He did mention Glash which is about 1 mile from me and about 2 miles west of Newmarket, which the Minister would know well, and about 9 miles north of Knocknagree, with both of which the Minister has ancestral links.

Speaking of Kiskeam, some of the areas that were on the area national broadband plan and have been dropped off it are the areas I want to zone in on. The private operators, wireless etc. have moved in to fill a vacuum that is there because people want to get connectivity immediately. They are talking to their bosses and to their schools during this pandemic and asking how they are going to get broadband. There are places that are not getting broadband. The plan for the areas that would find it difficult to get conn…

I welcome the opportunity to contribute. With all that is happening in the State and globally in terms of the pandemic, Ireland also has the threat of Brexit hanging over it. The Government and previous Governments have been working hard to mitigate the harsh realities of Brexit. Coming from a rural constituency that has a flourishing agriculture industry, I am all too aware of the challenges facing that industry as we face into the Brexit negotiations. I have seen much of the commentary in regard to the land bridg…

I am delighted to contribute to the debate. I would like to acknowledge, and offer my sympathies to, the family of Dr. Martin O'Donnell in Charleville, whose son, Kieran, is a Member, and his wife Veronica. Dr. O'Donnell set up what is now St. Joseph's Foundation in Charleville, which the Minister of State visited in July. It is his legacy. He gave his time to setting up the section 39 organisation that is St. Joseph's Foundation. We should pay tribute to him and many others around the country who gave valiant serv…

I welcome the Bill. A crisis has been allowed to develop in the forestry industry to this point. Serial objectors who have no skin in the game in relation to forestry, felling licences etc have been allowed to stifle an industry. The appeals of forestry licences have been allowed to stifle an industry. We have had a lengthy discussion on afforestation and the need for forestry etc. but serial objectors have brought this industry to its knees. As a society, we must look at the damage that has been done to the forest…

Deputy Cahill spoke about the charter of rights for farmers and the charter of rights for people who have forestry planted. In essence, the Bill is a positive move forward and I understand there is some reluctance to put the timeframe in it. Decisions should be made in the shortest possible timeframe from when the application is put in because, as other speakers have said, this industry is out of the soil, it has grown over generations, and there is great rural employment in it. As Deputy Danny Healy-Rae has just s…

I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to the debate. Since 12 March, the world as we knew it has well and truly been turned upside down. Many of the things we had previously taken as gospel in our transport planning are now in question. Further urbanisation, increasing commuter numbers, the decline of rural towns and more have been thrown into question by the onset of remote working on an unprecedented scale. Before 12 March the main roads into our cities were heaving with traffic each day from the early …

I want to address two issues. The bus fleet of private operators has been in garages and off the road in recent months. They had been preparing to go back to providing the much-needed bus service for schools over the last weeks and have done so successfully. Some of those buses had been off the road since March and had not been taxed because the private operators did not know when the buses would be back on the road. To get them back on the road, they had to pay the road tax for the buses for the period going back …

I am glad to have the opportunity to speak in this debate. I welcome the Minister of State and I thank her for making one of her first visits to service users in St. Joseph's Foundation in Charleville, where she met the parents of service users at the end of July. I think she got a broad sense of the challenges facing not only St. Joseph's in Charleville or the parents in Duhallow in north Cork, but those throughout the country. There are several issues in the disability sector. In recent years, the sector has been…

I apologise for going over my allotted time but these are important issues.

What are the Minister of State's plans to ensure that young people who are not in education, employment or training will have an appropriate option available to them to re-enter education? The question is about one group of people. Last year, a report by the Economic and Social Research Institute, ESRI, showed that about 16% of people of school-going age were not engaged in school or employment. What plans are in place at the Department to ensure they will have appropriate access to further education as the schools…

On the matter of technology devices at colleges of further education, I accept there is very clear guidance, and we congratulate the Minister of State and the Department on the work they have done to ensure that schools will reopen in the final week of August and early September. There is clear guidance on everything that needs to be done in that regard. Will the technology the Minister of State outlined be available to students who are studying at colleges of further education? What are the criteria? Many people w…

I have a supplementary question on the devices. Are they available under the Government's roadmap to students' further education?

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to the debate on this legislation. There are some aspects of it which serve to underpin the funding coming from Europe and by way of the July stimulus package that was announced in the past few days. Looking at the overall context, we are in a very difficult position post pandemic. The period from the early days of the lockdown in March through to the present time has seen many sectors of our society very hard hit by the crisis. The carnage and chaos in the business community…

Thank you, a Cheann Comhairle, for the opportunity to raise this important issue on the floor of the Dáil. I take this opportunity to congratulate Deputy Calleary on his appointment as Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine and I wish him every success. As the Minister of State, Deputy Fleming, is here as well I offer my congratulations to him and wish him well in his role also. I raise the issue of the forestry sector. By and large, there is just one serial objector to a range of issues relating to forestry…

I appreciate the work the Minister and his Department are doing to try to resolve these issues. We need to be very clear on the appeals process as well. There has to be a time limit on the appeals. I know that, as the Minister mentioned, the hope is to tie in the licensing process with the planning process. At the moment there is no clear guidance on how long an appeal will take if an objection is made to a licence. That has to go through the appeals process. We need clear guidance in the legislation the Minister i…

I am sharing time with my colleague, Deputy Fleming. I welcome this Bill and its contents. I congratulate the Minister of State, Deputy Chambers, on his new role. I wish him every success during the Government's period in office. Looking at the contents of the legislation, it is to enable us to get money from Europe and get a fund in place to ensure funding available to businesses in post-pandemic Ireland. What we really need to do is look at what happened in recent months. There was what can only be called carnage…

My question relates to the July provision. Ordinarily, when children are enrolled in a unit or special school where they would be starting in the last week of August or first week of September 2020, they would have had an induction in the school in the last week of June or the last school week of the year. They would normally have had an induction in June of this year but because they did not and have not yet started in the school itself, they are now outside the July provision. I ask the Minister to take back that…

The Minister or the Department might respond to us on any questions we ask. In the discussion about climate change and agriculture, we have, collectively, to be very strong in respect of our support for the agriculture industry. From the consumer's point of view, we produce the finest product in the world. We produce an expert product that, for those who consume it, whether in the home or the restaurant, is top quality. We have to be very strongly supportive in that regard and make no apologies for the product bein…

I will be very brief because I want to be sure that my colleagues get time to contribute. We have to look at what is there in rural communities. We have to look at the existing nucleus of the smaller villages and towns and we must enhance them. If the pandemic has taught us anything over the past three to four months, it is that. People have been working from home. The term "remote working" was used but it is smart working. They have been working from rural communities and the great enabler there is, of course, bro…