The Minister should not worry as I am not going down a particular avenue but I just want to refer to the vote of confidence in him two weeks ago. When I spoke on the motion of confidence in him, I meant, with full, heartfelt sincerity, that he had gone the extra miles during the Afghan crisis, particularly in respect of a family who live just 100 m from my home. I refer to his taking calls by night and text messages. It was not just for this reason, although it was a reason, that, on the night in question, I felt, …

Thank you. I will end at eight minutes then. I ask the Minister to please intervene. The people to whom I refer need to be brought back. These are Irish citizens. We talk about hospitals, roads and airports, but it breaks my heart to see young girls who belong in our Irish education system still stuck out in Kabul and who, when they try to get the safety, are thrashed by Taliban fighters. I appeal again to the Minister to intervene. He has been very good so far and I ask him to ask his staff in Abu Dhabi to buck up…

I raise the issue of capacity for secondary school students in Shannon town. The Taoiseach visited one of the secondary schools there with me two years ago, namely, St. Caimin's Community School. The other school is Shannon comprehensive. As we come out of Covid, there is a need for the post-primary buildings unit to take a comprehensive look at both schools. St. Caimin's was built with an enrolment capacity of 600. It is far exceeding that, yet Department officials fail to recognise the growth of the town and the …

The University of Limerick offers a fabulous paramedic degree course and has done so for several years. The course has many positive attributes but one of the negatives is that the students need to go to Liverpool to complete part of their training. In many cases, that leads to brain drain, with people qualifying from the University of Limerick and remaining in Britain to work out their professional lives. Covid has taught us that we need to increase our capacity in all forms of front-line healthcare. I ask the Tao…

There is a long list for every county in regard to the NDP. I would love to see the Minister hit the nail on the head with regard to the unsewered villages of rural Ireland. In Clare in particular, there are five or six of them. The Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, visited Broadford just a few weeks ago. It is important that we end that long-standing practice of raw sewage passing into local streams and drains. The first phase of the Limerick northern distributor road has…

My contribution is in a very similar vein to Deputy Murnane O'Connor's. In the Clare constituency, and the Minister has been to see it, Clare Abbey, an Augustinian abbey built in the 12th century, possibly by Domnall "The Great" O'Brien, King of Munster, has been roofless since the 1600s and its inner yard is a burial ground. The graves are being desecrated, smashed with bottles and broken in half. The Minister of State very kindly visited the abbey recently along with some of his staff, Deputies and councillors. T…

I wish to raise a pertinent issue regarding air traffic controllers. Many Members have received emails over the past week from air traffic controllers in Shannon, Cork and Dublin in which they outline a litany of industrial relations disputes they are having with the Irish Aviation Authority, IAA. There is an internal mechanism in the Irish Aviation Authority for handling disputes but most at this point agree that it will not be resolved there. Given the IAA's strategic role in managing Irish airspace, including gu…

I thank the Acting Chairman. I came in at the tail-end of the previous contribution, which Deputy Mattie McGrath over-personalised. I do not think that is necessary. This debate and the work of the House should be above that. We are here today to deal with important legislation that has many positive elements to it. The personal charges that are thrown across sometimes happen too often in here. When I watched Dáil Éireann as a young fellow over the years and said that this was the career I wanted to have, it was ce…

I will conclude that introductory remark by saying that I have the utmost respect for my colleague, Deputy Mattie McGrath. We share a corridor on which we are neighbours but I take exception to seeing personal stuff being thrown into the Chamber. It is below where we need to be in terms of the quality of debate on a particularly important matter. This is an important Bill that provides for a number of amendments to the Sea-Fisheries and Maritime Jurisdiction Act, which dates back to 2006. It legislates for a points…

I fully support the Garda Síochána (Functions and Operational Areas) Bill 2021. Most people will support it. I hope it will deliver more front-line policing, which everyone wants. I wish to make a number of points. The Limerick Garda division covers the county and city of Limerick, but a considerable part of it stretches into County Clare and many of the gardaí that are stationed in Limerick live in County Clare also. One could almost call the Limerick Garda division "Salem" because a form of witch trial has been o…

Deputy McGuinness is sharing time with Deputy Alan Farrell.

I wish to ask the Minister for Transport when we can finally expect to see a chairperson appointed to the board of the Shannon Group.

I thank the Minister. I want to thank his colleague, the Minister of State, Deputy Naughton, for coming on site to the airport two weeks ago and seeing first-hand all the preparatory work that is under way to ready ourselves for the season ahead. It was August of last year when Rose Hynes stepped down as chairperson of the board. We then saw an appointment process getting under way and that ran until February when Aaron Forde was appointed. His tenure lasted a matter of hours; that was a botched exercise really. We…

It is not just a geographical stepping stone between Europe and the United States; Shannon Airport offers much more than that. We have the pre-clearance facility in Shannon which is so important. We need to see that back up and fully functioning again. In the past number of weeks, the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, was in the airport to open and see at first hand the new baggage screening facility which is unique in Europe. It is a €12 million facility backed hugely by the Government. It is unique in Europe in that t…

Husna Hasbeni is a two-year-old girl living in County Clare. She is an Irish citizen who has been stuck in Kabul since July along with her four-year-old sister, who was due to start preschool two weeks ago, and her mother and older brother. They are Irish citizens. Their home is 200 yards from my house. I know the family. They are stuck in Kabul. It is devastating and heartbreaking. The individuals are among the 60 Irish people who still need to get home. They are watching these proceedings. The video will be watch…

We should not be here tonight. Merriongate from the very get-go was a problem of Fine Gael's making and it should have been for it to deal with, for it to determine the thresholds of ethics and for it to determine what level of sanction should apply. It is wrong that coalition partners, including my own party, are left to deal with this mess tonight, a full eight weeks after it first broke.

I did not interrupt the Deputy.

This Government has worked very well so far and it will work well tomorrow and in the days that follow but, let us be clear, there are three very separate parties in this coalition Government. There are very clear lines of demarcation between us. The Tánaiste, in my opinion, should have dealt with this quickly without a perpetuation of the matter for the length of time it has run its course. Sinn Féin has turned this into raw political opportunism.

It has played gamesmanship with this. Its Abú system is working in overdrive because people far beyond the boundaries of Clare, from south Armagh and Derry, are piling on our pages in recent days. I will conclude. It is working in overdrive. It loves these opportunities.

They do not want to deal with the real crisis in Ireland.