I thank the Minister of State for coming before us today. I am very familiar with his work in Wexford. I thank him for the work he did with the team in the OPW during the latest floods in Enniscorthy, Bunclody and Bridgetown. I very much welcome the €2.6 million, the interim measures that are coming and the fact that officials from the Department and Wexford County Council will be available in Enniscorthy tomorrow afternoon to meet with local residents and businesses about the interim measures. I am aware of the wo…

I join colleagues in congratulating Senator Nicole Ryan on her fantastic news. I wish her and her family the very best. I want to discuss the issue of the family carer's payment. In my county of Wexford, approximately 16,000 people are caring for a loved one - a child with a disability, a spouse with an illness or a parent with dementia or Alzheimer's. At the moment, they are entitled to approximately €270 per week, but that is subject to a means test. Unfortunately, the cold, hard reality of that means test, which…

I wish to share half my time with Senator Mark Duffy.

I thank the Minister of State for coming in. I commend my colleagues Senator Kelleher, and former Garda, Senator Noel O'Donovan, on bringing forward the motion. It is a welcome and opportune motion for the time we have with the various serious criminality that is, unfortunately, finding its way into our streets. It is an issue that has been discussed up and down the Chamber this evening and the real need to support our gardaí. I am thinking of the 597 gardaí who are stationed in the Wexford-Wicklow Garda division. …

I also acknowledge our guests. They are most welcome to Seanad Éireann. I will speak for a moment about the warmer homes scheme and the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, SEAI. I was contacted recently by a lady who had applied for support from the warmer homes scheme. She was looking at getting some attic insulation done and getting some upgrades to the energy capacity of her house. She submitted all of the application forms to the SEAI and got back in the post a letter that said in 12 months' time somebody …

I thank the Minister of State for coming in for this very important Commencement matter. This is about requesting an update from the Department about the South East Technological University Wexford campus. Regrettably, Wexford has the lowest number of people with a third level education degree. We are at about 37% as of census 2022, while the national average is 46%. This shows just how important the Wexford SETU campus will be. I am aware of the CPO being completed. I am aware of the detailed design, and the layou…

I thank the Minister of State for her response. The reason I am so passionate about this project is that I have seen so many people my age and older who did not have the opportunity to go to third level in their own county but went to Dublin, Waterford or Cork and, unfortunately, did not come back. There is a real opportunity here to stop the brain drain from County Wexford into other areas and use this campus to drive jobs, economic growth and economic opportunity in our county. I thank the Minister of State for t…

I again highlight the fact that at the moment if you live in south Wexford, be it in Rosslare, Wexford town or Enniscorthy, it is not possible to get an early morning train to Dublin that will have you in Dublin Connolly before 8.48 a.m., while if you live further north, such as in Gorey, you can arrive at 7.48 a.m. That hour difference is having a real and direct impact on the ability of commuters from south Wexford to access rail transport to Dublin and work and utilise the service in Dublin. I again call on the …

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this debate. I acknowledge the enormous concerns that ordinary people are having around the cost of energy, the price of fuel and the difficulties that they are having, including working people getting to work and making ends meet and the challenges that they are posing. The reality here is that as a country we have to make a concerted effort to make the transition away from fossil fuel use, particularly given the global instability that we have at the moment. My own count…

I very much welcome the Minister of State back to the Chamber and congratulate him on his recent appointment, which I have not had the opportunity to do in this Chamber until today. This is a very important issue. I think it is often forgotten just how much money flows through these public procurement policies and through the Minister of State's Department. When I am out speaking to voters and residents in Wexford, one of the key things they say to me is that they are fed up with and tired of how much money they fe…

I want to raise the issue of vaping and the proliferation of vape shops that are popping up right across our main urban areas in County Wexford. I am not against vaping for adults. I recognise it is something that quite a considerable number of people are engaging in. However, I am speaking about the direct targeting of young children and teenagers under the age of 18 through flashy, cartoon-style advertisements across our main urban streets, particularly on the main streets of towns like Enniscorthy, New Ross and …

I thank the Minister of State for coming to the Chamber to discuss this very important topic. I very much recognise the fact that the latest census suggests that we have about 1.1 million people across Ireland currently living with some form of a disability. I am very conscious of the fact that disability comes in many guises. It can be somebody who suffers from a mild inconvenience to somebody who suffers from a profound disability, which has a direct impact in all aspects on so many people, be it their family, th…

I will speak for a moment about the upcoming sports capital grant allocation. It is very important that this is a large allocation put forward by the Department and the Minister of State with responsibility for sport, particularly in the context of more public participation than ever before in our games across GAA, soccer, rugby and hurling but also those games that do not receive the same amount of attention. I call on the Minister of State to come into this Chamber to give an update on the forthcoming sports capi…

I very much welcome the opportunity to speak this morning on a very important topic. It has been almost three months since Storm Chandra ripped through Wexford, leaving a trail of devastation. Since then, Wexford County Council road crews have been out surveying the damage and have concluded that 157 roads are now impassable in Wexford, to the point where it is not safe to drive across them. The council has submitted a request to the Department of Transport for €20 million in emergency funding. This is a one-off re…

Yesterday and over the past number of days, I met with many of the people who were protesting across County Wexford. They are not the same people who are being portrayed in the media. These are ordinary working people who get up early in the morning in the dark and work through the day until dark. They are people who drive machinery and tractors. They are truck, lorry and bus drivers. They are the people who bring food across the country and take it out of fields. They are the people who bring children to school in…

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this debate. I will speak for a moment, as I did earlier today, about the protesters I met and listened to, and whose stories I heard, over the past number of days. They are ordinary working people who get up at 4 a.m., get onto machinery and work hard all day in the darkness of night right through to the darkness of night in the evening time. They are contractors, hauliers, fishermen, farm labourers and people who drive buses, trucks, lorries, diggers and other heavy mach…

I thank the Minister of State, Deputy Dillon, for coming in to take this very important Commencement matter. This relates to Ramsgrange Community School, a school in south Wexford. It is a very large provider of secondary-level education to people from as far south as the Hook Peninsula and as far north as Murntown on the outskirts of Wexford town. The school has a massive catchment area and currently has approximately 630 students enrolled and attending. I recently visited the school at the request of acting princ…

I thank the Minister of State for the response. I very much welcome the fact that the Department will commit to engaging with the school. I cannot overemphasise the importance of the project. I know Ramsgrange Community School will engage with the energy and conditions survey the Department will open shortly. I know from my interactions with the school how keen it is to engage with the Department on that, in particular to ensure that the special classes, of which there are currently four, will be in a position to m…

The Minister of State is most welcome and I welcome the opportunity to make a short contribution on Second Stage of this legislation. About ten or 11 years ago, I was a law student while this legislation was being introduced. I remember hearing in lectures about the background to this legislation and the reason it was so important that we moved away from the previous system, which had operated in Ireland from 1871 to 2015. What we have before us is legislation that will have a profound impact on the lives of 1,400 …

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