I welcome the ambassador. I have listened to these statements for the past two hours. They leave me with many questions. Do we know what the view on the ground is in Luhansk and Donetsk? How do we know it if we do not have diplomats there? Maybe we have diplomats there. Maybe we have a tiny embassy in Kyiv. Are we getting information from the ground from other EU states? If so, which states? Are we taking information from the media? If so, what media? Are the media there? I do not see them there. What is the differ…

I welcome the Minister's commitment to balanced regional development. Shannon Development was set up as part of that. It became the Shannon Group, comprising three entities, namely, the airport, commercial properties and Shannon Heritage. The idea was that properties, which would be highly profitable, would be used to pay for much-needed capital investment in heritage sites. For a variety of reasons, that has not happened. The Minister visited Clare last week and will be aware that the Shannon Group does not see Sh…

And what about the Government?

Irish ones do not. British ones do.

Before I discuss my Topical Issue matter I must thank the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, for the fact that her colleague in the Department of Health did visit Cappagh Hospital. I just hope that some progress will be made there with regard to providing additional funding for the treatment of scoliosis and similar conditions. I thank the Minister of State, Deputy Naughton, for coming to the House to take this issue. I wish to raise the necessity to fully reopen the National Driver Licence Service, NDLS, centre i…

I thank the Minister of State. What she has just told this House is that a temporary reduction in services as a result of Covid is being used to introduce a permanent reduction, which is what we have accused the banks of doing. The RSA, an agency under the remit of the Department, seems to be happy with this. It is outrageous that people can no longer obtain access to a normal service. Covid is being used to downgrade services. That is all very well and good for those who can do their business on line, which is man…

I thank the Minister of State, Deputy Butler, for coming in here today. For a while, I was afraid that the Chief Whip would be responding on behalf of the Minister, Deputy Stephen Donnelly. Is the Minister back in the country? It is good to know that he is, because while he was away, overcrowding in Limerick reached a new record level. It reached a record for Limerick and then the next day, it reached a national record. I raised the issue of the necessity of some kind of an independent review with the Taoiseach. He…

I apologise.

I thank the Minister of State for her reply, scant as it is. HIQA has a certain remit and I do not think it has the remit to recommend that model 2 hospitals be upgraded to model 3 hospitals. HIQA does not have a remit to look at the population, for example, if there is population growth or if the population of a region is greater than anticipated when originally planning hospital capacity. While I welcome the fact that HIQA is closely looking at this, I have two questions. First, will the correspondence the Minist…

I commend the Minister of State and his officials on introducing this Bill. It is long overdue. I have been asking in the Dáil when the commitment in the programme for Government to empower ComReg to apply administrative sanctions would be introduced. I kept being told that it was coming, but it is finally here. I hope that it will be effective and lead to a change in how telecommunication services are provided. Recently, we had a celebrated example of a company winning a great customer service award, namely, Eir. …

I wish to raise the issue of Shannon Heritage Properties with the Taoiseach. I have raised it many times before. A due diligence process is in place now for Clare County Council to effectively take over the Clare properties, as I am sure the Taoiseach is aware. Key to that is capital funding. Clare County Council has limited sources of revenue; namely, local property tax and rates. Nobody is going to thank it if it raises local property tax and rates in order to put a roof on a castle, for example. There will be fu…

It does.

I will return to the issue of the €1,000 bonus. Obviously, it will require legislative change to ensure it is tax free and that a chunk of it is not taken out from either the employer's or the employee's contribution. Will that legislative change include organisations that wish to pay it, where they deem that their employees or even their volunteers put themselves at huge risk at the time? I am not asking if the State will pay this money but whether organisations that determine their employees come within this desc…

Did he give the Tánaiste an answer?

I welcome that the Government is acknowledging that spiralling energy costs will have a very detrimental effect on households across the State. They will have an equally detrimental effect on many businesses across the State and this is not being adequately addressed at all by this measure. I am not suggesting that only businesses should be helped to deal with this issue, but they do also need help with this issue. This is just one facet of the inflationary times we are living in. I raised this some time ago. For m…

I raise the non-signing of a derogation to enable farmers to burn bushes. I am not talking about bushes that are alive. These are bushes that were cut during the winter season and are then piled up and usually burned in the spring when they dry out a bit. As a result of the non-signing of the derogation, they will now have to be mulched. I ask Deputies to excuse me for being slightly out of breath. I was running late. The bushes will be mulched using vehicles with diesel engines so I question the benefit to the env…

Now that I have my breath, maybe I could have another opportunity to address the Taoiseach.

I have raised the issue of overcrowding at University Hospital Limerick, UHL, many times with the Taoiseach's Government colleagues over the past two years. Yesterday set a new ignominious record for overcrowding in UHL, with 98 people on trolleys. At the same time we learn that the new 96-bed unit which is long awaited will actually deliver only 48 new beds; other beds will be taken out and replaced. I accept that any number of new beds will not meet the exponential growth in numbers on trolleys in Limerick, so th…

As the pandemic winds down, we hope, we can look back at a lot of things. During the pandemic, one of the key shifts in the country was towards working from home. The Tánaiste himself has acknowledged that it is one of the key changes that is most likely to last from this pandemic. For many in this State, there is a huge obstacle to working from home, which is either a very poor broadband connection from an existing provider, or no availability of broadband. Two years ago, we had a general election just before the …

Those figures are somewhat at odds with some of the figures being reported. I hope the Government is verifying what it is being told by the persons and consortium behind the national broadband plan. We were all told the country would be largely connected by 2024. People can go online and type in their details and request an update as to when they will be connected and are being told it is anticipated they will be connected in 2025 or 2026. I appreciate that anecdotal evidence is easy to come by and is not very much…