I thank the Ceann Comhairle and I apologise to the House. Today is world telecommunications day. Every day I receive complaints from constituents about the dropping of mobile phone calls. Every day I must ask people to move their location so I can hear what they are saying. This is because of the quality of the mobile phone coverage. On 1 February the Government launched its new national digital strategy, Harnessing Digital - the Digital Ireland Framework. One of the objectives set out in the framework is to make c…

The Government has big ambition for providing fibre but none for mobile services. I am talking about establishing a shared rural network with all the operators on it. This would be complementary to the national broadband plan. Similar models are already operating in other markets such as the UK and Germany. In fact, such a shared rural network is currently being built out in Northern Ireland. The estimated cost of replicating that here would be between €30 million and €50 million. This is small money and would also…

The programme for Government commits to maintaining the right of a social housing tenant to purchase his or her home. However, purchase of a Part V local authority home is not permitted under the tenant incremental purchase scheme, which came into operation on 1 January 2016 to allow tenants to buy their homes. Where tenancies predate the regulations, tenants were never informed they would never be able to purchase their homes. I ask that the current review taking place takes this particular cohort of individuals i…

I will ask the Minister a few questions and give him time to respond at the end. This debate, sadly, relates to the issue of trust. In the week we are debating the ownership structure of the national maternity hospital, on Tuesday, during the introduction of the Birth and Information Tracing Bill to rectify the issue of illegal birth registrations, the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, Deputy O'Gorman, offered a formal apology on behalf of the State for the deep hurt and anguish ex…

At a time when "air quality" is the buzzword being used by the Government, why are we seeing a huge increase in the waiting times for respiratory outpatient appointments? Since last October, the waiting time for a respiratory appointment at University Hospital Galway has increased from 18 months to a whopping 42 months. Nationally, there are now 18,632 people waiting for a respiratory outpatient appointment, almost 5,000 of whom have been waiting for more than 18 months to be seen. Are these delays due to the escal…

This morning I received a copy of an electricity bill from a constituent, a pensioner living on her own. Her bill has gone from €123 to €3,385 because her bills have been estimated for the past 24 months.

To add to her shock, she is being charged all of these arrears at the current electricity rate, compounding the financial hardship she is now facing. In the meantime, the electricity supplier gains excessive profits due to this inflated unit rate. The only obligation placed on suppliers is that they must attempt to take a meter reading four times a year. After that, the onus to submit a reading is thrust back on the customer after a banal card is thrown into the letter box. In the UK, under the back billing rules, …

The Minister should read the meters.

I was saddened to witness the political football being created from the matter of air quality. One in five children in this country suffer from asthma and one in 14 adults in the country suffer from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, COPD. Before Covid-19, COPD was responsible for 10% of all hospital admissions. The Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications, Deputy Eamon Ryan, has handled this matter terribly but peat has been in the cross hairs in the air quality debate for more than five years,…

I thank the Leas-Cheann Comhairle for facilitating me. Focus has rightly been on families struggling with rising energy costs, which are causing serious financial hardship, but these costs are also putting great financial pressure on many businesses with regard to operational costs, transport costs and wage pressures. What active and immediate actions is the Government going to take to ease the energy cost pressures facing businesses?

The Tánaiste will recall that we had very detailed conversation and debates on these specific issues back in 2017 and 2018. At the time, I pointed out that energy costs have a far higher impact on inflation in Ireland than anywhere else in the EU. This is partly a result of the subsidies to the cost of green electricity, grid connections and back-up supplies provided to existing and speculatively planned data centres, which result in no substantial employment dividend here in Ireland. As the Tánaiste will know, the…

The responsibility lies with the Tánaiste's Department. It was his Department that published the report back in 2018. The reality is that we are subsidising the cost of electricity for a sector that will account for 50% of all demand by 2030. With regard to the public service obligation, PSO, levy, the Government announced earlier this week with some fanfare that, next October, the PSO levy will be reduced to zero or that people will actually get a rebate on it. The Government has given the impression that this is …

The income limits for social housing have not been reviewed since 2011, while property prices have doubled in the same period. The price of a three-bed, semi-detached house is increasing at €100 per day. This is forcing people to turn down work or face the prospect of homelessness. Last September, the Taoiseach told me in the House that the idea that people not being able to progress in work or get an increase in salary because they would be marginally over the social housing thresholds needed to be relaxed. My con…

I want to pick up where Deputy Leddin left off. Last December, Dáil Éireann unanimously passed a motion that, among other things, called on the Government to design a strategy in conjunction with the European Commission to fund and construct an Atlantic electricity interconnector that would connect west coast and south-west coast renewable electricity directly to the mainland European grid. This would provide large quantities of clean and green electricity to the EU and create tens of thousands of jobs along the we…

We usually agree on most things.

I thank Deputies on all sides for their contributions and for their support for the principles behind this motion. In particular, I thank Ms Cáit Nic Amhlaoibh, who assisted us with the drafting of the motion and the research relating to it. There is something fundamentally wrong in a country that is in the middle of a housing crisis - which has got far worse in recent weeks - and in which there are 90,000 vacant homes. The Northern and Western Regional Assembly has identified 44,905 residential and commercial prem…

What time did you do it in though?

They are not agreed.

Ireland is setting out a very ambitious set of targets in our carbon budgets for the next 15 years. If we are to achieve such significant reductions, we will need to bring the public along with us on that journey. People cannot be commanded. Effective change means putting the levers of climate action into people’s own hands. That will not be achieved by shoe-horning continental solutions into addressing the unique set of challenges that we face here in Ireland. We have a three-day debate every October in relation t…

The Dáil has no say in that. The final decision is tomorrow.