It was.

I understand that it is important to have a proper BusConnects system. There is no doubt about that but the truth of the matter is that Navan is the largest town by far in the State without access to a rail line. Meath is the biggest dormitory and commuter county and Meath people are living in Meath without the facility to commute. No other county has the same level of outward working as the people in Meath do. It is having an enormous cost and the rail line has been promised for decades. I remember Noel Dempsey, a…

Not the infrastructure. The infrastructure is not being built in Meath at all.

It is the population and that is the danger.

The Boyne greenway has the ability to become the most important greenway in Ireland. It is internationally recognised for having a large concentration of very important heritage sites. The Boyne Valley has Brú na Bóinne, which is a UNESCO world heritage site. It has Trim Castle, the Hill of Tara and the site of the Battle of the Boyne. There are dozens of smaller important historical and heritage sites there. What is the progress in the development of the greenway? This has been going on for years.

Sometimes I feel that there are two understandings of the word "time". There is how citizens understand it in their normal lives.

There is a different understanding of time in the context of how the administration of this country works. I passed a motion almost 14 years ago at council level for this particular project and it still has not come into being in any real way. It is amazing. The tourism potential of this project is massive. The Minister knows that cycling and walking tourism are taking off around the world. Walks in northern Spain and Ireland are drawing down tourists. Meath is ideally located. It has a high concentration of import…

Trim and Drogheda.

Unfortunately, tourism in Meath at the moment consists of a coach tour from a Dublin hotel to visit Newgrange and Trim Castle, before returning to a Dublin hotel for dinner. There is little left for Meath in terms of income. Walking tourism allows for people to stay within a location for five, six, seven or eight days. Their visits can include bed and breakfast accommodation, hotels and restaurants. That would allow for value to be left in the locality where those facilities are. I agree entirely with the Minister …

I am aware of a number of the issues that relate to this Bill, especially the case of the Dublin Business School, and I have been in contact with many of the students in that regard. The school has hugely failed the students regarding their particular qualifications. Many of these students have spent big money and many have taken time out of their own jobs and have changed careers. Many have spent a lot of time on placement so they could qualify with the Dublin Business School, and they are now left in limbo withou…

Ten years ago, in 2012, I had the opportunity to formulate a detailed and costed plan to deep retrofit 1.4 million houses in this State that were still, at the time, in need of deep insulation, in addition to the 130,000 non-residential buildings that were in the same state. I presented the plan to the Dáil. At the time, the costings that we worked out meant that it would cost approximately €14 billion to bring all of the residential housing stock up to an average BER of C1. At the time, according to the Institute …

I raise issues of grave concern regarding our heritage and An Bord Pleanála. Builders bulldozed the home of the O'Rahilly in September 2020 to prepare the site for a 12-storey apartment and hotel development. I raised this issue with the Taoiseach at the time in this Chamber because of the historic importance of the building. The Taoiseach agreed that it was absolutely wrong that a building, a site of this value in terms of our heritage, a national monument, was floored in such a manner by a developer. The O'Rahill…

Following on from my colleague's contribution, one of the biggest problems existing in the administration of this State is our glacial bureaucratic system. Anybody outside this Chamber will tell us that any time constituents try to do something right by their families, communities and the State, they find that they run into a bureaucratic wall when they deal with the State. The State is slow and cumbersome in dealing with issues. I will give some examples. Some 70,000 people applied to the Be on Call for Ireland ca…

I believe that in the years to come this Government will be known as the “coalition of crisis”. The cost-of-living crisis is hammering people’s ability to live and the housing crisis is threatening hundreds of thousands of families with homelessness and spiking rack rents. Despite all the Taoiseach said, the response of this Government has been stifling inertia in the face of these crises. Going by the rate of action of this Government, the only thing that will remain warm this winter is its own hands because it ha…

I have seen letters the Minister has written, obtained through freedom of information requests, where he said the review was to be carried out under the understanding of reconfiguration. It is written in black and white. It is also in the terms of reference of the review. The Minister of State, Deputy English, said it will include a review of a functioning potential future for Navan to make it safe. Who is telling the truth? Both cannot be correct at the same time. Both cannot be in contradiction with each other an…

The Taoiseach is answering me with a question.

Limerick, Nenagh, and Ennis.

Disasters, each one.

Gabh mo leithscéal, a Cheann Chomhairle. An féidir leis an Taoiseach an cheist a fhreagairt?

It is nine years out of date.