What about the trees?

What about rural dwellers?

I welcome the opportunity to speak. It is welcome that the thresholds for the carer's allowance have been lifted a bit. My honest opinion is that anybody who gives up a job to mind someone belonging to them as a carer should not be means tested because the service such a person does for the State is unbelievable. I also welcome the move on childcare. The devil will be in the detail and we will see who will get what. I also welcome the stamp duty relief for young farmers but we are still at the stage where a young f…

There will be nothing to import.

The climate has changed drastically over the years and it will change again. I do not think anyone has a problem with technology, but we have signed up to stuff that is not attainable. I refer in particular to the EU 2030 climate target plan and what we have signed up to in that regard. I put on record that in energy, transport and agriculture, we are not fit to carry out what we have signed up to. We must own up to that fact. We are living in a fantasy world. Turning to energy, we have one offshore wind farm. If w…

It must be said by those on all sides that no one can condone the protest outside the Tánaiste's house last weekend. Nothing seems to be out of bounds at the moment. I stand in solidarity with him on this. I wish to speak about rural Ireland. When I was going to school in 1980, old yellow buses used to bring youngsters to school in all parts of Ireland. With Covid, the capacity of buses was reduced by 50%. Unfortunately, some children have been left behind. This seems to be an annual thing. We have become a more af…

If we are interested in talking about climate change, the first thing we should be doing, as a minimum requisite, is saying to all school-going children in rural Ireland or, indeed, in the cities, that there is a ticket there for them. We should not have cars or the SUVs or whatever going up and down the road with one child in them. That is the first common-sense thing. It is not going to rob the bank because there is plenty of money wasted in this country. That is the first thing. I welcome what the Tánaiste said …

-----be allowed and able to go into stocking if they want to? Is it going to be on the nitrates, with X amount of units per hectare, like it was proposed, or is there a new system coming?

I congratulate the Minister of State at the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Deputy Troy, on his marriage to his better half during the summer. My question is to ascertain whether the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Deputy Leo Varadkar, is satisfied that Irish food export companies are fully prepared for the changes proposed as part of the post-Brexit process, specifically in regard to products of animal origin and which are due to be introduced on 1 October 2021. I wish to know the st…

I thank the Tánaiste. I am a member of the agriculture committee. In fairness to Deputy Cahill, he has brought this issue up also. It was going to be looked into at one of the meetings. If the arrangement had been implemented, especially on the food side, it is unknown how many vets would have been needed to sign off on products. My understanding from the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine is that it expected people to have products ready from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Many companies might work for six days per …

I welcome the Minister's response. One thing that Enterprise Ireland or the Minister's Department needs to home in on is the storage part. My understanding from the veterinary side of this is that for eight or nine hours, a vet may be available. However, one may have a small company in this country that does not have the storage, where the lorries are going every three, four or five hours for six days a week - but not on Sundays; it may not have the facilities and the storage to ensure that when the vet is there th…

The House is running ahead of schedule. I am grateful to have the opportunity to speak on this motion. Hotel quarantine has been fairly well debated over the last while. There is something I cannot understand. We have been contacted by many people about this issue, for instance, people who were travelling from Abu Dhabi or countries in that region and had parents going into hospital for a serious operation. They had been vaccinated, and were actually fully vaccinated long before many EU citizens, but the vaccine wa…

I welcome this motion and I thank the Rural Independent Group for tabling it. The mantra over the last 15 months has been that we are all in this together. However, this circus continues. When I was a gouger I remember the Pope saying to people in Galway: “Young people of Ireland, I love you”. This Government has sent a clear message by bringing in this legislation that it does not love the young people. Last night I spoke to a woman who telephoned me about her youngster whose birthday is in two weeks’ time. The mo…

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this legislation. I do not know where we are going, as a country. I will give the Minister an example. I was talking to a woman last night who is vaccinated. Her youngster is under the limit, in that he or she can walk in with his or her parents to a restaurant or pub. The child will be able to do that next week but in two weeks' time that youngster will not be allowed to walk in because of the date on which the youngster's birthday falls. Coming up with something like that is …

I speak in support of this amendment, but it is a damn bad day when we have to introduce an amendment like this and support it. I understand where the proposers of this amendment are coming from and I said that I would support it. I hope, however, that we never do this again and that it will not go any further. I reiterate that I understand where Deputy Boyd Barrett and the other proposers are coming from with this amendment, but, to be quite honest, I cannot see the sense in what we are doing at all regarding this…

I know that. I am talking about the amendment and I have said I am supporting it. While the amendment is in good faith I do not think we should be going down this road because the Dáil is not functioning in the way a democracy should function. We are heading towards dictatorship in this country.

I welcome the opportunity to contribute on this legislation. I remember going onto Galway County Council in 2014. The council used to then get something like €12 million from the equalisation fund. The property tax then came in that year, and €14.5 million was collected throughout the county. Galway County Council got its €12 million of that amount, while €2.5 million went back to the Exchequer. The equalisation fund in respect of the €12 million went off to Angela Merkel to pay for the bailing out of the banks. Th…

We need a mix of everything to deal with the current housing situation. We can look at the situation in a year or 18 months. If something is not working then or some aspect has got out of hand, it will be easy to bring in legislation to deal with it. Regarding public private partnerships, I refer to a previous Government Minister in respect of when the health centres were done. It was the damnedest scheme I ever saw. The buildings were released from the person who built them for 25 years, after which it was necessa…

I move amendment No. 7: In page 8, line 6, after “make” to insert “owner-occupier”. This amendment protects people who need houses and the State. While we are all in favour of making sure that everybody who needs affordable housing has as much of it is possible, there is a clause in this amendment for owner-occupiers. People who have become fairly wealthy may decide to rent out a house to somebody else. We need to include a clause in that regard. I would like to hear the Minister's thinking on another point. When p…

I would worry about the issue of a family member, but I will take the Minister's word that the intent is included. I will remind him of this if the measure backfires, but I will withdraw the amendment.