I thank the Deputies. They made some very valid points. They highlighted that there are many needs today. There are definite needs in the future. The demographic costs are real with respect to pensions, home care, nursing home care and so on. Those costs are real, we need to provide for them in the future and my colleagues have acknowledged that. We already have a significant national development plan, and a public capital programme with a budget this year of over €12 billion. We also have the strategic investment …

I thank the Deputy and acknowledge he has been consistently making the case for more investment in road infrastructure, and not just new infrastructure but maintenance of our local and regional road networks. As he knows, there have been underspends in a number of Departments in recent years. We have engaged with the Minister for Transport, Deputy Ryan, on the opportunity presented over the summer months for additional maintenance and restoration work to be done on our road network around the country. The Departmen…

I thank the Deputy for raising this question. Following the resignation of all previous DDMBA members in November 2021, I had hoped that a new DDMBA would have been established by now and that the appeals process would have recommenced. The Deputy should note that five members are legislatively required for a functional board, however the recruitment of these members has proved to be challenging. In this regard, four expressions of interest campaigns have been organised by the Department of Health, three of them la…

As the Deputy said, the working group reported back in February and reached the conclusion that the existing scheme is outdated. It needs to be replaced with a needs-based, grant-based scheme. Last week in the House, in responding to the report from the Ombudsman, the Taoiseach gave a commitment to convene a meeting of all the relevant Departments to work now on an solution urgently. I expect that meeting will happen very shortly. My own officials stand ready to assist in any way we can. At the moment we have a tax…

What is needed here is a whole-of-government approach. Dealing with these issues does not sit in any one silo or Department exclusively. I welcome the initiative the Taoiseach is undertaking to pull together the key Departments to devise a coherent and comprehensive response to the working group report and address the issues the Ombudsman has justifiably raised. This has taken too long. The Government is now focused on bringing forward solutions, which will involve a new scheme. In the meantime, I will continue to …

I thank the Deputy for his question. While no decision has yet been formally made by the Government, the normal date for the budget is the second Tuesday in October and I anticipate that will be the date. The decision will be formally made by the Government when I and the Minister, Deputy Donohoe, bring a memo to Government to set the date. I expect we will do that very shortly.

An enormous amount of work has to go into the development and preparation of a budget on both the expenditure and the taxation sides. The Minister, Deputy Donohoe will have to go through a detailed round of Estimates, discussions and negotiations with all of his colleagues. The preparation of the documentation is quite a process. On my side, the taxation side, this year we have a particularly extensive Finance Bill because of the introduction of pillar 2 of the OECD base erosion and profit shifting, BEPS, agreement…

I met the banking and insurance defective block redress focus group yesterday to discuss its concerns, which included the issues raised by the Deputy. The focus of the meeting was on mortgages. I understand the very difficult situation faced by homeowners whose houses are affected by defective concrete blocks, and the Government is determined to assist households impacted by this terrible situation. As the Deputy is aware, the Government response on this issue is led by my colleague the Minister for Housing, Local …

I did engage with the BPFI in recent weeks on these issues. I know that the BPFI met the mortgage group on 29 May and provided me with an update from that meeting. Having met the homeowners yesterday on the specific mortgage issues, I think the asks they have are quite reasonable in the main. They want dedicated contact points in place within the institutions concerned. Bridging finance or interim funding will be an issue for many of them. We will of course discuss this issue with the banking sector. The group also…

I understand that there is a further meeting today between the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage and the homeowners' group with the view to getting the scheme up and running. I also understand that the BPFI is going to meet the Department as well in order that they fully understand the intricacies and the detail of how the scheme will operate. We also need to ensure that the non-bank sector is involved here because some of the homeowners have mortgages with the non-bank sector. The starting point…

Over the past year, Ireland, along with almost all other advanced economies, has had to grapple with the effect of surging global energy prices triggered by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. These price pressures quickly spread to non-energy goods and services, creating broad-based inflationary pressure. In practical terms, it has squeezed real incomes of households and has also come at a time when many have had to contend with tightening financing conditions. Since last summer, the ECB has increased interest rates …

The truth is that it will be through a combination of measures. Incomes will rise next year. I believe that in the main incomes will rise ahead of the rate of inflation next year. In real terms, people will make gains relative to the cost of living next year. The last 12 months have been really difficult for many people. Even though there was a whole range of cost-of-living measures, costing approximately €12 billion, we acknowledge that the full impact of inflation was not offset by those measures for everyone. Ho…

First, I want to contest the Deputy’s central thesis that Ireland is some kind of a basket case. That is not the case. He spoke of how we talk about the story of economic success. That is a real story. Some 2.6 million people at work is not a fantasy. They are real people, they include the Deputy’s constituents and they are all over the country. Unemployment is less than 4% at this point in time. The economy is continuing to grow and is among the fastest-growing economies over the last number of years in Europe. We…

Of course, we see challenges every single day in our health system. We have recruited approximately 20,000 more people in health since the beginning of the pandemic. The Deputy spoke about living standards. Living standards in Ireland over the last number of decades have improved, without question. We have seen a reduction in inequality in Ireland over that period of time as well. Our investment in education is held up across the world as being of the highest standard. Those points are important by means of context…

We have statutory bodies that this House has empowered through legislation to carry out certain functions, and when it comes to ensuring that we have a competitive marketplace generally and that there are no anti-competitive practices. We have the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission. It has examined the retail sector, for example, and it has not stood up some of the charges that have been made by the Opposition on the level of competition in that sector. It has extensive powers. We have the energy regula…

At the outset I want to say that the report and the findings contained within it are deeply shocking. It is disturbing to think that there are any individual examples of that kind of behaviour and practice happening in Ireland now or in the past. I assure Deputy Bacik, the House and the general public that this will be treated with the utmost seriousness, which it deserves. We welcome the fact that this scoping study on the sexual exploitation of children and young people in Ireland has been conducted by UCD. The D…

On the question of a referendum, the relevant Cabinet committee is actively working on this issue. A meeting of that Cabinet committee will take place this afternoon as I understand it. It will be given further consideration and there will be engagement across the House and of course public confirmation of any final decision on that particular issue. On child trafficking, since last year Tusla has partnered with the anti-child-trafficking organisation MECPATHS to raise awareness and to provide front-line staff acro…

I must apologise because I am not familiar with the detail of this particular case, the Davitt complex, but we will certainly look into it. I want to underline what the Government position is. Our position is that we support integration. The best developments around the country have a mix of tenure types, of house types and apartments, involving private, cost-rental, social and affordable housing. We certainly do not support segregation. There may well be a role here for the local authority to work out the applicat…

Tuath Housing and Dublin City Council need to come back with a response on the issue. At the level of principle where amenities or facilities are being provided for development, they must be provided to all. How people came to occupy the property, whether it be Part V or private purchase, should not be the basis of denying anybody access to shared amenities. As the Deputy said, these were build-to-rent standard. That is the principle and that is the policy. We will ask the bodies to come back on the detail of this …

I thank Deputy Healy-Rae. I want to underline the Government's support for the family farm and the principle of that all over Ireland. I negotiated with the Minister, Deputy McConalogue, over the last number of budgets, significant increases in the funding for his Department. He successfully negotiated a new strategic Common Agricultural Policy, CAP, plan worth almost €10 billion out to 2027, which resulted in an increase of 50% in the national contribution compared to the previous plan and provided for an extra €1…