So you are pushing ahead with the carbon tax.

I apologise in advance to the Minister that I will not be here to hear his contribution. However, having seen the Government amendment, I am disappointed because Deputy Funchion has provided a route that will ensure we can deliver affordable childcare. This is crucially important in a State in which many families are already facing a cost-of-living crisis and we are dealing with the highest mortgage rates in the eurozone and possibly the highest rents in the western world. We couple that with the experience of many…

It is now over ten years since 23-year-old Shane O'Farrell was killed in a hit-and-run by a known criminal who should have been in prison at the time. The litany of State failures in this case have been well rehearsed in this House and both Houses have supported calls for an independent public inquiry. In February 2019, rather than establish that public inquiry, the Government established a scoping inquiry, which, amazingly, 31 months later has yet to report. We learned last week that the Department of Justice in a…

Debates in this House on the climate crisis take a familiar course. Almost every speaker accepts the need for urgent action and almost every speaker talks about a just transition. The truth is the term "just transition" means nothing in this country any longer. It is supposed to mean decisions are made in consultation with those who will be impacted and that measures are deployed to address concerns and provide alternatives in terms of goods, services, incomes and jobs lost due to climate action measures. The conce…

Most people will agree there is very little that is more traumatic than for a parent to lose a child. There is something very particular about the loss of a child through stillbirth or at the very early stages of infancy. We would all know, either through family members or friends, people who have had to go through that devastating experience. I was struck by somebody who once told me that the only people who could ever fully appreciate that particular type of pain are people who have gone through it themselves, pa…

According to its most recently published strategy, the Government intends to provide 54,000 affordable home interventions, which is an interesting term, between now and 2030. How many of those affordable homes will be delivered in County Monaghan between now and 2025? Will the Minister outline his definition of "affordable" in those instances?

I thank the Minister for that answer. In order for a strategy to work, and we can leave aside the debate on the wider strategy itself, it is crucially important that we know the where and the when. It is hard for me to comprehend how we could say that the local authority will provide the Minister with a plan or vision by the end of this year and that, within that context, any affordable houses will be delivered in County Monaghan by 2025 considering that there are no proposals for that right now. The crucial diffic…

Therein lies part of the problem. The Minister is correct that house prices in Monaghan are lower than in other parts of the State. My fear is that the local authority and the Department will consider that Monaghan is not a priority for affordable housing. The difficulty is that we see the pressures that are already building, even in a county like Monaghan. House prices in County Monaghan, according to the most recent Daft.ie report, have increased by 17.5% and the average house price is €204,000, which is way beyo…

Many people are surprised to learn that income thresholds are a relatively new phenomenon. It was, to its shame, a Minister from the Labour Party who introduced them in order, I contend, to simply reduce the housing lists. Rather than build houses, mechanisms were found to cut the lists. Prior to that, housing lists were determined on a raft of criteria, including income. It was taken into account and allowed local authorities to recognise the realities. It has already been said that in many counties, mine included…

The Government is still deluded.

School secretaries and caretakers are the heartbeat of our school communities in many instances. Beyond the principals, they are the most public faces of our schools. They are the people who keep the schools ticking. It was a travesty that, for so long, they were operating under a set of unfair and insecure conditions. I welcome the progress that has been made. The big lesson for all workers to take from the school secretaries on all this is that the benefits of unionising and working together remain valid. My appe…

I am satisfied that Question No. 94 has been answered previously. Can I move to Question No. 95 please, Acting Chairman?

I ask the Minister the steps she has taken to ensure that the school transport system has capacity for all applicants for the current school term.

I thank the Minister for that response. Last year, the biggest issue that my own office dealt with was the issue of school transport. I am aware of parents where one of them had to give up their work because they went through the whole academic year with their child being unable to secure school transport for which they were eligible. There are often difficulties arising from the deadlines in place. We know that deadlines are in place to make the management of the system a little more controllable but there are oft…

I thank the Minister again. There are two particular issues I will mention. The Minister referred to 98% of valid and paid-on-time students having secured their place on their school bus. That means that 2% have not. In percentage terms this may be a small number but it is a substantial number in real terms and the impact is very real for those families. I urge the Minister that she might ensure that this figure reach 100% as quickly as possible. The second point I will raise is where the Minister has mentioned the…

This is the first legislation to which I have had the honour of putting my name. I commend it to the House. This is the time of year when many families, particularly those with school-going children, find themselves under financial stress, with many traditionally receiving home and motor tax insurance renewal documents at this time. People are already planning for the Christmas period. Many of these families are floored when they receive a letter from their local school requesting, as Deputy Ó Laoghaire noted, hund…

I want to put on the record of the House my commendation to Deputy Mac Lochlainn on the work he has done in this area. I am the Sinn Féin spokesperson on agriculture, food and the marine but we recognised early on that the challenges facing our fishing and coastal communities were so great that we needed to have a dedicated person of ability to address and deal with these issues specifically. One of the difficulties the Government faces is the fact that it has not done the same. It has been quite a number of years …

The Minister, Deputy Coveney, has brought an unbelievable story to this House. His narrative, essentially, is that the Minister, Deputy Donohoe, contacted him to tell him that Katherine Zappone was looking for a UN gig and he then made contact with her. He says she did not lobby him or ask him for a job. Almost immediately afterwards, however, he had a conversation with his Secretary General in which he outlined his great new idea about a new UN envoy for something or other. The Minister then contacted Katherine Za…

Freedom of information legislation has become a bedrock of democracy across the western world. It is in place to provide transparency, accountability and confidence in government. It is in place to allow citizens access the decisions made and the process that led to them. We have seen in recent weeks that, in Ireland, rather than providing such confidence, the actions of some Departments and organisations with regard to adherence to FOI legislation is diminishing it. There are Ministers who have deleted and destroy…

I thank the Minister of State, Deputy Heydon, for being in attendance. It is important to recall that the beef exceptional aid measure was put in place to provide farmers with temporary financial aid in response to a prolonged period of depressed beef prices. It was a recognition that farmers were on their knees. The difficulty with the scheme from the outset was that it included a provision that farmers were required to commit to a 5% reduction in bovine livestock manure nitrogen, effectively meaning they were to …