I thank the Minister of State. It sounds like a big effort is being made to clear any backlog and I appreciate that. I am from Meelick, County Clare and since the Hungarian revolution in 1956, there has been, on an on-off basis, refugees and asylum seekers in our community. We value them. We have got to know their stories over the years. They are harrowing, compelling and are not always heard. As a local person, who taught in the local school for a number of years, I have stood as guarantor to help some of those as…

It is welcome that direct provision will cease three years from now and people will be accommodated, helped and aided in different ways. However, there is a real concern within both the local direct provision centre and the wider community that enough might not be done to support those seeking international protection between now and then. Perfect cognisance is not always taken of the situations that those seeking direct provision accommodation face in their home countries. I know of one man who, for several years,…

I want to take up the point made by my colleague, Deputy Ó Cuív, in regard to the 57% criteria laid down by the European Union. It is very easy to be an Independent Deputy for County Kerry and to come in here and say "coulda, shoulda, sod of turf", mention 12 villages in one's county and say where the money should have gone. The reality is that if we had not followed the rules, we would have waved goodbye to €520 million of EU money. The funding was specific to certain measures and that is reflected in yesterday's …

I thank the Minister and the Ministers of State, Deputies Butler and Rabbitte, for everything they and the Department are doing. I also thank our front-line staff. The pace of the vaccination programme is incredible. More than 80% of our adult population is expected to be vaccinated by early July. That is a success and the programme is going well. More power to everyone at the front line who is helping to deliver that. There will still be a small percentage of people, probably younger adults, who will not have been…

This weekend, raw sewage was again being discharged into the wild Atlantic from the coast at Kilkee beach. The HSE and Clare County Council prohibited bathing in the area. Raw sewage flowing through the pipes and out into bathing water has now occurred for three consecutive years, and this has now been in contravention of the EU wastewater directive for 16 years. We had been hearing that the upgrade to the infrastructure would be completed this year. However, Irish Water has now stated that it could be four years b…

I will make two brief points. I thank the Minister for being here today. Many of us have met representatives of the Irish Air Line Pilots Association, IALPA, today. The pilots are just outside the national convention centre today and they have met many Deputies on their way into the Dáil. The point the pilots want to make is that we are all waiting with bated breath for these announcements to be made on Friday regarding easing restrictions on international travel, and international air travel in particular. The poi…

On the way into the Dáil, I met with a group of airline pilots from Recover Irish Aviation, all from Aer Lingus. They do not belong on a street corner protesting, but back in our skies. The announcements scheduled to be made this week, and especially on Friday, will be key in giving those pilots and the whole sector the hope desperately yearned for. We must see several developments this Friday and in that regard I address my remarks to the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, and the Minister of State, Deputy Naughton. It …

I am glad to have the opportunity to speak on this draft financial resolution. Like many, I watched the "Prime Time" special a fortnight ago in which we saw Peter Melrose and his fiancée, who are of a similar age to me, standing outside Mullen Park, literally and metaphorically locked out from the houses there. They had no opportunity to buy them. It is what they had aspired to do. They aspired, after marriage, to have a family and settle down there. Is it not what every young couple dreams of? The couple was fully…

We had devastating breaking news at lunchtime that Aer Lingus, having operated its Shannon base for seven decades, has announced it will now permanently close its base there, with 81 cabin crew offered severance or transfer to its Dublin base and a similar impact for the 45 ground crew. I ask the State to intervene in this matter for jobs, for connectivity and for our region. This is absolutely devastating beyond belief. I ask that from the heart of the Government the Taoiseach says something positive today about e…

An inspection undertaken by HIQA at St. Joseph's Hospital, Ennis, in March found that some patients had gone a period of months without showering. We have had Joe Duffy telling us to wash our hands every day on the radio. The latter has been drilled into us and yet the necessity of washing themselves was denied to patients at St. Joseph's in an attempt to curb the spread of Covid within the facility. Ultimately, there were 32 positive Covid cases and six deaths at St. Joseph's. I ask that the Government investigate…

I have used my first 30 seconds to walk up here because the clock is moving a lot quicker than I thought it was. I thank the Whip's office for alerting me that my slot was coming up. As I have just jogged up the quays, I have done all my exercise for the day to get back here in time. This is important legislation. We have all seen a number of horrible and unsavoury evictions take place in recent years where private security personnel have arrived at people's doors. The whole area has been largely unregulated until …

This is a very positive Bill that provides a legislative basis for the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment and of course the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine to enter into an agreement with IBRC so they can implement the Brexit impact loan scheme. Once launched, it is intended the scheme will open up to SMEs and those that employ up to 499 people. It will provide loans ranging from €25,000 to €1.5 million. We mush consider this is the context of May 2021. We certainly hope we as a nation are …

I want to tell the Minister of State at the outset that his colleague, Deputy Matthews, who is a major railway advocate, has challenged me to try out the train. I have done so a few times, including today, and will do so again tomorrow. I am glad to admit that it works. I still travel to Dublin by car some days but it takes ten or 15 minutes to cycle to the train station and an hour and 50 minutes on the train. I get through a lot of emails, have an apple and a mug of tea and come off the train refreshed before cyc…

I thank the Minister of State, Deputy Butler, for her engagement over recent days. Last week in this Chamber, I told her the sad story of Margaret Morgan, who is 101 years of age and probably one of the oldest citizens in County Clare. She comes from the small west Clare village of Kilmurry McMahon. She had not received her Covid vaccination. She is bed-bound. The Minister of State was very engaged, both in the Chamber and afterwards, and told me that the capacity of the National Ambulance Service to call out to su…

I join with others in congratulating the Minister, Deputy McEntee, on her wonderful news this morning. The programme for Government contains a commitment to ending direct provision. I am delighted that it was announced just a few weeks ago that this will happen by 2024. It cannot happen soon enough. I grew up in Meelick, County Clare, which is the location of one of Ireland's oldest direct provision centres and I have got to know and have befriended many families there over the years. This system cannot be wound do…

I know the Minister is a cycling enthusiast, so I have a cycling-related question. I love cycling myself. For the last seven years, the Wild Atlantic Way has been a huge success. It has been a magnet in bringing tourists to our country - pre-Covid, of course. Recently, we have seen beautiful signs being erected in County Clare and the west of Ireland, which read: "EuroVelo 1". It is an 11,000 km long cycleway that goes all the way from Norway to Sagres in Portugal, taking in huge skelps of the west of Ireland, incl…

That is music to my ears. Speaking of music, the Minister will certainly have heard the song "It's a Long Way from Clare to Here". It is fabulous for one to step up on the pedals of a bike in my home village of Meelick, knowing that going north, one will pass through Galway and Mayo and ultimately get to Norway if one keeps following the route, and travelling in a southerly direction, ultimately get to Sagres in Portugal. There are huge opportunities here. I know that the Minister's Department recently invested €70…

An obvious extension of the initiative would be to invite the Tour de France to come to Ireland, as we did very successfully in 1998. It passed through Dublin and into counties Wicklow, Wexford, Waterford and Cork. It was a huge success. The tour has a global audience each year of 1 billion people. It would be an obvious extension of the EuroVelo 1 initiative. When I was Mayor of Clare, 18 months ago, I proposed the idea at a council meeting. Like many council motions, we believed that it had been buried in the ann…

I am delighted to be able to speak today on what looks like an end to direct provision. I am from Meelick in County Clare, where we have received refugees since 1957. First, we had refugees coming in from the Hungarian Revolution in 1956. On a sporadic basis, over the decades, we had various cohorts coming to Ireland and to our village for safe refuge. Despite what we saw at various community halls around the country two years ago, with outrageous protests and slogans daubed across the walls of these halls, it has …

I thank the Minister, the Minister of State, all in the Department and, moreover, the front-line staff who are helping to deliver vaccinations at huge speed at the moment. It is massively appreciated. I will speak briefly about mandatory hotel quarantine. It had a real high-value purpose in the early weeks of this year when there was a major risk of new strains of Covid coming into the country. The Minister has evolved and refined it in recent times but I am still concerned that the Sinopharm vaccine, which many Ir…