The Minister and I interacted in this Chamber some weeks ago. Will he confirm, further to that discussion, that the tax breaks he might give to the private rented sector in the budget will be backdated to January of this year, as was requested among measures from the Regional Group? Access to finance is a huge problem currently in the SME and micro-business space. It is very hard to get money out of the commercial pillar banks. SMEs are paying more than 8% APR. If they are going into linked finance they can be payi…

I will suggest a couple of measures, one of which is a tax warehousing scheme again this year. I believe a lot of companies are still trading from the subsidies that came through during Covid. They will have a difficult time later in the year. Beyond that, could the Minister consider putting tax credits on utilities rather than looking for a windfall tax that gets to everybody? It would mean that the high users would end up getting a tax credit. They are the ones that are in manufacturing. Beyond that, perhaps ther…

I am glad again to get the opportunity again to speak to the Minister on the issues in the disability sector and to follow up on the motion the Regional Group Members have brought to him, which he referred to earlier. The motion is about the access to public and private transport for people with disabilities and their carers. It is based, as the Minister highlighted, on the UNCRPD, which Ireland has signed up to. That was to provide access to transportation on an equal basis to enable persons with disabilities to l…

I am rather sorry to see Deputy John Paul Phelan announce his departure from the House. I wish him and his domestic constituency the very best. I have a good deal of sympathy for his predicament. Like Paudie Coffey, Michael D'Arcy and John Deasy before him, genuine embarrassment was felt to have made electoral promises that simply evaporated at the Cabinet table. For all the blather about public spending procedures and processes, cost-benefit analysis and business plans, capital spending appears to follow Ministers…

The Taoiseach has reached back into a couple of previous programmes for Government. The North Quays, as he knows, was included back in 2014, to be fair, and it has taken until 2023 to get that approved.

Beyond that, the PPP for our engineering building in Waterford Institute of Technology was actually granted planning permission in 2008. In 2020, I had the pleasure of coming into the Government here to see that project sidestepped while other PPP projects in Cork and Dublin, to the tune of €330 million, were advanced. This is what I am talking about. The Taoiseach said we are under pressure in Waterford hospital at the moment. I was down there the other day for a ten-year project to move community services out of …

This is important legislation. It is to be welcomed that we will have a better standard of licensing of workers and tutors. We must be careful of overregulation of the construction sector as well, because it is a difficult enough one to try to recruit and get skilled labour into now. It takes a great deal of time. I am aware of companies in the past couple of years whose workers had to go for Safepass certification. These were people who had six, seven and eight years' experience of working on sites. They could not…

Can the Tánaiste update the House on the final cost of the Dunkettle interchange? It was originally signalled at €77 million when first mooted, then the figure rose to €88 million. I gather it was signed off in the early days of the Tánaiste's premiership at €216 million. Even that sounds a lot for a fancy-pants roundabout. Some 23 years ago, the Jack Lynch tunnel cost €133 million; adjusted for inflation that is around €216 million today. With a two-for-one split between public transport and roads hardwired into t…

They are not happening.

My colleague, Deputy Tóibín may or may not be here. If he is not, I will not take the full allocation of time. This is an important Bill that is being discussed in regard to the preservation of our national monuments which are singularly involved with our ideas of culture and heritage. Apart from the idea of identity, of understanding who we were and who we are and maybe who we will be in the future they point to the ambitions that have been arrived at in this country over nearly 2,000 years. They are very importan…

The Good Friday Agreement was signed on 10 April 1998. It was a seismic agreement that ended decades of violence that had pitched extreme elements within communities against one another based on ideas of religion, inequality, the retention of political power and the perception of ethnic identity through the prism of the past. The agreement paved the way for the development of a new understanding based on the recognition of an opportunity for all and the acceptance that inequality breeds discontent. It enshrined a r…

It is Groundhog Day as I bring up the issue of a second cardiac cath lab at University Hospital Waterford, where the HSE has spent 14 months attempting to provide a 12-bed day ward solution for this lab to operate. The latest parliamentary question response I received stated the hospital hoped to occupy the lab by quarter 2, not operate it. Operations cannot begin in this lab without dedicated day beds. Two solutions have existed for months. One is either a modular, six-bed day ward and six radial chairs being plac…

A modular solution is all that is needed. It is being done everywhere else. That is all we need.

Organised crime is a fact in Ireland and it involves conspiracy generally to commit serious crime. Mostly, it operates on a level of intimidation and enforcement. It preys not only on the weak but also on the strong. We also have disorganised crime in this country. We see that more outside of the major urban centres, maybe, in the form of antisocial behaviour, theft, money laundering, general types of stealing and what have you. I think it is fair to say that the organised crime in this country is most prominently …

It is fair to say that the housing sector is in crisis. It must be acknowledged and I acknowledge this is a multifaceted problem. It has not occurred only in the past couple of years. It goes back to the banking crash and construction sector withdrawals and liquidations and the loss of skilled labour. Then we had Covid and now we have Ukraine and the energy crisis. We must also acknowledge the rise in our population of more than 360,000 since the census of 2016. That being said, we have a regulatory, planning and c…

The debate focuses on our binding requirements to meet climate-reduction targets under EU legislation and compliance agreements. The framework the Minister of State referred to is the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol from 2013 to 2020, or the last nine years. The framework at EU level provides for various compliance options beyond our making direct emission reductions, including the partaking of the trade of annual emissions unit, that is, a way for us to buy our way out of missing our targets on clim…

In our exchange during Leaders' Questions yesterday regarding south-east development progress, the Taoiseach said that the university for the south east is done. Almost one year after the merger, it is far from done on the ground. Indeed, at this moment, it is more of a complex and somewhat loveless merger with a rebrand. What measures specifically does the Government plan to take to make the university a meaningful improvement? The Taoiseach promised a game-changer that will halt the brain drain. When will the dec…

I asked about capital investment.

I am just asking about the capital investment programme.

Again, I asked about capital investment and the schedule.