Well said.

Well said.

It is good to have the Leas-Chathaoirleach in the Chair. It is an issue that has been close to his heart in the past. I welcome the Minister of State and congratulate the Civil Engagement Group for its passion and for this comprehensive motion, which is a roadmap for what can, should and must be done. I commend all speakers so far this evening. It is great we can send a unified message on this issue to the Government. That is what the Minister of State is getting this evening and that is important. The difficulty i…

Well said.

I begin by acknowledging that tomorrow is Lithuania's national day. I welcome the presence of the ambassador in the House. I want to raise the issue of the economic and social intervention fund, ESIF, for Limerick. This is a really vital fund that has been providing essential funding to community groups across Limerick city, and to some of the most disadvantaged groups not just in Limerick but around the country. I tabled a Commencement matter on this issue in November and got a very positive response from the Mini…

Well said.

The Minister of State is very welcome. I would like to speak briefly on this amendment. As the Minister of State is aware, I raised this matter last week. In fairness, he acknowledged the fact that while some of the regeneration has been very good, some of it has not been. He also acknowledged that we need to give the opportunity for a directly elected mayor to be able to tackle this. I think that is what the people of Limerick would want. As Senator Higgins and others have said, we do not see those powers in the B…

I want to come back in because this is a good amendment. I have to agree entirely with Senator Boyhan that talking about the spirit of the amendment really means nothing at the end of the day unless the amendment is accepted. Talking about the role that the new mayor will have in terms of chairing is all well and good but, as has been pointed out, we are here to discuss the legislation today. What I find really concerning is that right now in the House, Deputy O'Donnell, as Minister of State and as a Limerick man, …

Well said.

Well said.

I was delighted to attend, with some of my colleagues from the Dáil, the momentous and historic occasion last Saturday when Sinn Féin’s Michelle O’Neill was elected First Minister with the DUP’s Deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly. With many others, I witnessed first-hand epoch-making events. It was a day like no other in Ireland’s long and conflicted history; a day of great hope for the people of Ireland and of great opportunity for a new beginning. It was a great day for the Good Friday Agreement and its a…

Well said.

I will briefly come in to support Senator Higgins' amendments. The reason I do so is because it is increasingly clear to me that in fact, there will be an agenda of privatisation and of outsourcing coming from the European Union. It is very clear, unfortunately. God knows the Ukrainian people have suffered enough already. It is par for the form of the European Union to attach these types of conditionalities to the sort of funding we are talking about. Unless the Minister of State is in a position to guarantee that …

The Minister of State is very welcome. I wish to express a little frustration regarding these amendments. Sinn Féin is not opposing them but we did ask for a briefing note on them. Even from what the Minister of State has just said, there is quite a lot involved here. We did not get such a briefing note. That is not a good way to go about doing business in terms of tucking these amendments into an important Bill principally dealing with another matter. I do not know whether the Minister of State wishes to comment i…

That was 20 minutes ago.

I appreciate the Minister of State setting out the detail. I think he has accepted the point that the short notice was not acceptable. Clearly those are amendments that we are very happy to support, given the housing emergency that we have across the State.

No.

I move amendment No. 4: In page 12, line 31, to delete “3 years” and substitute “2 years”. Unfortunately, I was in Strasbourg when the Second Stage of this Bill was being discussed. However, my colleague, Senator Warfield, did express a degree of frustration that many of us in Limerick feel with regard to the lack of ambition regarding the content of the Bill. I say that respectfully. I acknowledge that fact that the Minister of State has worked hard to get this Bill through in a timely fashion. I have to admit tha…

Let us work through the timeline as the Minister of State proposes it. As he proposes it, a review will commence three years into the new mayorship. I am going to take a wild guess, but face it, no reviews I am familiar with take less than six months and probably take a year. Under the most optimistic of circumstances, that would leave one year in the lifetime of a Government to implement the recommendations from that review. As the Minister of State and I both know, that means those recommendations will not be imp…

I do not want to prolong this unnecessarily. I accept the Minister of State's point in terms of three years and three months. However, he and I both know that if a report comes back three years and three months into a term, the likelihood of the recommended changes being made into actual legislative changes by the time the five years is up is slim, to say the least. That is my concern. Some of us on this side of the Chamber do not think the Minister of State has been ambitious enough, in particular in terms of mayo…