I welcome the Minister to the House and thank her for being here today. There was a bit of a mix-up last week with Senator Ní Chuilinn's Commencement matter. I appreciate the Minister coming in specifically to answer this Commencement matter. Before I call on Senator Ní Chuilinn, I welcome to the Distinguished Visitors Gallery my niece Yvonne Daly, who is also my godchild and will at some stage be selecting a nursing home for me. I ask the Minister to make sure she picks a nice nursing home for me some day in the future. The Minister might keep an eye on her when she does. I also welcome her friend Katie Dillon. They were out at a concert last night and were up bright and breezy this morning to come and watch Seanad Éireann in action.

I thank the Cathaoirleach for selecting this Commencement matter and making time for it in the schedule after last week's mishap. I thank the Minister for making time this morning. I know she is very busy as we approach the recess. I appreciate her coming to the House today to discuss an escalating crisis in early life healthcare. Our HSE public health nurses do important work. I want to acknowledge that from the beginning. A worrying trend is developing, however, in some parts of the country whereby babies, toddlers and children are not receiving critical developmental checks. To explain the importance of the checks, I will quote from the HSE website:

How your child develops up to the age of 5 sets the groundwork for learning, health and behaviour throughout their life. All children [as we know] develop at different rates. Some will be slower than others but then catch up over time. Others may have an underlying problem ... Every child gets free health and development checks from 0 to 5 years. This is to make sure they are healthy and developing normally ... All checks are free of charge and provided by the HSE ... In their first six months, your baby will have health and developmental checks immediately after birth, during their first week at home with you, at 2 to 6 weeks [old] and at regular intervals up to 6 months ... At 6 to 12 months, your PHN will check your baby's physical, social and behavioural development ... At the 21 to 24 month developmental check ... your public health nurse (PHN) will talk to you about your child's development and any concerns you may have ... At the 21 to 24 month developmental ... [they] will also check your child's general health. This includes: dental health, general physical [health] and growth ... Your child will get two more checks between the ages of 3 and 5 ... At 46 to 48 months ... eyesight .... posture and large movements .... fine movements ... speech development ... cognitive development ... social, emotional, behavioural and play development ... [Finally, at age four or five] ... a public health nurse will check your child's [learning and eyesight] ...

That is just to give an idea of how much great work these public health nurses do in the best-case scenario.

A conservative estimate of the number of checks from newborn to age five, based on the HSE's advice, is eight checks by a trained professional to ensure our children are healthy and developing normally. I have a three-year-old who was seen at two weeks old and once at 24 months old when I raised a concern about his speech; that is it. Since then, parents in my locality and I have been sent official HSE letters to say our children cannot receive checks for the foreseeable future. I raised this issue in the Seanad in March and April and I have been contacted by parents in the Dublin 12 area. I have since come to learn that developmental checks are routinely postponed or cancelled in various parts of the country. It is a Dublin problem but it is also in other pockets of the country.

In one case in Dublin 12, a parent of a two-year-old was told there were too many older people in the community and that they had to be prioritised. In another case, the mother of a preschool four-year-old was told their final sign-off before attending primary school would not happen due to the HSE-Government restrictions and staffing challenges. The backlog of missed appointments was said to be a consequence of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The HSE is sending letters to the families of babies, toddlers and preschool children asking them to perform developmental checks themselves. This is deeply concerning. No parent could or should feel qualified to check the dental health of their toddler. No parent, especially a new parent, knows the difference between speech delay and selective mutism. We know the importance of early intervention in autism, ADHD and other conditions. No parent is trained to identify the early signs of a behavioural struggle in their three-year-old.

Public health nurses have also contacted me since I raised this issue. There are not enough public health nurses. I know the Minister knows that. It appears in Dublin in particular that there has been a dramatic decrease in staffing numbers due to transfer requests out of the area. This means children born in the greater Dublin area are at a geographical disadvantage in relation to early life care and development. I have also been contacted by early childhood educators who are now enrolling children in their education settings who have never been seen or assessed by a public health nurse of professional. Granted, most of the parents and healthcare professionals I have spoken to are in Dublin. I would like to know how widespread the crisis is. I would also like to know what is being done to tackle the staffing shortages in the HSE. Most importantly, I and other parents in Dublin 12 need to know how soon we can expect the full complement of key developmental checks to be reinstated for our children.

I thank Senator Ní Chuilinn for raising this important topic and again apologise for the problem last week.

The Government remains committed to providing continued investment in the health workforce, including public health nurses, and ensuring this incredibly important service is available for those who need it. Public health nurses are employed by the HSE to deliver safe, quality and person-centred community nursing care across a person's life. As of May this year, there are 1,493 whole-time equivalent, WTE, public health nurses employed and a further 27 whole-time equivalent posts provided for in budget 2025.

In response to the very significant concern the Senator and others have raised, especially in her constituency where I have observed this has been a particularly acute problem, we have tried to expedite those posts to areas where child health developmental assessments are most impacted. More broadly, as of March 2025, 83.4% of 9- to 11-month child developmental assessments were completed on time or before reaching 12 months of age.

As we are aware, the HSE recruitment pause ended in July 2024. There is no impediment to normal recruitment or replacement of staff within agreed WTE limits. Each regional executive officer will continue to prioritise, recruit and replace staff within his or her approved number as appropriate, including public health nurses.

The Senator and I both know there have been known challenges with the recruitment and retention of public health nurses, especially within parts of Dublin and in particular in the area the Senator represents. A community nursing oversight group was established by the HSE specifically to identify those challenges related to recruitment and is progressing the recommendations from that work. Short-term temporary solutions to prioritise resources and service provision have been put in place, including prioritising birth notification visits and post-natal assessments.

As of March this year, 13 local health offices nationally, including Dublin south-west, are using the national caseload prioritisation framework. That assists with providing care to people within the areas in greatest need of services. Child health developmental assessments have, in some instances, been impacted by that approach. However, and this is so important, the HSE advises that the Dublin south-west integrated healthcare area, IHA, which covers the area of Dublin 12, is working to address service provision. Efforts under way include the development of partnerships between acute hospitals and community partners to provide graduate nurses with an opportunity for a clinical rotation to the community and to initiate a similar opportunity for experienced registered nurses working within hospitals. That development is in the initial stages and is one of a number of measures that will improve the public health nursing workforce into the future.

Of the additional public health nurse posts allocated in budget 2025, six whole-time equivalents were allocated to Dublin south city west and Dublin south-west IHA’s, which are areas with a significant mismatch between demand and capacity as the Senator correctly identified. Recruitment for these positions has been prioritised. Candidates have been selected and are scheduled to commence their roles through the public health nursing sponsorship scheme in September 2025. That is six additional WTEs for that area commencing in September 2025. Reconfiguration and integration of services, reorganisation of existing work and redeployment of staff will continue to underpin broader contingency plans. I absolutely fully acknowledge the very important concerns of parents when access to these important public health nursing services is limited. They provide reassurance and comfort as well as an early identification system for difficulties at a most vulnerable time of both a mother and baby's life. My Department is working with the HSE to address those challenges and I will continue to do so. I appreciate the Senator raising this issue and the opportunity to be able to provide an update to her today.

I thank the Minister. That piece of information on the six additional whole-time equivalent nurses is new. If they are beginning in September 2025, that will significantly impact in a positive way in the Dublin areas the Minister mentioned. If she has an opportunity to pass word back to the HSE and the managers in the area, it is important that, as part of that workload in September, they would look at trying to catch up on what has been missed because babies continue to be born and continue to need their newborn checks, six-week checks and six-month checks, but there are three- and four-year-olds who have had maybe one heel prick test and that is it. It is, therefore, really important that, as part of their work programme when they begin in September, they look back at what has been missed over the past few years. I appreciate the Minister's considered response, however. I am glad there is actual news in it and that we have six whole-time equivalent public health nurses beginning work in September. I thank her for that.

I know that the Senator has been a very strong advocate for this area. It is my privilege to be able to provide this update to her. I thank her for raising this so that I could provide this update to her very publicly and her constituents. Perhaps we might have a further conversation a number of months into their work from September 2025. I will certainly bring the Senator's suggestion back to the HSE. Again, I thank her for advocacy.

I thank the Cathaoirleach for selecting this Commencement matter, which is important to the people I represent. I thank the Minister for coming in to take the question in person and give it the seriousness it deserves.

I have lived in the Bailieborough area for more than roughly 30 years and in all of that time, there has been a speech and language service available to parents in Bailieborough, Shercock and Mullagh. I understand that this would have been the case in most areas throughout the county. It is my understanding from parents in this area that the service has been abandoned, and families are now asked to attend the service in the town of Cavan. In other words, it is centralised. Not all of the families have transport. It is difficult to overcome this, and the costs are big as the Minister will appreciate.

In an area like Cavan, while huge strides were made in public transport during the previous Government, which is outside this debate, and there are much improved bus services, there are still not trains. Using the buses to go to Cavan town involves quite a chunk of a day and it is expensive. For many families, the time involved in getting to Cavan town and back is not available to them either because of work or having other children to care for. This repeats itself in areas like Ballyconnell and others. The extra time involved will greatly damage their schooling. The children are not attending school if they are travelling to get there and presumably there are all sorts of diversions the children will insist on when they get to Cavan town. They are, therefore, losing out on schooling.

I am aware that the non-attendance policy takes them out of the service quickly. In other words, if somebody is due to attend and they miss one or two, then they are struck off and go off the service for non-attendance. This will greatly increase non-attendance. That is a huge part of it in my view, and there is anecdotal evidence to support that. If I understand properly the values of Sláintecare or what it seeks to achieve, this totally contravenes it. There are many vulnerable families in the area I am discussing and in other areas in the county.

I understand that in the case of cancer services and other clinical needs, there are cases for centralisation on the grounds of not losing excellence, etc. Those arguments have been well rehearsed. However, I am a teacher by background, and I cannot see how speech and language therapy delivery is improved by moving its location. It is a one-to-one thing with very little resources. It is mind-bogglingly stupid unless I have been misinformed.

I thank Senator O’Reilly for raising this matter and for the opportunity to discuss this very important issue for Cavan but for people more generally.

As we know, at a higher level, primary care therapy services generally, such as speech and language therapy, play an absolutely central role in enhancing the health and well-being of both children and adults in the community. However, the Senator and I are both aware and have discussed separately the very important early intervention measures that speech and language therapy can provide.

I am doing everything I can, working with the Minister, Deputy Lawless, to get more speech and language therapists with regard to the number of training places. In the past number of days I have met with officials from CORU about the speed of registrations and how we might do that better to get more people onto the register to be able to serve our community.

I met with the national clinical directorate for disability yesterday on the same point about making sure that as many speech and language therapists, and indeed therapists more broadly, are available in our system to be able to provide services to everybody who needs them but, in particular, as the Senator correctly identified, and as the Sláintecare principle goes, as close to home as possible.

We are not there yet, however, and we have to organise services in a way that maximises our ability to get the most out of the good training and the good experience of every therapist. I am aware that recent increases in the number of referrals as well as an increase in the complexity of presentations require many more intensive interventions that have put more pressure on many primary care services, including speech and language therapies. Furthermore, a number of primary care services face staff shortages and we have ongoing recruitment challenges. Combined, these factors have increased the waiting lists for services across the country. I fully recognise the frustration of people in Cavan who have to address both long waiting lists and the geographical proximity of the services available to them. I want to make sure they have timely access to therapeutic services.

On do-not-attends, it is very important that people attend their appointments because every appointment that is not fulfilled costs somebody else the opportunity. We have to take a strong approach to do-not-attends generally in order that we can continue to get the best for our all-too-scarce-yet services, particularly in disability.

I am committed to building capacity in primary care, recruiting additional staff and promoting advanced practice roles in the community for health and social care professionals. The Government is committed to increasing the number of college training places for health and social care professionals. Cavan community healthcare network speech and language therapy services, as I understand, are currently delivered in Cootehill; Breffni Care Centre, Ballyconnell; and Cavan town in line with the current staffing resource that is available. That is our big challenge: making sure we have enough therapists to be able to deliver the service to the people who need it as close to home as possible. We are not there yet, and I appreciate the Senator raising the complexity of this intersection for the people in his area. I hear him very clearly in that regard. All I can do is try to increase the number of therapists insofar as possible, expedite recruitment where we can and make sure that the therapists and the services are delivered as close to home as possible.

In the meantime, until we reach that, we have to do this as efficiently as possible to get the best for every therapist and every therapeutic service and to make sure they are seeing as many people as possible, recognising the increased number of presentations and the increased complexity of those presentations. I hear the Senator very clearly about the needs of the people of Cavan.

I thank the Minister for that. I accept her bona fides and accept that she is doing everything possible to increase the number of speech and language therapists. The issue here, however, is that this has been centralised and moved from the villages and the small towns. The Minister might say that is because of a lack of speech and language therapists. There are enough there at the moment to deliver the services. It will take the speech and language therapist, unless he or she is walking, only a short time to commute from one town to the other and provide the service locally, so this is an absurdity. If we had a map of Cavan here, and if you take the service out of the towns of Mullagh, Virginia, Bailieborough and Shercock and move it to Cootehill, Ballyconnell and Cavan, we would see there is no logic to this, only disturbing parents. I take the point about domiciliary care for adults, but this is no good to children. It is right that that is there for adults, and of course I am in favour of it, but for children this does not deal with it. A child in Shercock or Bailieborough, say, where I live so it is easier for me to talk about it, will now spend four or five hours of a day going to Cavan town for a service. They are taken out of the primary school, the parents are discommoded and other children suffer. It is madness. I ask the Minister personally to look at this specifically because this does not arise from a lack of speech and language therapists. Of course we need more of them, but there is no logic to this. The speech and language therapists can commute in 20 or 25 minutes from, say, Bailieborough to Cavan in a car. The parents take four hours, and there are multiple parents. It is crazy stuff. I ask the Minister to look at it.

Of course we will look at the organisation of services more generally. It is very important to me that every hour a therapist works delivers therapeutic services. I do not want to see therapists in cars. That is one of the reasons the Minister, Helen McEntee, is doing such strong work to make sure there are therapists based in schools, where they can have the most effective and efficient use of their time. I appreciate that is a transitional period at the moment as she moves to do that and provide services in special schools in the first instance. There will be a measure of travel if we are going to get the best out of every hour from every therapist who wants to do therapy work. I hear the Senator about the geography and I will reflect on it. It is a matter for the local area to organise its services, but we need therapists doing therapy.

Thank you, Minister, for coming in to answer those Commencement matters.

I would like to welcome some of our groups here. I feel like I am in the ballroom of romance; we have the ladies on one side and the gentlemen on the other. We have guests of Senator Chris Andrews, the Ringsend and Irishtown golden girls group. You are all golden girls and fabulous blondes. We do have more fun, do we not? We also have the Terenure Men's Shed. I hope you are both enjoying your trip to the Seanad today and that perhaps you will convene and have a cup of coffee together. It might really be the ballroom of romance here this morning. Thank you and enjoy the rest of your stay.

I welcome to the Seanad the Minister, Jim O'Callaghan.

I too welcome the visitors from Ringsend. It is opportune that the Minister would take this Commencement matter while his constituents are in the House. Ladies, you are most welcome.

This morning I ask that the Minister update the House on the community safety partnerships that are due to be rolled out in the 31 local authorities. In the previous Oireachtas term, the Minister for Justice brought through the House the Policing, Security and Community Safety Act 2024. I and my colleagues in Fianna Fáil supported that legislation and worked very hard to secure in that legislation a commitment from the Minister that when the community safety partnerships would be established the regulations would stipulate that the local elected representatives in each of the local authorities would have strong representation on the partnerships and that the partnerships, once established, would have as their chairpersons members elected to the relevant local authorities. The reason I and my Fianna Fáil colleagues worked very hard to secure that commitment from the Minister for Justice is that we understand it is incredibly important that all our communities feel safe, with safe places to live, to work and to visit, and that young children, their families and our senior citizens all feel they live in a safe environment. The Minister has taken great strides to increase garda numbers, and we commend him on that and on his plans to increase prison places and the proposal to potentially introduce electronic tagging. These are all really good initiatives, and the Garda is to be commended and the Minister's work and his Department's work are to be supported, but community engagement is incredibly important because we cannot have a garda on every single corner and every street at every hour of the day. It is just not practical, it is not possible and none of us want to live in a police state. We want community safety partnerships that reflect the community concerns and the concerns that people encounter in their daily business, going to the shops, maybe antisocial behaviour they witness that is intimidating and discouraging people from going out and using their local public places.

I would like the Minister to update the House today on when the community safety partnerships will be implemented and up and operational and the membership of those community safety partnerships, and that they will have members elected from their local communities, the local authority members. They are the people who get the complaints, the people on the front line listening to residents and community groups and understanding where antisocial behaviour is happening and where crime is taking place. They can inform and should be the ones informing the agenda for each of the local community safety partnerships. They should be in a position to put themselves forward and be selected as the chairs of those community safety partnerships.

Will the Minister provide clarity on the arrangements to be put in place for the capital? We have four local authorities in Dublin. It is the capital. The Minister has put significant priority on increasing safety in the capital. I welcome and support that and I believe these arrangements will greatly enhance potential for increasing community safety in the capital and in each of the 31 local authorities. I look forward to the Minister's update.

I thank the Senator for requesting my attendance in the Seanad this morning. It is important I am here to answer the questions she has raised. Coincidentally, it is also of great benefit to me because the Ringsend active retirement group are here as guests of Senator Andrews and the Terenure men's shed are here as my guests. I am fortunate to have two important groups from my constituency here. It shows the benefit of senior Ministers turning up to answer questions in the Seanad.

The Senator will be aware that in April of this year I commenced the Policing, Security and Community Safety Act 2024, which will regulate policing and community safety in this country. Under section 114 of the Act, I am entitled to make regulations to establish the local community safety partnerships the Senator referred to. I am pleased to say that last week I signed the regulations for the partnerships and they came into effect this week on Monday, 30 June. A total of 36 partnerships will be established across the country. Their purpose is to ensure the interests and needs of the local community are served by the individuals who will be on the partnerships. There will be a central and important role for councillors under these regulations and in the partnerships. Regulation 4 states there will be a requirement for seven elected members of the relevant local authority to be nominated to the safety partnership. The chairperson of each partnership is a matter for the partnership that will be assembled. Like the Senator, I recognise the qualifications councillors will have to serve as chairpersons and I am hopeful councillors will put themselves forward, as they will bring the benefits derived from being an elected representative of the area.

It is important to emphasise the partnerships are central to the Government's new whole-of-society approach to community safety. They will bring together elected representatives, gardaí and persons involved in important services provided by State agencies, such as the HSE and Tusla. The regulations I signed outline clearly how the safety partnerships will operate and ensure each partnership operates with transparency, strategic focus and strong local engagement.

The Senator referred to the fact the capital will be treated slightly differently. That is correct. There will be five safety partnerships for the five administrative areas within Dublin City Council's area. That is appropriate considering the vastness of the city. There will be two in Fingal as well. Each partnership will be led by a chair supported by a co-ordinator and administrator. These full-time permanent staff posts are resourced by the Department of justice and employed by the relevant local authority. It is important that the Department of justice plays an involved role in the partnerships. There is no point in setting them up and not giving them the support they require. In preparation for the establishment of the partnerships, local authorities have been recruiting these staff and so far 24 co-ordinators and 18 administrators have been appointed across the country.

The Act also provides for a national office for community safety to be established in my Department. The staff of this office have held a number of information sessions with staff appointed to the partnerships by local authorities. I am engaging with the officials in my Department who are responsible for the office. It will be a very important office and will ensure the partnerships operate effectively throughout the country.

It is encouraging to hear of the efficiency with which the Minister has progressed the regulations and the preparations in train in the local authorities. I welcome the fact there will be five in the city and, to reflect its growing population and expanding demographic, two in Fingal. I echo the Minister's comments on local councillors. They get elected because they know the people they represent and the local area. They care about it. They put themselves forward, primarily in a voluntary capacity, motivated by pride in their community. They want to champion and achieve the best for the community. They have a finger on the pulse and are uniquely positioned to set the agenda for the local community safety partnerships, which will bring together the statutory agencies - the local authority, the Garda, the health service, Tusla, education and welfare and so on - to address the issues on the agenda. I wish all the local community safety partnerships much success. I hope they deliver for each of their communities. Will the Minister indicate the timeframe within which there will be an evaluation? I cannot recall whether it is a three-year evaluation period. If the Minister has that information to hand, it would be useful.

The Senator is correct about councillors. Like her, I started my political career as a councillor, as did many Members of this and the Lower House. There is a huge benefit in being elected to a local authority by the local community. I do not think it is possible to get elected to a local authority unless one is well aware of the issues in the community. That is why it is so important the seven members of the partnerships are elected members of the local authority.

Chairperson of a partnership will be an important role. Councillors are eminently qualified for it. In drafting the regulations, I wanted to ensure councillors and anybody else would have an opportunity to put themselves forward to a partnership. In the first instance, it would be preferable if councillors put themselves forward.

We will have to watch the progression of the partnerships carefully. There were benefits to the joint policing committees, of which the Senator and I were members. They have now come to an end. We want something more than the joint policing committees. From my experience, sometimes the committees could just be a box-ticking exercise. We want people responsible for important services in the area so they can engage on policing and on community safety. That requires more than just An Garda Síochána, which has a huge amount on its desk. I thank the Senator for raising the issue. We will engage further on it in the future.

Cuirim fáilte roimh an Aire Stáit. The Heritage Act 1995 has served us well. It established the Heritage Council and was a visionary piece of work by Michael D. Higgins. However, 1995 is quite a long time ago and there is a commitment from Government to a review of that and to looking at establishing a research function within the Heritage Council. I thank the Minister of State, Deputy Cummins, for being with us and I would welcome his and his Department's thoughts on the review and when it will be initiated.

We have seen huge growth in the heritage sector in recent years, thanks to the investment of the last Government - and hopefully this Government as well. The Minister of State has seen it in his community in Waterford, with the Viking experience and the fantastic museums quarter in Waterford city. We want the sector to continue to grow. There are thousands of heritage professionals employed in the sector. We see it in the plans and policies of Government, from the national biodiversity plan to Heritage Ireland 2030. It is important, in looking at where resources for heritage need to go, that it is evidence based. Establishing enhanced responsibilities for, and a research function within, the Heritage Council is a positive way forward.

How does the Minister of State anticipate that would be integrated into a revised Heritage Act? How can we reflect on the changes in how heritage is defined in our communities? There has been a broadening of the view on how heritage is defined. Certainly, when we brought the historic and archaeological heritage Act through the two Houses a number of years ago and when we look at intangible cultural heritage, inclusive heritage and those aspects that are really important, we have seen, particularly during heritage week, that communities have an active role to play. It is around looking at biodiversity, intangible culture, heritage, folklore, traditions and practices as well.

I would welcome the Minister of State's thoughts on what a review of the Heritage Act might look like, a timeframe for its delivery, and the critical public participation elements of it that would take place with the heritage sector but also within communities. A huge amount of public participation took place in the development of Heritage Ireland 2030 and we need a similar process for this. It is vital to communities up and down the country who partake in, and are custodians of, our heritage. Critical too is that the growth we have seen in the sector over the last number of years has been welcomed by those communities and by the Heritage Council in its role as well. That role is ever expanding and it is really important that we use this evidence-based approach to see where we need to be investing into the future and to justify that investment for future Governments. It is one of those sectors that have taken hits in the past when the country has gone into recession or there have been economic challenges. If anything, it is a time to ramp up investment in heritage because it is all a part of who and what we are and it helps shape our future. I would welcome the Minister of State's thoughts on that.

I thank Senator Noonan for raising this matter, which I am taking on behalf of the Minister of State, Deputy O'Sullivan. I acknowledge the Senator's contribution to the sector during his time as Minister of State with responsibility for nature, heritage and electoral reform. The Department is of course aware of the important commitment in the programme for Government to undertake a review of the Heritage Act 1995, the primary purpose of which was to establish the Heritage Council. The Heritage Council provides a hugely valuable service to the public in raising awareness and understanding of our rich natural, built, archaeological and cultural heritage, in supporting community organisations and heritage professionals through grant and other funding, and in providing expert advice to the Government on a wide range of matters relating to heritage policy.

Much has changed in the 30 years since the passing of the Heritage Act and the time is right now to review its provisions to ensure both the Heritage Council and the sector as a whole can continue to deliver for all sections of Irish society. The Act provides that the function of the Heritage Council shall be to propose policies and priorities "for the identification, protection, preservation and enhancement of [our] national heritage”. It specifies that the national heritage should be understood to include “monuments, archaeological objects, heritage objects, architectural heritage, flora, fauna, wildlife habitats, landscapes, seascapes, wrecks, geology, heritage gardens and parks and inland waterways.” The definition of heritage provided for in the Act focuses very much on physical objects - the Senator referenced this in his opening comments - and omits to mention less tangible aspects such as folklore, oral history and traditional skills and practices. In light of the important work both ongoing and yet to be undertaken in these areas, this is certainly a topic the proposed review will consider. The Act goes on to outline the particular role the council should play in promoting interest, appreciation, knowledge and pride in our national heritage and in co-operating with other public bodies and co-ordinating all activities related to its functions. Emphasis is placed on the role of the council in promoting appreciation and enjoyment of our heritage, a responsibility it discharges very effectively through excellent initiatives such as National Heritage Week and the community heritage grant scheme.

In considering how things have changed since 1995, I acknowledge the particular and growing importance of biodiversity, natural heritage and cultural heritage, particularly that of immigrant communities and historically marginalised groups. The Heritage Council already plays an important role in both of these areas through its funding for local authority biodiversity officers, the National Biodiversity Data Centre and its ongoing work on museum standards, archives, oral histories and the national Traveller heritage plan, among other initiatives.

A review of the Heritage Act is a new Government commitment and the Department is reorganising staff responsibilities to ensure it is appropriately resourced. Our intention is to establish a working group this year to commence the review. The working group, which will include representation from the Heritage Council, will seek to identify and prioritise areas where any shortcomings in the Act create a practical hindrance to the work of the council and to consider whether opportunities exist to streamline and make more effective the work of the sector as a whole. The immediate task of the working group will be to define the scope of the Heritage Act review, at which point it will be possible to provide further detail on the process and timelines to be followed. I know this is an area on which the Senator will keep close attention.

Members are probably used to standing up here and saying they are disappointed with the response they get. I warmly welcome the response from the Minister of State in this case. As I said in my opening remarks, it is really important that we use an evidence-based approach. I refer to that specific point I made about the research function in the Heritage Council, but all of that will be teased out as the working group sets about its task. It will take considerable time. There is no doubt but that it is a significant Act. Indeed, it is a significant sector to try to get into the roots of to ensure everybody has a say in this review process and that we have a vibrant sector into the future. I go back to that resourcing point. I say that with the framing of the Minister of State's budgets for 2026 in mind. It is really important that we continue to grow the sector. We are in a good space, which has not always been the case, and it is being reciprocated by communities up and down the country when they get community monuments funding, the built heritage investment scheme or the small funding grants for projects or oral histories. All of that is hugely important. We cannot see it as just a nice add-on or a nice thing to have. It is critical to the future of our communities. I really welcome the response and look forward to the process being initiated and to participating through this House.

I thank Senator Noonan. Again, I acknowledge his work in this area. Notwithstanding that the council has been able to discharge its responsibilities very effectively in recent years, I agree, as I know the Minister of State, Deputy O'Sullivan does, that the Heritage Act, and particularly the definition the Senator referenced on what heritage is, should be reviewed to bring its provisions into line with contemporary views and to ensure the council and the wider sector can continue to thrive, which we all want to see. I assure the Senator that this is a priority for the Department and the Minister of State and it will begin this year with the establishment of that working group. The Senator referenced public consultation and research, both of which will be part of it as well. These are all items that will be teased out in that process. Our heritage is so important and the work that goes on by so many individuals and community groups right across the country, in collaboration with the Heritage Council and all of the staff who work in this area, is really valued and appreciate by the Department. We will continue to work with them going forward.

Gabhaim buíochas leis an Aire. I thank Members for their attention and attendance here today. With that final Commencement matter, the House stands suspended until 11.30 a.m.