It will be imminent. I cannot commit in the same way I did previously, that the regulations will come next week before the Dáil rises, because this is difficult and complex. It is not just the likes of agriculture, which attracts much of the public attention. In the Department of Transport, the scale of what needs to be done is beyond compare. It is the same in the industrial sector. What we need to do is a complete transformation of everything in the whole swath of different areas of our society. It is better get …

Two things have the potential to transform that and they will be delivered in the autumn. The first is a regulations law that the Minister of State, Senator Hackett, is working on to help farmers. It does not always have to be the case where one takes the whole farm and covers everything in a single monoculture clear-fell forest model. Instead, we will start giving flexibility to farmers to put in native wildlife trees. The second key regulation to go with it is the European Commission committing to introduce a reg…

No, I do not expect to do so. However, I expect the Austrian and Luxembourg Governments to take a case that would be resolved in the courts, not in the European Council.

We are working on it. As I said, I met the industry representatives of the Irish Road Haulage Association during the week and we are looking at a whole variety of different options. First and foremost, we need real solid data on the fleet of vehicles here and what the real emissions reductions would be from various measures. That is something we both agreed that we need to do much further work on. Going back to what I said, European legislation guides and regulates everything in this energy transformation area. The…

I thank the Deputy for acknowledging what is a very significant increase in the back-to-school allowance and the free school bus service for the year, which is hugely welcomed across the country. I agree with the second point made by the Deputy. As I stated, there is only a certain cohort who will be able to avail of it, particularly in the context of the back-to-school allowance. It had to be done quickly. It could not wait until the budget because children go back to school in August. It had to be done straight a…

I will happily do so if the Deputy forwards the specific details to me. Many organisations are in real difficulty as a result of coming out of Covid or the recent wave of Covid. If the Deputy supplies the details, I will happily follow up to see what happened in respect of the services in Donegal and report back to him.

May I revert to the Deputy on this issue? I do not have the details in front of me. It is a valid question. The scheme will, as stated earlier, make an important contribution to targeting those homes with high energy use in particular. Rather than getting a figure or estimated time of delivery wrong, I will revert to the Deputy with specific details.

I agree that nursing homes provide a critically important service. My understanding is that, to date, four expert panel progress reports have been published on the issue of how we advance and improve them. The key areas of progress include the provision of State supports to nursing homes. More than €22 million was provided in budget 2022 for the implementation and mainstreaming of a range of recommendations in the expert panel report, including the establishment of permanent community support teams, the development…

Every Deputy is aware that there are real difficulties in school transport, particularly outside the Dublin area, where that service is not available. There are exemptions, but there are also problems where people do not fit in with a particular system. The Minister for Education is doing a lot of work on that. I recently made the point to her that Local Link services could connect in or have a potential role in helping to co-ordinate that. That may already apply in Cavan. One of the things we need to start conside…

The Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, is very aware of this issue. We are all concerned about the figures cited by the Deputy. There has been a reduction in waiting lists as a result of some of the measures introduced by the Minister of State. I understand that one of the real constraints relates to getting the staff. One third of the posts that have been advertised to try to get new services in are still vacant due to a lack of people applying. I acknowledge that is not a sufficient answer. I will ask the Minist…

I will ask the Minister of State, Deputy Butler, to respond to the Deputy. Apologies.

Deputy Griffin is right. With ongoing developments this month, we will have a much clearer idea of what Russia is doing in terms of cutting off gas supplies. That report is due in the third quarter. I discussed it with officials this week. It is critical that it comes at the same time as the hydrogen strategy, which will go to consultation in the coming days, and the Shannon area task force report. To my mind, many of the decisions we need to make are in the Shannon area, in north Kerry. Should we buy into fossil g…

They go together - the Shannon area task force report, the hydrogen strategy and the energy security report.

I will pass Deputy McNamara's suggestion on to the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, Deputy Harris. It seems that research capability and knowledge ability in our economy is absolutely central to our success and to the massive increase in corporation tax we have seen in the last half a dozen years. I will ask specifically that we look at whether that rate can be increased.

It is ring-fenced, which gives certainty for the next ten years. We will transform our buildings by retrofitting them. If, in the instance the Deputy mentioned, there is an underspend, and we discussed this yesterday in the committee, rather than returning that to the Exchequer, it is appropriate for us to use it to provide the energy security various Deputies here said we need.

I might look at what Professor Lambert suggested because it is clear Covid-19 is a pernicious and complex illness. There is still much to be learned about the long-term effects. We are only in the first year or two years of seeing those effects. I am sure our public health authorities, which served us well in taking a scientific approach on vaccination and public health recommendations, will also review Professor Lambert's advice and see how it might be applied.

The afforestation rates we need are going to be higher than that. This is complex. When you go into the detail of it, we have to account for farming and agriculture but we also have to account for land use. It is a slightly different category but it is connected obviously. We have learned that the forestry put in over the past four or five decades was in peaty soil where there is a release of carbon. It is not a sink. We will be clear-felling it in rapid fashion, which means that sink of forestry would turn into a …

I met Age Action on a number of occasions in the past six months as this energy price spike crisis evolved. That is part of the reason there was a significant increase in the fuel allowance in last year's budget. There was a further significant increase in it twice during the spring months. We agreed with the social partners during the summer to consider what further measures we would introduce in September's budget. In terms of what we can target in our retrofitting schemes or social welfare provisions, there is a…

I have seen at first hand the curse of Parkinson's disease. I have also seen the benefit one can get, particularly from that community nurse care model where miracles can happen in terms of helping people through a very debilitating disease. The health budget has expanded beyond all compare and already this year it is at unprecedented levels. We will not decide the future allocation until the September budget. I see the provision of those Parkinson's places being exactly in line with the Sláintecare approach of doi…

This will be a huge issue for our constituencies-----