We expect greater things.

Will the Vice-Chair explain that?

I welcome the students from Christ the King and, in particular, the teachers here. Ms O'Leary is the co-ordinator and she is very welcome. She comes with very special privileges. A former pupil of mine told me that his daughter was here today. They are from a great club called Na Piarsaigh. I will not call her out because she might be embarrassed but she knows who she is. They are very welcome. I commend the Christ the King transition year students here. It is a tremendous school in Cork and we are lucky to have a …

Exactly.

I welcome the Minister and thank her for being here tonight. Many of us deal with parents. Senators Garvey and Lombard eloquently touched upon the emotions involved. The raw emotion of students and their families impacts on us as well. I am dealing with the case of 15 students from Ballinhassig who are travelling to Kinsale without a bus ticket. The bottom line relates to the human emotion of frustration and the lack of certainty and clarity. I commend the Minister on fighting for and achieving in the budget the wa…

I welcome Mr. O'Meara and his family to the House and thank them for being here. I commend Senator Wall and the Labour Party on this Bill. I apologise that I missed the briefing by Treoir but I commend it on its great work from which we have all benefited as Members of the House. What was said in the Minister's statement is very true. This debate is about human loss and about grieving. Those of us who have been in relationships and who have met cohabiting couples constituency offices know that grief has no boundari…

I welcome the decision made regarding the pay claim for the staff of the Houses of the Oireachtas. I commend the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Michael McGrath, on signing the order in this regard. I commend all involved in the initiative and the effort to ensure the staff of the Houses of the Oireachtas receive proper and just pay. I compliment, in particular, my own secretary, Ruth Lawlor, who was active in the pursuit of this pay claim. I hope we can have a debate on this issue in due course.…

I concur with Senator Murphy in congratulating the boxers on a fantastic achievement. I ask that the Minister of State at the Department of Health with responsibility for mental health and older people, Deputy Butler, come to the House to discuss the ongoing issues in nursing homes and care of the elderly. The Home and Community Care Ireland annual conference today will hear that six in ten people are concerned about how they will be cared for in old age. It is a worrying and startling figure. I appreciate that the…

Senator Garvey is correct in that the Senator may receive a tome of context but sometimes the answer is not given at all. We are Government Seanad Members, but it is as frustrating for us as well.

Hear, hear.

I promise my statement will not be as dramatic as Prime Minister Truss’s.

I have no notion of resigning. Not at this occasion, anyway. I join with Senator O’Loughlin in commending my colleague and friend, Senator Malcolm Byrne, on this very important and appropriate Private Members’ Bill on Seanad electoral reform - if I can use that use that dreaded term, “Seanad reform” - to expand the franchise. He is right that it is time we did it. As Senator O’Loughlin said, Seanad reform has been an ongoing, rolling debate for decades in this country. The debate has been fractious at times. There …

She has resigned.

Will the Deputy Leader facilitate a debate with the Minister for Finance on the decision of the Central Bank to ease mortgage-lending limits and thereby allow first-time buyers to borrow up to four times their income? It is an important decision by the Central Bank which I am sure we all consider welcome, but it raises a fundamental question as to its import and what it means in order that we will not go back to the days of old. I hope we can have that debate as a matter of urgency. I join Senator Boyhan in asking …

I welcome the Minister of State and I concur with a lot of the sentiment expressed in the debate. This is an important sector of our economy and it is one in which we must look at the protection and retention of jobs in what, as Senator Murphy rightly said, is an energy crisis in which the costs have escalated. I will give the example of the Celtic Ross Hotel in Rosscarbery, where the chief executive, Neil Grant, has been widely reported as saying that their energy bill went to €24,699, from €8,333 in 2021, in the …

The Minister was in the Seanad last week. He is here more often than Senator Craughwell is.

The Minister appeared before the House last week to discuss the Defence Forces.

He was here last week.

On a point of order, I was not referring to Senator Craughwell's travels. I was referring to the fact that we had a debate on the Defence Forces in the House last week. That is what I was referring to.

It gives me great pleasure to ask the Acting Leader to bring the Minister for Education to the House for a debate. I say sincerely and genuinely that, notwithstanding the issues with Covid, and I appreciate a gargantuan effort has been made with the leaving certificate, we are now into mid-October and the junior certificate students still have not got their results. That is very unfair. I accept the challenges around leaving certificate appeals and understand the leaving certificate was a priority, but it is now 13…