Under the funding for people who provide accommodation for Ukrainian refugees, it has been brought to my attention in recent days that, early on, when the Government was looking for accommodation places, it was spending money fairly freely - I am referring to Athlone specifically but there are other places in my constituency - but it is like a broken-down subbie at the moment. I know of two crowds that were supplying food that are owed €2 million. This has been going on since October or November. That is disgracefu…

This is the first time I have been in a debate with the Minister of State since her appointment. I wish her the best of luck in her new position. In respect of the Bill, I note the representative bodies of the credit unions emailed every Deputy about the pieces that are of concern to them. I ask the Minister of State and her team to be proactive in addressing their concerns. I know there are plenty of credit unions around Dublin but many people may not realise the role they play down the country. My home town of Gl…

Deputy O'Donoghue can have two and a half minutes of my time.

I think I have more time than what is displayed on the clock.

Does anyone else want to speak? Is Deputy Nolan okay?

The Acting Chair can give Deputy Nolan a minute if he can.

I will stop at four minutes if the Acting Chairman wants to give Deputy Nolan the minute. I welcome this announcement but one thing I would say is there have been a few announcements on different energy schemes in the last six or eight months, some of which involve Enterprise Ireland. Is that correct? It is through Enterprise Ireland that businesses can look for the rebates back or where they fill in the forms. What we are hearing back from businesses is that Revenue is making it ferociously difficult for businesse…

I welcome the crew from Mountbellew and Gerry Connellan from Elphin. We have discussed this Bill at committee and had the different farming organisations in. The Minister is aware of the different views in the line of fertiliser. Last year many people could not afford to spread fertiliser but I hope some of the monopolies in the context of inflated prices might be sorted out in the second quarter. That is my understanding. No more than plastic or any other thing, I cannot fathom how the Department will control or l…

If it is being abused in any way by the veterinary sector, will the Department be able to look at that in six months or a year?

Under the programme for Government, Ireland is projected to plant 450,000 ha of forestry between now and 2050. That is about 1.1 million acres. In 2023, with all the debacle that has gone on with forestry over recent years, farmers, if they want to apply to plant trees, cannot do so because the Department will tell them that it is waiting for state aid approval. Along with that - this seems to be the week of leaked documents - in Europe a document from the Directorate General for Agriculture and Rural Development, …

I can email them to the Taoiseach.

The Taoiseach said first that the Government supports the proposal, and then he said it has grave concerns. If it has grave concerns, how is it that every other country, including the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden, has written back already and most of the countries in the EU have written back opposing this in is present form? Why have we not written back and outlined the things in it that the Government is concerned about? We had representatives of the Directorate General for Environment, DG ENV, before our agricu…

I welcome the motion. I understand there will not be a vote on it. Does that mean the whole deal will be stopped and the motion will not stand at all? Are we here talking, as we do most Wednesday nights, while thinking along with the public that something is happening when it is not happening at all? There is something that stinks about this whole scenario from beginning to end, for the simple reason that we are getting different stories all the time. Mr. Carlin referred to clean land on the basis that he was so co…

Second, he said it is going to manage it. The Minister is right about the management part. Someone is telling us porkies somewhere. I believe we were misled at our committee meeting when all its members, including Deputy Carthy, were present. We were totally misled because the boat had sailed and we were playing catch-up. We were told – the Minister of State, Senator Hackett, can confirm this – that the Minister was made aware last year of what was occurring, but now we have minutes of meetings that state he was ma…

What about 2012?

We are well aware of that in 2012.

Can we deal with the motion? We do not need to know the history of forestry.

What percentage are we planting every year?

What percentage-----

We are not going to be talking about football with the Minister. It is not a soccer match either.