This is a simple one for the Minister of State. I am glad to hear from Deputy Buttimer that the budget negotiations with the Department of public expenditure are ongoing because my question is whether the Minister will provide the €70 million in funding that the NTA says is required to avoid the increase in public transport fares.

I thank the Minister of State. Often when I ask a question of the Minister for Transport, I am fobbed off to the NTA because I am asking about operational matters but this is a funding matter. It is a hugely disappointing decision from Government and a baffling decision in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis and a climate crisis. The current policy has been working for the Government. It is a really popular policy with the public, it is politically popular and I am baffled as to why the Government is doing this w…

I certainly will not dismiss the very significant investment in public transport which is really welcome. The problem with the PSO is that it is not keeping pace with the volume of users now and the demands. The Minister of State talked about 38% of the costs of the PSO being covered by fares but public transport pays for itself in other ways through reduced congestion, safer roads and lower carbon emissions. The idea that fares need to cover costs is not entirely correct. Talking about international comparators an…

I move: ""That the Bill be now read a Second Time." Is lá mór bróid dom é an lá seo mar tá mo chéad phíosa reachtaíochta tar éis an Dara Céim a bhaint amach. Táim ag tnúth leis an díospóireacht. Tá súil agam go mbeidh sé go maith agus fiúntach, agus go dtabharfaidh an tAire Stáit a thacaíocht don Bhille. This is the first Bill I have introduced. Its Title continues the long Labour Party tradition of snappy marketing. The Title may be technical but the Bill itself is neat. It is designed to fix a gap in our law and …

I am open to amendments.

I thank all the Deputies who spoke here this afternoon and I appreciate the support from Deputies Cronin, Paul Murphy and Heneghan. I thank the Minister of State for being here. Obviously, it would have been preferable if the Minister could have been here but I appreciate the Minister of State is the designated survivor today, so I thank him for his time. I am disappointed to hear he will not be supporting my Bill. Part of the Government might but I guess not all of it and that is what is important. To the extent t…

It is a comprehensive report. It is worth the Minister of State’s time to read and consider it. I have a couple more points in response to the Minister of State. He mentioned that Ireland’s industrial electricity demand is primarily concentrated in our digital economy and that this is our core energy-intensive industry. That is fine but what is happening at the moment is that multiple Ministers are using this argument to justify continuing the status quo in their own Departments - by " status quo ", I mean continui…

I thank the Deputies from Independent Ireland for bringing this motion forward today. Everyone in this House knows and agrees that we are going through a severe and extended cost-of-living crisis. We all want to do everything in our power to protect people most at risk from energy poverty. Many people in the country are struggling now. However, the vast majority of us in this House, in opposition at least, agree on the reasons for the cost-of-energy crisis and the long-term solutions. The climate crisis is not ment…

It might be a bit tedious answering the same question three times but there is a reason that the first question asked by each of three Opposition climate spokespeople has been on data centres. It is because of the level of concern that exists in the Opposition. We see around the world that people are waking up to the impact that data centres are having in their communities, from energy use to water use. The Minister spoke about industrial strategy. We hear time and again that we have no heavy industry here and, the…

Absolutely, and we are all focused on bringing through more renewable energy. Offshore wind is vital. Our issue on this side of the House is that the renewable energy we are creating at the moment is being gobbled up by data centres. We also know the impact this is having on energy bills. We also know how much water they use. I know it is a relatively small percentage but there is an unfairness at the heart of how they are treated, whereby ordinary people were asked to abide by a hosepipe ban this summer whereas da…

We had a great summer here. We all enjoyed the bit of heat, but it is the second year in a row where we have experienced our hottest summer on record. Temperatures that used to be anomalies in the past are now becoming consistent. It is that direction of travel that we are really concerned about, because we all know it has such huge impacts on our society. This is the case in urban areas when it comes to a lack of green spaces. Even new apartment designs that are single aspect do not allow for draughts to come thro…

With El Niño happening next year, this sitation is presumably going to get worse. We are likely to have another record heatwave next summer. Aside from the issues we spoke about earlier, there are also serious health implications here as well for vulnerable communities and older people. The 2023 climate action plan said it was necessary to develop a new public health heatwave plan and to seek to ensure more uniform planning country-wide for heatwaves. That recommendation was not included in the 2024 or 2025 version…

We have been waiting for a long time. We were told the plan would be published by the end of quarter 3. I heard the Minister refer to the plan for 2026 being published by the end of October as well as the plan for 2027. It would be very welcome if the Minister of State could confirm that. It is better late than never that the Government is getting its act together. This is about transforming our theoretical targets into practical measures for Departments and Ministers. We cannot hold those Ministers to account unle…

The Tánaiste recently echoed his predecessor as leader of Fine Gael, Leo Varadkar, in saying that this Government will provide a budget for people who get up early and go to work. Was the Tánaiste thinking that this includes the tens of thousands of workers who stand at 7 o'clock every morning at bus stops and in train stations across the country five days a week, who are now facing an average increase of 15% in their costs to get to work? Many of them are facing increases of up to 33%. These planned fare hikes are…

----- which was trumpeted at the start of this Administration. The NTA does not have the money to do things right because it is not getting it from the Government. The Government is throwing commuters under the bus. The Government was able to find almost €1.2 billion behind the back of the couch to subsidise diesel and fuel. Why can we not look after commuters in the same way?

The Labour Party absolutely supports the main thrust of this Bill, which is to improve data sharing between the State bodies responsible for road safety, that is, An Garda Síochána, the RSA and our local authorities. At present, the information exists but the people who need that information to make our roads safer do not necessarily have access to it. That situation has been allowed to persist for too long. Nevertheless, I welcome the Bill being introduced at Second Stage today. If a person is seriously injured on…

I welcome An Coimisiún Pleanála's decision to refuse planning for a data centre in Mayo on climate grounds, so all hope is not lost. I thank People Before Profit Deputies for tabling this really important motion. On behalf of the Labour Party, I brought a relatively similar motion to the House back in June, calling for targeted energy credits funded through a data centre levy as well as the introduction of a moratorium on the new construction of data centres. I did so and I imagine that the Deputies who are bringin…

What we are asking for today is simply that the Government lives up to the commitment made in the programme for Government to carry out a new, independent feasibility study for an extension of the MetroLink from where it is currently due to end in Charlemont, out to Dublin south west. I raised this with the Minister for Transport a few weeks ago, and he advised that the study would be carried out but would be done as part of a review of the greater Dublin area transport strategy. While it is welcome to know the stu…

As the Minister knows, parents are paying hand over fist for ancillary school costs, be it for school uniforms, laptops, school transport or the so-called voluntary contributions. We cannot say we have free education in this country if the whole architecture that enables proper participation is hugely expensive for parents. What is so regrettable is that some of the good work that is being done, like the school books scheme - something that has been long-championed by Aodhán Ó Ríordáin and others in the Labour Part…

The list of schools goes on. A lot of these issues are on the Minister's desk and I really hope they will be looked at favourably.