We all want to respect the hedgerows and biodiversity but ladies and gentlemen are going around in cars and vans taking on the role of officers of some State body or something. They are part of an NGO which is intimidating ordinary workers driving machines, cutting hedges for health and safety reasons by order of the county council and sometimes for farmers to stop cattle from going over the ditches when the fences are being contacted by briars and weeds. These people are pulling in, causing a danger to traffic and…

-----that people can do this and take the law into their own hands.

I thank Deputy Verona Murphy for allowing me to go first as I have a Business Committee meeting. I congratulate the Minister and Minister of State on their new roles. I appeal to the Minister to re-examine the ICOB supports. It is a good scheme. Council officials and everyone worked hard on it, but it disqualifies people who rent a business premises. The owner pays the rates and therefore the businesspeople operating their businesses from there cannot apply to the scheme. It needs to be tweaked badly. Will the Mini…

I thank the Minister for his reply and the officials in Tipperary County Council and the Department who are dealing with the scheme. The Minister gave the reasons he cannot. He wants to spend the money and get it into the pockets of businesspeople who are struggling to keep the doors open. However, there is a considerable cohort that have an arrangement to pay rates as part of their rent. I do not know how we will tweak it, but it needs to be tweaked in some way because those people are very valuable in our towns a…

I do not know if the Minister does value them. He says that, but the scheme has to be tweaked because there is a big cohort of people in this situation. The Minister said it takes time from an announcement made in the budget. The budget speech is hardly over before his colleagues go around the country saying this or that scheme has been announced before any legislation is in place to deal with it. The Government cannot have it every way. It cannot advertise that everything is rosy. Everything is not rosy in busines…

My earphones are not working.

There is a huge crisis at Tipperary University Hospital, TUH, which was previously know as South Tipperary General Hospital and St. Joseph's Hospital. The embargo that is in place is preventing recruitment. According to the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation, INMO, safe working and other practices are being eroded. We need these posts. It is not a matter of funding. Those posts exist already but people have left, retired, are on sick pay or on maternity leave and the posts need to be filled immediately. Safe wo…

This is for 70 posts.

It is 70 posts.

I support the motion and recognise it is very well presented and timely. It is well overdue. It is an excellent motion and it reflects the real situation affecting so many hundreds of thousands of people. The fact that dental services are not available to them is truly shocking. It is not the first motion of its kind and it will probably not be the last. The motion calls for legislation to be brought forward by September but there is little hope of that. It is a situation that affects every one of us, our children,…

Once again, I return to the issue of disability services and school places in south Tipperary. Last week, I handed a number of letters to the Tánaiste from very concerned families who cannot get school places for their children with autism. This continues, with many children still without a school place. This week, I was in receipt of a letter highlighting the urgent action required to support Scoil Chormaic special school in Cashel. It is a wonderful school with wonderful staff. Scoil Chormaic is a special school …

I wish to raise with the Taoiseach and the Chief Whip the lack of business being transacted this week. Where has the debate on the EU migration pact gone? Everyone knows that the European elections and local elections are due to take place. The pact was due back from committee in the first week of May and was supposed to have been disposed of by the House by 9 May, as we were told. It has just gone missing. We raised this matter at a Business Committee meeting last week. We have problems all over the country. There…

After the election.

Not agreed.

The level of open drug taking, antisocial behaviour and drug dealing on the main streets of our towns is worrying. It shows that law and order is losing the battle against drugs in many cases. I raised this matter with the Tánaiste during Leaders' Questions last week, specifically in the context of Clonmel town. He acknowledged we need a renewed focus. Open drug dealing in broad daylight on the main streets of our towns and villages is evidence that we do not have sufficient Garda resources in our towns. One of the…

I, too, am happy to contribute to the debate. I thank the officials in Tipperary County Council, formerly South Tipperary County Council, and a wonderful, outstanding council official, Mr. Sean Lonergan, who is retiring after decades of service to the council and the people of County Tipperary. He is an outstanding public servant with great ideas, vision and passion. Unfortunately, he did not always get the support he needed. We are listening to all these figures. It is a game of Punch and Judy over and back betwee…

I thank the Acting Chair for her forbearance in allowing us back in. We were late for our slot for one reason or another. I do not know what happened, since I was watching the debate, but sin scéal eile. I will follow on from what Deputy Healy-Rae said about Sinn Féin and objections. Sinn Féin espouses what Deputy Ó Broin says and always listens to what he says about Housing for All, ideas, etc. I sat on the housing committee for five years, and they were the most difficult five years I ever had. Talk is great, but…

-----but as far as its legions are concerned, they are well heeled and well paid members of the Judiciary, associate with them and everything else and they know all the avenues, stopping people providing their own homes.

It is time that we debunked all of these well-heeled organisations and provided people who want to, and can, build their own houses the wherewithal to do so and not have all of this inside in a big heap and mess and we have nothing only brus.

There are considerable issues facing the once thriving market town of Clonmel, with huge levels of vacancy and dereliction. There are water outages on a weekly, and sometimes daily, basis and there are concerning levels of open drug taking and drug dealing on the main streets of our town. There is, unfortunately, an unsavoury atmosphere to be felt in the town centre. I do not say this lightly because Clonmel is a great town, a vale of honey, Cluain Meala. It is a fantastic town and with serious help and support, it…