I thank Deputy Healy very much for raising the matter. When a court sitting changes in a town, it is not just the convenience for people in terms of accessing the court; it is the general footfall that can come into a town associated with a court sitting. I see that in my county of Wicklow as well. I will ask the Minister for Justice to get an update and to discuss this matter with the Courts Service with regard to Carrick-on-Suir and Cashel and why the sittings are moving to Clonmel and to revert to the Deputy wit…

I thank Deputy McCormack. I offer my sincere sympathy to him and his family on their loss. The Deputy is so right to highlight the importance of the electricity grid, both from an energy security and from a housing point of view. We quite rightly talk in this House about the emergency that is housing - there is no doubt about that - but the key enabler to moving forward on that emergency is water, wastewater and energy supply. That is why the Government is very minded to invest significantly more funding through Ui…

I thank Deputy Burke for raising this issue and for vocalising very strongly the absolute frustration of his constituents in and around Blackpool. I know this has been going on for an extraordinarily long period of time. The Deputy is of course correct that on 17 April the OPW submitted the final supplementary information and those updated environmental surveys he referenced to the Minister for public expenditure, infrastructure, public service reform and digitalisation as part of the statutory confirmation that ne…

I thank Deputy Guirke. I will ask the Minister for housing and the Minister of State with responsibility for planning to give consideration to the point he makes about the role of section 5 and the appropriate use of it in the context of what he has outlined. I would like to make two points on IPAS and migration accommodation. First, there has been too much discussion only on accommodation. We also have to discuss a rules-based system and making sure that if people have a right to be here, they are integrated, get …

That is, of course, not our policy. I thank the Deputy for raising issues in relation to Belmullet, the Belmont Hotel in Knock and St. Mary's school in Ballina. I will ask the Minister for Justice and the Minister of State for migration to come back to the Deputy on that. Broadly, on the issue of communications around migration, we need to do more. We recently discussed this very issue at a Cabinet committee meeting on justice and migration. We have good people doing their best to communicate and to keep communitie…

Sorry, that is a fair question. In relation to the issue of planning, I am truthfully not sure in relation to that but I will get an answer to the Deputy directly.

I thank Deputy Ó Murchú. While I am not aware of the specific details, I join the Deputy in sending my best wishes to that member of An Garda Síochána. As the Deputy says, all of these incidents are harsh and real reminders of the dangers that gardaí face when they put themselves in harm's way to keep the rest of us safe. I am very grateful to all members of An Garda Síochána for their service. I am a big fan of the community safety partnerships for the reasons the Deputy has outlined. They bring everybody together…

Absolutely.

I would be delighted to do so.

I agree with the Deputy about recruitment and retention. We can have all the investment plans, and we need to in the Defence Forces, but the men and women in the Defence Forces constitute its most important resource. Given that this is a country with full employment and very skilled individuals work in the Defence Forces, how we recruit in the first instance and then crucially retain them is a very fair question raised by the Deputy. My Department has one service commitment scheme in place in respect of Air Corps p…

We are not.

I was not talking about fighter jets but was asked about a question about them at an Army barracks. I said I want to get to level of ambition, LAO, 3, which talks about that degree of air cover. We need a better understanding of what happens and the capabilities in our skies and seas. The Deputy is right that the key to being able to activate any of this is having the personnel to operate any such infrastructural capabilities, and we can debate the merits or demerits of each of those. I am not saying this is what h…

That is correct.

Let me be clear that I do not rule out what he has suggested. I am not in any way naive. While I can point to figures that show marginal improvements in the numbers of Defence Forces personnel, I am also aware we are nowhere near the established numbers we need. That marginal improvement provides a degree of false comfort in some of the specialties where we need to continue to recruit and, crucially, as the Deputy said, retain in the Defence Forces. As he referenced, there is the new service commitment scheme. I am…

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue. When we look back at the Commission on the Defence Forces and everything else, radar and sonar are two key areas on which we must move. The Deputy and I can largely agree on that point. These are no-brainers. We must have a better understanding of what happens in our skies and seas. We need that capability. It is a key priority for me to ensure that the operational capacity of the Defence Forces is maintained and developed in line with the decision the Government has alrea…

I fully agree with the Deputy. I like, and will cog, the phrase "positive neutrality". That is what we should be talking about. I certainly have no plans to change Ireland's military neutrality. There is an overwhelming consensus in this House and significant support across the country for military neutrality. We should be proud of our neutrality. It is not just a cornerstone of our Defence Forces policy but also our foreign affairs policy. We need that vision of positive neutrality. There are many neutral nations …

We certainly do not and there is no proposal to join NATO or anything like it. I value military neutrality. Understanding and debating what it means, though, is very useful. It means being militarily unaligned but one can be militarily unaligned and still take national security and defence seriously. I accept there are very different views in the House on the terms, conditions and parameters on which we decide to deploy personnel abroad for peacekeeping. The Deputy is right that we have to get to a point. We are ab…

Are the Deputies happy to do them in this order?

So we will do this and come back. Is that okay?

I propose to take Questions Nos. 155 and 156 together. I thank Deputies Gibney and Ó Laoghaire for raising this important matter. I accept we approach this from very different points of view. I do not doubt the Deputies' bona fides on this and ask that they do not doubt mine. I value military neutrality. I am not proposing Ireland joins any military alliances; I am proposing that the triple lock in its current form poses challenges and should change. We will have an opportunity to tease through legislation and vote…