Taoiseach's Meetings and Engagements
Dail Éireann — 2026-06-16
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Micheál Martin (FF), Cork South-Central

All right. Deputy Quaide referred to 500 Ukrainians. Have they received notice? I will talk to the Minister in respect of that. There is a significant number there and, obviously, the impacts for the children will be significant. I will revert to the Deputy.
As Deputy Quaide acknowledged in the question, there are issues in terms of commercial premises, the costs involved and the sustainability of all of that. Transition is important, particularly in terms of children attending schools. That has to be handled with care.
Deputy Ward raised the issue of nitrous oxide and the regulation of it. I will speak to the Minister. Obviously, the transposition of the EU directive is under way. We are continuously transposing EU directives. This is a significant issue and it does need regulation.
To respond to Deputy Tóibín, the Government put out a tender. We can involve a member state of the European Union in joint procurement to accelerate the procurement of needed defence capability. In this case, it was radar and sonar in particular, which are urgent. In my view, it is a significant deficiency that we do not have radar. The entire motivation, while respecting all of the laws governing procurement - and, by the way, it has taken quite a number of years to get to this point - is that we do have capacity to do this with people and to do it in a way that can accelerate the process so that we have capability.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-06-16/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:54:50+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-06-16