We can accommodate whatever.

At this point only one person has offered to speak after the Senator. If Senator Currie is here then I can add her name to the list. There are eight minutes remaining to be shared between both Senators. There is also time for the Minister to come back in.

I urge the Senator to not stray into such territory.

That completes all of the listed speakers with three minutes remaining. As Senators Currie and Davitt have not spoken, I ask them to take a minute and a half each before I bring in the Minister to reply. Is that agreed? Agreed.

There are actually an extra couple of minutes available if the Senator would like two minutes more.

The Senator was working with the good O'Brien.

I thank the Senators. This debate has shown their depth of knowledge regarding the issues pertaining to this particular Bill. Many Members have worked on county development plans in their previous lives. Today's debate has shown their appreciation of the nuances involved and their consciousness of the realities of the process and the importance of public engagement. As there are no other Senators offering, I will now call on the Minister to conclude.

When is it proposed to take Committee Stage?

Is that agreed? Agreed.

I thank Senator Dolan for sharing her time. Some powerful statements were made during this debate. Some contributions touched on the point that many counties do not have shelter or support services. I record my appreciation for the services provided in County Meath. Those services, like many others throughout the country, started in a voluntary capacity back in 1987 in Navan. Over the decades, countless women and families have been supported, and mainly voluntarily until the HSE and Meath County Council provided fu…

I deeply regret that Senator Craughwell in making a case for the legislation that is before us, chose to besmirch the credentials of people on this side of the House. If he wants to check my academic and professional qualifications over a 25-year period then he need only check with the Clerk of the Seanad. As is so often the case, we are doing things backwards because I believe that we have already had Second Stage. I know because I stood over there on 7 November last year when we had a two-hour debate on this repo…

This weekend marks 100 years since Bloody Sunday and the terrible events of that day. Last night, the RTÉ documentary on Bloody Sunday expertly captured the events of the day in a very detailed way, from the morning of the raid by Michael Collins' Squad on British officers, during which innocent people were also killed, to the deaths in Croke Park in the afternoon. The executive producer, Mr. Michael Foley, used archival interview footage involving those who were there on the day to recall the events, as well as tr…

I thank Senator Byrne for bringing forward this Bill, for his work in that respect, and indeed his commitment to the ideals that he has set out. In recent days we have listened to our friends across the pond in the United States and how their Government is not listening to the will of the people by facilitating and authorising the President-elect's transition team to commence its work. We laugh and scoff at their antics. The debate tonight shows that we have little to be scoffing at, given that there have been 16 g…

Which I said.

The Minister of State, Deputy Butler, is welcome and I thank her for being here. I rise to raise with her the important topic of St. Mary's Special School in Navan. It has a requirement for a new building. A promise was made to provide one. It has been in existence for 43 years in Johnstown in Navan. The school has had a long-running battle to acquire this purpose-built building to educate the near 100 children who attend there from all across Meath and different counties. These children face the greatest challenge…

I thank the Minister of State for the response. I am sure that she can understand my frustration when one looks at the detail in the reply from the Department and the painstakingly slow progress that it has taken in respect of this matter, including the referenced move to phase 2 of the secondary school that is on the campus for Coláiste na Mí. Meanwhile,43 years later these children are still in temporary school accommodation and many thousands of them have passed through. I welcome the advancement whereby the des…

I welcome the motion from the Green Party Members of Seanad Éireann. I welcome the fact that the Minister of State, Senator Hackett, has this portfolio and wish her well in her role. I also wish her well in her work to marry together the very real challenges, pressures and realities of life in Ireland and the need for our country to react to the threats to our habitats and ecological life while also respecting the industries that work within it. The motion commits to protecting nature by providing sufficient suppor…

I welcome the news that last week the Cabinet agreed to draft an election reform Bill that would provide for the establishment of a statutory independent electoral commission and, critically, the modernisation of the register of electors, which we can all agree needs to happen. An area I feel needs to be looked at, and I raised it in the previous Dáil with the then Minister with responsibility for local government, unfortunately to little avail, is the area of online voting - not electronic voting - and the necessi…

People will immediately raise concerns about security as a knee-jerk reaction as to why it cannot happen, but our entire Revenue system now operates on a secure portal. If we can collect the taxes of the people of this country online through a secure portal, then voting online safely should also be possible. Last year, I met the Gov2U group, which promotes democracy throughout Europe. Up to 14 countries have some form of online voting. Estonia, a small Baltic nation, was the first to introduce permanent national In…

I will touch on the debate that has been raging in the country over the past 48 hours in respect of the playing of GAA matches this weekend and, in particular, Members of these Houses weighing in and putting pressure on the GAA to concede that the competitions should be abandoned and drawing the false comparison between what has happened at club level in this country and these elite games. What happened after country finals over the past number of weeks was totally wrong. The GAA acknowledged that and came out ahea…