You are butting in to me when I had ten seconds to go.

More people want to leave.

We support the Minister of State 100% in this. This is a real issue affecting youngsters especially. We do not know what they are vaping or what is in the vapes. We need to control this. Schools and parents are outraged by what is going on at present. We are 100% behind the Minister of State with this Bill.

I am glad to have the opportunity to speak on the motion. I thank Sinn Féin for giving us the opportunity to talk about this very important matter with the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, and the Minister of State, Deputy Kieran O'Donnell. We have great firefighters in Kerry and we need them. We need them to stay in their jobs. Right around the Ring of Kerry, from Sneem, Kenmare, Killarney, Cahersiveen, Killorglin, Listowel to Tralee, we depend so much on these brave men and women for the great work that they do.…

I am glad to get the opportunity in the Chamber to respectfully ask the Minister to provide more funding for the local improvement scheme, LIS, in Kerry. At present, we have 659 LIS applications and 14 community applications, that is, 673 applications, waiting for funding. Of course, I thank her for the €799,000 she gave earlier in the year which will do only 15 roads, but that leaves a deficit of 673 roads. At the current rate we are going, that will take up to 30 years.

I thank the Minister for her reply. Deputy Humphreys is a Minister from a rural county and she understands the problem that we have. I appreciate the funding that we have received but we must go forward. We have 673 roads on the list. The Department of Finance may be telling the Minister that these are private roads; they are not. They are public roads that were not taken in charge by the local authority. To qualify, you must have at least two landholders. Many of these roads have up to 20 landholders and maybe the…

Yes.

The Minister asked the question: what capacity have the local authorities? In 2005 and 2006, we did exactly 111 roads each year in County Kerry because a certain Deputy was up here at the time and he was able to cajole the then Ministers into providing extra funding later in the year when it was not spent in other places. They have the capacity to do the roads all right if we get the funding. Some of these people are waiting since 2007. Their applications went in in 2007. There was nothing happening. The Minister i…

I know that the Minister has.

I did not know that. I will have to have a word with them about that.

I thank the Leas-Cheann Comhairle for giving me the opportunity to raise this very important matter with the Minister of State, Deputy Chambers. I will outline first the deep concern expressed by many farmers in rural areas, especially in rural Kerry. The farmers whose lands people are talking about rewetting are the farmers who are working the hardest. They drained their land and were encouraged to do so to make it productive back in the 1960s, the early 1970s and through the 1980s. They were grant-aided to do tha…

I thank the Minister of State for the reply. However, again, considering this rewetting will have a desperate effect on people who drained their lands and have successfully farmed them for many years. Take the people of north Kerry. It is a vibrant farming community and they have great hurling teams. Kerry has the best football team in the country most years, but we also have massive hurlers and hurling clubs in north Kerry, who are proud of their tradition and villages such as Liscahane, Ballyduff, Abbeydorney, Ba…

I am glad to have an opportunity to speak about this very important topic. I thank Deputy Cian O'Callaghan for the opportunity. The biggest problem we have in Kerry at present is that people who want to build their own houses are being blocked by the planning regulator. This has been a serious issue since last June. Many people in their own areas cannot get permission because of urban-generated pressure. These are not people coming out from Killarney town, Killorglin town, Tralee town or Dingle town. They are peopl…

I am glad to get a few seconds to talk about this very serious matter. It is the people on marginal land who had to work and drain their land to make it productive who will be hurt. We cannot flood fertile land. We cannot flood the plains of County Kildare, the Golden Vale in County Tipperary, east Cork or Limerick, but the Government will try to do it in south and north Kerry, which Deputy Michael Healy-Rae mentioned. The poor farmers slave day and night in their fields alone, and sometimes with their wives and fa…

The Senator was not elected by the people. She came in the back door.

I thank the Labour Party for bringing this motion and giving us the opportunity to discuss this important matter here in the Chamber this morning. There is nothing to top the joy of a newborn baby for a couple when they are lucky enough for that to happen. When something is wrong, however, and they discover that something is not right with the child, it can be a really big problem and, in some cases, it is a burden they must carry all of their lives until they depart from this life, and they must wonder what will h…

I support Deputy McNamara's amendment because it is important to attain transparency as to what is going on. We know what the farmers would like. Deputy McNamara said we know what the farmers are getting at any time, we know what the consumers are paying at any time, but we do not know what is happening in between. A year or so ago, farmers' costs rose dramatically, mainly fertiliser costs and the cost of diesel, oil and anything connected with oil such as plastics for silage bales and plastic covering. They are al…

It is very important that the regulator have powers to chase up these traders, in a legal sense, if they do not give the information requested. A regulator can ask all the questions in the world, but if it does not get answers, where is it to go? That does not make any sense, so I appeal to the Minister to accept the amendment, which makes the utmost sense.

We need to give the agrifood regulator teeth to investigate certain rules that apply at meat factories, such as the four-movement rule. My contention and that of all the farmers is that the four-movement rule is unfair, as is the 30-month rule whereby farmers are penalised when cattle are more than 30 months of age by the time they go to the factory. I have been raising these issues for many years. When a carcass is hanging off the rafters, how do you know what age that animal was? That rule is totally unfair, as i…

At those gates in Bandon and in Rathkeale, I recall being asked several times by farmers why were they not being paid for the fifth quarter. The fifth quarter is every other bit of the carcase, which the farmer does not get paid for, yet the factories are getting paid for that. If this food regulator is to have any real purpose or benefit to farmers, the regulator needs to go after that issue because farmers are being short-changed. They are not paid for all of the animal. They are not paid properly at times even f…