I was awaiting direction from the Acting Chairman. As Deputy Doherty has said, when the Society of Chartered Surveyors Ireland was asked to cost the demolition and rebuilding of a home earlier this year, the terms of reference did not provide for the foundations. IS 465 underpins the current grant scheme and, unfortunately, will underpin the legislation until it is reviewed. It has been discredited. It is well known that pyrrhotite is a very serious feature and it is playing a much more significant role than mica i…

This goes to the nub of the issue. The Minister has given terms of reference to the SCSI and it has given him a costing. That instructs to a certain extent the cap of €420,000, which includes €20,000 for relocation so is really a cap of €400,000. I trust that if the foundations are tested and found to be in the same condition as the blocks, the NSAI will recommend that they have to be replaced. The Minister is then going to have to look at that cap. He needs to do it now. He needs to be thinking ahead. It is very l…

Three weeks ago, a delegation of fishermen from all around the coast of Ireland went to Brussels and met with the director-general of the European Commission that deals with fisheries, Charlina Vitcheva. That delegation included representatives from six national fishing organisations and two co-ops, one based in Greencastle in north Donegal and the Galway and Aran co-op. We had representatives from right around the coast. It was a powerful delegation and they made the case for our fair share of the fish in Irish wa…

It is very hard for people in counties such as the one I represent, Donegal, to listen to the lecturing of the Minister of State's party leader, the Minister for Transport and the Environment, Climate and Communications, on their responsibilities, considering the failure to deliver alternative renewable sources of energy over such a long time. The microgeneration scheme has been on the agenda for years and years. Deputy Stanley tried to promote it. It is the most basic form of utilising our resources. It is not don…

Sinn Féin is opposing the Order of Business because of the last-minute introduction of an amendment to the Electoral Reform Bill 2022. It is an old-fashioned stroke, to be quite frank. There is no time to debate it. The Government wants to push through a motion. What is it about? It is about Fianna Fáil being blocked in the court, following the actions of a private citizen, with regard to its €500,000 lottery. Rather than have full scrutiny of changes to the law that would facilitate that, the Government wants to b…

Deputy Fitzpatrick is out of order.

If the Opposition did that, they would not be-----

Why not scrutinise it now?

Where did Fianna Fáil come from? What happened in Cork in the 1920s?

The Cabinet signed off today on the updated defective blocks scheme, which we are told will cost up to €2.7 billion. For the life of me, I cannot understand why the Government has not clearly said there will be full scrutiny of the legislation, given that €2.7 billion of taxpayers' money is involved. In 2020, as the Taoiseach knows, we had a so-called 90:10 scheme, which was a false dawn for all the families in counties Donegal and Mayo. In 2021, we had the introduction of a sliding scale. Families have been let do…

We learned the hard way.

Is the Taoiseach agreeing to scrutiny?

Are you agreeing to scrutiny?

We support the homeowners.

That is praise indeed.

Today is the 31st anniversary of the assassination of Councillor Eddie Fullerton. The Minister will be aware I have made a number of speeches in his presence about that case and the Minister is familiar with it. I will focus on the case of Councillor Eddie Fullerton again here today to illustrate what I believe is the serious bad faith by the British Government and the British state and how I think they are trying to protect themselves from accountability and responsibility for their central role in the conflict an…

The response of the Israeli state after the murder of Shireen Abu Akleh was consistent with its response to all sorts of similar events over the years. We have seen the imagery of the young man in the white t-shirt showing heroism under gunfire from Israeli snipers in rescuing her body. Those images do not lie and it is very clear what happened here. There must be an independent investigation and I agree with my colleague, Deputy Brady, that the International Criminal Court will have to look at it. It has all the h…

I want to outline to the Minister of State why the Minister, his party leader, is so deeply unpopular in rural Ireland and why he is so out of touch with rural Ireland. I want to describe to him the practical realities for people in Donegal. We have a situation whereby two thirds of homeowners in Donegal rely on home heating oil to heat their homes. Even more rely on solid fuel. They heavily rely on these two sources of fuel to heat their homes, particularly in winter. Despite the price of home heating oil increasi…

The Garda Síochána (Compensation) Bill 2021 appears again on Thursday's schedule so there may be time then.

I want to start my comments by revisiting the issue of Killybegs and the scandal of how it has been handled. The Minister was at a public meeting there in recent weeks and he saw at first hand the scale of the anger and frustration. That is not just today or yesterday as it has been building up for many years. There has to be a solution to this. What is being asked of our industry, fishermen and fish producers in Killybegs is not asked of anybody else anywhere in Europe. I spoke that night and the Minister will hav…