Amendments Nos. 19 and 20 are related and may be discussed together by agreement.

Are you withdrawing the amendment?

Amendments Nos. 22 to 24, inclusive, are related and may be discussed together by agreement.

Amendments Nos. 26 to 29, inclusive, will be discussed together.

Amendments Nos. 26 to 29, inclusive, are grouped together..

We will come back to that in a moment.

I want to give the Minister of State a chance to reply, then we will come back to Senator Higgins.

I welcome the good news from the Department headed by the Minister for Rural and Community Development, Deputy Humphreys, and the Government of the €2.6 million for the first Town Centre First plans. The town that has been chosen in County Roscommon, I am proud to say, is my own home town of Strokestown. It is also the home with the National Famine Museum, which is also going under a major upgrading plan of €5 million with State support. We also have the €200 million N5 bypass investment going on there at the momen…

Cuirim fáilte roimh an Aire go dtí an Teach. My contribution will be brief. Yesterday, I spoke about the value of our secretarial assistants. I will not go through all of that again. I acknowledge and admire Senator Craughwell for his intervention. The Leas-Chathaoirleach also referred to the matter. I fully understand, acknowledge and agree with almost everything that has been said by Senators across the House. On this issue in particular, it would be a mistake to cause a division. I want to put something on the r…

I wish to return to an issue on which my colleague, Senator Gallagher, had a Commencement matter this morning, for which the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Deputy McConalogue, was in the House. I compliment the Minister, who has been doing a lot of work on this. I refer to the spiralling cost of fertiliser for farmers. While we all want to promote organic fertilisers and ensure we do all this type of work in a more environmentally friendly way, the fact is that farmers cannot produce food without us…

The Minister is very welcome to the House. Over the past number of difficult years he has been important on a number of fronts to the constituency I serve, and to the country in general, as we dealt with something nobody had seen happen before with the pandemic. Like many Members, I welcome the fact that the Minister has come to the Chamber himself to give this address and listen to what we have to say. I might not even use up my four minutes because Senator Wilson has adequately covered much of what I was going to…

On a more serious note, our secretarial staff have done a wonderful job. Like everybody else, we would like to see their conditions changed and their jobs upgraded. It is very good to hear the Minister say so much about those assistants in his address. I picked out four paragraphs at an early stage. He also spoke recently in the Dáil about the important growth of pay, which is included in this address as well. The public will ask, on an ongoing basis, why it takes so much money to run the Houses of the Oireachtas. …

-----to get the research on those. There were 37,941 questions with written answers and 977 with oral answers. Apart from secretarial staff, Oireachtas Library and Research staff do an outstanding job. We should be very appreciative of what they do. They are fantastic people and are all so helpful. The ushers look after us so well from morning until night. Many a time I have had to get my office reopened late at night. They never say "Boo", but just go and do it. The cleaners have been very significant over the pas…

We are running late and have to get out of here by 6.30 p.m. I am conscious that many people want to speak. If it is okay with the Minister, he might leave the last part of his speech for when he sums up.

We are short on time. I will remove my own four-minute slot. I ask everyone to try to accommodate all their colleagues.

For newly arrived Members, the Minister unfortunately got held up at an important meeting. We are running late so I have asked Members to co-operate with me. I came down hard on Senator Paul Daly and cut the Minister's speech down a bit.

I thank the Senator for her co-operation on time. Kildare is one of the greatest counties for the horse racing industry and with that in mind, I call Senator Wall.

I thank the Senator for his co-operation. By order of the House, I must call the Minister at 6.24 p.m. There are four speakers remaining. I have given way and given up my four minutes. I am asking the four remaining speakers to share their time. Will Senator Kyne share his time with Senator Buttimer? Will Senator Higgins share her time with Senator Ahearn? We do not have the time. The Minister may also give up one minute.

I presume Senator Higgins is replacing Senator Ruane.

That is fine.