There is a commitment in the programme for Government to hold a referendum to extend voting rights in presidential elections to our citizens living abroad. When will that referendum happen? We are hopelessly out of step with the European Union and the rest of the world in extending any kind of democratic opportunity to our citizens living in Northern Ireland and across the world. These are people who have a major stake in the future of Ireland. We know, for example, that 30,000 of our citizens returned home to Irel…

That is correct.

She is an extraordinary woman and athlete. I thank the Minister of State for being here to listen to the powerful case I want to make for the provision of an indoor sports hall for Seamount College, a superb school in the heart of Kinvara. It is embedded in the life of the Kinvara community and south Galway. It is difficult to understand why a school that will approach enrolment of approximately 700 students next September does not have an indoor space for physical activity. In addition, it has no indoor space wher…

I do not take issue with the Minister of State but it is as I expected from the Department. It said a request for a PE hall does not come within the remit of the additional school accommodation scheme, yet it did this 21 times in 21 other schools and in a school just 10 km away from Seamount. Why it decided to single out Seamount for special treatment in denying it this facility is a mystery to me. I will not relent until I get to the bottom of this. It is deeply unjust. It is limiting the school's capacity to deli…

This motion is a cynical, clumsy attempt to gain political capital from a tragic incident. Thankfully, the Irish people are beginning to see Sinn Féin for what it really is, namely, a party linked to criminality that has repeatedly sought to undermine our State and institutions and one that applauded those who took the life of one of our gardaí. It is no secret that officials in the Department of Justice are filled with dread at the prospect of a Sinn Féin Minister for Justice but perhaps members of the Sinn Féin F…

-----in seeking to remove a Minister with genuine justice at the heart of her work every day.

I thank the Ceann Comhairle for allowing this Topical Issue to be taken and the Minister of State for being here at such a late hour. I am delighted to bring proceedings to a close. It has been a very long day in Dáil Éireann. This is a major issue for the people of Loughrea town. It has been for a considerable period ever since July 2021, when Bus Éireann decided to completely withdraw its X20 service, which is essentially the Expressway service connecting Dublin city to Galway city. It passed regularly to and fro…

I thank the Minister of State. The Ceann Comhairle outlined earlier the tendency at times for departmental officials to abdicate responsibility in certain policy areas and I think this opening statement attempts to do that at the very beginning. It clarifies that the Minister for Transport and his officials are not involved in the day-to-day operation of public transport services, but they do set the policy. They do set parameters and targets. I have great admiration for the work the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, is…

Athenry town and its environs are thankfully experiencing major population growth. However, it is putting major pressure on enrolment in the post-primary schools in the town. Arising from accurate data pulled together by school leaders in Athenry town, we now know we are potentially going to have a shortage of up to 100 secondary school places next September. This was flagged to the Minister and her officials as much as two years ago. I urge the Minister, Deputy McEntee, to engage immediately with the Minister for …

This week we have seen something completely unprecedented in Irish politics whereby Reporters Without Borders and our own National Union of Journalists, NUJ, felt obliged to write to the leader of a political party, Sinn Féin, expressing their alarm about a series of legal actions taken by Sinn Féin members against journalists. The letter states: "... the number of legal actions that have been filed by Sinn Féin members points to a coordinated campaign against the media in Ireland". It goes on to say that these bea…

I thank the Minister of State for being here today and for his unstinting commitment to making our roads safer. As he pointed out in his opening statement, we are in a crisis. That is the only way of describing it. In three out of the past four years, we have gone backwards. There have been 155 deaths this year and recent RSA statistics tell us that, in the past seven years, 1,600 cyclists have been seriously injured on our roads. We are experiencing a litany of death and disability and it is no longer acceptable t…

I will finish on this and I thank the Leas-Cheann Comhairle for her support. I am working with a community in a small village in south Galway called Kilcolgan. This is essentially a village divided by a national secondary route. TII, incidentally, should also reflect on its role in road safety. I asked our local roads engineer to consider the installation of a pedestrian crossing in a village that has approximately 1,000 people living in it, where it is not safe to cross over and back on the road that divides their…

This week, the Western Rail Trail campaign will present a petition of 26,000 signatures of voters in the western region to the Committee on Public Petitions and the Ombudsmen, advocating for the development of a greenway on the currently disused railway line between Athenry and Sligo. The serious fear among the members of that campaign and among the 26,000 who signed the petition, 9,000 of whom are in County Galway, is that the line on which we are advocating for the development of a greenway will remain decaying a…

Alongside the excellent work being done in the delivery of housing supply, there is significant potential for additional supply in our rural towns and villages. In recognition of that, in April of last year the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, announced a special funding opportunity for our rural towns and villages, namely, €15 million for wastewater treatment plants to allow them to develop to their full potential. A year and a half later, there has been no further annou…

I thank the Minister of State, Deputy Peter Burke, for being here. This has been a very long-running saga in the west, and in my constituency of Galway East in particular. What is deeply disturbing for those of us who are ambitious about the future of east Galway, and in particular its towns and villages, is that there is a piece of public infrastructure that has now been left to rot for more than 14 years. It has no function or purpose in serving the economic and social needs of the people of Galway East. It has b…

I thank the Minister of State for that very comprehensive response. I am aware of, and am very pleased with, the significant investment already committed to the development of the greenway from Athenry to Milltown. Those of us campaigning for that greenway like to describe it as "The Quiet Man" greenway because it allows for users to cycle through Ballyglunin railway station, which featured extensively in "The Quiet Man" movie many years ago. That is a 45 km route along that disused railway between Athenry and Milt…

Galway County Council, on my request, recently carried out a traffic speed survey of cars entering a 60 km/h zone in Craughwell village, County Galway. They measured the speed of 45,000 vehicles over a week. Some 84% of those vehicles exceeded the speed limit. The average speed recorded was 88 km/h, with one car travelling at 159 km/h. Craughwell is not alone in experiencing an extraordinary pandemic, one might call it, of speed and carelessness on the part of motorists. The number of pedestrians dying in incidents…

To paraphrase Mark Twain, rumours of the demise of rural Ireland are greatly exaggerated. I was born and raised in rural Ireland as were many previous generations of my family. I remain living there. Yes, there are still issues that we need to face up to and resolve and they are going to require investment and commitment. However, every time I go home to rural east Galway I sense nothing but vibrancy, energy and a genuine sense of ambition and vision as to how our rural communities develop in the future. That has b…

In April 2021 we commenced the all-island rail review to develop a strategy for the planning and provision of an enhanced rail network across the whole island of Ireland. Over two years later we still do not have the findings of that review, which have yet to be published. The Taoiseach will be aware that there was a recent and significant investment announcement in the town of Athenry, with a US company called Dexcom hoping to provide 1,500 jobs. There will be an urgent need for the development of new rail and act…

Our Government is doing wonderful work in rolling out public transport options, both in urban and rural settings: the Bus Connects scheme in urban areas and Connecting Ireland in rural areas. However, there is a major inequity that needs to be addressed. Let us take, for example, the town of Loughrea in County Galway. It has a population approaching 6,000 people. Its only public transport link to Galway city is a bus service, and the last bus leaves Galway city for Loughrea at 6.30 p.m. each evening. It cannot serv…