Grand.

I withdraw the amendment on that basis.

I move amendment No. 39: In page 30, after line 35, to insert the following: “30. The Minister shall, within 6 months of the passing of this Act, lay before both Houses of the Oireachtas a report on how registered sex offenders are able to change their name or other aspects of their identity without the knowledge of the Garda Síochána with the intention of subverting the purpose of this Act.”. This is a related issue. I thank my colleague Sarah Champion MP from the UK and her advisor Lucy Cserna for their assistanc…

The people who the Minister has been talking to in the Garda and those to whom I have been talking are very different. I have been talking to people who are enforcing this at the coalface. There is a requirement, within three days of people changing their name by deed poll, to notify a divisional Garda headquarters somewhere in the country. This comes back to the argument we had at the start of this debate. Someone who is residing in County Roscommon might change his or her name by deed poll and then inform the gar…

I thank the Minister and her officials for their engagement on this. The legislation has been in the offing for the past 13 years. I thank the Minister's predecessors, Alan Shatter, Frances Fitzgerald and Deputy Flanagan, for the work that they did to progress this legislation. I thank the officials and their predecessors who I dealt with over the years with regard to this. It has caused plenty of grey hairs over the last 13 years. While I am not happy with the final Bill and think it could be better, it is a signi…

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this legislation and thank the Aire Stáit for dealing with it. I welcome the publication of the Bill, particularly the provision for additional powers to be given to ComReg, which is very much warranted. However, there are a few issues not dealt with in the Bill that need to be addressed. The first is an issue I have raised on numerous occasions in the House, namely, the European Commission's definition of high-speed broadband. One of the provisions in the Bill relates to unive…

The income limits for social housing have not increased in a decade, while property prices have doubled over the same period, forcing people to turn down work or face the prospect of homelessness. Other families who received the pandemic unemployment payment, despite its temporary nature, have now been forced off the housing list. In a perverse twist, the budget measures announced yesterday to help families will push more of them off the housing list, resulting in the withdrawal of housing assistance. When will we …

Turning to the short-term measure, I welcome the changes that have been announced for counties Galway and Westmeath, but what does the Minister have against people from County Roscommon? Did he have a teacher in school who he did not get on with from County Roscommon? From 1 October, there is going to be €6,000 of a difference in the income thresholds for people living in Baylough in Athlone who are on the same income, living next door to each other, paying the same rent and whose children play in the same football…

As I said, the reality is that the income limits have not changed in 11 years. Property prices have doubled in that period of time. In fact, the price of a three-bedroom semi-detached house is increasing at €100 per day at the moment. We need, even in the short term, some discretion in situations where people get a temporary increase in income. There should be some flexibility so that they are not automatically excluded. That is going on left, right and centre right across the country at the moment and it needs to …

For a number of years, I was a lone voice in this House in highlighting the need to reopen vacant homes. I acknowledge the steps the Minister has taken in introducing a refurbishment grant for vacant properties in our towns, villages and rural areas. However, the Department was slow to issue guidance to local authorities, although it eventually did come. We now need to actively encourage the uptake of this scheme.

From a climate perspective, this is a no-brainer. We have already put the infrastructure in place. There is water and electricity and broadband is going in now. In climate terms, every square metre of new-build takes 1 tonne but the refurbishment of a square metre of an existing house takes half of that. There has already been an incredible level of interest in the scheme but we have set a cap of 2,000 premises by 2025. Conservatively, we are looking at somewhere between 90,000 and 160,000 vacant properties across …

I thank the Minister for that reassurance. The difficulty is that, across my constituency of Roscommon-Galway, we have approximately 6,000 vacant homes, fewer than ten of which are available to rent today. Across the Northern and Western Regional Assembly area, there are 44,000 of these vacant properties. We want to see them back in use, bringing life back into rural communities. Will the Minister give an assurance that if there are barriers to the uptake of this scheme, they will be addressed? Take the repair and …

Budget 2023 reminds me of the kitchen sink. What the Government has done is put an overflow pipe onto the sink, but the difficulty is that is not turning off the tap and if that the water comes in any quicker, it will still overflow. That is the difficulty with this budget. While it is helping and while the investment that is being put in is welcome, it will not deal with any of the systemic challenges, particularly in relation to the cost of energy and the cost of electricity. We see that the retrofitting targets …

Last week, I spoke with the mother of a long Covid suffer who until she contracted the virus was a young and fit woman working as a doctor in a busy hospital. She has not stood on a hospital ward in more than 11 months because she is still recovering from the illness. Based on research conducted in Ireland and the Netherlands, 336,451 adults are experiencing or have experienced a long-lasting impact of this illness, known as long Covid. Long Covid encompasses a broad range of illnesses following Covid infection and…

With regard to the prevalence of long Covid, based on my analysis of the social welfare payments for Covid-related illnesses lasting 12 weeks or more following the initial infection, 21,000 people are unable to go to work due to long Covid. This figure does not take into account the tens of thousands who are suffering with less severe forms of long Covid who are going to work but not contributing to the same extent that they did prior to the illness, nor does it take into account the thousands of people who recover…

More than 9,600 people in fuel poverty have been waiting some two and a half years to access the retrofitting programme under the warmer homes scheme. While this scheme is great for those who are lucky enough to avail of it, it is of little use to address the cost of electricity today. There are 2,900 participants on the rural social scheme, many of whom are involved in outdoor maintenance work which normally winds down during the winter months. I ask that these staff be redeployed as an emergency measure to instal…

I refer to Private Members’ motion No. 152 on the Order Paper, which seeks the direct intervention of the Government to address a humanitarian crisis faced by eight families in the Ballagh and Lisphelim area of south Roscommon due to the increasing water level in Lough Funshinagh, a situation that is deteriorating daily due to the current heavy rainfall. The motion seeks the establishment of a cross-departmental task force to address emergency climate adaptation measures to protect homes nationwide by reforming the…

On expenses, what is the overall capital envelope that is being set aside by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform in relation to this? Can the Minister give us an indication of the type of cost we are looking at? Second, has an assessment been carried out of the potential for using energy efficiency measures to reduce overall demand? What sort of an impact would that have on the overall load on the grid?

I will speak to my amendment No. 22. I have heard the comments from colleagues about data centres. As the Minister will know from the records in his own Department, this is something I had been highlighting during my term there back in 2017 and 2018. On foot of that, the then Government published a statement on the role of data centres in Ireland. It had a substantial section in it on the issue and challenges regarding energy infrastructure. The difficulty today is 1 MW out of every 7 MW generated on this island is…

I am disappointed that the Minister ignored amendment No. 22 and did not address the point I raised. The amendment provides that: The Minister shall, within 180 days of the passage of this Act, publish a report on the mitigation measures to be taken to minimise the additional impact of intensified data centre activity on the Public Service Obligation levy and network charges for all other electricity customers. This legislation is taking €40 out of the pockets of every family in this country to pay for the addition…