The reason I am taking part in this debate is an email that was sent to my office and the Minister's office by Ellie Hoey, an 11-year-old from Dundalk, County Louth. It is much more appropriate that I read Ellie's words, as her email does much more justice to the issue than I ever could. It states: Dear [Minister] Ryan ... Hello, my Name is Ellie Hoey, I’m 11 and I’m from Dundalk, Co. Louth. I hope you and your family are doing well in the current circumstances, and I know The Government are focused on important th…

Ellie is in school at the moment so she is going to have to watch this debate later on. She is also a very active member of her green schools committee in the CBS in Dundalk. I felt that the words of an 11-year-old girl, in such simplistic and yet concise language, would give far greater emphasis to this issue than I ever could.

I want touch on three points with regard to tourism in my native County Louth. Indeed, it is somewhere with which the Minister is familiar, not because of where she is from originally but if I am not mistaken, through a staycation there last summer in Gyles Quay. The first point I want to make is about tourism in north Louth in the village of Carlingford. Senator McGreehan is all too well aware of the same issues I am about to raise regarding this area. Approximately 1,200 to 1,500 people are involved in the touris…

Is it agreed that Senators Cummins, Murphy and Crowe will share a six minute speaking slot? Agreed.

On this morning 47 years ago, in a field outside Clones in County Monaghan, the body of Senator Billy Fox was discovered with a single gunshot wound through his upper back. He was killed instantly. The night before, he was visiting the home of his fiancé, Marjorie Coulson, at her family home; a Protestant family from a Border area. As he went down the dark laneway that night, he was confronted by 12 IRA gunmen who were in the process of searching the Coulson home. They were wrongly tipped off and lied to, and told …

Hear, hear.

I wish to acknowledge the very sad passing of Eoin Faherty, a man well known to many in this House. Eoin served as a member of staff in the Oireachtas for more than 20 years and retired as a committee clerk. He unexpectedly passed away yesterday. Eoin was well known to many Members of this House and to me in particular as one of the founding members of the Dáil and Seanad rugby team which was set up in the early 1990s when Nelson Mandela asked all Parliaments to come to South Africa to partake in the parliamentary …

The issue I wish to raise today is one that I have spoken about in recent months and it concerns urban regeneration funding. I raise the issue because I would appreciate it were the Leader to convey to the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage the urgency of the need to make a decision on urban regeneration projects around the country. I will use the examples of Bridge Street and Linenhall Street in Dundalk to illustrate why it is so important to at least have the outcome of the decision made known to…

I want to raise two issues. The first is the practical changes that will arise in transport after Covid. For the last seven years, I commuted from Dundalk to Dublin and I used a tax saver ticket. A tax saver ticket is a yearly ticket and a person can use it seven days a week. If I was to get the Matthews bus from my home town to Dublin, it would cost roughly €2,744 a year, and I could use it at any stage over the seven days. For the last two years, I decided to get Irish Rail, and an annual ticket with Irish Rail c…

The regulation of social media is a topic I have been talking about for a couple of months. Social media have become the Wild West and can no longer continue to be so. The train has already left the station in terms of governments around the world starting to regulate this. We saw this under the Trump Administration and it will be continued under the Biden Administration. I refer to the real need to repeal section 230 of the Communications Decency Act in the United States, which became one of the first ever Interne…

That concludes our discussion on Ag Climatise. We will suspend until 3.30 p.m.

The Moorhead report is the greatest work of fiction completed in recent times. This is the problem with having people, like academics in ivory towers, writing reports about what men and women are doing in their jobs in their communities and constituencies. What happens in a situation like that is we get works of fiction like this report, which is the most insulting such report I have ever read in my life about the work of local councillors. I put on the record that is what happens when we have people in ivory tower…

I will raise an issue today on which the Leader has much experience and has been vocal about, both inside and outside this House, namely, the Irish aviation industry. At some stage in the future, I would appreciate if we could table a debate and have the Minister for Transport come into this House to outline his plans - really good, detailed plans - for the Irish aviation industry. I raise this issue because two or three friends of mine are pilots and many people in my home county of Louth, who are members of the I…

That is a hard act to follow because Senator Currie has been talking about remote working since long before Covid existed.

I second the motion. We can see how impressive Senator Currie is because of the clear and detailed ideas she has put forward. Credit has to be given to her for that. In my part of County Louth, the national broadband plan will have to play an important part if remote working is to be successful. I pay tribute to Fine Gael and particularly its website, finegael.ie/broadband , which was announced this morning. One can go onto the Fine Gael website and look up 120 townlands in County Louth or look up any county in the…

To lead off on the final few points that Senator Byrne made, my sister, Ruth, is 20 years of age. She is in her second year in UCD and she has spent her whole second year on Zoom lectures at home. She does not know it, but I feel so sorry for people of her generation who are missing out on what are the best years of their lives. I look back on my three years in UCD as the happiest times of my life. They really were superb. Young people in this country have been scapegoated for some of the bad behaviour that we see …

I would like to raise the difficulties facing more than 20,000 people living with type 1 diabetes in Ireland during the Covid-19 pandemic. The latest data from across the globe show, and HSE advice states, that those with diabetes face far worse outcomes if they contract Covid-19. The HSE also advises diabetes patients to avoid visiting hospitals and GP care at all times where possible, yet the same agency is dragging its feet when it comes to best in class care for these patients. To date officials have spent two …

I thank the Cathaoirleach for selecting this Commencement matter. He selected it before Christmas but I got my days mixed up. I apologise to him for that. The Haynestown and Blackrock area, just south of Dundalk, is one of the fastest growing areas in County Louth in respect of population. Some 1,650 planning applications have been submitted for housing and more than 500 houses have been built in the area in the past three years. In Blackrock, which is beside Haynestown, the two primary schools are completely full,…

I thank the Minister of State for her comprehensive reply. It is very much appreciated. I would like to make two points about it. It may be too late for this debate but we need to treat the Haynestown and Blackrock area separately from the Dundalk planning area, which is utilised by the Department. Dundalk is a town of approximately 40,000 people. The Blackrock-Haynestown area, which started off as small villages on the outskirts of Dundalk, needs to be treated as two distinct areas. The needs in that area are comp…

I would like to talk briefly about voids in the Louth County Council area. Some 97 voids have been brought back into stock in the last year and families are now living in them. Louth County Council has been one of the most ambitious local authorities in terms of taking voids back into use since 2016, when we were using compulsory purchase orders to take vacant houses. It is not all doom and gloom with other local authorities. In places like Donegal, as Senator Blaney said, and in my county of Louth, our local autho…