13. Deputy Erin McGreehan asked the Taoiseach when the Cabinet Committee on water quality will next meet. [63428/25]

Sentiment score: 0.00

Along with my constituency colleague, I want to pay respects to those poor five souls, the young people who lost their lives in the car accident at the weekend: Chloe McGee, Shay Duffy, Alan McCluskey, Dylan Commins and Chloe Hipson. It is a desperate loss for their families, friends, work colleagues and everybody. I only hope their families can find the strength to walk along the pain and agony that comes upon a family when they lose someone so tragically. It seems almost futile and frivolous to mention it during a discussion on water quality. I have raised on several occasions the state of the water and rivers around Dundalk Bay. Research was published recently in a local newsletter spelling out clearly issues around repeated sewage discharge and wastewater plants operating beyond capacity, with visible waste near Blackrock and protected habitats being steadily damaged. People are seeing it, smelling it and living beside it. As the Taoiseach knows, I raise these concerns regularly and I get very dismissive responses from Irish Water. I often feel almost gaslit by them. I hope that when the Cabinet committee is working on water quality with the infrastructure Department that it will consider fast-tracking projects to make sure our water quality is up to standard.

Sentiment score: -0.14

18. Deputy Erin McGreehan asked the Taoiseach for a report on the work of the shared island unit. [48519/25]

Sentiment score: 0.11

The shared island unit has real potential and has had real results and benefits for County Louth and the country, as the Taoiseach said, in terms of the arts, emergency services and biodiversity. Yesterday's announcement that Dundalk Institute of Technology, DKIT, will gain university status alongside Queen's University Belfast is incredibly exciting news. It will be transformative for the north east, and will be a really complementary match-up with Queen's University as well. This is a huge opportunity for the shared island unit to invest in the future, to invest in our young people and to invest in our economy and our industry. I wish to ask the Taoiseach about the investment in people and about deeper health care co-operation with our neighbours in the North. There have to be synergies and opportunities there that we can look at with Daisy Hill Hospital in Newry and even further afield in Dundalk. We can start looking at how we can look after the communities in the Cooley Peninsula, Carlingford and Omeath, and how we can reflect this in our usual daily life and health care. They do not match up at the minute and we can do more.

Sentiment score: 0.47