Departmental Reports
Dail Éireann — 2026-01-20
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Micheál Martin (FF), Cork South-Central

I thank all the Deputies who raised a variety of issues. Deputy O'Meara raised the issue of affordable housing, specifically in Tipperary and north-west Kilkenny in a variety of towns. There is a variety of schemes to help people to afford housing. Lots of people have used the help to buy and first home schemes. The local authority affordable scheme has had applications in some counties more effectively than others. Some of that is to do with valuations and so on. We will see what we can do to make sure that every county benefits from those schemes. I was in Wexford last week, where plenty of affordable houses were built with subsidies through the local authority affordable scheme. I will talk to the Minister for housing about what is happening in Tipperary, north-west Kilkenny and those areas. Affordable housing is the significant issue because we are making progress on social housing.
Deputy Conway-Walsh raised the issue of the public service media. Again, I know there is a conference but we are actually doing work on that under the shared island initiative. We have allocated very substantial investment through the shared island initiative to media to increase reporting North and South and to have a more seamless interaction across both. This has not been happening to the degree it should have been in the past number of years, either with Southern media covering Northern Ireland or Northern Ireland media covering the Republic. We have put substantial funding through the shared island endeavour. Public service media in the modern era is critical for societal cohesion and it has to operate to very high standards of impartiality and with the public interest at the core.
On Deputy Ó Murchú and special education, again, this is a matter for the Minister for education. I know Deputy McGreehan has been raising these issues also. We will relay that back to the Department. The Deputy is saying, and I have no doubt he is in contact with the Department-----

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-01-20/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:31+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-01-20