Cuirim fáilte roimh an Aire Stáit. At the outset I say that Sinn Féin recognises that return and readmission agreements are a crucial part of having a managed migration system. We have been clear that where any person is not entitled to be in Ireland, they should be returned safely, and deportation orders should be both enforced and tracked. Such return and readmission agreements can be done on a bilateral basis, so they are not required to be negotiated by the European Union on behalf of Ireland. In respect of Kaz…

Where possible.

Not all of it. Not all of Ireland. That is the problem.

The deposit return scheme is well known to people, sometimes for the hassle of it and sometimes for the economic benefit of it. A huge proportion of the plastic that is collected under the scheme is shipped as waste plastic out of Ireland even though there is at least one company in this State that could manage quite a large part of the process. Is the Minister of State making efforts to ensure a greater proportion of the plastic that is collected is recycled in Ireland?

It is regrettable that the figures the Minister of State gave date from before the introduction of the deposit return scheme. The information I have is that by the end of this month, 17,000 tonnes of plastic will have been collected under the scheme but only 3,400 tonnes of that will have been brought to a factory in the State. I mentioned previously to the Tánaiste in the House that Shabra Plastics and Recycling, a company in my constituency, can do a large part of the work. The process involves the bottles being …

I do not know how the Minister of State can say Ireland leads the way on plastics recycling when, in fact, we are leading the way in shipping those materials all over the world. We need to build capacity. As I mentioned, Shabra Plastics and Recycling can do a large part of the work and could do it all if it puts in a pellet production line. That would involve a huge investment, however, and the company would have to have enough plastic coming in do it. I hope the Minister of State accepts the real difficulty is tha…

I reaffirm everything Deputy O'Rourke said. The statement read by the Minister could have been read by every single Minister for the environment since 2006 when this project was mooted. Since 2006, Minister after Minister has devolved this issue entirely to EirGrid and said it was an operational matter and since 2006, EirGrid has made a mess of this. The Minister said he will not apportion blame. I will apportion blame to the pigheadedness of EirGrid. It is a model exercise in how not to deliver public infrastructu…

How many?

Will the Minister outline the amount by which he intends to increase the carbon tax during the course of the Government's term, setting out clearly what that will mean for families and workers facing a cost-of-living crisis?

The carbon tax is unique. There is nowhere else we can point to in the current budget where we can say with certainty, "This is what the Government plans to do". We cannot tell pensioners where their pension will be in five years' time but we can tell them by how much precisely Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and those champions of rural Ireland, the Healy-Raes et al., are going to increase the cost of heating their home. We cannot tell motorists how much money will be given to fund the roads network or precisely how much w…

I really would appreciate a bit of honesty from the Government. It is not true to say that the carbon tax is ring-fenced. The Comptroller and Auditor General confirmed that he could account for about 61% of it and be assured that it was going towards environmental measures. As with all Government decisions, taxes are collected and decisions are made as to how they are spent, so to say that we need the carbon tax to pay for environmental schemes probably sets out how committed the Government is to those environmenta…

I thank the Minister of State for being here. Last week, the Dáil debated the motion in respect of the assessment of need scandal, as I would describe it, where Government is flagrantly breaching the law on a daily basis in terms of providing assessment of need for children with disabilities in particular. What might have got lost in that scandal is that for many families of children who have received assessment of need, their battle only starts there. In Monaghan and Cavan we have CDNTs that are at crisis point. I…

I thank the Minister of State. The truth of the matter is that disability services in my constituency are an actual embarrassment. I am embarrassed, as an elected representative, when dealing with parents who are at their absolute wits' end trying to be all things to their children. As well as being parents, they are also expected in some cases to be teachers. They are absolutely expected to be OTs, speech and language therapists and physiotherapists. There is a clear problem in getting appointments. There is also …

The Ceann Comhairle may have seen reports that two directors of Igo Café, which is one of the largest beneficiaries of State contracts for the provision of IPAS accommodation, paid themselves €4.6 million last year. It appears these revelations may be just the tip of the iceberg in terms of some of the profiteering happening in the provision of IPAS accommodation. People are literally becoming millionaires through the provision of State contracts. However, we know that HIQA inspections have found that in some cases…

We always argued against profiteering.

We never argued that two people would be able to draw down €4.6 million in one year.

Why does the Taoiseach not just answer the question?

Does the Taoiseach think that is acceptable?

The Taoiseach is allowed to say whether he thinks it is acceptable that two people are drawing down €4.6 million of taxpayers' money.

To use that Irish phrase, I knew Shane O'Farrell to see but I had never spoken with him. It is one of my regrets that I did not get to know the man in life that I now feel I know well - the good-looking, talented, popular young man from my home town of Carrickmacross. Conversely, I regret that I have had to get to know his family so well. I regret that because it is only because of what happened to Shane on a summer's evening in August 2011. Prior to that, Jim and Lucia O'Farrell were the quiet dignified parents of…