Cabinet Committees Dail Éireann — 2026-05-19 ============================================================ Micheál Martin (FF), Cork South-Central I thank all Deputies for the issues they raised. Bhí an Teachta Moynihan ag caint faoi Chonradh Aoine an Chéasta agus go háirithe an cinneadh a rinneamar maidir leis an oileán comhroinnte. He spoke about the shared island initiative and the decision in respect of it. He asked if loneliness could come under that umbrella. It certainly could. We have had discussions with the Minister of Health in the North about public health interventions under shared island. We can try to get the right organisations together North and South, as we have in the area of domestic violence where the National Women's Council Ireland is working with Women's Aid in the North. We have already funded joint projects between the two in respect of that issue. Likewise, if we can get the right bodies to focus on the issue of loneliness, which is a significant socialisation issue and has an impact on health, we will be willing to work on that. We have made a lot of progress on the legacy agreement, which was raised by Deputy Smith. I say to all concerned that this is the opportunity to get this Bill through. He is correct to say that the previous Bill was deficient and the previous British Government did not consult as widely as it should have initially. It had measures in that Bill that were completely unacceptable. There has been a complete change in approach by the current British Government compared with what occurred prior to that. We need to acknowledge that. It is still going through Westminster. We are keeping an eye on it insofar as we want it to be true to the joint framework agreement. I am clear in my head that this is the opportunity to get a legacy Bill through that can sustain, and this current Government is the government in Britain that can deliver that. We have no guarantee that any future government, whatever configuration that might be, will be as disposed to the kind of legacy Bill we have in front of us. That needs to be said, and I say it straight. That is the reality of it, and we are continuing to work with the British Government to make sure it stays faithful to what was agreed. I think Queen's and Dundalk is an exciting proposal. I was up there giving the annual David Trimble lecture, and I met the heads of Queen's and Dundalk Institute of Technology. That is a very exciting potential partnership and again we stand ready to support that. They are working on it. Deputy McGreehan made a point on the health service. There has been progress under CAWT, which she is probably familiar with, and on cancer and on heart at Altnagelvin, along with dialysis to some degree. More and more, particularly in the north west, we should be looking at really making it a whole health area. That would be my view. Instead of expecting people to travel all the way to Galway from Donegal, Sligo or all along the north east, it makes sense that we would synergise and use up the capacities. We can resource some of that and we are prepared to resource that through shared island funding because everybody benefits - citizens North and South benefit. I was in Altnagelvin some years ago and met a Donegal man who literally had about a 15-minute drive to Altnagelvin. He had to get a stent in because he had a cardiac event. Under our strategies here, that person could have had to go to Galway, in theory, whereas this makes so much more sense. The cancer centre in Altnagelvin that we helped fund some years ago is a superb opportunity and a service for people. Deputy Devlin mentioned, I think, Dún Laoghaire and Bangor. Again, that cross-Border corridor is extremely important. The Enterprise service has been superb. There has been a 40% increase in the number of people because the shared island initiative funded the hourly service. We want to continue to fund those economic corridors. I do not have an exact timeline for phase 3 but it is going to happen and we will be funding that right to the end as well. It is great that through the shared island initiative, the county councils, about 25 of them, are looking at feasibility studies and how best we can have joint projects between the councils. Moving to Deputy Ó Murchú, the road user levy did not come up at the last North-South Ministerial Council. I met all the Northern parties last week but I will pursue it. How we can intervene in that is an open question but I hear what the Deputy is saying in respect of it and the additional costs it entails. I think Deputy O'Rourke was saying Athletics Ireland was negative in terms of what he was suggesting about the same rules that apply to the Olympics applying to the world championships and the 1934 rule. I would have to examine that in greater detail but we should be careful of overly intervening in the sporting world. It has worked out its frameworks over a long number of years and we should respect the sporting bodies in that regard. I would like to see what it has to say about the issues involved. Deputy Conway-Walsh raised a dedicated Passport Office. This has been a hardy annual for some years. It is all online now. That is the direction of travel. If you look at the statistics, they are overwhelming. The Department of foreign affairs has been of the view for quite some time and has moved away from the establishment of any new physical offices for symbolic reasons because the bulk of applications come in online. That is the Department's view and I have a lot of sympathy with it. The Department has concentrated a lot on getting a very quick turnover of passport applications if everything is in order and so on. The speed of response is quite significant and that is positive. Deputy Boyd Barrett raised Lough Neagh and again shared island funding has been made available to help with the pollution there. The Minister, Deputy Heydon, and the shared island unit have had good engagement with the Minister of agriculture in the North, Andrew Muir. He is certainly doing everything he possibly can to deal with what is a chronic situation with the lough. Again, we have sought to pool our resources and bring experts together to try to identify what is the best way to try to deal with this pollution, which is shocking and chronic and really undermining what the lough has to offer. On the reform of politics in Northern Ireland, I raised the issue with all the political parties last week when I was in Belfast. I spoke about this a number of years ago at the Alliance Party's annual dinner but I favour reform of strand 1 of the Good Friday Agreement in respect of enabling politics to work better. I think there is greater confidence in some parties. Sinn Féin is saying it is going to produce proposals in respect of that and people are awaiting those. That is a new position but it is important. The DUP is saying it is not as enthusiastic about this, to put it mildly. The Alliance, the SDLP and other parties are. Again, the parties themselves need to get together to discuss this. For example, the Assembly should meet immediately after an election and a speaker should be elected. That is a very basic reform that should not bring the whole house down. Then there would not be a vacuum in terms of the Parliament meeting after an election. --- 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/dail/2026-05-19/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-09-28T05:50:46+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-05-19