I welcome the opportunity to contribute briefly on this debate. I was listening to some of it. I echo some of the comments made by Deputy Gogarty about the provocative nature of some of the matters that he raised and the wide range of issues we would need to consider. We do not talk about the North in this House enough. I have been here ten years and it seems to me that we are only really beginning to have a discussion about it. There is nothing for us to be afraid of once we have open minds, open hearts and are re…

That simple structure in Ireland of four provinces offered and offers a very simple federal system that could be taken going forward, and then we would decide where central government is organised from. It would clearly have to have a Belfast dimension as well as a Dublin dimension. I do not think one-upmanship in the House assists this because we all have ideas and they are all valid. I do not think there is any one Member or party that is the exclusive carrier of the flame or the ambition for unity. In the foreig…

I will be fair to my colleagues. I welcome the very positive news the Minister of State announced to the effect that the Government is positively committing itself to the consideration of the feasibility study we, as representatives of the various constituencies, are requesting. This is one of the most significant investments in transport in the history of the State, but, for too long, communities in my constituency have watched major transport projects stop short of where growth is happening. We live in a country …

It is truly remarkable that in 1888, one could board a tram in the city and travel all the way to Blessington via Rathfarnham and Templeogue, yet in 2026, we are still arguing for but have now moved much closer to an independent feasibility study to bring modern rail infrastructure to our constituency. The Minister of State will agree that the best time to build a metro in Dublin was 20 years ago. The second best time is right now. The Government must not make the people in Dublin South-West wait another 20 years t…

Parents of children with special needs require certainty and predictability. Their lives and those of their children are challenging enough without having to endure distress and anxiety caused by uncertainty and unpredictability. The Minister of State appreciates that. As my colleague Deputy Moynihan said, parents are deeply concerned that Nexus in Knocklyon and other locations has been informed by Tusla that due to its registration as a part-time service provider, it cannot take children who will be aged six or ol…

Will the Minister of State clarify on whose behalf she is responding? Is it the Minister for children or the Minister for education?

One of the things that strikes me about the reply, which is not the Minister of State's responsibility, is its technical nature and the lack of child-focused orientation it displays. There is no comfort in it for parents as to what will be done for their children in six weeks' time. That is the real letdown. I fully concur with Deputy Moynihan that there is an avenue available to move this situation forward. I am grateful for the Minister of State's indication in that regard. If there is a child-focused view and pe…

I thought we had left these days behind us because we have made huge strides in the provision of affordable childcare under this Government. In my constituency, however, this progress is being seriously jeopardised by the fact that some providers are being forced to withdraw from the scheme because of the unviability of their businesses. If no alternative providers are available locally and when a provider withdraws from core funding, parents are then left with the equivalent of a second mortgage cost for their chi…

I thank my colleagues for joining me in bringing this question forward. We do this sometimes in this Chamber. Sancta Maria College is unfinished business. It is an unfinished school. A school without a sports hall is not a school. A school without performance facilities and space and creative space and facilities is not a finished school either. It is what we can call an incomplete school or an uncompleted school, giving, essentially, an incomplete education to the girls who attend there and have attended there for…

I thank the Minister of State, Deputy O'Donnell, for that. I appreciate him bringing back our sentiments to the Minister. Before starting on a new project, why not finish the projects that are outstanding? What is happening is through no fault of the school itself. It is affecting how the school attracts students and how education is provided there. It is affecting enrolment and the school's ability to enrol. It is also affecting wider personal, physical, mental and well-being education. On top of that, the site is…

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to these statements on rare diseases. I chair an ad hoc cross-party committee in the Oireachtas on the subject of rare diseases and have done for some time. My speaking time is very limited. To put it in context, one in 17 people in Ireland has a rare disease. In this Dáil Chamber, that would mean ten Members would have a rare disease. If we populate those ten around the seating in the Chamber it actually brings it to life and gives it reality. We all know someone and there a…

I have observed, over the past year or so and before then, that the biggest critics of the Irish Government are the Netanyahu government and Members of our own Opposition, regardless of what the Irish Government does and the esteem in which it and the Irish people are held internationally in relation to their stance on Palestine and their defence of Palestinians. I have met many of these representatives in this House and abroad who hold Ireland up as an exemplar. It is never enough for the Opposition but I will foc…

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this. I had been a county councillor for 11 years back in 2010 when Government expanded the DTA to become the NTA. I may have the dates wrong but I am roughly right. This Bill provides a big opportunity. I agree with a lot of what the previous speaker said. There is a real democratic deficit when it comes to the NTA. I suspect the public view of the NTA is not hugely positive. I want to defend it by saying that very often when its schemes are completed the furore calms down and…

I thank the Ceann Comhairle for selecting this Topical Issue matter, which should have included our colleague, Deputy Paul Murphy, as well. I ought to say that. The four non-officeholders in Dublin South West come together when there is an issue of serious concern to all of us, and this is one such issue of concern. It is to raise the reported proposal by An Post to close the sorting office at Edmondstown in my own parish and relocate its operations to a centralised hub in Grange Castle in Lucan. As the Minister of…

I welcome the fact that the Minister of State will do his best to facilitate engagement directly between An Post and the public representatives who have raised this matter. I also welcome the news about 300 additional postmen and postwomen, some of whom will be employed in the local area. That is really good news. As regards the talk about dispersing what Edmondstown sorting office does to other local post offices, we have lost Templeogue post office and we lost Rathfarnham post office. They were never replaced des…

It did not take the "Prime Time" documentary on this to educate me about it. It started in my constituency with Citywest where there was out-of-proportion development in relation to the capacity for parking that was provided by either the local authority or An Bord Pleanála, now An Coimisiún Pleanála. Why was that density allowed? I presume proximity to the Luas red line was one of the reasons. However, not everybody living in that area takes the Luas red line. There were appeals on social media a number of years a…

If we go from Citywest to Knocklyon where I live myself, it was mentioned in the documentary that 600 units overspill into adjoining estates, causing a lot of aggravation. Representatives of residents' associations in adjoining estates look for double yellow lines or parking measures to mitigate antisocial forms of parking. Then we have the people who do not have parking spaces because a sufficient number of car parking spaces were not provided in the apartment complexes. I get it that underground car parking is mo…

I thank the Minister of State for his answer. I will take him up on his offer to engage further.

When I think of nurses, male or female, I think of the stereotypical attributes that we associate with them: kindness, gentleness, warmth, a reassuring smile or word, but also their dedication and professionalism, as well as world-class qualifications, ability and professional capacity. It is appropriate that every year on this day, International Nurses Day, Parliament recognises and thanks those nurses for the extraordinary care that they provide to our communities every day. Those nurses include advance medical p…

I acknowledge the men and women who keep this country moving. The Ceann Comhairle knows all about them from a previous life. Our hauliers are not constitutive of an abstract sector in the economy; they are people who deliver every product on every shelf, every medical supply to every hospital and every tonne of gravel to every construction site. They are the ones who collect our waste and recycling material before most of us have even awoken in the morning. They drive through the day and night and in all weathers s…