I propose to take Questions Nos. 1 to 16, inclusive, together. The Government has placed agriculture and rural development at the heart of its work and the programme for Government sets out our ambitions to do more to grow our agrifood sector and see our rural economy and rural communities thrive. Government has mainstreamed agriculture across the Cabinet committee system to ensure that agriculture and rural policy are always factored into wider considerations and Government action. With this in mind, we established the Cabinet committee on water quality, which has been instrumental in our efforts to secure a derogation on the nitrates directive. Likewise, the Cabinet committee on European Union and international affairs has been a forum for closely monitoring CAP developments, other issues to do with agriculture and Europe, and shaping our positions from a negotiating perspective. The Cabinet committee on economy, trade and competitiveness and the Cabinet committee on climate action, environment and energy have also regularly discussed agricultural issues, particularly with regards to fully unlocking the economic potential within rural Ireland. As with all policy areas, agriculture issues are regularly discussed at Cabinet and there is regular cross-departmental engagement on issues that affect agriculture and our farming communities. Budget 2026 saw €2.3 billion allocated to the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine. This was an increase of €170 million over the 2025 budget. This Government commitment is showing very strong results. In 2024, agrifood exports were a record €19 billion and estimates for 2025 show even further growth, to €21 billion. This highlights the global orientation and exceptional quality of Irish produce and, when viewed in the context of international trade uncertainty, is all the more impressive. This success directly benefits Irish farm families. In 2024, the national farm survey showed that average family farm income rose by 89%. The figures for 2025 are not yet finalised, but indications show that it could see a further 30% growth. This is real progress and is the outcome of years of investments by the Government and, above all, by farmers themselves. By way of example, one can look at the success and implementation of the ACRES programme, which is part of Ireland's Common Agricultural Policy strategic plan. This work is relevant to multiple Cabinet committees and will see €1.5 billion allocated, with 60% funding from the Exchequer and 40% from the European Union budget. That will have a huge impact on our rural environment and will deliver an income support for up to 50,000 farm families. The Government will build on this success and the hard work of our farming families to ensure a thriving, resilient and sustainable agrifood sector. When it comes Ireland’s priorities for the next CAP, our position is very clear and remains unchanged. We want a CAP that gives sufficient certainty and stability for farmers, fishers, and rural communities, allows for policy tools tailored to the Irish agrifood system and provides sufficient funding for farmers and rural communities. As the Deputies will be aware, the proposed CAP structure post 2027 seeks to consolidate existing measures into a single policy framework. The Government will be going through the proposals line by line to work towards our CAP priorities and assess the practicality of the Commission’s proposed approach, given the associated governance and conditionality requirements. I also note that the European Parliament has expressed dissatisfaction with the proposed merging of CAP elements with other funding structures and streams. Ireland will advocate for maximum flexibility, retention of the full toolbox of measures, ring-fenced funding and a CAP framework that supports competitiveness, sustainability and food security. Ireland will play an influential role during our upcoming Presidency, acting as an honest broker in progressing CAP discussions. The Minister, Deputy Heydon, and all of Government will continue to engage actively at European Union level.
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Shocking. That is an awful slur on Deputy Cleere.
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Thanks, Deputy.
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Indistinguishable.
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I thank all the Deputies for raising the broad spectrum of issues that they have. In response to Deputy 'Chap' Cleere, I have spoken to the Minister for Transport, Darragh O’Brien. Without question, very significant damage has been done to quite a lot of local roads in areas of severe flooding over the past month. I was in Aughrim recently with Deputy Byrne and saw at first hand the damage done to the roads there. In fact, some of the roads came with the flood. The situation is very serious. The officials who were with the Minister said they are awaiting returns from the councils in respect of an assessment and an estimate of the damage that has been done. I will talk to the Minister again to allocate funding to those roads in the context of the weather damage that has been done. They are waiting on the rough estimates from the councils for the cost of restoring the roads that have been without question damaged as a result of the flooding. I will keep in touch with the Deputy on that and with other Deputies who are concerned. Deputy Moynihan raised the range of issues that face farmers at the moment. He is correct. I welcome the offer of dialogue from the Minister for agriculture to the farm organisations, the IFA, the ICSA and others, in respect of the Bord Bia issue as well as the full gambit of issues that face farming at the moment. I have been in touch with some of the farming organisations. In my view there is a need for dialogue to chart a way forward for Irish agriculture and farming out of the current controversy that focuses on the core issues. The single biggest issue this year is the CAP. Be under no illusions that when the dust settles on the current row, it will be the CAP. There are other issues but the CAP is the one I am most concerned about now. There is protecting the derogation, blue tongue and the various assurance schemes and the imposition and the burden they represent for farmers. I know Deputy Smith has raised this as well. He was involved in the first ever major food plan. Was it Harvest 2020?
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Food Harvest 2020 was the first major strategic document which set the roadmap for the development of the food industry. I think CAP and the budget are key but also the need to get into a dialogue pathway with the organisations. I would encourage the organisations to respond positively to the correspondence that the Minister issued to them today in respect of those issues. In my view, that cannot happen quickly enough. I will come back to that issue. Deputy Cahill raised the issue of TB. It is a very significant issue. The Government believes its efforts to tackle the ongoing challenge of bovine TB is having a positive effect. The herd incidence has started to reduce in recent months. In June the Government agreed to introduce additional measures to the bovine TB programme following extensive stakeholder agreement. The bovine TB action plan was launched in September underpinned by scientific research and veterinary expertise. The aim of the action plan is to reset the programme in the context of putting in place measures necessary to tackle the current disease situation. Those measures are targeting both transmission between wildlife and cattle, which does happen, and transmission between cattle. There is a heavy emphasis on vaccination in the action plan. The budget has also been substantially increased to €157 million this year, 2026, to focus on driving down it through the implementation of the measures laid out in the action plan itself. I will talk to the Minister in the context of what Deputy Cahill asked for in terms of whether something can be done about the compensation levels that farmers are getting at the moment and the degree to which a substantial number are out of pocket. Nothing is more devastating than to be told a herd has TB. I think I dealt with Deputy Smith's issue. Without question, we have a top-class food industry and we have got to protect it. The issue more generally is that the global supply chain is key here. We are not an island on our own. It is complex. If we want to supply markets in Europe, and people are buying our food in Europe, or Middle Eastern or Asian companies or whatever, they too will set terms that will govern the basis on which we sell them food and very often contingency of supply is one of those conditions, so this is not simple and we need to be careful of the message we are sending. So far, we have penetrated markets all over the world - in Asia, America and Europe - because of the quality of our food, including our dairy produce, beef, poultry and fish. We want to maintain that level of high-quality exports. In response to Deputy O'Meara, I will talk to the Minister about accessibility to new technology. He said the log in method in that authentication process is too difficult and it is causing enormous problems. I will talk to the Minister in respect of this and revert to the Deputy. We will see what we can do on the funding. The funding may be stretched to cover a pothole that would cover Deputy Cleere but we will certainly do our level best to stretch it. Deputy Byrne raised a key point. We want generational succession to be part of the Common Agricultural Policy. Our concern at the moment is that, as drafted, the seven-year budget is about 20% below what the previous seven-year allocation was. That is the issue at the moment and we should be focusing on that collectively with the farming community and Government because people will be quite annoyed if we do not try to improve that somewhat. I am concerned about it from my discussions, last week in particular. We have a lot of work to do on it and we also have to work with other member states to try and get a higher budget for CAP. That would include within it proposals on farm succession, which is a big issue. It is about certainty and clarity, which is why the derogation was important. Young farmers want certainty. It also the adoption of new technology. I suspect it is a lifestyle issue in that people want a life as well. Farming is a 24-7 occupation with a lot of responsibilities. There is a lot of bureaucracy, obligations and pressure. Therefore, we need to create that roadmap for young people showing that there is a future and viability above all else for young farmers. That will be key. Deputy Tóibín suggested I would be in line for the Booker Prize. I wish I could ever be as good a writer as to get the Booker Prize.
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The facts are that exports of food products have increased exponentially. They have done very well in high-quality markets across the world. Incomes have increased over the last two years. One of issues with farming is that it is cyclical. There have been proposals on taxation. Deputies Tóibín and Paul Lawless are the doomsday couple.
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The language switched dramatically from incredible to terrible, to the world is going to collapse at any moment.
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The point I would make is that it is difficult; it is a challenging world. I think Deputy Lawless said farmers feel ignored. Let us consider ACRES, comprising €1.5 billion, with 60% of that from the Irish Exchequer and 40% from the European Union. Admittedly, some of it is funded by the carbon tax but it provides incomes to 50,000 farmers.
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The Deputy never mentioned the derogation. We are the only country in European Union that has a derogation from the nitrates directive. We voted against the Mercosur deal but we negotiated for safeguards, just as we will negotiate for an increase in CAP.
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Calm down.
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Did the Deputy not hear me saying that? We have to negotiate it up. The only way we can do it is by negotiation, just as we negotiated on Mercosur to get safeguards in place. Our MEPs got safeguards in place, better than they were a year ago, because the likelihood was that if one of the bigger states went for Mercosur, the blocking minority would go.
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The safeguards were very important to get done.
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No one is smug at all about anything. To be frank with the Deputies, the Members of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael know an awful lot more about agriculture than the two of them together.
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Deputy Ó Murchú-----
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I want to reply to Deputy Ó Murchú-----
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-----who is one of the more consistent Members in the House. He is here consistently every Tuesday, to give him his due. He said that he met the two Commissioners and so did I. One of the issues I had was the issue with the CAP and the need to impress on those Commissioners that the CAP is not where we want it to be in terms of income levels for Irish farmers. My sense of that conversation is that we have some distance to go to get the Common Agricultural Policy limits up. The Commissioners were reticent on other issues, including the issue the Deputy referenced.
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They did not say that to me. That is probably a matter higher up the scale. Deputy Heneghan somehow got the adaptation measures in Clontarf into the agriculture debate.
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Flood defences are a serious issue in its own right. I do not know why the Deputy is not allowed to take photos. Of course, he should be allowed to take photos. I presume he took them anyway. I would say he did, given form. I do not know; I will check it. There should be full transparency. Is the Deputy saying the flood scheme is not being allowed? I do not know, but there should be full transparency in these matters. There are significant issues there with flood relief, and there have been for quite some time. I agree with Deputy Whitmore. I read that report in the media about the tangled nets in our waters. That is not good enough and cannot happen. It will do irreparable damage from a biodiversity point of view. I will talk to the Ministers. I know the Minister of State, Deputy Christopher O'Sullivan, is concerned about it. I will talk to the Minister of State, Deputy Dooley, as well.
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I am coming to him. The bulk of the plan is on vaccination. The scientific advice is different. The advice is-----
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There will be a hell of a lot of vaccination this year. The budget has gone up significantly to €157 million. There will be vaccination and there will also be the wildlife measures because there is transmission. It is not as simple as the Deputy has articulated. In response to Deputy McGuinness, farmers are not ignored. I just spoke about ACRES, the derogation and the various funding mechanisms we have taken in to support different farmers at different levels. We have been supportive of farmers, from sheep to tillage to sucklers, right across the board. We are not ignoring anything. I mentioned the nitrates directive and so on. The bigger issue for us is we want to continue to export. Sinn Féin opposed the Canada trade deal. We are exporting food to Canada. I do not get the logic of opposing a trade deal that helps Irish farmers.
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I am talking about CETA at the moment.
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We opposed Mercosur.
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While I cannot verify it, one of the Commissioners told me last week that a few food producers went out on an EU mission to Mercosur countries, showing that some people will see if they can get opportunities there. On CETA, we did well and the embassy in Ottawa in Canada did a fantastic study on the economic benefits of CETA for Ireland and for the Canada-Ireland trade relationship.
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No, but the Deputy says we are ignoring-----
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Why is he talking about Brazil?
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I already told him that we voted against Mercosur.
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We got safeguards in. We are not ignoring farmers. About a month ago, I went to the AGM of the IFA, just before this latest round. There is no sense of ignoring. In fact, it was quite an agreeable, good conversation. I listened, as did the Minister, Deputy Heydon, and the Ministers of State, Deputies Dooley and Healy-Rae. The was no reference to the Bord Bia issue, which may not have surfaced at the time. There was no sense of people being ignored, whatever else the Deputy may say. That kind of language is rubbish. It is just exaggeration.
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It is just throwing out words that mean nothing. There was never any sense that farmers were being ignored by this Government, nor could there have been.
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 17 to 41, inclusive, together. The Cabinet committee on children and education oversees the implementation of programme for Government commitments in the area of children and education. It receives detailed reports on identified policy areas such as child poverty and well-being, and education. The membership of the Cabinet committee on children and education comprises the Taoiseach, the Tánaiste, the Minister for Health and others. I will not go through the full list; there are quite a number of Ministers on it. The programme for Government contains many important commitments intended to improve the lives of all children and especially those children who need our help most. These commitments include setting an ambitious child poverty target; progressively increasing the child-support payment; expanding eligibility for the fuel allowance to families in receipt of the working family payment; and exploring a targeted child benefit payment. The Cabinet committee meets quarterly and met for the third time in December. It will next meet in the first part of 2026. The Government’s vision for education is to deliver a world-class education system which breaks down barriers and ensures every child can achieve their full potential. That is why we remain committed to building on the work of the DEIS programme, which, since 2006, has been operating to tackle educational disadvantage. Budget 2026 moved towards permanent targeted payments to support the most vulnerable. A €320 million social welfare package for children includes the largest increase ever in the child support payment, increased income thresholds for the working family payment and the extension of fuel allowance to those on the working family payment. Increases in prices and wages have widened the gap between people reliant on social welfare and the average income in society. In recent years, as a result, the Government has invested to protect low-income families with children. Since 2020, the weekly child support payment has increased by 95% for children aged 12 and over and by 61% for children under 12. This exceeds the growth in average wages of 28% and exceeds the rate of increase of many other permanent social welfare payments. Other new or enhanced allocations in budget 2026 to address child poverty through the provision of services include an additional €5.14 million for Equal Start, which is a 30% increase on last year; an additional €16.5 million - a €48 million full-year cost - to the Department of education to implement a new DEIS strategy and the new DEIS plus scheme; a 22% increase of €7.3 million for youth justice supports; €3.2 million of funding to expand and strengthen the national network of family resource centres, with the addition of ten new centres bringing the national total to 136; and an expansion of the income thresholds for the national childcare scheme. Given the growing demand for many children's services, "Breaking the Cycle: New Measures in Budget 2026 to Address Child Poverty and Promote Well-being", our third report on child poverty spending in the annual budget, highlights new and additional spending in that area. Analysis from the ESRI shows that the permanent measures taken in budget 2026 are progressive and prioritise protecting the incomes of the poorest families. On disabilities and children, we have established a dedicated Cabinet committee on disability. The work of this committee is progressing important initiatives to respond to the needs and well-being of children. There was a record allocation of €3 billion for special education provision in 2026, including funding for 1,700 additional SNAs and 860 additional teachers for special education. We are also establishing the new education therapy service as an additional support for children with special educational needs. It is intended to commence in special schools, with roll-out over time to special classes and mainstream schools. Recruitment is advancing and it is anticipated that the service will commence in 45 special schools at a later stage in the 2025-26 school year. Significant investments in disability services are also being delivered, particularly in the children's disability network teams, CDNTs. I will leave it at that because I am conscious that a number of Deputies want to get back in.
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I am sorry, which Gaelscoil?
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Once.
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Ba mhaith liom-----
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Ba mhaith liom-----
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Ba mhaith liom a rá leis an Teachta O’Meara go bhfuil ionadh orm-----
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----- nach bhfuil Gaelcholáiste dara leibhéal i dTiobraid Árann. B’fhéidir go mbeidh seans againn teagmháil a dhéanamh leis an ETB chun clár de shaghas éigin a chur i bhfeidhm ionas go mbeidh, diaidh ar ndiaidh, Gaelcholáiste againn. De ghnáth, tá Gaelcholáiste i mbeagnach gach aon chontae anois. There are Gaelcholáistí in most areas now. There is at least one in many counties across the country, so I am surprised. Perhaps the ETB might be in a position to work with the Department or with local interests and schools, particularly the Gaelscoileanna, to see if consensus can be arrived at in respect of a Gaelcholáiste that would be centrally located and could be availed of by those who want to pursue second level through the medium of Irish. Beidh mise sásta tacú a thabairt le tioscnamh den chineál sin. On Deputy John Connolly's issue, the national therapy service is commencing. We want to roll it out to the remainder of the special schools. That is important. It is a significant development. We made this a red-line issue in the most recent general election. I agree 100% on the developmental language disorders. I brought in the first of those classes back in the late 1990s. They are game-changers in how they can facilitate children to deal with language challenges at an early age in order that they can transition back into mainstream education. It is one of the better outcomes I have seen with children down through the years. I will talk to the Minister of State with responsibility for special education in relation to that. Deputy Dempsey referred to cost of childcare. We can do more and we have to do more to meet the commitment in the programme for Government. In the forthcoming budget, we will examine that issue to see what more we can do. We hope to have earlier discussions with Deputies on the next budget. We are conscious that the European Presidency is coming our way, so we need to talk about these things a bit earlier than usual. I will pursue the issue Deputy McGreehan raised in respect of unallocated social workers for children in the Louth-Meath area with Tusla. The Deputy stated that the situation there is out of kilter with the rest of the country in the context of the numbers that remain unallocated. That is a concern. At some stage, we need to look at how people are deployed as well. Numbers generally seem to be increasing and caseloads are increasing. That is across a range of professional service engagement. Maidir leis an Teachta Crowe agus Gaelscoil Mhíchíl Ciosóg, beidh me ag caint leis an Aire faoi thionscadail tógála sa Roinn. I will talk to the Minister about school buildings. We have a lot of challenges. Deputy Ó Murchú also referred to social workers. We have had a lot of cases. I fully take on board what the Deputy is saying. We need to look at allocating more social workers and at the best way to deploy them.
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