Departmental Properties
Seanad Éireann — 2026-06-23
============================================================

Fiona O'Loughlin (FF), Administrative Panel

I certainly welcome the continued engagement with the National Parks and Wildlife Service, which has undertaken an initial scoping and I believe this is the way forward. I am also pleased to hear that there was a meeting between the Department of Defence and the National Parks and Wildlife Service on Wednesday last and the fact that it was positive. This cannot come soon enough. My strong message coming back from here is that those appropriate next steps will not only be identified but will be implemented. It is of absolute urgency that this is seen and taken as a priority.
In terms of the existing encampment that is there - and I thank the Minister of State for providing the chronological order in terms of the dates with the Courts Service - given those dates and the action that has been taken, which is clear, I cannot understand why the encampments are still there. Something is breaking down somewhere. As I said, I met the Minister, Deputy O'Callaghan, and he was very clear that the Department would do what it could. The gardaí in Newbridge and Kildare are excellent in my dealings with them. Something is breaking down somewhere and we need this resolved.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-06-23/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:05+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-06-23