Reality check: no infrastructure, no houses.

I am proud to say I grew up old school and that I am a self-employed person. I can go back to times when my father, God rest him, and I used to go to get a few supplies. We would go to Limerick or wherever and before he left the yard, whether it was for hardware supplies or whatever, he always gave the man who loaded the trailer a few bob, or the price of a pint as it was called. I have been self-employed and when it came to Christmas or a birthday, I always gave somebody a few bob in cash, or a few bob for luck. I…

I salute the women today, International Women’s Day. I salute the mothers who are trying to do their best for their children, particularly those with children with special needs who stayed at home to look after their children. I salute the mothers who had to abandon their careers to look after their children. I salute the women who had to move into the sitting room to look after their husbands and to care for them at home so as not to have them go to a nursing home. I salute the women who bake the scones and the ap…

Tonight in Ballyneety, County Limerick, a meeting is being held by concerned citizens over a plant like this that is suggested for a disused quarry in the area. The Government wants to bring in emergency legislation to provide that an environmental impact assessment does not have to be done. Is the Government opening the doors for a unit like this to be put anywhere in the country without such an assessment being done? If I build a house tomorrow morning, an environmental impact study is done. If a farmer wants to …

Members are eating into my time. I thank them not to do so. Once there is proper investment in infrastructure, there is not one person in this House who does not wish our energy costs will go down. People do not mind whether it is provided by wind energy, solar energy or any other source of green energy but, like everything else, the Government puts the cart before the horse. Does the Minister of State, Deputy James Browne, know that Ireland is paying 60% more for electricity than any other European country? Why is…

What plans, if any, does the Minister have with regard to the issue of the affordability of cars for young families who are dependent on the second-hand car market for transport to schools, third level institutions and work? The latest figures from the Central Statistics Office, CSO, show that 2.2 million licensed cars, 64% of vehicles in the country, are six years old or older.

That speaks to my exact point. Any vehicle that comes in from the UK is subject to VRT and other taxes. Let us look at electric vehicles. The Minister has said that he is not responsible for taxation on second-hand vehicles but he is. If you go to any garage in the UK, you will see four-year-old electric vehicles. There are loads of them in the UK that cannot be sold. Why is that? It is because, after four years, an electric vehicle is no longer under warranty. It also costs €8,000 to replace the battery in an elec…

I will go back to my point again. If you buy an electric vehicle at the moment, you are buying at a loss because you cannot change it. The Government's decision not to proceed with a ban on fossil fuel car sales from 2030 has been criticised by the Irish Electric Vehicle Owners Association. I wonder why that would be. I could not believe the Government was even more zealous than the EU, which stated it could not bring in the ban in 2030 but had to wait until 2035 due to a breach of competition rules. The Government…

The existing eviction ban ensures that the tenant who wilfully withholds rent or engages in antisocial or criminal behaviour will not be given an exemption from termination. However, People Before Profit's Bill aims to prevent landlords from evicting tenants who do not pay rent, leaving the landlords with no mechanism to reclaim their properties or tenancies. We have some fantastic landlords and tenants and only a minority of bad landlords and tenants. Now, landlords are leaving the market. They do not want to be l…

I thank the Deputy. Businesses that are trying to stay open have been fighting through Covid and through the warehousing of tax. What they were warehousing for tax is the money they were using, with the subsidies, to keep the doors open because of excessive prices. In his statement, the Minister stated that those who avail of this scheme have to be tax-compliant. What is going to happen if Revenue pulls in the warehoused tax from those people? They have used this to keep people employed and keep businesses open in …

I appreciate that, a Chathaoirligh Gníomhaigh, but I believe everyone has spoken here. Deputy Doherty spoke for 30 minutes, Deputy Carthy for 15 minutes, Deputy Michael Collins for 17 minutes, Deputy Danny Healy-Rae spoke for ten minutes, Deputy O'Reilly spoke for ten minutes and now you want me to try to get in five other speakers. Not only that-----

Some people decided they wanted to have interactions and run down the clock themselves.

If other people who interacted with others while they were speaking had a bit of cop-on, they might have had a bit more time themselves. We are looking at the Minister's budget and he had €5 billion left over from excess taxes after the Government did its accounts this year. There is €5 billion left over and people have increases in their energy costs of up to 300%. The Government is saying it will help people if their energy bills have gone up 30% since last September. I think that is what it said. That is welcome…

I will stop soon and leave time for the next speaker.

I ask the Minister to look at all his Government's Deputies in the rural areas and what people are saying to them, which is the same thing, namely, that they are not representing the people they are supposed to. If there is a desire to make this a Government based on the cities of Dublin or Cork, then go ahead with that.

At the end of the year, the Government's budget showed it had taken €5 billion extra off the people in Ireland in taxes, even though Electric Ireland had €390.3 million in profits. I believe Bord Gáis Energy is expected to have €1 billion extra in its coffers this year than it had in 2021. Yet, representatives from Barnardos are in the audiovisual room in LH2000 this morning with a book called, Food Insecurity in Ireland: Impact on Children and their Parents. The Minister of State should look at it and go to the au…

The Minister for Defence is responsible for Civil Defence policy with up to 70% of the cost of funding Civil Defence. The Department provides training for volunteers instructors and supplies equipment, vehicles, uniforms and PPE for Civil Defence volunteers. Civil Defence volunteers undertook 9,500 tasks during the pandemic, including transporting people to medical appointments, testing and vaccination centres and delivering food and medication. Civil Defence was extraordinary during Storm Ophelia and Storm Emma an…

I will respond regarding the complaints about nursing home care throughout the Covid pandemic, whether these were from family members or HIQA. From the perspective of nursing homes run by the State and those run privately, and smaller versus bigger nursing homes, the report showed that smaller nursing homes had fewer complaints. They were better run and there were fewer complaints about them. These are the same nursing homes that are fighting at present to keep their doors open due to the economic pressure of the r…

I thank the Minister for his comments earlier. All payments are welcome. Recently, a new alliance for smaller nursing homes was set up. I think it counts 18 or 19 nursing homes and more than 1,000 patients. The alliance feels that the new payments coming out are still not adequate for the smaller nursing homes. If there are new, increased payments, the alliance would like the Government to look at the smaller nursing homes first and to see where the shortfall is. The larger nursing home businesses in the system can…

I also support the amendment. We have been talking about high-profile cases, and we have mentioned the case of Jessica Sheehy before. This is a high-profile case which has been going on over three years and has not been dealt with. People are making complaints, as the Deputies have said. There was a petition signed not so long ago in regard to 15,490 people on trolleys in Limerick in 2022. The figures were calculated by the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation. What scares me is that the research indicates that o…