Amendment No. 5 is a consequential technical amendment to section 3(3) of the principal Act to ensure that tenancies of unlimited duration fall within the scope of the Act. In practice, such tenancies could be longer than 35 years in duration. In all circumstances, tenancies of unlimited duration which are included in the updated definition of a "Part 4 tenancy" under section 29 of the principal Act, as substituted by section 6 of this Bill, will fall within scope of the principal Act.

I meant to respond to the Senator's last point regarding the previous amendment. She made a very good point about making information available, which I acknowledge. In this case, I cannot accept amendments Nos. 6 or 7, which propose to introduce the concept of a long tenure notice period to provide for an additional 30 days notice for each additional year of duration of a tenancy beyond two years. Chapter 2 of Part 5 of the Residential Tenancies Act, which deals with tenancy terminations and notice periods and othe…

Yes. I thank Senators for their engagement on the issue. The commitment is there in respect of the review of the extended notice periods. Senator Higgins made a very valid point that requires consideration.

I thank the House for its careful consideration and courtesy during the passage of this important Bill.

Like other colleagues I put on record my sympathy for the survivors of mother and baby homes and county home institutions. The Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, has engaged extensively and very often on a one-to-one basis with survivors of mother and baby homes and these county home institutions. He did this, listening with empathy and compassion, to ensure he and his officials could gain greater understanding of the lived experience of former residents before designing an action plan and payments scheme that was inclusiv…

I thank Deputy Harkin for raising this issue. Under the Planning and Development Act 2000, as amended, all forms of development, unless specifically exempt under the Act or associated regulations, require planning permission. This includes wind farm developments which are also subject to dedicated detailed planning guidance, that is, the 2006 wind farm development guidelines, which developers are required to have regard to in drawing up their proposals in the first instance, and the development of their proposals a…

I agree wholeheartedly with Deputy Harkin. Our Department is currently undertaking a targeted review of the 2006 wind energy development guidelines. In line with the programme for Government, it is committed to concluding the review of the guidelines as soon as possible with a view to striking a better balance between matters of importance to local communities and the need to invest in indigenous renewable energy projects, having regard to our challenging renewable energy targets in the context of our EU commitment…

I thank Deputy McHugh for keeping this matter consistently on the agenda and doing so in a constructive manner, which is important. Following the conclusion of the working group report and building on the cross-party Dáil motion of June 2021, the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, wrote to Opposition spokespersons on housing to seek their views and input into potential changes to the scheme. The Minister has sought their views on major documents such as Housing for All, and has accepted Opposition amendments to legi…

The Deputy has summed it up eloquently and I thank him for his acknowledgement of the work the Minister and his officials. I assure him that they have worked tirelessly to try to find an equitable solution through the defective blocks grant scheme, which was benchmarked against the previous scheme regarding allowable costs in qualifying works and homeowner contributions. It takes on board the homeowner demands and needs relating to the cost of removal and refitting, retrospective payments, etc. Considerable work ha…

Ba mhaith liom buíochas a ghabháil leis na Teachtaí as ucht na ceiste seo. I thank the Deputies for raising this and I hope it will help expedite matters. However, there are some complexities which I will try to outline. The principal purpose of the Wildlife (Amendment) Bill, as initiated, was to provide for review of raised bog habitats, the making, amendment and revocation of natural heritage area orders and for those purposes to amend the Wildlife (Amendment) Act 2000. The Bill was originally presented to Dáil É…

I would be more than happy to meet the Deputies to try to expedite this. As I said in my opening statement, it is our priority to try and get this through. We need to try to work through the complexities to resolve it. I believe we discussed it informally shortly after the Government was formed. I had a number of meetings with Senator Higgins to try and move it along. I assure the Deputies that it is of our highest priority to try to get this resolved once and for all. I would be more than happy to meet the Deputie…

No, it is okay.

This amendment, if passed, will insert a new section 6 into the Bill to provide for consequential amendments to the Residential Tenancies Acts to reflect the provisions of section 5 of the Bill, as now amended. The proposed new section 6(1)(a) inserts a substitute section 29 of the principal Act to define a Part 4 tenancy. For the purposes of the Residential Tenancies Acts, each of the following will be considered a Part 4 tenancy: where a person has been in occupation of a dwelling under a tenancy for a continuous…

Amendment No. 18 seeks to amend section 128 of the Act of 2004 to include the amount of rent payable under a tenancy in the published register. This proposal was debated previously during the passage of the Residential Tenancies (Amendment) Act 2019 and during Private Members' time. Section 29 of the 2019 Act amends section 151 of the principal Act to require the Minister to request the RTB to provide to him specific information relating to rent levels in the private rental sector. The Minister is required to make …

I am happy to take that question from the Deputy. The report from the horticultural peat working group has been sent to me and I have sent it on to the relevant Ministers. A number of recommendations will go to Government for consideration. I will not get into the detail of these here today but I welcome the work that has been put into this and it does offer some possible solutions. As I said previously, there is no easy answer to this. There is a dual consent process in place in Ireland and the measures that are o…

Is í an eolaíocht an modh trína mbaineann daonnacht ciall as an domhan, as an gcruinne agus, cinnte, aisti féin. Science is the method through which humanity makes sense of the world, the universe and itself. It is a process of inquiry and experiment that combines curiosity, creativity and collaboration with rigorous interrogation to shed light into dark corners, illuminating the realities of nature through an iterative process of understanding. It is, in no small part, one of the reasons our species has become so …

I agree. This is an important issue, certainly politically for candidates but also for the right of constituents to exercise their vote in their areas and DEDs. It is critically important. Article 16 of the Constitution sets out clearly and distinctly the overarching requirements that apply to the membership of Dáil Éireann. In addition, and complementary to the constitutional provisions of Article 16.2 in particular, Part II of the Electoral Act 1997, as amended, provides for a review of Dáil and European Parliame…

I agree wholeheartedly with the Senator and it is critically important. If one looks at where we are now, it is going to be a very short time once the commission is established. As I have said, it is going to be tasked with quite a significant body of work from the outset but this part of that work is going to be critically important, given that there will be an electoral event in 2024 and, we hope, a general election in 2025. It is important that political parties and prospective candidates have certainty as to wh…

Gabhaim buíochas leis na Seanadóirí. I thank both Senators for raising this really important issue. While the National Parks and Wildlife Service of my Department licenses the hunting of deer and actively manages deer on its property, it does not own the deer population nor is it responsible for cordoning it into specific areas of land. Deer populations are mobile by their nature and have home ranges that are not constrained by land ownership boundaries. These home ranges are normally defined by physical landscape …

I agree with Senator Casey. During the summer we spent a bit of time on the Wicklow Mountains after some of the fires with Wesley Atkinson and his team. It is critically important that the deer population is sustainably managed on which I am sure we all agree. This initiative will take hold. The streamlined issuing of licences is critically important and we have issued a significantly larger volume of licences this year so we need to do that. In terms of meeting IFA representatives from counties Wicklow and Kildare…