I also welcome the Minister of State to the House. I agree there was shock and sadness in the whole of County Clare last week when we heard the news the Doolin Coast Guard was to be stood down. Much progress had been made, with Doolin getting a pier and a first-class and state-of-the-art rescue centre a number of years ago with the efforts of the now Tánaiste, Deputy Leo Varadkar. The equipment is good and the facilities are excellent. Unfortunately, this problem has been bubbling for some time and it must be resol…

I concur that Mr. Mulvey is certainly a name that one would hope would attract a lot of support and agreement. Regardless of the mediator appointed, I very much welcome the Minister of State's commitment to appoint one. The mediator has to be independent of the Coast Guard because the representative organisation operates under the auspices of the Coast Guard and all the HR staff hired to deal with this were paid for by the Coast Guard. This matter needs to be addressed by the Department. The Coast Guard must not ha…

We were all pleased to see that the American market opened up yesterday. It is great news for family members who will be able to travel to America for the first time in 18 months to meet their loved ones. Some grandparents have not seen their grandchildren and so on. It is a great news story. The positivity from New York struck me. New York, as a city, is going to be running the most aggressive marketing campaign in its history. It will be spending more money than it ever has before on marketing its city internatio…

I welcome the Minister of State. I agree with the sentiments expressed by Senator Seery Kearney and others regarding the Minister of State's personal passion and commitment. There have been other Ministers who might be described as bluffing. Maybe they tried their best but certainly the work of the Minister of State and the way she approaches it is peppered with sincerity. If delivery does not happen it will not be for the want of trying. However, I am convinced delivery will happen. Universal access is needed thro…

Like everyone else, I welcome the Minister of State to the House and thank him for his work on this legislation. I have been a Member for several years and I regularly see legislation introduced because we are approaching a deadline. That is not a good way to engage with legislation. Essentially, one's back is to the wall. We have seen this every year with the Special Criminal Court legislation. From time to time, we have technical legislation but this Bill is a little more than that. It is extremely important beca…

I am privileged to be on the board of directors of the Cara organisation, which is based in Tralee but is a national organisation that promotes the inclusion of people with disabilities in physical activity. It has had remarkable success in recent years. I pay tribute to Niamh Daffy, the CEO, who was identified as one of the most influential women in sport in Ireland. It is a tribute to what she and the organisation have achieved, and I congratulate her on that. I want to raise the fact the HPV vaccine has been sho…

I want to raise the issue of Doolin Coast Guard, which is of great concern in County Clare. I am not sure if the Deputy Leader is aware of the fact that Doolin Coast Guard unit was stood down yesterday by the Irish Coast Guard. Let me put that in context. It is one of the longest serving and busiest Coast Guard units in the country, servicing serves the coast of counties Clare, Galway and Kerry. The standing down of the Coast Guard is a worrying development for a number of reasons. First, 12 volunteers have been st…

A minute would not kill you.

I join with others in commending and congratulating TG4 and our former colleague, Trevor Ó Clochartaigh, who is one of the key people in TG4 making it the success it is. What happened to the Israeli energy minister, in terms of her being left outside of the climate summit for a couple of hours, does not surprise me one bit. It is symptomatic of an attitude towards people with disabilities throughout the world. To the best of my knowledge, I am the only Member of this House with a declared disability. Two weeks ago,…

I also want to know what provisions are being made to ensure that if there is an accident off the Clare coast tomorrow or over the weekend, there are measures and appropriate equipment in place to deal with it.

I welcome the MEPs. It is great to see Ms Fitzgerald in particular, a former colleague, and Ms Daly, who I served with on the justice committee, one of the best committees this House has ever had in terms of what we achieved. I want to talk about Covid. We have not seen the MEPs and they have not seen us in person for the last two years because of Covid. While I think we in Europe did very well in co-ordinating the vaccines, we were not really prepared for a health crisis in the way that we should have been. What a…

Hear, hear.

I too support colleagues in calling for a debate on antisocial behaviour. Senator Ward articulated very well a modern problem in respect of antisocial behaviour. Certain people in our community are suffering and we need to address that. We also need to address what is going on in our streets not only in the city of Dublin, but also in other towns where wanton thuggery is taking place. We need to ensure that the streets of our towns and cities are safe for people to come and go. Ireland is a place of welcome. We hop…

I thank the Deputy Leader for outlining the proposed Order of Business. On behalf of the Fine Gael group in this House, I join the Cathaoirleach in extending our sympathies to the family of Sir David Amess. As a new member of the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly, of which Sir David was also a member, it is a sad day for me. Many of our colleagues in this House met him and worked with him on British-Irish relations over the years. Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam. I join also in the tributes to Brendan Kennelly and M…

That is not acceptable.

I welcome the Minister, Deputy Donnelly, to the House. He is always very welcome here. I know he has had a long day and a busy few days. We had a very good engagement on the future of Sláintecare at the Joint Committee on Health. I have no doubt about the commitment of the Minister, the Secretary General of his Department and the HSE to Sláintecare. We need to be realistic to some extent. We have just been through the worst pandemic in living memory. There have been many achievements with Sláintecare. Along with ev…

The day after budget day is always one where we analyse, having slept on the budget. If there are large banana skins, they will have emerged by this stage. Thankfully, there are no banana skins.

The budget has done a little for a lot of people. The criticism I have heard is that there was a bit for everyone, but I would like to know what area of the budget people would like to see withdrawn.

What supports would they like to remove? I am amused by why people believe it is necessary to leak the budget and what the purpose of that is, but we probably need a fundamental rethink about the budget process anyway. In the Bundestag in Germany, there is a full debate on the budget for a certain period and all parties and none, including finance committees and so on, get to put their proposals on the table, stress testing and debate take place, and the finance minister, having listened to and engaged, will ultima…

I will in a minute. I think we need to-----