I agree with the various points the Deputy made. I would add one further reason we need to shift the share of this type or model of car. It is related to this energy price issue. Energy is one of the biggest components in the price of steel and the price of steel is going to go up because of this energy price crisis. A vehicle like an SUV, by definition, is probably twice the weight of a smaller car. The cost of that steel alone, regardless of what we do in terms of the forecourt, will, I hope, be an increasing fac…

I am told work is ongoing on that issue. It is important we get that Bill to the House because it is critical. We are seeing that there is still a lot of remote working going on, and I am sure that is reflected in the Deputy's own experience. That is of real benefit but how we organise it and work in this partnership approach to get it right is critical. I will pass on to the Tánaiste the Deputy's request to accelerate the Bill as quickly as possible.

As I said in response to the earlier question from Deputy Bacik, the key issue here will be around budget time. Legislation may be required if we are to strengthen the sort of State agency I was talking about. That may need legislative support but, critically, that is part of the budget process. We should be clear; the budget process effectively starts now. It is a six-month to eight-month run-in. The way the European budgetary process, and the Dáil process, works is that the Committee on Budgetary Oversight and ot…

"Yes" is the answer to that. We are going to have to expedite everything. However, I do not want to hold out false hope. My understanding, without having come to a conclusion yet, is that there are technical issues not just for the pipeline, which will be decommissioned, but also around the amount of cushion gas that would have to be put into that field and its geological formation. It is not certain that either of those Cork fields will be ideal for gas. That is some of the advice I am hearing. We will have to con…

It is a critical issue for everyone concerned in the region. I will ask the Minister for Health to refer back to the Deputy directly because I do not have the specific details here. I would make one point, however. It is important we learn from the mistakes of the past but also from the successes of the past. I am long enough in the Dáil to remember the controversy about centralising or having centres of excellence. That cancer care strategy has worked. As I understand it, all outcomes have shown a remarkable impro…

I wish I was able to answer the Deputy in a few hours because I am heading from here to the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, SEAI, show in the Royal Dublin Society. I am meeting the SEAI chief executive there who will give me an update on the various elements. My understanding is that it is ready to go and that a number of companies are registered. I expect it to be announced imminently. There has been a huge public response and an unprecedented level of interest. From talking to companies directly involved…

The taxi industry, like so many other sectors, has been hit by these high fuel prices, which is one of the reasons we introduced the 20 cent reduction on excise on petrol and the 15 cent reduction on excise on diesel. In the North it was something like 5 cent by comparison so it was not a small reduction. The other measure we carried out last year that was hugely successful, although people were sceptical at first, is that we provided some €50 million in grants for taxi drivers to switch to electric vehicles, which…

I will have to ask the Minister responsible to revert to the Deputy. I agree with his basic thesis. Public pools provide a huge benefit for our health and mental well-being and many other benefits. The more accessible public pools we have the better and we should support them. I will ask the Minister to answer the specific questions the Deputy asked.

I thank the Deputy for raising it and I will do everything I can to follow up with Government colleagues to see what can be done in this specific case.

I will ask them to do that. I am embarrassed; I must apologise for the delay in responding to the Deputy. I will make sure that correspondence is replied to straight away. Clamping being used as debt collection sounds totally inappropriate to me. I do not know whether it requires legislative or regulatory measures. I presume the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage is responsible so I will follow up and see. I ask the Deputy to forward the specific details. It would be useful to examine. If it is an …

This energy price crisis has been with us now for the guts of a year. The Government has taken a series of responses. In October last, through the budget we increased the fuel allowance, the qualified child allowance, the working family payment and the living allowance, targeted to those most at risk of fuel poverty. Three weeks ago, we went further with the €500 million package in terms of the €200 credit which will help people with their bills. It will not cover the full increase, but it will help this month. We …

That advice to slow down got a lot of criticism yesterday but it was in answer to a straight question about what sort of efficiency measures we could do. It is just a fact. The people in rural Ireland are most exposed. Consider the drive down from Donegal, for example, which is a long distance. If you are on a motorway, which would not be on the Donegal route but elsewhere, going from 120 km/h down to 100 km/h could save about 20% plus. This is real and is the absolute law of physics. That measure and such efficien…

I fully agree with and support Deputy Gannon when he spoke about calling it out, and especially when yesterday we saw the maternity hospital being bombed. There are no words to express the shock and horror of the images we see on the front pages of our newspapers this morning. Our Government is, on behalf of the Irish people, standing up. The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Deputy Coveney, has been active in New York this week. We have led the call for the establishment of an investigation by the International Crimin…

As I said, we are going to have to act with real speed. In some instances, that will require the likes of modular housing and applying different rules from what we would ordinarily apply in the planning system. My understanding from the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage and from Cabinet discussions is that we are looking at those sorts of emergency measures to allow us to build modular housing outside the normal planning process. On the more immediate issues, the Deputy is right. Assessments and …

I agree with the Deputy that we have a proud record in difficult situations and conflict situations. Rather than adding to the conflict, we try to create peace in such conflict situations. There are examples of us sending diplomats and the likes of our Army Ranger Wing, which went to Kabul Airport last year and helped to get Irish citizens home, in conjunction with other countries. The Department of Foreign Affairs is working very closely with the Polish Government, which is co-ordinating the response in this regar…

The situation in Mariupol is atrocious but the difficulty is that it is impossible for citizens to get out of the city. Despite supposed arrangements to provide safe access routes out, that has not happened so that is not possible. Our embassy officials in Bucharest were hugely influential in getting a certain number of babies out recently in difficult circumstances. I will go back to the Deputy’s original question and I mention our engagement with the Polish, Romanian, Moldovan and other governments. We should be …

The switch to this renewable and local fuels future will have to be accelerated and I accept that. It is here and I just checked my phone to get the latest figures. As we speak we are using about 5,500 MW of power for lights, heating and our electricity systems. About 3,500 MW of that is coming from wind, particularly from the west, the north west and the south west, including in west Cork. We can use that and we can start planning to store, share and switch it. We can turn things on and off so that we use it in ef…

Deputy Collins and I were neighbours for many years in LH 2000 and I am sure he had the same experience as me. Does the Deputy remember the first day he walked through the gates of Leinster House and getting a tingle in his spine? We all share something in our constitutional and democratic Republic that when one is elected as a Deputy for a constituency one represents all of the people in it. The Deputy represents all of the people in Cork South-West and I represent all of the people of Dublin Bay South, regardless…

The energy crisis and food price rises, as mentioned, are at the centre of this. The Deputy is absolutely right that those on the lowest incomes are most at risk and the percentage of their incomes going on basic essentials, such as food and energy bills, puts them at particular risk. It is important that we look at our social welfare system in that regard. It is very uncertain. We have been looking at inflation rates for the past three months. It was 5.7% in December and then went down to 5.1% in January. My under…

When it comes to us at home in regard to agriculture, we will also have to be careful because our system is exposed and at risk, particularly the poultry and pig sectors.