I acknowledge the major strides the Minister has made to date in the provision of housing. It remains the biggest challenge facing the country. Now more than ever, I am reassured and convinced that we will finally get to grips with this crisis with this Minister at the helm. I raise the issue of index-shared ownership loans. In the pre-2003 version of the shared ownership scheme, the equity component was linked with the consumer price index, CPI. Longford County Council has 21 of these pre-2003 shared ownership loa…

The country is tired and weary as it looks to get past Covid. There is no doubt that the crisis has utterly transformed much of everyday life in Ireland. I am conscious and deeply appreciative that a range of supports have been put in place to support businesses throughout the lockdown and that, in the main, they are proving very effective. The reality, however, is that many businesses simply will not reopen and simply will not be able to function in a post-Covid era because, to smash a famous line of poetry, all h…

I thank the Minister. It is very important at the outset that we state we have come on an incredible journey in a short space of time in terms of the vaccination roll-out. We have moved from being the laggards of Europe to being the top performing country in the continent, and this is the level at which we need to be operating. As of last Sunday, we had administered 94,000 vaccines. We have a team of 1,700 vaccinators operating and a total of 4,000 people trained to vaccinate. It is important that we emphasise that…

Brexit is foremost in our minds this evening. I commend the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Deputy Coveney, the Minister for Justice, Deputy McEntee, when she was in her previous role, our Taoiseach, the Tánaiste, the Minister of State, Deputy Byrne, the Minister for agriculture, Deputy McConalogue, and my constituency colleague, the Minister of State, Deputy Troy, for the Herculean work that has been done. Many hours have been put into it and I want to commend all of them. The reality for this House is that, notwith…

Thanks in part to the hard work of our local authority, Longford County Council, and keen, civic-minded community groups, County Longford is awash with top-quality regeneration projects. One of these I wish to discuss with the Minister of State is the Yard Hub in Abbeyshrule, on the banks of the canal. It involves the redevelopment of a derelict site in the hope of creating a new village hub, creating a space for economic and enterprise development and enhancing the first impressions of visitors to the village as t…

I thank the Minister of State for his comprehensive response but, needless to say, it will not fill these project promoters with enthusiasm. I accept that there are other retail players operating in the market, but the view is that Eir fibre is the gold standard. When one works on a project and develops it to the scale of €1 million of State investment, there is a reasonable expectation that the standard of broadband available to it will be the gold standard. Abbeyshrule is an idyllic village. It is a recent winner…

At the outset I commend both Ministers on their early work and immediate impact in what is a difficult area. Covid-19 and the ancillary restrictions have brought the issue of domestic violence sharply into focus. The reality is that no community or parish has been immune. In Longford, the team at Longford Women's Link provides a first-rate support service. It has seen referrals and contacts spiral during the past year. September and August in 2019 saw the team deal directly with 94 cases. Yet, this year has seen a …

I bring to the attention of the House concerns over the staffing issues that will affect the diabetes clinic service in Midland Regional Hospital, Mullingar. Several constituents have contacted me this week over concerns that the service could cease at the end of the month. Patients were told when attending this week that there is uncertainty about the future of the service, and none of those who attended this week was issued with a future appointment. This problem has festered since the retirement of the dedicated…

I thank the Minister of State for her reply. I welcome the commitment that the position is being advertised and will be filled. I hope the delay in filling it will not affect the service in the interim. We are all well aware that diabetes is a very costly issue for the health service. The easiest and most effective way to deal with it is through personal management of the illness rather than expensive interventions. In Longford alone, over a four-year period, there have been 24 cases of lower limb amputation as a d…

Last Friday, Malik Amir Iqbal was one of several people across the country to be advised of the rejection of their appeals for leave to remain in the country. Mr. Iqbal has lived in direct provision for almost five years and in Longford town for several of those years. During that time, he has endeared himself to the local community and excelled in the arts through the medium of dance. Through the local Backstage Theatre, the Cruthú Arts Festival and many other local groups, this man has made countless friends. An …

I thank the Minister of State for his detailed response. I certainly hope the Department will move to issue a simple assurance that no deportations will occur during the Covid pandemic. At the very least we would ask that no deportation orders be issued and, ideally, that leave to remain be granted in the case of Mr. Iqbal, which I outlined earlier. I also ask that consideration be given to the many healthcare workers who received similar notifications last Friday, many of whom have been in direct provision for mor…

When I visualised attending the Dáil on budget day for the first time as a Deputy, little did I realise it would be one of the most significant and historic budgets in the history of this great State of ours. I certainly never imagined it would be set against the backdrop of the Covid-19 crisis. Many people have already correctly referred to this budget as a wartime budget because it had to be framed within the challenges confronting us as a nation. Across County Longford businesses are on their knees. Many were sa…

The Minster with responsibility for housing, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, is very focused on delivering affordable housing schemes in key urban areas. As the Minster of State shares a constituency with me, he will be very aware of the need for a similar scheme in six or seven counties, namely, a sustainable house-building programme. County Longford will obviously be one of those. The average price for a standard three-bedroom, semi-detached starter home should be €229,000 whereas the average price of a house sold locall…

I thank the Minister of State, Deputy Burke, for the comprehensive overview and I emphasise the issue in Longford is not an affordability one but a sustainability one because we simply cannot get builders to come forward to build houses because it is not commercially viable. For decades to come, we will probably reflect on the Covid-19 period as a watershed moment and it will very much be a case of before and after. One of the biggest shifts certainly has been in lifestyle choices and where people choose to live. I…

Communities across the midlands are already reeling from Covid-19 and now we find ourselves facing significant uncertainty as a result of Brexit and how it will ultimately play out in our community. I appreciate the Trojan work done by the previous Administration on this issue and I know a number of our Ministers, our Taoiseach and our Tánaiste are assiduously working to ensure there is no negative impact from Brexit on the midlands region. However, regardless of whether the UK ultimately yields to a deal on Brexit…

Bus Éireann has agreed to carry out a review of the school bus service in order to comply with the 50% capacity ruling. It was expected that it would take five or six weeks and that additional buses would be provided to resolve the dreadful situation in which many families who do not have access to buses find themselves, as well as assisting beleaguered private bus operators. We now hear from Bus Éireann that the review may take up to 12 weeks, which would bring us up to Christmas. Many balls have been dropped by B…

I am delighted to see the Minister back in the Chamber. Everybody in the House is relieved to know that all is well for him in the family home. I welcome the confirmation last week that a number of Longford-based projects have been approved for funding from the just transition fund. It was particularly good to see the inclusion of an ambitious technology energy cluster project for the site of the ESB power station in Lanesborough. The proposal has the potential to put the Shannonside town at the centre of alternati…

I am well aware of the many measures that have been introduced to aid businesses throughout the country to get back up and running. However, I will focus on one sector that was in crisis pre-Covid and will be essential to the country if we are serious about any post-Covid recovery, and that is, of course, the forestry sector. The introduction of new forestry licensing procedures in 2019 has been a disaster and it brought the industry to a standstill. Presently, only one in four of the required licences needed for p…

Given the week that is in, I will focus on the Siege of Jadotville, which raged for four days 51 years ago this week. It was a stand-out moment in this country's proud history of overseas peacekeeping duties. In Longford-Westmeath, we are especially proud of our association with this chapter in our peacekeeping history. Fifteen soldiers from County Longford and a further 22 from Westmeath featured in Jadotville. Indeed, the two counties accounted for more than 20% of the complement of soldiers there. One of those w…

I am sharing time with Deputy Christopher O'Sullivan. I wish the Minister of State well in her new role and commend her on the significant body of work that she his achieved to date and, specifically, today's announcement on funding to clear the backlog of young people waiting for an AON. It is much needed and I hope, in respect of my parish and county, that it will enable the Phoenix Centre in Longford, which operates a special needs unit, to return to optimum capacity. A number of staff are swabbing in Covid cent…