I know, but will that be used as an incentive to get more of these houses on the market?

I am trying to be constructive and positive. I welcome the scheme but there is a difference between vacant houses and derelict houses. The Government has introduced a vacant house scheme but there are a lot of derelict houses across the country. They do not accrue local property tax at the moment. Bringing in a vacant property tax is not going to be a stick to force those houses onto the market. We need those houses on the market because the Government is incentivising people to buy them. We need those houses done …

I have asked if that will be increased. Will the Government use that mechanism?

I welcome that the banding in Clare has been changed so that the threshold to qualify has gone from €26,000 to €30,000 or €27,5000 to €33,000 in the case of a family of four. That is still a low threshold, which artificially keeps the housing list for Clare low. It needs to be looked at, particularly now that we have such inflation. There will be wage inflation, which will see fewer people qualify for social housing and will increase the pressure for affordable housing, because a large cohort will not be able to bu…

The increase in the bands in the five counties, including Clare, is to be welcomed. The Minister of State has fairly acknowledged that more work needs to be done and that it needs to be study based. He said he hopes this study is done by Christmas. If I could urge the Minister of State to do one thing, it would be to ensure this study is completed by Christmas so that we can see the criteria. Inevitably, there is always slippage but this is very important and particularly as we are living in inflationary times. Wag…

I suppose everybody would agree that the budget contains many positive measures that are very badly needed to address the cost of living. However, most of the measures are once off. We know the reason for that, which is that, as most would agree, the world is in a perilous state economically and we are uniquely exposed. We continually talk about being such an open, trading economy. We are a member of the European Union. Germany is in recession. The British Government seems determined to throw itself off the nearest…

The Supreme Court found this invalid and, instead of broadening the scheme, as any decent human being might envisage would happen, to help these people and give them some degree of independence along with their parents and those who drive them, the Government used the cloak of budget night and a budget resolution, in the convention centre, to narrow the scheme on the express promise that we would look at this again and broaden it-----

-----but that still has not happened. Two years later, it needs to happen. I thank the Ceann Comhairle for his latitude.

The Leas-Cheann Comhairle might be able to help me. Can I just speak to the financial resolutions or do I need to speak to Deputy Nash's amendment?

I want to give the Minister time to respond. He has talked about Ireland's energy transformation. He and I are both admirers of the Shannon hydroelectric scheme and the bravery displayed by the new State at that time to meet Ireland's energy needs. We were completely reliant on imported energy at the time. We are not completely reliant on it now but we are almost completely reliant. The Irish Free State at the time was almost completely reliant on imported energy. The Shannon hydroelectric project was achieved by s…

I have no doubt the Minister is correct when he talks about the ill effects of smoking and the necessity of reducing the number of people who smoke. However, at what point does increasing the tax become counterproductive due to the use of imported tobacco? The higher the tax, the more lucrative smuggling tobacco becomes and the more that money falls into the hands of criminal gangs rather than local shopkeepers. It is simply a question. At what point does the Minister think it is unrealistic? We have one of the hig…

The Minister spoke earlier about the merits of not using one-off funding for day-to-day measures. I find it difficult to disagree with that. Once-off funding can be used for capital projects. There is a dire need for transport capital projects in particular. People look back at the Celtic tiger and say that at least we got roads out it. If this is a boom, what will we look back on and be able to say we got out of it? There is a necessity for electricity generation capacity in this country. We can import as much Fre…

I very much welcome this motion from the Rural Independent Group. I will support the motion if I am not called upon to pair with a committee Chair who has to be elsewhere. It is a very important motion in that it recognises, as most people recognise, that we would like to move to renewables. We also have to realistic about the fact that we will not achieve that in a couple of days, weeks or even months. We will have to be realistic. We will have to figure out a strategy for powering this State while we make that mo…

We were the only country that closed the churches.

We are broke. Does the Minister of State not get it?

Having listened to this debate, do I understand correctly that an office is being set up that will be tasked with getting 1 million electric vehicles on our roads by 2030?

It simply beggars belief. I am sorry. I am again going to say that I admire the Minister's hopes and ambitions, but at some point policy will have to be grounded in the reality of where we are. I do not have a problem with electric vehicles, but I do have a problem with forcing cars off the road. There are very few charging points in rural Ireland even now. A bigger problem, however, is that most people in this House, for example, would drive perhaps 50,000 km annually. I see Deputy Michael Healy-Rae here and perha…

I thank the Regional Group for bringing forward this motion, which I support. I do not necessarily agree with the Minister on many points but I am willing to accept he sincerely holds those viewpoints and thank him for coming into the Dáil to debate this and other issues, because many Ministers do not. They all should do but they do not. It is important we debate. I have debated some of these issues with the Minister before. There are obviously many good ideas in this motion for how we can increase energy supply in…

I said that.

Is it floating wind energy?