I thank Deputy Doherty very much. I note with interest the debate that took place in the Northern Ireland Assembly this week and the outcome of it. I will engage with my Government colleagues, including the Taoiseach, in relation to this matter. I am supportive of the principle. I think there is logic in it in terms of a Government timeline and the likes. I will need to discuss that with Government colleagues and revert to the Deputy.
Sentiment score: 0.32
He is behind you.
Sentiment score: 0.00
As the Deputy can imagine, this is an issue I am very alert to and aware of in a very practical sense. My hometown is one that has seen an adverse impact from this change. Admittedly, many other areas have seen fares decrease. I do not think it is good that we are seeing one town nearly being pitted against another as a result of this fare structure. We have taken several measures to reduce public transport fares that I am proud of. We did that together in the last Government. I would like to meet the NTA regarding this issue. Perhaps those of us from constituencies impacted could seek to meet the organisation together to seek a timeline on when it intends to carry out the consultation. While I am on my feet I join the Leas-Cheann Comhairle in welcoming the students and their teachers to the Dáil. I welcome Ms Lavin and Ms Keyes and their students, Éabha, Josie, Cillian and Jacek. I am sure they could all teach us many things about debating. I first learned how to debate back in secondary school too. I was told to do all the things I never do now, like locking your knees, looking up, speaking calmly, beginning with a quote and all that. I hope they have had very good success and I thank them for being here today.
Sentiment score: 0.26
I thank Deputy Rice very much. I agree with him in general that we must come up with systems to drive forward infrastructure projects in a more timely manner. This is why we have set up the new infrastructure division of the Department of public expenditure and reform. I think we all hear this issue raised in our constituencies. To the people of Cork regarding the decisions we are taking, I would say that the Crawford Gallery is an example of a project that had been knocking around for quite a while. We took a big decision in that regard recently that I think is important. I will get specific answers for the Deputy concerning the three questions he asked regarding the north-south line, the allocations and the timeline. The next point in time is the national development plan, which is due to be published in or around July, and that will allocate capital for the next number of years. I will ask the Minister for Transport to respond to the Deputy specifically on those questions.
Sentiment score: 0.11
No.
Sentiment score: -0.30
I know we do not agree on much, but I thought one of the things we could agree on was our concern around the activities of some who are loosely termed the "far right" who turn up and intimidate and wear balaclavas and face masks. They stood outside your house and my house shouting and roaring and causing significant concern to people in terms of their safety. This is a sensible initiative in respect of a garda being able to direct a person to remove clothing that is being worn to make themselves unidentifiable. It is certainly not about anything to do with the immunocompromised, whom of course we much support. I will ask the Minister to provide the Deputy with clarity regarding the intent of this legislation in writing.
Sentiment score: 0.23
I thank Deputy Collins. I watched in admiration how he managed to bring a Longford school back to a Cork connection. It was nicely done and I join him in welcoming the students Deputy Carrigy has brought to the Dáil today. They are very welcome and I hope they enjoy their day. I thank Deputy Collins for his question and for raising this important issue. He and I know that HIQA is the statutory independent regulator. We all appreciate that and the role it has to play in ensuring nursing homes are safe and effective. It is important that they always work closely with nursing home providers and that any restrictive conditions attached to a nursing home are resolved between HIQA and the providers. I join the Deputy in urging a speedy resolution to ensure our older and most vulnerable citizens can have access to services located close to their loved ones in the Bantry area. I will ask the Minister for Health to come back to the Deputy directly.
Sentiment score: 0.51
I thank Deputy Crowe for highlighting this issue. I take the issue of animal welfare seriously. Far too often in our country, we hear of the mistreatment of horses. We often see images on social media and elsewhere that can be extremely distressing. I think the Deputy's point is right. I have been asking about this for a while. The legislation on this is pretty robust, but perhaps there are issues relating to enforcement and how we can get better at enforcing it. In light of the Deputy raising this issue, I will ask the Minister for agriculture to consider the points he has made and come back to him directly.
Sentiment score: 0.06
I thank the Deputy for raising the important issue of the cost of insurance and the impact that can have on consumers, businesses and so many parts of our lives, our economy and our society. I know that the Government is working its way through that issue at the moment relating to the PIAB guidelines. The Deputy has made a sensible suggestion to look at the length of time for the reviews, which I think is probably too frequent. I know that the Government, led in this area by the Minister for Justice, will give consideration to whether there is a need to amend legislation as well. We are also re-establishing the Cabinet committee on insurance reform, which I will share with all relevant Ministers. We will certainly take forward the Deputy's suggestions through that forum as well.
Sentiment score: 0.34
I thank the Deputy for bringing that issue to my attention. I will certainly speak with the Minister for housing and ask that he reply to the Deputy directly. As the Deputy has rightly said, the Government took a funding decision with regard to this. We are living through a housing emergency. We need to see these projects move, so I will ask the Minister to come back to him.
Sentiment score: 0.06
I thank the Deputy for raising this important issue. I undertake to speak with the Minister for Justice and the Minister for further and higher education about this. From my memory, I know changes were made in the regulation and oversight of that sector. I also agree that students who come here are making an important contribution with the part-time work they carry out. I know many businesses in rural and urban Ireland are reliant on those workers. I will raise the issue the Deputy has brought to our attention directly with the Ministers, Deputies O'Callaghan and Lawless, and ask them to reply to him.
Sentiment score: 0.28
Deputy Currie makes an important point. How do we make sure we are hearing all of the voices we need to hear when making policy decisions? How do we be as inclusive as possible? I remember well that visit to Castleknock and being in a relatively new coffee shop with the Deputy for a lovely cup of coffee. What was it called?
Sentiment score: 0.25
I remember being in Melo and meeting the young woman running it, and indeed her mother. As is often the case in family businesses, everyone was pitching in. I remember them talking honestly to us about the costs of small business. We have made a number of decisions recently as a Government, not all of which are popular, to try to recognise that when we come up with a good idea in here, it is not us who have to pay for it. It is often the small business, and we have to get that balance right. We are going to set up a cost-of-business advisory forum. This will look at all business taxes and costs and ensure that businesses are properly consulted before new legislation or policies that impact small businesses are introduced. On foot of what the Deputy has raised, I will ask the Minister, Deputy Burke, and the Minister of State, Deputy Dillon, to give consideration, as I know they are, to the membership of that, and to make sure we get that balance right.
Sentiment score: 0.23
First, let me reject entirely the assertion with regard to the Uisce Éireann funding model. The full trawl of documents, which I have no doubt committees and others will look at, will show that the €1 billion was additional funding. Indeed, those of us who were in government at the time very much remember that. Of course, it is true to say that and also to say the next thing, which is the broader point the Deputy is getting at, that it is not going to be enough. There are towns and villages right across Ireland, rural and urban, that desperately need the water infrastructure and wastewater infrastructure as well. We have been very clear as a Government that we intend to allocate a lot more to Uisce Éireann. We have been very clear that the Apple fund, for want of a better phrase, does provide a once-in-a-generation opportunity to invest. We will make decisions as a Government shortly in terms of how to move forward on that investment. We are also bringing Irish Water to the table in the new housing activation office, which we are going to get right, because water infrastructure is a key enabler of housing to keep young people in constituencies like the Deputy's and in our country too.
Sentiment score: 0.11
I thank Deputy O'Gorman. I acknowledge that he put a real emphasis on this in the previous Government. It is not simply about strong words, although I do think words matter, and I do think speaking out and speaking up matters. Quite frankly, there are a lot of countries not speaking out and speaking up the way Ireland is. Find me another European country that has referred to the actions of Israel in terms of war crimes. We going to continue - and it is not a case of letter writing - to put pressure to build a coalition because the European Union has to live up to its obligations too. We are not just going to do that, however. We are going to pass a Bill with regard to the occupied Palestinian territories. It is going to have to be legally robust. I had a good dialogue with Senator Black in that regard. There are different legal opinions, let us be truthful, around goods and services and what can and cannot be done, and we are happy to thrash that out. That is what this Parliament is meant to do. It is not a policy difference from my perspective around covering services. It truthfully is not. I get the point about covering services. However, the legal advice available to me is that services are legally a different issue from goods. Let us thrash that detail out, however. I am happy to work through that with the Deputy.
Sentiment score: 0.11
I thank Deputy Healy very much for raising the matter. When a court sitting changes in a town, it is not just the convenience for people in terms of accessing the court; it is the general footfall that can come into a town associated with a court sitting. I see that in my county of Wicklow as well. I will ask the Minister for Justice to get an update and to discuss this matter with the Courts Service with regard to Carrick-on-Suir and Cashel and why the sittings are moving to Clonmel and to revert to the Deputy with an update.
Sentiment score: 0.30
I thank Deputy McCormack. I offer my sincere sympathy to him and his family on their loss. The Deputy is so right to highlight the importance of the electricity grid, both from an energy security and from a housing point of view. We quite rightly talk in this House about the emergency that is housing - there is no doubt about that - but the key enabler to moving forward on that emergency is water, wastewater and energy supply. That is why the Government is very minded to invest significantly more funding through Uisce Éireann and into the grid through EirGrid and others. We will be looking at this in the context of the Apple escrow account and that once-off opportunity to make that investment. We will consider this in due course in the months ahead. We are determined to get that right and make sure there is bang for buck in terms of that investment leading to extra houses. I will keep the Deputy updated as that progresses.
Sentiment score: 0.22
I thank Deputy Burke for raising this issue and for vocalising very strongly the absolute frustration of his constituents in and around Blackpool. I know this has been going on for an extraordinarily long period of time. The Deputy is of course correct that on 17 April the OPW submitted the final supplementary information and those updated environmental surveys he referenced to the Minister for public expenditure, infrastructure, public service reform and digitalisation as part of the statutory confirmation that needs to take place to progress the scheme to construction. I spoke with the Minister responsible for the Office of Public Works this morning in this regard. I was going to say he is as eager as Deputy Burke, although I am not sure anyone could be as eager as Deputy Burke, to move this forward and do so quickly. He is almost as eager as Deputy Burke. I will ask the Minister of State, Deputy Moran, to keep in very close contact with the Deputy. It is a statement of fact that all the necessary paperwork is now with the Department of public expenditure and we need to move this forward.
Sentiment score: 0.21
I thank Deputy Guirke. I will ask the Minister for housing and the Minister of State with responsibility for planning to give consideration to the point he makes about the role of section 5 and the appropriate use of it in the context of what he has outlined. I would like to make two points on IPAS and migration accommodation. First, there has been too much discussion only on accommodation. We also have to discuss a rules-based system and making sure that if people have a right to be here, they are integrated, get on with their lives, get a job and make a good contribution to our country. If they do not have a right to be here, we must ensure they are asked to leave and to do so much more quickly. If they do not leave, we must ensure that they do leave. Second, we want to see hotels used for what they are meant to be used for, which is tourism. In the emergency situation, of course, that was not always possible but we have a very clear commitment to try to stay away from the use of the only hotel in a town. There can be cases where a hotel has been shut for many years but I am talking about active hotels. Certainly, that is the policy objective of the Government.
Sentiment score: 0.35
That is, of course, not our policy. I thank the Deputy for raising issues in relation to Belmullet, the Belmont Hotel in Knock and St. Mary's school in Ballina. I will ask the Minister for Justice and the Minister of State for migration to come back to the Deputy on that. Broadly, on the issue of communications around migration, we need to do more. We recently discussed this very issue at a Cabinet committee meeting on justice and migration. We have good people doing their best to communicate and to keep communities up to date, but we probably do not have enough of them. We need to support those people who are doing very good work in trying to go out and engage with communities. We also need to listen to what communities are saying. Often communities just want to know what the impact will be on schools and health services. We need to be better able to respond more quickly to the resources that a community often needs. If a community sees a significant increase in the population, be that through IPAS or anything else, these are often legitimate questions that people are raising and we need to do better at providing more speedy answers. That is our work-----
Sentiment score: 0.33
Sorry, that is a fair question. In relation to the issue of planning, I am truthfully not sure in relation to that but I will get an answer to the Deputy directly.
Sentiment score: 0.19
I thank Deputy Ó Murchú. While I am not aware of the specific details, I join the Deputy in sending my best wishes to that member of An Garda Síochána. As the Deputy says, all of these incidents are harsh and real reminders of the dangers that gardaí face when they put themselves in harm's way to keep the rest of us safe. I am very grateful to all members of An Garda Síochána for their service. I am a big fan of the community safety partnerships for the reasons the Deputy has outlined. They bring everybody together and recognise that while gardaí have a role to play, so too do the councils, the HSE and lots of other parts of society. They involve pulling everyone together to draw up a plan to make communities safer and to have that buy-in is important. I will ask the Minister for Justice to reflect on the particular comments Deputy Ó Murchú made today in relation to Louth, the membership and that interim gap and to respond to him directly.
Sentiment score: 0.40
Absolutely.
Sentiment score: 0.00
I would be delighted to do so.
Sentiment score: 0.51