I am grateful for the opportunity to participate in this debate and I thank the Minister for the time he is giving to help us to understand this. I think it was Shakespeare, in King Lear , who wrote, "Striving to better, oft we mar what's well." More of us might say that the best is the enemy of the good. There is no doubt that this is not a perfect arrangement. If we were given a blank sheet of paper and were starting to design our health service from scratch, this is not how we would design it. However, in Dublin…

I am grateful to have an opportunity to speak in this debate. I know time is limited. To be honest, when I see members of Sinn Féin come into this House criticising the Government for not delivering affordable homes to buy, I take a very deep breath. They come as a wolves in sheep's clothing. The reality is that they oppose five important measures from the Government that will together deliver 50,000 homes at affordable prices to first-time buyers in the next five years. These measures include: the help-to-buy sche…

I understand that part of Croí Cónaithe involves looking at higher-density urban developments and introducing an intervention to make them affordable for first-time buyers. What progress has been made on that scheme? I do not know whether that question was answered in reply to Deputy Christopher O'Sullivan. There is much high-density development. In constituencies such as mine, it is almost exclusively high-density development. The fund will be eagerly awaited.

I strongly support the Government's policy in accommodating Ukrainian refugees. I am concerned about the continuing use of community halls and Army camps. I have two basic questions. One is to get assurance that the emergency response will have the budget and the authority to quickly change schemes - for example, for holiday homes and vacant properties. Second, I would like an assurance that this will not interfere with the ongoing Housing for All strategy the Minister is delivering for other housing needs.

I thank the Minister of State for the reply. I will ask the Minister of State a number of specific questions. There are 62,000 holiday homes and there is a window of opportunity to potentially bring them into use. It probably would need some level of payment though, to attract some of those 62,000 into use. They would be really valuable. I welcome the fact that the Minister of State has an emergency vacant housing delivery unit, he has the Office of Public Works, OPW, looking at modular building and he has a cleari…

Where the Minister of State is looking at State lands for potential modular use, will a material contravention process, which can be lengthy, still be required? How will the Minister of State get temporary use of lands for modular building that would not be too long delayed?

Deputy Stanton is very anxious to break the logjam on the Midleton Water Rock project, which has the potential for 2,500 homes. The local infrastructure housing activation fund would contribute just over €2,000 per unit to trigger it. It seems that it is stuck. The latest problem is that Transport Infrastructure Ireland has said the major road is not up to scratch to allow it to go ahead.

The frustration arises because this is very good value from money from a LIHAF point of view. For €2,000 each there would be 2,500 homes. It seems one hand of government is trying to push it along and another is trying to block it. Funding for the proposed upgrade of the N25 was dropped and now TII is saying it is inappropriate to go ahead with the development. We now have a real problem. We need ministerial intervention to break through.

Is work continuing on the introduction of measures to help families make energy savings? I have listed these measures before. I refer to activating 750,000 smart meters, rolling out electric vehicle infrastructure, of which the local authorities have installed none, installing heat controls in the 1.5 million homes the retrofitting wave will not reach and extending obligations on switching to the utility companies ripping off many older and less tech-savvy consumers. These are measures that are available. Is work c…

When the Circular Economy, Waste Management (Amendment) and Minerals Development (Amendment) Bill 2022 was published recently, it was disappointing to discover that no obligation will be placed on other Ministers to develop a strategy. It is left to the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, to develop a programme. The Tánaiste is very interested in seeing circular economy thinking implemented throughout the business sector. What planning is going on in his Department? Will we see strategies for key sectors emerge?

While I welcome those general approaches, which are largely EU driven, the reality is that we have the lowest circularity rate in Europe at approximately 1.6%. The average is 11.8%. Only 10% of waste is recovered in the construction sector for any sort of useful approach. If we do not start to dig into the sectors and see what is wrong within them, we will fail. Timber use in construction is very low, even though timber is a carbon sink, whereas concrete is a huge source of carbon usage and emissions. Some 25% of o…

Would the Government consider supporting an amendment to the Circular Economy, Waste Management (Amendment) and Minerals Development (Amendment) Bill 2022 to place an obligation on individual Ministers to report on progress on sectoral strategies under the circular economy heading? It is notably absent from the Bill, even though it is at the heart of the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development (Amendment) Act 2021. These two are indistinguishable. They are two sides of the same coin. We need to put a prod not jus…

I congratulate the Minister of State on the progress made on this proposed legislation. PIAB fixes cases in half the time and at one twentieth of the legal cost. Therefore, it is a worthwhile venture. A worrying trend, however, has seen the number of PIAB cases accepted fall from over 50% to 37%. This suggests people are testing the courts and their willingness to implement the quantums of damages. Can the Minister of State give us any reassurance that the courts are sticking to the quantums of damages and that we …

On Deputy Hourigan's point as to whether the Minister of State is willing to strengthen the Circular Economy, Waste Management (Amendment) and Minerals Development (Amendment) Bill 2022, I agree that we need a fundamental shift in a series of sectors, including the food sector, but there is no provision in the Bill for imposing any responsibility on Ministers other than the Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications, or the EPA, to develop these strategies. I raised this earlier with the Minister for …

The Minister will be aware that there has been lively debate on this matter within the Joint Committee on Environment and Climate Action under its Chairman, Deputy Leddin. I would like to ask the Minister a couple of questions. When does he believe it will be appropriate to have a protected auction for floating wind energy generation capacity? When does he think it would be appropriate for Ireland to develop a hydrogen strategy? What is his view on the attitude of the Commission for Regulation of Utilities, CRU, wh…

I add my voice to those wishing Teresa, Noel and Liam well. I have the privilege of representing two of them, so I pass on particularly good wishes to them. I welcome the offsetting measures the Tánaiste has indicated in the context of the May increase in carbon tax. I ask him to look at other measures that could be implemented far more effectively than the bogus and unsustainable zero VAT rate that has been called for. The measures are sustainable and entirely consistent with our climate obligations. One example I…

I welcome the Bill. The response from some in the Opposition to what we are achieving here is less than fair. Almost 1 million workers in Ireland are without either a sick pay or pension scheme, and this year we will move to remedy in our legislative code both those elements. One thing we have learnt from Covid is how many very important and strategic workers are in precarious positions. Some of that precariousness comes from their exposure in having no pension scheme other than social welfare and no sick pay schem…

I welcome the opportunity to participate in this debate. We face three interlocking crises at the moment, that is, an energy crisis, a climate crisis and a refugee crisis. We need a resilient strategy and we need it now. It is important that we start to bend our minds in this Oireachtas, using the best minds from across this Chamber, to how to do that. There are plenty of pillars on which we can build it. We need a consumer protection pillar to promote switching, to make it easier to make contact with utilities and…

It is impossible for us to fully understand the loss, grief, courage and defiance of the Ukrainian people. We can only stand in solidarity and stretch out the hand of friendship. It is a tribute to the Irish people that, up and down the country, that is being done. The stresses that is creating have been highlighted but the Government has responded quickly and with compassion to the challenges we face. It is said that in war the first casualty is truth and there is no doubt that in the case of Russia that is so. Ru…

It would be nice to believe the Government could absorb all the energy impact or that energy companies could be forced to absorb it but, in a small, open economy such as ours, that is fairyland talk. Could we see an immediate activation of economic resilience measures, among them an activation of the 1 million smart meters, only 40,000 of which have been activated; reasserting remote working as a priority; tackling the supply chain inefficiency that sees 25% of our food wasted; promoting vehicle sharing, given more…