The horse and greyhound industries are invaluable components of the economic, cultural, social and traditional fabric of Irish life. Those industries have served to deliver prestige to Ireland and they are recognised brand ambassadors in developing Irish tourism abroad. They have created economic ties and have allowed Irish people to forge international links which have serviced us through good times and bad. Through the generations, committed and passionate animal lovers and sports enthusiasts in the horse and gre…

Will the administration day that is currently allowed to teaching principals be maintained into 2021 and, ideally, beyond that? All school principals are facing a very significant workload and Covid has only highlighted how difficult that is. There is a huge body of administration work to be done. Does the Minister have any thoughts on that?

As the Minister notes, a great deal of work has been done by principals, deputy principals and boards of management. Looking at any school with 200 or 300 pupils, one can see the additional workload around procurement for Covid. I also wish to highlight the problem of recruiting people from assistant principal to take on the principals' workloads. Many assistant principals regard it as an onerous task. The administration of the role and how it is done needs to be examined. I suggest the Department considers ongoing…

I appreciate that. Regardless of the days, which are ongoing, and the administrative supports, some continuous training in governance would be a great help to teachers. Hopefully these release days will continue into 2022 to help with the onerous burden borne by principals.

As a new Deputy in the 33rd Dáil, I would like to be associated with comments regarding two families who were in mourning over missed scans today. I also disassociate myself from some of the political grandstanding that has taken place in the last few minutes.

Amendments to the Brexit omnibus Bill are set to introduce a new threshold of €75 to all non-EU passengers who avail of the VAT retail export scheme, enabling travellers outside of the EU to benefit from VAT relief from goods purchased in the State and brought outside the EU. This proposal will in effect move the threshold from a de facto minimis amount of 1 cent to €75. In County Waterford bus tours and cruise visitors avail of this VAT rebate when purchasing Waterford Crystal, woollen crafts and traditional gifts…

I will not go over all the points that other speakers have already made. Brexit remains a very significant challenge for this country. The sounds coming from Europe today do not bode well. This particular provision of the omnibus Bill is a retrograde step in the context of the challenges of Brexit, particularly for my city and county of Waterford and the whole south-east region. We are very exposed to all of the issues arising out of Brexit. The region is an exporter in the agri-food area and it has supply chains t…

I am happy to be here to speak on what is a silent epidemic. It has been prevalent in Ireland not just recently but for many generations. When we speak about domestic violence, we need to contextualise it to a degree. It includes abusive relationships, taking many different forms. Included are the physical abuse of hitting, pushing, denying medical care, emotional abuse, manipulation, threats, name-calling, sexual abuse, rape, sexual assault, pressuring a person to have sex, and image-sharing, as has been discussed…

The Covid special committee did a lot of good work. I pay special thanks to the Chairman, Deputy McNamara, and the secretariat. I would also like to highlight my colleagues on the committee who were elevated to office, including the Minister for Health, Deputy Donnelly, the Minister of State at the Department of Health, Deputy Butler, and the Minister for Education, Deputy Foley. I am not sure where Deputy McGuinness went, but we certainly felt his loss from the committee. With regard to the original proposition of…

I thank the Taoiseach and the Government for supporting the north quays project in Waterford. It is a transformative project for the whole of the south east and it might - I say "might" - just be the turning point our region has been waiting for. As the Taoiseach is well aware, the south east is home to just under 10% of our country's population and it has fallen behind the rest of the country. Each year, we leave behind €10 billion of GDP year on year. My parish's €16 billion of GDP should be a €26 billion economy…

I thank the Taoiseach and note that we met recently to discuss this issue. There has been much talk about a diffused model for the south-east technological university. National policy has been to consolidate services, and that was the logic behind having DIT in Grangegorman and UCD in Belfield. There is no model on earth, however, of a multi-campus diffused university working. It is worrying for us in the south east that we are forced to accept a model of higher education which we know has failed everywhere else. W…

The new contract for air search and rescue services is to be tendered in the next 12 to 18 months. It is currently serviced by a ten-year contract with CHC which includes provision of patient transfers from University Hospital Waterford. The contract is estimated to cost between €70 million and €80 million per annum, €700 million to €800 million over the ten-year lifespan. CHC is a private company and many more will be interested in this tender. Can we not consider using our Defence Forces and Air Corps to deliver …

I support the comments of Deputy Daly regarding University Hospital Kerry, a facility I know well. It suffers from significant deficits. These are largely attributable to the inadequacies of the South/South West Hospital Group administration, to which University Hospital Waterford is also connected, unfortunately. The proposed legislation signals our arrival at a difficult juncture. The questions now are whether we can live life as somewhat normal and whether society can function while we attempt to keep coronaviru…

The debate this morning centres on the old adage that we know the cost of everything and the value of nothing. In recent years the Government has, to a large degree, turned its back on the needs of the post office network and in doing so it has turned its back on the needs of regional and rural Ireland. A significant group of our citizens have used post office services for many years and will not avail of the move to e-commerce that the Government and society more generally is pushing. We need to acknowledge that i…

As a member of the Regional Group, I welcome the budget announced yesterday. The phrase "a wartime budget" is apt. I particularly welcome the increases in the health and education spend. I share some of my colleagues' reservations that an opportunity has possibly been lost to create social change in order to encourage migration to the regions, remote working, affordable housing and the overall tenet of rebalancing Ireland. I hope that is something the Government will address. I wish to highlight the €10.1 billion c…

I thank the Taoiseach for his comments. I agree with the Taoiseach that it is probably more than a decade, when Mr. Cullen was a Minister, since Waterford could look at any kind of significant capital infrastructural spend from the Government. It is probably a testament to that being the case that I am standing here now. In Waterford and the south east we are absolutely ready to play our part in the economic revival of Ireland. We have fantastic innovation clusters and a vibrant agrifood sector. We have a college p…

I am sharing time with Deputy Fitzpatrick. I was in the House earlier this morning broadly welcoming many of the outlines of the budget but highlighting to the Taoiseach the need to make sure that we see fairness and equity in it. Before I go on to other parts of my contribution, I too will reference the Debenhams workers. I heard the Taoiseach's comments earlier this morning. We need to have some de-escalation of the situation. I am on the record here previously as saying that it appears a tactical insolvency was …

B'fhearr liom caint as Béarla. I recently shared a post on social media not because this debate was coming up but, rather, because it struck a chord with me. The post in question was probably not written with Ireland in mind but it speaks to a hard truth and the responsibility on present and future Irish generations to act. The post I circulated states: Speak your native language to your children or watch it die within the next 20 years! Looking down on your relatives or friends who speak your native tongue because…

Yes. Magnanimous, I know. The Minister and I, along with other colleagues in the House, have engaged in hearings of the Special Committee on Covid-19 Response. Unlike other Deputies here I am not interested in what happened last weekend. I am interested in our strategy and where we go from here. Without going back over where we were, the committee was very important and I am personally sorry to see it conclude without some continuing platform for the interpretation and interrogation of Covid-19 strategy. I know thi…

Companies should engage with NPHET. That has been a problem. It will be proven that antigen testing should have been augmented 13 weeks ago when I brought the issue to members of NPHET. The validation could have been done in the meantime. We need it now. We need to get these things delivered and we need people to be able to engage with thought leaders in NPHET. They cannot be blind to or out of communication with industry peers and medical peers. We are all in this together. We need to use all our resources.