I thank Senator Sherlock. She is aware of the legislative process and the steps involved in it. The key first step is obviously to bring the proposal to the Cabinet and the Minister has committed to doing that in the next few weeks. The complicating factor behind the Senator's question is that it has been part of a wider review of equality legislation. We want to bring a suite of measures to the Cabinet to make sure we make a comprehensive review and refreshing of the needs of a variety of groups under equality leg…

I thank the Senator. I am responding to this matter on behalf of the Minister, Deputy Foley. The school to which the Senator refers, St. Francis Xavier Senior National School, currently has two live emergency works scheme applications with the Department. I should explain first that the purpose of the emergency works scheme is to provide funding specifically for unforeseen emergencies, or to provide funding to facilitate inclusion and access for pupils with special needs. An emergency is deemed to be a situation th…

I will add to what I provided earlier because when I read the initial answer I felt more was needed. In April last year, an initial visual assessment was done by an architect but it was August last year before the senior technical officer visited the site. Therein lies some of the delay. The Department was keen to underline to me that the scheme is repair only, but also that a leak detection test was required and there was some over and back regarding who could or should do that. It was finally agreed. However, I a…

Thank you, Ceann Comhairle, for your intervention and your comments. Since January, approximately 2,400 beds have been brought into use for those seeking accommodation by the international protection accommodation services. That said, week in, week out, we are opening new accommodation centres in communities across the country. Thankfully, by and large, they go unremarked upon because, for the most part, local communities have welcomed these new arrivals and people are getting on with their lives, including those p…

I thank the Deputy for the question. The new iteration of the social inclusion and community activation programme, SICAP, 2024-2028 has a renewed focus on building capacity in community representative structures, establishing new community groups and social enterprises, and empowering communities to lead out on identifying their own needs, through a new dedicated core area of work called community animation. Delivered in both rural and urban areas, the supports are provided by community development workers based on…

Since the Deputy specifically raised the community recognition fund, I will try to address the particular point he made. This was a €50 million announcement from last year. Each local authority was given an allocation based specifically on the number of new arrivals they had. After that a process ensued in each local authority area whereby the local authority was obliged to engage with communities on the ground. Maybe we can question the quality, breadth and depth of that in some cases, but the logic was that the c…

We have to trust in the local authorities' decision-making processes as well to some extent, but at the same time we look at how they were done and we can learn from this round for future plans. I would point to a couple of things that we have been doing and that are particularly dedicated and pointed at particularly disadvantaged communities, namely the empowering communities programme that I launched. We have 15 very specific areas that we chose based on the level of deprivation, probably the most deprived 15 are…

The Government's five-year strategy to support the community and voluntary sector, Sustainable, Inclusive and Empowered Communities, was published in 2019. This is a whole-of-government strategy led by my Department and it is implemented collaboratively with the sector through the cross-sectoral group on local and community development. This strategy reaffirms the Government's commitment to supporting the sector while also recognising the reality of finite resources and the need to ensure available resources are fo…

We are using a couple of mechanisms to try to push that and expand that approach across government. In his question, the Deputy proposes the convening of a working group. In many respects that working groups already exists. We have a cross-sectoral group tasked with implementing the five-year strategy. It includes officials from quite a few Departments, including the Departments of Health, further and higher education, housing, environment, children and integration and, obviously, the Department of Social Protectio…

There are a few strands to Deputy Ó Murchú's question.

In terms of other Departments, particularly in the case of the section 39 organisations the Deputy mentioned, this comes down to service level agreements. I point to a document that was agreed by the Government in the year before last. It is the shared values and principles document. It encourages Departments to engage more with community and voluntary organisations that we are dependent on and to build that relationship. That document is something I constantly push any time I get a chance to mention it. Specifical…

Our charity sector is an important and valued part of Irish society, playing an integral role in the provision of services to our communities. With over 11,500 charities on the charities register, the work of the Charities Regulator is also vitally important. The Charities (Amendment) Bill 2023 was published on 22 December 2023, and concluded Second Stage of the legislative process on 25 January. The Bill's aim is to improve the ability of the Charities Regulator to conduct its statutory functions, providing greate…

As the Deputy will be aware, the Department of Transport is responsible for rural transport policy and programmes and the National Transport Authority has statutory responsibility for securing the provision of public passenger transport services nationally and for the scheduling of these services. Notwithstanding this, I acknowledge the vital importance of transport services for rural communities. Accordingly, the Department has ensured the inclusion of relevant actions in Our Rural Future, the whole-of-government …

I point out that the Local Link services have accelerated in their expansion and reach, in particular over the past couple of years. Figures from the Department of Transport show that numbers taking Local Link services have shot up by more than 360% between 2020 and 2023. It was a particular commitment in the programme for Government that we would triple the use of Local Link. I was part of negotiating it myself. I am glad to see we have overshot our target there as well. There are a huge number of Local Link servi…

I thank Senators McDowell and Boyhan for their work on drafting this Bill and for their opening remarks. I welcome the opportunity to address the House on the Derrybrien wind farm. Derrybrien wind farm has had a long and difficult history. It is owned by Gort Windfarms Limited, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the ESB. Gort Windfarms commenced construction of the wind farm in June 2003. However, work was stopped in October 2003 due to a peat slide that resulted in an ecological disaster polluting the local river, causi…

I first want to apologise to the House for my delay this morning. There was an unexpected event that I did not plan for, so I apologise to everyone for the delay that has caused. I thank Senator Crowe for raising this matter, which I am taking on behalf of the Minister for Justice, Deputy McEntee. As the Senator will be aware, the international protection system is currently undergoing a significant modernisation programme to ensure it is agile, robust and fully resourced in order to meet demand. Investments to dat…

The Department has made significant investment in staff, technology and re-engineering processes at the IPO and that investment is delivering. Over the course of the past year, we tripled the number of monthly decisions for processing times for applicants from safe countries, reduced under ten weeks, with numbers arriving from them dropping considerably, too. To my own knowledge, when people exhaust the international protection process, they will eventually get to a stage where they have no entitlement to any State…

I thank the Senator for raising this genuinely very important issue. The Government is committed to supporting positive ageing across the life course, as well as ensuring that older people can continue to live independently in their homes and communities for as long as possible. This commitment is enshrined in the national positive ageing strategy, which provides a blueprint for promoting older people’s engagement in economic, social, cultural and community life and fostering intergenerational solidarity. Recognisi…

I acknowledge that tremendous work is being done across the country to ensure communities are fully inclusive of our older citizens. The older people’s councils that have been established in every local authority by Age Friendly Ireland to ensure that older people have a voice in local decision-making, the Senior Citizens Parliament and the national network of Active Retirement Ireland associations number among the wealth of initiatives that ensure older people enjoy fulfilling lives in their later years. I thank t…

I thank the Deputy for the opportunity to address the issue of participation of dentists in the dental treatment services scheme in County Galway. The dental treatment services scheme, DTSS, provides dental care free of charge to medical card holders aged 16 and over. Services available annually and on demand include an examination, including preventative advice, two fillings, emergency extractions and a scale and polish. More complex care, such as dentures and a broader range of treatments for patients with additi…