The Minister of State is very welcome to the Chamber. I welcome the proposed changes to the nursing homes support scheme, which are long overdue. I am delighted the Bill is being brought through the Houses prior to the recess. It is in line with a commitment we made in the programme for Government and a commitment I gave personally to local representatives of the Irish Farmers Association, IFA, in Longford when we met with them. I am pleased the Bill will be on the Statute Book before long. For too many years, nume…

The Minister is welcome. I thank him for coming to the House. It is important to welcome the apology he gave on behalf of the Government in his opening statement. I acknowledge the effort he has made previously in commissioning this report. We live in a democracy and the Defence Forces are there to defend our democracy. Senators, Deputies and councillors are elected to represent the views of the people within our democracy. I take issue with comments in the report. I went back to the comments I made during a debate…

I wish to be associated with the congratulations to Senator Bacik. She will be an asset to Dáil Éireann and a loss to the Seanad. I also wish to compliment our candidate, Councillor James Geoghegan, a fantastic candidate who ran a great campaign. To paraphrase Arnold Schwarzenegger, he will be back. I would like to get an update on the provision of a new school for Meán Scoil Mhuire in Longford. It has been an ongoing issue for a substantial length of time. The school has 600 pupils, an ageing building and no play …

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Troy, to the House. I also welcome the Bill, which represents a lifeline for small and medium-sized businesses and gives them the opportunity to restructure their debts and allow them to continue trading. Throughout Covid, the Government has introduced numerous schemes to mitigate the impact of the pandemic, which have been very successful, but a lot of business owners were under severe pressure with regard to the liquidity and sustainability of their business. This was parti…

I welcome the Minster of State and I welcome this Bill. Section 13 sets out the functions of the LDA, which are to develop and manage relevant public land and, thereafter, other lands for "the provision of housing for the public good". It is acknowledged that there is a shortage of new housing being developed and, in particular, housing that is affordable in certain areas. There is a requirement in this Bill that a proportion of any housing provided on public land and former relevant public land be made available f…

I congratulate the Cathaoirleach on the first 12 months of his term and I look forward to the next 12 months. Senator Burke spoke on driver theory tests. We have had that issue where people have turned up to do the test and have not been notified that the place is closed. I concur with the Senator's proposals. I welcome the increase in capacity proposed for sporting events. I hope it could be introduced by this weekend. We have a large number of championship games on and it would give an opportunity for the public …

I welcome the Minister. I pay tribute to the members of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Climate Action and thank them for the huge amount of work that they done over the last nine months. I also acknowledge the work of my party colleague, the current Minister of State at the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications, Deputy Hildegarde Naughton, who chaired the committee during the term of the previous Government. The passing of the Bill is a great day for the Minister and his party colleagues who …

I am delighted it was announced. As chair of the County Longford tourism committee, I have supported the Mid Shannon Wilderness Park for years and will continue to do so. However, we may need further funding to complete the project. I thank Longford County Council, our regeneration team and in particular, Donall Mac An Bheatha, who has driven this project for a long number of years. I am delighted this funding has come through. The just transition commissioner, Kieran Mulvey, asked the ESB to provide €500,000 each …

In response to the matter raised by Senator Wall, the Minister, Deputy Humphreys, has given a commitment in regard to the licensing laws and to the introduction of whatever legislation is needed to ensure there is no issue with regard to outdoor hospitality for the summer ahead. I would like to raise with the Leader the issue of Bóthar in respect of which there have been numerous reports in the media over recent weeks. Are there questions that need to be asked of the Charities Regulator given that every couple of m…

I wish all the businesses in the hospitality sector that have reopened over the past week or so the very best. I got the opportunity at the weekend to visit a number of them. I remind them that the outdoor service enhancement scheme is open from today. Through it, they can apply to their local authorities for funding. I look forward to visiting some of the businesses in Dublin Bay South with Councillor James Geoghegan in the coming weeks. On the arts sector, I met an arts group in Longford on Friday last. I ask the…

I welcome the Minister of State and support the motion. It highlights what the Government plans to deliver in the coming years. It is important to note that the Government takes the housing crisis seriously, is taking action and is willing to deliver social, affordable and private housing through whatever mechanism to deliver what is needed, namely, homes. It is important that the State uses every available asset it has to support citizens in doing that. The combination of the Affordable Housing Bill, the Land Deve…

I raise the issue of the sports capital programme. I am the treasurer of my local club, with which I have been involved for the past 30 years. I have also been involved in a number of successful applications for the sports capital programme. The programme was launched in 1998 and more than 10,000 projects have benefited from funding, bringing total allocations to approximately €1 billion. This year, the programme closed on Monday, 1 March, and by the closing date more than 3,000 applications had been made seeking m…

I thank the Minister of State. The departmental officials might have taken me up wrong. This was not in any way a proposal that there would be no new applications. It is with regard to applications that are validated but may not have scored as highly as other applications. If, as a club, we were not successful, we would have to reapply and go through the whole system again. Department officials would spend months going through the same application again. If we knew that we had a validated project and our funding ap…

I wish to raise a couple of issues with the Deputy Leader. I seek a commitment from the ESB to provide funding of €500,000 to develop a community facility in Lanesborough, County Longford, following the closure of the Lough Ree power plant. I recently met Kieran Mulvey, the just transition commissioner, who has put proposals to the ESB to provide that funding for both Lanesborough and Shannonbridge. Yet, the ESB has not made a commitment to do so. I ask the Deputy Leader to write to the ESB encouraging it to suppor…

The Minister is very welcome. I thank him for coming to Fine Gael's parliamentary party meeting the other evening. It was very informative and very positive and is something I would like to see more of across parties. Access to affordable housing is one of the most immediate and urgent challenges facing young people, middle income earners and families today in Ireland, including in my home county, Longford. This Bill is about individuals and families who want to be able to rent their own homes and to aspire to own …

I commend the Bill and I commend Senators Bacik and Sherlock on bringing it forward. I commend my colleague, Senator Mary Seery Kearney, on speaking of her experience. It is sad it has taken until 2021 for this Bill to be brought forward. If the Bill is enacted, it will give an entitlement for up to 20 days of paid leave for women experiencing the trauma of early miscarriage and up to ten days of paid leave for employees accessing other reproductive health treatments, such as IVF. I fully support this important leg…

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy English, to the House. Today is an important day for our country and the business sector as retail fully opens up. I take this opportunity to wish all businesses, especially those in my home county of Longford and County Westmeath, every success. I thank the Minister of State and the Department for the support they have given to businesses, our local authority for the work it has done in supporting businesses over the past 12 months and, in particular, the local enterprise of…

I wish to raise two related issues. The first concerns South Westmeath Hospice. Its current site at the St. Vincent's centre in Athlone is closed and the hospice is to be moved to a newly built nursing unit at Clonbrusk. The voluntary group which has raised more than €1 million to develop the current site was given assurances last October that the new building would mirror the old one. However, the HSE now plans to incorporate four hospice beds into the rest of the facility, contrary to the written agreement that w…

I welcome the Minister of State to the Seanad today and wish him well in his Department. Today, I seek to highlight the need for the Attic House CLG to be successful under the 2021 community development pilot programme. It has a proven track record of community service in Longford and is ideally located to pilot a community development initiative. This superb facility has a state-of-the-art campus that is ideally located at the heart of the most marginalised communities in the county. The existing project has been …

I thank the Minister of State and I appreciate he cannot make further comment. I acknowledge his comment about being aware of the strong work involved. It is an organisation I have been involved in for over ten years. When he is looking for a pilot programme, he should know this is already being done on a voluntary capacity, and I do not think there are too many programmes anywhere in the country where that can be said. As a town, we do not have a family resource centre and we have been unsuccessful with applicatio…