This is a long, long time coming. As we know, the 2022 legislation was rammed through the Dáil. I will never forget it. The homeowners who were up in the Public Gallery were absolutely traumatised and were banging on the screens. I will never forget the look on their faces outside afterwards. They were absolutely betrayed. They had engaged honourably with Government and they were betrayed by a scheme that condemned our people in Donegal and the west of Ireland to be second-class citizens. It is absolutely shameful …

I will continue for one more minute with the forbearance of my colleague. What is the issue with these incrementalist amendments? The issue is the Government is still excluding people. It put a date of March 2029. It was bad enough the Government took over a year but now it is excluding dozens of families. It is so cruel. They will be out tens of thousands of euro. Why did the Government put the date of 29 March 2024 to coincide with the publication of the SCSI report? That does not stand up because that report wou…

Hear, hear.

Hear, hear.

The Minister of State knows that the Irish fishing fleet took a huge hit as a result of Brexit, and the EU–UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement resulted in a huge loss of fish, but it is about to get a whole lot worse with the imminent cuts to the mackerel quota. Mackerel is a prime fish species, which is really critical to so many jobs in Ireland. I want to get a sense of the Government's plan on how to mitigate this and also to ensure that those who are recklessly overfishing are stopped urgently.

The difficulty is that there are corporations based in the European Union that have invested in the fleets in Iceland and the Faroe Islands that have been recklessly overfishing. My concern is that there has been a lack of political will as a result of their lobbying skills over the last number of years. We have been watching this slow-moving car crash. Mackerel is a precious species. It is a migratory species. It spawns off the west coast of Ireland and works its way up to those northern waters. To see it reckless…

I do appreciate the fact that we have a dedicated Minister of State for fisheries, which has been a welcome development, who is engaging and listening to our communities. We now need to use that resource with all the knowledge, working hand-in-hand with the Irish industry, to confront this injustice once and for all and to say to the European Commission that what happened with Brexit was so wrong. We did not have burden sharing and we carried so much of that weight. I am glad the Minister mentioned the UK. It is a …

Has the Tánaiste nothing to say to the renters of Ireland?

Where is he now?

We know where we stand.

Does this Government learn nothing? We had the absolute farce and spectacle of the Lowry Independents being in government and in opposition and all that led to, and here we are today with Leaders' Questions, Questions on Policy or Legislation and Taoiseach's Questions gone. The Government is absolutely scrapping accountability today. Just at the stroke of pen, it is scrapping accountability. There is no talk about business committees any more because the Government does what it wants to do. It never learns and it m…

All of my life in politics, I have talked to farming families who are asked to adhere to the highest standards possible. That is why we have world-class products when we talk about grass-fed Irish beef, the pride of the world. We are the highest exports in the European Union. Our farmers have been asked to bend over backwards again and again to comply with environmental standards. They have been held up as a scapegoat around climate change again and again. That is what they have had to put up with. It is galling an…

The announcement by the Government after such a long time that it will restore funding for the Dublin to Derry air link is extremely welcome. The population of the north west of Ireland is about 500,000. The removal of this air link was devastating and continued to devastate us for a long time. We need to get it restored as soon as possible. I want to get timelines for when we will have this link restored.

Some 40% of the passengers who use the City of Derry Airport are from Donegal. The Minister of State understands the geography of Derry and how close it is to Donegal. It serves a region of about 500,000 people. If he gets a map of Ireland out, he will see that, unfortunately, we do not have a motorway connection. Our hearts have been broken with the A5 delays. We do not have a direct rail connection from Derry to Dublin and on to Donegal, so this air link is vital. It has been a long battle but it is good news and…

The defective concrete products scandals have destroyed so many lives across Ireland. The Taoiseach's Government recently extended the pyrite remediation scheme. Almost 3,000 families in Dublin and Leinster have rightly received 100% redress. The State will take responsibility for the remediation of their homes directly. It is a very different scheme in Donegal, Mayo and the west of Ireland. Why are our people in the west of Ireland second-class citizens? Why does the Government insist on a scheme that leaves peopl…

In three successive elections Fianna Fáil engaged and paid for media coaching services provided by broadcaster Ivan Yates. He coached six Fianna Fáil Ministers, including the Taoiseach, yet you failed to disclose this relationship even though there was a clear conflict of interest. You knew Ivan Yates was playing for your team, contributing to Fianna Fáil election strategy and then presenting himself as an independent commentator in the national media, yet you said nothing. Fianna Fáil already attempted to engineer…

We are talking about a person who presents himself as independent.

It is a totally different matter. It is a matter of an analyst presenting as independent while playing for your team.

There is a major wind farm just above my hometown in Buncrana. Recently, I drove up the hill and observed that half of the turbines were actually turned off. When I made inquiries as to why that was the case, apparently the electricity infrastructure just is not there to take the power from them. It is absolutely extraordinary. These wind turbines are there a very long time. I just have to ask: what the hell is going on? Apparently, a significant percentage of the wind turbines that are dotted all across County Don…

There is a story online on theskipper.ie . It is the Bord Iascaigh Mhara, BIM, annual fisheries report and it has caused outrage in the fishing industry because, essentially, the report says it is all fine. It is good; it is all fine. It is data from 2023. This has to stop. We have to stop denying what is happening. My party conducted a survey late last year of hundreds of fishers and their families. They did not just respond to the survey; they could make some commentary. What was in that report, which I have emai…