It is not my intention to push through this scheme in this way. We have to follow the law that protects all our people in the long run. If we start ignoring orders of the High Court-----

We do. We are engaged in a process whereby we are looking at how we reform the law. This is probably one of the most important projects we have to do now for the sake of everyone in the country. It takes a certain period of time. This process will not be concluded until the end of this year. Any new planning legislation would take time to go through the House before it would be law. In the interim we have to do everything we can to help any householder caught, as these households are, in a very unfortunate situatio…

Yes. We intend to introduce a circular economy Bill, which will have a whole range of provisions to help to reduce the amount of materials we are dumping or seeing going to waste. I fundamentally agree with Deputy Fitzmaurice. When I was originally a city councillor in Dublin, I remember the shock of realising that one third of our landfill then was demolition waste. It was often very good, expensive, and carbon-intensive products, which we need to reduce, reuse and recycle. It is going to be at a scale beyond comp…

It will not be one year, it will be quicker than that. A lot quicker. This Government has three years to run and I believe that it has the necessary plans: Housing For All, the climate plan and the national development plan. The Housing For All plan also commits exactly to the sort of measures that Deputy Fitzmaurice was talking about. Across all Departments we now have to focus on delivery, delivery and delivery, and it being fast. We must take some of the capability we showed during Covid and during Brexit to mak…

We need to spend about €12 billion per year to really tackle the problem. Some €4 billion of that will come from the State and €8 billion from elsewhere. My job and my role, and what I want to do, comes back to what I said about Dublin Port: do we need all of the land with the expectation that it would double the amount of traffic in the port? I would say "No". We should take some of those pockets of land that are within walking distance of the city centre, where the problem is at its most acute, and build high-qua…

I will give my personal view based on real experience in Dublin. In 2018, we came very close to drought in Dublin. There is undoubtedly a real issue with water supply in Dublin. I was in Shannon and Ennis last week and I also have long held the view that we need better balanced regional development. A lot of water use is industrial. People do not see it or notice it, but it is huge. If that is where the water is, would we not move industry there, rather than shipping everything somewhere else? There is imbalance in…

One of the measures announced last week was a change to the rules on school transport. That applies more to rural than urban areas, but it was very much targeted at the parents of young children. There are also changes in prescription charges. In addition, the many parents who cannot afford a car will benefit most from a cut in the cost of public transport. It is very expensive to pay for fares for adults and children, and that starts to hit home. More fundamentally, what was done last week was an adjunct to last O…

We clearly recognise that we have an issue with data centres. We cannot just have an open door whereby every new data centre that wants to get onto the grid is connected. If we did that, we would blow our climate budget and so on. We have introduced much-needed new arrangements. A data centre that wants to connect to the grid has to be part of solving the problem we have with managing the balance in the grid, such as providing backup power, providing a real benefit in terms of district heating or other solutions. F…

I look forward to that meeting. About 25 people sought a meeting. It will be tricky to arrange everyone's diaries but I will happily do whatever I can to facilitate it.

I met the council and the chair and chief executive of the Shannon Group. We are close to final arrangements involving the likes of Bunratty and the Cliffs of Moher retail unit going to Clare, King John's Castle going to Limerick and so on. There is remaining debt and those issues have to be resolved. It is appropriate that Clare County Council is taking over Bunratty. It will get revenue streams from the Cliffs of Moher. We have to plan for the Cliffs of Moher in a different way. While we did not resolve that on m…

And the Government too.

I do not think the Government will ever share legal advice.

They may, but we are not a British Government.

We have a Constitution and laws that are based on it, with certain protected rights, unlike others that I will not mention. This is a living issue and an immediate concern for people. There has to be a balance between the right to protest and to people being protected. The Government is committed to delivering the zones. My understanding from the Attorney General's legal advice is that this is not an insurmountable problem. We will be able to square that circle and provide the measures. I will pass the Deputy's que…

My glasses are good but they are not that good. I ask the Deputy to send me the details. On Tuesday, €25 million was announced as being allocated to Meath County Council for local roads. The overall figure was a 4% increase on previous years. It is important that we maintain what is called steady state quality of roads. If they are let go, they cost more to repair, and there are safety aspects and other issues. I ask the Deputy to send me the details, I will look specifically-----

I commit to doing that. I am sure I will be joined by colleagues in saying how much people are inspired by the bravery and strength of people such as Charlie Bird. That vision of going up Croagh Patrick is poignant and powerful. We wish him and everyone else involved well. I will raise it with Government colleagues to see if there is anything we can do to help.

The Deputy makes a good point. I will have to look into it because I do not have the details of why it is so difficult to get that Covid certificate in place in time. The Deputy is right that people are now looking forward, as more normal life returns, to starting to travel. If they are restricted in that way, that would be a real problem. I will follow up and come back to the Deputy with the specifics of what is happening and what could change to address the problem.

I do not have the details but I will follow up and try to get the Department of Education to respond to the Deputy with urgency. It is not right that the school is in such an uncertain place.

I am not aware of the school in question but I am aware of the issue. In my family we have a child with special needs and I have seen him grow up through the various parts of the health and education systems. My broad assessment is that our education system is providing many services that did not exist ten or 20 years ago and that there has been significant progress. The problems really start to occur in the interaction between the health system and the education system. The communication between the two is very po…

He is not here now, but Deputy McNamara and I were joking earlier about what the difference is between Ireland and the UK. We have a constitutional legal system. I see the European Union in a similar light. The Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union is, in effect, an extensive constitutional arrangement to which we have all agreed. It provides us all with real strength and protection in the context of fundamental rights. The European Commission and others are right that it is their role to stand up for the…