Last Friday evening, a constituent of mine who has dual citizenship - Canadian and Irish - was on to me. They made their application to the Irish Passport Office. They went up to the Canadian Embassy last Friday evening and they came out with an emergency passport for the child. They could not even get an answer from the Passport Office here in Dublin. They spent weeks and weeks and weeks. Something has to be done. I agree with my colleague. The Minister is talking about putting the service into Belfast. I would li…

An Irish citizen who is a taxpayer-----

The Irish citizen, who is paying his or her tax in this country, should have that document and he or she should not be begging for it.

I thank the Leas-Cheann Comhairle for letting me in. I did not realise that I was going to be able to ask my question, so I thank her.

I will put two brief questions to the Minister. First, will he take staff from other Departments and put them into the Passport Office to try to deal with the emergency? Second, and seriously, is it not time that the Department considered putting a passport office in the west? If there is a problem, it is not fair that someone from Galway, Mayo or Belmullet has to go to Dublin to resolve it. Although many passports are being processed online, there are still many that are not. This matter has been raised with me an…

I thank the Minister for his answer. I acknowledge that the staff of the Passport Office are working under difficult conditions, but this is an essential service. I warned the Department three months ago that this problem would arise and it has now happened. There has been a problem every summer. I would like to see it not happening next year and the office being given the requisite number of staff to process passports. Many people did not have holidays this year because they could not get a document to which they …

That is not fair. They had them in on time. They have had them in for 40 days.

The system has to be fair.

Members should show respect for the Chair.

I welcome the opportunity to address the Chamber today to update Deputies on the work of my Department as part of the national efforts to address the challenges presented by Covid-19. Community organisations, charities, social enterprises and the volunteers who assisted them have been an integral part of our country's response to the pandemic. While elements of our society and economy are now beginning to reopen, the reality is that community and the voluntary sector never closed. In recent weeks, when other sector…

That is grand.

I will not be able to answer all of the questions in one minute, but I will do my best to answer some of them. Deputy Calleary raised the issue of the stability fund. The Deputy is correct. My plan is to roll it out as quickly as possible. The funding is in place and more than 1,000 applications have been received. I want the funding to be paid out as quickly as possible. We did have to engage with some of the groups in regard to the manner in which they filled out their applications. I want to ensure equality betw…

We will need to get written responses to the issues Deputy Conway-Walsh and others raised because I do not have the time. I want to be associated with her words of sympathy to Alan Duffy and his family. Regarding what happened in America, the Deputy asked me what I had done on racism. My Department funds national organisations that fight against racism. I am totally appalled at what happened in America. My Department has a fantastic record in supporting groups fighting racism in this country. The social inclusion a…

I thank Deputy Feighan for his kind comments regarding his town of Boyle. I was glad to hear him speaking about the schemes, including the town and village scheme and the rural regeneration scheme, because it annoys me sometimes when I hear people knocking rural Ireland, not being factual about rural Ireland and not being truthful about the previous Government regarding the investment of funds and the amount of money that went into towns, villages and counties throughout the country. Every town and county got fundi…

I thank the Deputy for his comments about the Department, in particular with regard to funding for community groups. Deputy Noonan has given me an opportunity, for which I have waited a long time, to compliment a colleague of mine, the Minister of State, Deputy David Stanton. He has shown great bravery, courage and commitment to the role in the Department of Justice and Equality. Particularly in the context of equality, he has certainly fought the case for our new citizens coming into the country and for the rights…

The Deputy is correct. I did not get the chance to publish the new policy on rural Ireland, although I have it ready and I want to put on the record that I am hopeful that I will publish it in the next fortnight. When I was drawing up that new policy, one of the big issues I looked at was the pilot scheme I carried out for towns and villages. We picked six towns and villages and we gave €100,000 to each local authority. We asked them to have consultations with the chambers of commerce, the community groups and anyb…

I refer to the mná tí in the Gaeltacht areas. I know my colleague, the Minister of State at the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Senator Kyne, has been talking to the Minister for Finance, Deputy Donohoe, to see if anything can be done. I will respond to Deputies Sherlock and Conway-Walsh about this. Deputy Conway-Walsh raised LEADER as well but she has the same problem in the Gaeltacht areas. The work of the mná tí has been a way of life for people in the Gaeltacht and people have made a living o…

I thank Deputy Cairns for her comments. As I said earlier, my Department is represented on several groups, along with the Department of Justice and Equality, that address migrant, immigration and Traveller rights issues. All of the issues that Deputy Cairns has raised arise at these forums. We have the Roma strategy and strategies for the different groups. We fund these from my Department. The Deputy asked about charities. She is quite correct to state that charities have gone through a difficult time since this cr…

The State will not be able to fund everything and there is no point in pretending. We have a great many organisations and groups. Let us consider the community services programme and the funding that my Department provides. We can see all the groups. People would be amazed with all the groups. Maybe that is one of the things we should be looking at. We have a €5 million innovation fund. Perhaps we should be looking at ways and means of doing business differently. Perhaps we should consider whether some of these gro…

I do not have responsibility. I will raise the issue at Cabinet and ask the relevant Minister to respond to the Deputy. All I can do is raise the matter at Cabinet. I must say that meat plants are important to rural Ireland and to the agricultural sector. It is very important that we have meat plants but it is equally important that they operate in a safe manner. I will raise the Deputy's concerns at the Cabinet meeting tomorrow and ask the Ministers for Agriculture, Food and the Marine and Health to respond to her…