I welcome the Minister to the Chamber and thank him for all he has done in the past year during this crisis. Senator Craughwell was speaking about someone who shows a presence of calm during a crisis and I do not think that there is anyone who has done that better than the Minister over the past year. It has been of great importance that when we have gone through a crisis that no one has experienced before, leadership has shown a calmness and reassurance that we are going to come out of it. I wish well all the busi…

I thank my colleague, Senator Seery Kearney, for the amount of work that she has put into this motion, and thank all of my Fine Gael colleagues for bringing this forward. I welcome the Minister of State to the Chamber. If it is not too remiss of me, I thank him for the work that he did last week on minimum pricing and for the lives that the country will save, on the back of that, in the next number of years. I welcome the opportunity to speak on this motion. On Friday, I had the opportunity to meet Clare Duffy, Fam…

I welcome the Minister and thank her for the excellent work she and her Department have done throughout the year, especially in the past number of months. No matter who one talks to in any sector of society, people seek clarity. The fact that students this year have got that clarity - and that they got it quite early - is greatly appreciated. When I have spoken to any student or teacher in the last few months the one thing they have pointed out is that, compared to last year, they now have clarity going into the le…

One could almost use the two hours for this debate to talk individually on this subject, it is so vital. I welcome the Tánaiste to the House and thank him and his officials in the Department for the work they have done over the past year during Covid-19. I also thank all the local enterprise offices, LEOs, across the country for the role they played, in particular in Tipperary where it is led by Anthony Fitzgerald. The first thing I want to touch on is a local issue in Clonmel and the Ballingarrane business, scienc…

Hyperemesis is a condition that one in ten women suffer from during pregnancy. It is a condition that became quite commonly known from Kate Middleton's pregnancy. It is a condition that women suffer from involving severe nausea and vomiting to the extreme levels that one cannot work or have any sort of normal pregnancy. There are three drugs for the condition, two of which are not available in Ireland and one of which is, namely Cariban. However, it is not licensed. The cost of it is €2.40 per tablet and it is reco…

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Naughton, to the Chamber. I am trying to remember whether I have spoken in the House when she was here before. We have had a crazy year and it has been hard to get speaking slots. I am not sure whether I congratulated her on her appointment and wished her well. I would like to put that on the record today. I thank her for being here for this important debate. I come from a very rural area in County Tipperary. I would be surprised if anyone here lives in as rural an area as I …

I thank the Minister of State for being here to take this matter. My question relates to heritage and the portfolio of the Minister of State, Deputy Noonan. I am particularly delighted that the Minister of State, Deputy Brophy, is here because he totally understands the building about which I wish to speak, given his family connections with the O'Briens in Ardfinnan. I would be shocked if he has not visited the premises in question. Knocklofty House, just outside Grange on the Ardfinnan to Clonmel road, is an 18th-…

I thank the Minister of State for his response and the Minister of State, Deputy Noonan, for keeping in contact with Tipperary County Council. I am not sure how long we have left to preserve Knocklofty House. The building is in dire condition. Lead and metal are being robbed from the place and assessments and reports will show that not much time is left. The State has an obligation to support historic structures such as Knocklofty House. The longer we wait to do that, the more it will cost to preserve. If we have a…

There were two important announcements earlier, one of which related to a walking and cycling fund of €70 million, which is greatly welcomed. In Tipperary, we will receive €4.6 million, which is an awful lot of money to support walking and cycling tracks throughout the county. We are very lucky at the moment. While it is not as well known as the greenway in Waterford, there is a blueway in Tipperary from Carrick-on-Suir to Clonmel. It has been very successful over the past year since it was opened, particularly dur…

I have many matters to talk about but on behalf of the Fine Gael Party, I will back up Senator Chambers's comments. I am sure we all agree that Senator Keogan's comments are an absolute disgrace. They are personalised comments about a Minister who, as most Senators would agree, is one of the most accountable Ministers in coming to this Chamber on a weekly basis. There is no one more accountable than the Minister, Deputy Stephen Donnelly, in terms of the work he is doing.

Absolutely everything the Senator said was wrong. She criticised his performance even though hospital numbers have dropped from more than 2,000 in January to 331 today. It is a disgrace that the Senator can be critical of the Minister when the figures have dropped by that much due to the decisions he made and on the back of the work and commitment of the people. I agree with everything Senator Chambers said. On the vaccination centres, there is one open in Clonmel and I commend the work done there by all the nurses…

I welcome the Minister to the Chamber and thank him for the work he has done not only in recent months but also in recent years. It has been a really difficult time over recent years for anyone in business with the uncertainty of Brexit and what that brings. Anyone who thought that uncertainty would end when Brexit was agreed was incorrect, and uncertainty continues. In my constituency, in a town like Clonmel there are an awful lot of small to medium-sized businesses that trade with the UK on a range of products. B…

I thank the Acting Chairman, Senator Boyhan, and acknowledge that he has connections to the wonderful county of Tipperary. I welcome the Minister to the House and thank her for taking this Commencement matter. I am aware that she attaches importance not only to this matter but to all Garda stations. Built in 1870, Clonmel Garda station has been operating for 150 years. It is located in Emmet Street beside the county council office and in the heart of the town. Its 107 staff, including civilian staff, are headed up …

I thank the Minister for her response and her commitment to the Garda station, in particular that it will be part of the capital plan next year. That is really important. Like every project we as a Government put forward, it is not until people see the diggers and something happening on the ground that they fully believe it will go ahead. There is excitement among the staff. The work they do is phenomenal. They believe that if the station is built it will bring new life into the workforce and also into the communit…

I welcome the Minister to the Chamber. This is the first opportunity I have had to speak with him here and I wish him well in his role. I listened to his statement at the start of the debate. I welcome the review and his comments regarding the need to review costs. This year, we have spent more money than we have ever spent in any calendar year. When putting together a plan for going forward, like the national development plan, we need to make sure that what we are investing in is cost-proof. One of the main things…

I welcome the announcement by the Government yesterday allowing visits to nursing homes from 22 March. This has been an incredibly difficult time for everyone in the country, but it has been most difficult for residents in nursing homes and their families, not being able to have the weekly visits and the comfort they would receive from family members. I welcome the fact visits will now go ahead. There has been an awful lot of talk about the vaccine roll-out and the challenges we as a country have had, but one of th…

I welcome the Minister to the Chamber today and thank him for the work he has been doing on this matter over the past number of weeks. I also want to thank him for facilitating Zoom meetings and briefings he gave beforehand. They were very helpful and more Ministers should be encouraged to do this. I welcome this Bill to increase a parent's leave from two weeks to five weeks over a 24-month period. Most importantly, it includes same-sex couples as part of this provision. This was long overdue and is very much to be…

I wish everyone a happy International Women's Day. I have said previously in the Chamber that I am very proud to be a son of a former Deputy, but I am even more proud that it was my mother, because of the obstacles and challenges she had. She was once told that because she had four young boys, she could not possibly be a Deputy. In 1989, however, she became a Deputy, and the first thing we did was reconfigure the garage into a constituency office so that she could rebalance her work life and her home life. I do not…

It is always lovely to follow Senator Garvey with the passion and commitment she has in her contributions. I echo everything she said, particularly on the motivations behind motions such as this. I always get the sense from contributions from the other side, particularly from Sinn Féin, that it is almost about trying to create a division between renters and home owners or renters and landlords. That is certainly not the case on the Government side. I rented for a long time, for ten or 12 years, in Cork. I moved fro…

Almost everything that has succeeded in solving the problem was rejected by Sinn Féin. Every time Sinn Féin rejects something, it means it is working.