Schools are getting ready to close for the summer but yet again, in County Wicklow, a number of students and children do not have places for September. I am aware of seven in Greystones. A small number in Newtownmountkennedy and Ashford do not have places for September either. This is a problem every year. It is really unfair on students. Will the Taoiseach send a departmental liaison to meet with the parents and schools to resolve this issue? Ultimately, we need a common enrolment process in these areas to solve t…

Just where the schools come together and actually-----

Yes, just general enrolments.

A number of students who do not have a place-----

I love the Minister of State's passion for nature. You can tell it is a huge part of who he is, and I look forward to working with him over the term of this Dáil to see what we can achieve in this regard. It is absolutely needed and I know he wholeheartedly knows and believes that as well. He spoke about how this needs to deal with nature and how our biodiversity crisis needs to be a grassroots exercise involving communities. I absolutely agree with him on that, but the Government has a huge role to play in this. W…

As he should be. There is a housing crisis.

A total of 15,296 children. I know the Minister has heard that figure a lot today but each one of them is a child that is being failed by this State and the Minister’s Government. Each is a child that cannot reach his or her full potential because of that failure; a child who is living a life where they are uncertain, do not know what is happening and do not know their place in the world, where they face huge challenges integrating, making connections with other people and being seen for their own potential and wha…

The last time we discussed driving test wait times was in February as part of a Sinn Féin motion. At that time, the wait time in Wicklow was 26 weeks. It is now 33 weeks so the situation has got unusually worse. In Meath, the wait time is now a staggering 43 weeks. According to CSO data, wait times have grown in nearly every county. The situation is going backwards, unfortunately. It is clear there is a systemic problem. There are issues with the RSA and I welcome the fact that there will be a review of that entity…

That is in the past and going forward, they will be full-time jobs. I welcome that. I was not aware that these staff can be moved. One could be living in Dublin and be required to go to a centre that is a long commute away. I imagine that lack of certainty makes it difficult to recruit when people are required to travel considerable distances. I acknowledge the current staff, who have been put in a difficult position in recent years. I can imagine that the stress for someone who is the only tester in a particular c…

I ask the Minister to introduce a policy to ensure there is no increase in public transport fares until we are at least on track to meet our transport-related carbon emissions; and if he will make a statement on the matter.

I find it interesting that, literally, the only mention of affordability came in the last sentence of a two-minute contribution, and my question was about fare pricing. I know we have seen an increase in the number of people using public transport, which is fantastic, but we need to see more of it. Our emissions are stubbornly high in the area of transport and while we have seen a slight reduction, it is nothing like what we need to see. There has been a 6% increase in public transport emissions and as there are a …

If the Minister of State were to talk to my constituents in Greystones and Kilcoole, they would not be particularly in agreement with him about public transport being a good news story. They have seen an increase of 30% in their fares and children have seen an increase of 200%. It is very hard to sell that as a good news story to people in those towns, particularly when the train service for areas like Greystones, Kilcoole and further south in Wicklow is essentially a part-time service as we do not have services on…

Tens of thousands of women will be travelling in.

This week we saw a new train fare structure rolled out around the Dublin area. While I welcome the simplification of fares, because I believe it was necessary, and also the reduction in fares for some towns, towns such as Greystones and Kilcoole have seen significant increases. This is really difficult to understand considering our transport emissions, the fact that we have to reduce emissions, the fact that we are not on track to do that, and the risk of having €20 billion in fines imposed on us by the EU if we do…

I looked through the document. When you read it, it all sounds very worthy as did the document before it and many other documents this Government and previous governments have produced. These are all nice, shiny, glossy documents that have very good sounding objectives and visions in place. Take, for example, national policy objective 12. It reads: “Ensure the creation of attractive, liveable, well designed, high quality urban places that are home to diverse and integrated communities that enjoy a high quality of l…

We do not have sufficient, affordable and proper public transport. We do not have investment in the infrastructure we need. Unfortunately, I do not have much faith that the Minister will be able to deliver the communities we need.

It was quite noisy. My understanding, and this has been reported in the media, is the CEPA report offers an alternative view to the previous analysis done on energy security. It really is important because I understand the CEPA report says that by the time we get any emergency or transition measure in place, it will be very costly, but also there will not be a need for it at that stage. We could spend ten years and I believe €300 million putting in place infrastructure that will not be needed by then from a securit…

On the terminology of this being emergency infrastructure, I understand that every two months, because of the very nature of LNG, the gas will have to be distributed through the pipeline-----

-----so we are essentially just replacing the majority of the gas we are using at the moment with this system even though we are calling it temporary and saying it will only be used in case of disruption. To compare it to the oil reserve is incorrect because that does not have to be used every two months. We do not have to get rid of it out of the system and ensure everyone uses it as it just sits there. That is where the complication comes in as well. We sort of have two processes here. We have the potential for S…

And put it online.