Two Departments seem to be under significant pressure at the moment, namely, the Departments of Justice and Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth. They are under strain with the current issue of the migrant numbers coming into the country. There was an important story in yesterday's edition of the Irish Daily Mail in regard to two asylum seekers who were successful in court in arguing that they should not be returned to Britain on the grounds that Britain would send them to Rwanda. One of these asyl…

The judge in this case, Ms Justice Siobhán Phelan, stated that the information in regard to the applicant's conviction has been in the Minister for Justice's agent's possession since October 2021, without telling the applicant of his obligation to register as a sex offender. The judge went on to say that she was troubled by the fact that this has not come to light. She said this was in the public interest. Here we have a judge who is saying that the Department of Justice is not doing its job in keeping people safe …

I had a chance to visit Midleton recently and I spoke to many of the people living in the area. It is important for people outside Cork to remember how life-threatening this event was. It was not just damaging to homes, properties and businesses. Lives were in the balance. I know of an elderly man who now works as a human water gauge, as it were. When the rainfall is heavy he stays up, sometimes all night, to watch the level of the river to see whether it is going to damage people's lives. I offer special thanks to…

Is there a date for the planning application?

In July 2023, I asked the Minister for Justice how many asylum seekers were coming from Britain through the North of Ireland into the South of Ireland over the past five years. At that stage, approximately 66% of those were making applications to the International Protection Office. The Minister stated in her reply to the parliamentary question that the question about what routes they used to come into the country was not asked of the asylum seekers. I thought this was a stunning answer: that a Minister in charge o…

One of the basic tenets of management is to measure what is happening. If we cannot measure what is happening, we cannot manage the situation. If I were to open a sweet shop on Main Street in Bray, I would need to know what is happening within that sweet shop or it would go bust. Despite myself and others trying to get the Minister to focus on measuring what is happening, there was a refusal to do so until two weeks ago. The most recent reply to a parliamentary question I asked of the Department stated it was not a…

I have replies to 15 parliamentary questions that say the opposite.

Are they enforceable?

How is it enforced?

I have put in a freedom of information request to all local authorities seeking the number of vacant local authority properties that exist. Incredibly, the information I have got shows that there are 3,500 empty local authority homes at the moment. The State is the biggest hoarder of empty homes in the country. We have done more digging into this and have found that, on average, it takes eight months to turn around a local authority home and three weeks to turn around a private home for re-rent. Many of these local…

The Minister is a fan.

No border.

No border.

People with disabilities are among the people most discriminated against in Ireland. People with disabilities battle daily just to achieve basic services from the State. A few weeks ago this Government played the part of champions of carers and people with disabilities, but that zeal has disappeared for some reason after the referendum results. People with disabilities regularly tell me they apply for disability allowance and are initially unsuccessful with their application, but when they appeal, they get their ap…

These are shocking figures. The Minister basically said that since she was elected, approximately 40,000 people with disabilities have applied for disability allowance, been refused, had to appeal the decision and were then successful. She is saying that, for the big chunk of those cases, the initial refusal of the application by the Department was incorrect. These are people with disabilities who are struggling to survive and to get what they are entitled to from the State and in 61% of the refusals the Minister's…

The Department is blocking people from getting assistance. That is what a refusal is. It is a block. Up to 40,000 people, which is equivalent to the populations of Athlone and Portlaoise combined, have been refused by the Department and then been granted the allowance subsequently. The Minister might blame the people for not having all the information first or not being able to fill the document, but it is the Minister's responsibility to make a document that is accessible to people with disabilities. Some 69% of t…

Yesterday.

Scrap the means test.

In 2011, 73,000 people declared their occupation to be farmers. In 2016, this had fallen to approximately 69,000 people who declared their occupation to be farmers. In the 2022 census, this had fallen again to 61,000 people who declared their occupation to be farmers. This is an 11% decrease and an acceleration in the number of people who are no longer self-identifying as a farmer because farming is becoming a smaller element of their occupation. I want to get the up-to-date numbers for where we are at with farming…

It is interesting there is such a disparity between the numbers the Minister has quoted, which are correct according to the census, and the number of people who are declaring as farmers. Fewer people are declaring as farmers because they must have another occupation when they cannot make enough money from their farms. In the census, they declare they are not farmers but are something else. That shows us that something is changing in the sector behind those figures. What is the average age of farmers? Some 33% of fa…