I will follow up on many of the themes raised by many of my colleagues on this side of the House. I welcome the level of investment to go into Uisce Éireann over the next few years. From meeting the Uisce Éireann team at the infrastructure committee, I know the company is very positive about having the funds in place, not only to do the work it wants to do to repair water lines but also to help as regards the housing needed over the coming years. Uisce Éireann is very positive that the funding it is getting from th…

What specific measures are the Minister's Department and Enterprise Ireland undertaking to ensure that SMEs in Ireland stay up to date with advancements in AI and digital technologies as they grow at a rapid rate? Local enterprise offices, LEOs, have been very good at giving grants to small companies but what I am talking about are mid-range SMEs that would like to get involved with Enterprise Ireland but sometimes struggle to do so. What steps can we take this calendar year and next year as we look forward? These …

I want to speak about AI because it is obviously so important, it will become so important and, as Deputy Geoghegan has outlined, it will cut across different boundaries and different areas. Other speakers will probably choose to speak on other areas on which we all well know the impacts. We can see even on social media that it has become a topic of conversation not alone in Ireland but across the world. I think that will be covered in the debate. It needs to be covered and we really have to be conscious of it. I w…

I join others in wishing Christmas cheer to everyone here and while we are on the topic of Christmas, I want to raise the issue of e-scooters and e-bikes. There is a lot of talk about them being bought as Christmas presents for people but there is a great need for the regulation of these vehicles on our roads. In the past few months we have seen stories of scooters come and go. We have read about the accidents and the damage being done to people. I witnessed the unfortunate aftermath of such an accident when a youn…

NAMA has been one of those interesting bodies in my lifetime. It came in during a significant economic crash and was seen almost a set-up of last resort. I wondered about the impact it would have. As we look back now we can see it has had a positive legacy. It has turned out positively for the Government, notwithstanding what has happened over the past few years and that is worth reflecting on. How do we take the learnings, and not just from NAMA itself? If something like this happens again, how do we ensure the kn…

I wish the Ceann Comhairle a happy Christmas. I want to raise targeted tax credit adjustments. The budget was significant, with an extra €9.4 billion spent. We got a lot of criticism and many questions were asked. It was suggested that, potentially, we had spent too much. There was a real focus on the part of this Government on supporting the most vulnerable, which is exactly what we did. We put a lot of extra spending in social welfare to really look after people in need, and correctly so. There was also significa…

It is great to have the opportunity on Questions on Policy or Legislation to ask about the swimming pools we need all around Ireland. The swimming pool gap analysis report recently came out, which showed us that there are significant gaps around. The Minister is well aware of the swimming pool gap in north Kildare. As a councillor, I ensured a significant amount of funding was put in place for a pool but there is still a gap to be filled to reach the final cost. This is something we have discussed regularly. I am k…

I welcome the opportunity to discuss this issue. It is something that impacts us all in many different ways. To some degree, all of us are online. The days of a parent or grandparent not being online are probably over at this stage because everyone has access to a local Facebook group or whatever may be the case. Obviously, it is not just about being online and covering social media. We can see that in our own lives. As public representatives, we often get targeted with comments made online. When there are votes, w…

I thank the Cathaoirleach Gníomhach for allowing me in. The Tánaiste would be surprised if I heard about the liveable cities and towns and potential economic benefits going to other areas and I did not take the opportunity to mention north Kildare and the need for regeneration of the towns in the context of the liveable cities. I am talking about liveable towns and how we can widen the scope of the scheme, which is obviously welcome. Last week, I spoke in the House about the housing Bill and the benefits of it. I r…

I welcome the Tánaiste here in his position as Minister for Finance and extend best wishes to him in his term ahead. My question is to ask the Minister for Finance if his Department has considered increasing the domestic excise duty threshold for Irish brewers from the current 30,000 hl, previously set at 20,000 hl prior to 2019, and if he will make a statement on the matter.

Like every other market, it is evolving continually. Microbreweries is an industry that really took off over the past number of years. It has grown really well but at the same has its own difficulties and considerations. There has been some contraction in the industry. There have been a lot of increases in costs which has caused difficulty for some of those breweries. The Tánaiste referenced breweries going together but ultimately there are individual businesses and breweries brewing on behalf of other companies an…

I welcome the Tánaiste's response especially his view that we have to keep monitoring this. Like every industry, we need to support it as best we can. It can be a fundamentally Irish product and industry. We want to protect it, look after it and enable it to grow considering it has its own difficulties. We all know the difficulties these sort of industries face. We spoke about it earlier with the whiskey industry and a lot of brewers that export to the US but face difficulties in that regard. It is important and in…

Deputy Ó Cearúil's reference to drudgery and repetitive tasks brought me back to my days in PricewaterhouseCoopers, where I started as an auditor. There were many repetitive tasks. Specifically on Future Forty, the Tánaiste's predecessor as Minister, Deputy Donohoe, put a very sensible budget in place. He was very anxious to ensure we would be left on safe ground for the future. Future Forty refers to corporation tax as something we cannot necessarily rely on and it also refers to broadening the tax base. Notwithst…

Today I welcome our new infrastructure plan, which will shape the future of Ireland. Our many goals include fast-tracking planning for critical projects and reforming judicial reviews to stop endless delays. I want to highlight one project that has not been subject to a judicial review but seems to have come off the rails and has been delayed now for four years. The DART+ South West project seems to have been put out until 2030. Today we heard that the M50 is officially full and this would have taken the pressure o…

It is important that we discuss this and that we do so thoroughly. At this time of the year we are more conscious than ever of this issue. Many of us are homeowners and we live in our homes. A lot of us here also rent. We have bills during the summer but as we face the winter a different set of costs often come onstream from a gas perspective, and this puts it back on homeowners. In recent years we have had the energy credits and they have made it easier for a number of people as prices reach their highest levels i…

I want to take the opportunity to discuss my experience from a housing perspective. As someone who has been a councillor in County Kildare for a number of years and, indeed, a town councillor before that, I have seen the different tranches. I have seen a housing boom and a housing bust, and now I have seen continuing price increases in housing. We have seen that a lot of those houses have become out of reach for ordinary people. A lot of our friends and families have not been able to buy in the area and have had to…

How we treat Irish investors does not make sense from a tax perspective. In the past, the primary way Irish people built wealth in Ireland was to buy additional properties, but for the vast majority this is currently out of reach. All the statistics tell us that Ireland has never been richer and, indeed, personal savings are at an all-time high. However, the scourge of personal savings is obviously inflation. People need to put their money to work. In other countries, exchange-traded funds, ETFs, are a logical and …

The issue I wish to raise today is the whole issue of ownership of IPAS centres and, indeed, who exactly the beneficial owners of those centres are. In the public accounts committee recently, it was highlighted that €1 billion was spent on commercial providers, of which €230 million was given to seven providers, with one of those receiving close to €50 million. As one of my following questions, I asked a straightforward question of a senior departmental official about whether the Department always knew who the bene…

I want to raise the issue of childcare and the Government's long-terms goals but I will focus maybe on the short-term goals. Our main goal coming into government was to reduce the cost of childcare to €200 per month and to increase accessibility through investment in key locations, which required it. In north Kildare, families in Maynooth, Kilcock, Leixlip, Celbridge and Naas are struggling to get childcare. We want to give people the best opportunity to get back into the workforce as they request and require. A ke…

My question is to ask the Minister for Public Expenditure, Infrastructure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation the position regarding a departmental review into the way in which the OPW manages projects to ensure value for money for the taxpayer and if he will make a statement on the matter.