The announcement in September 2022 regarding early years education and childcare was really significant and in later years will be looked back upon with huge pride as a major achievement of this Government. It was a significant focus of the previous general election. All of us in government should be really proud of what we have achieved with regard to core funding. It is a massive step forward. However, the Minister does not want any services to be faced with financial sustainability issues and is fully committed …

I just want to make one point first. I am not reading out the script that might have been provided to the Senator because it does not reflect the position of the Government and it certainly does not reflect the position of the Minister, Deputy Stephen Donnelly. I am getting that checked. I have been talking to the Minister. The position is that, first, we have championed women's healthcare from day one. The announcement that the HSE made was not sanctioned and is not and was not agreed by the Government. As soon as…

I thank the Senator and others for raising this issue, including constituents. Some people in Louth were on to me as well about this particular issue. The script that has been provided here, by the HSE or whomever, does not reflect what the Minister has said. I speak with the authority of the Minister and I can state categorically that he has instructed the HSE to write to every woman it contacted about this proposal to tell them that it is not going ahead. While we will increase supports in parts of the country wh…

I thank the Senator for raising this matter. In Ireland, our relatively low cover of native woodland makes our hedgerows exceptionally important for biodiversity. Hedgerows provide botanical diversity, as well as food and shelter for animals, most notably birds. They also act as corridors that connect habitats. They are a vital part of our biodiversity infrastructure. In general, untrimmed thorn hedgerows containing shrubs such as blackthorn, whitethorn, holly, briars and brambles are favoured by birds as they prov…

I understand the points raised by the Senator and his sincere motivations in this regard but the legal position is that the dates are set out in primary legislation and the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage has no power or discretion to vary them. The dates can only be altered by primary legislation enacted by the Oireachtas. I will take up the specific point the Deputy raised with the Minister. The Senator may be aware that the National Parks and Wildlife Service is currently undertaking a projec…

Ba mhaith liom mo bhuíochas a ghabháil leis an Teachta ós rud é go bhfuil an t-ábhar tábhachtach seo curtha faoi bhráid na Dála inniu. Before I address the specific issue raised, I will provide an outline of the extent of the school transport scheme. The scheme is a significant operation that is managed by Bus Éireann on behalf of the Department of Education. In the current school year over 161,600 children, including over 135,000 pupils travelling on primary and post-primary services, 19,800 pupils with special ed…

In answer to the first question on what the Minister is doing about this, in my reply I outlined the quite considerable work that is going on in the full root-and-branch review of the school transport scheme.

That is important because the school transport scheme has run for a long time. There were fairly transparent rules around it and, quite frankly, all of us in the House try to get our constituents on a bus when the rules do not provide for that. In recent years, the rules have been extended, through the temporary alleviation scheme, to allow as many children as possible to get on school buses even if they do not comply with the original rules of the scheme. I am very proud of the work the Department has done on that…

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue and for giving me the opportunity to clarify some of the concerns that have been raised regarding the allocations document which issued on 6 February. At the outset, it is important to remember there will be more special education teachers than ever before in our schools in September next, an increase of 1,000 since 2020. This is in addition to a significant reduction in class sizes at primary level over three budgets to a situation where our pupil-teacher ratio at primary …

I reiterate what I said earlier. In order to ensure that schools are not negatively impacted by these issues, all existing hours assigned for complex needs are being maintained for each school, which is an important point to remember. Approximately 98% of all children, including those with special educational needs, are educated in mainstream classes. We recognise there are children for whom a more specialist support is required, which is why we have seen significant growth in special classes, as the Deputy noted. …

Humour changes.

I thank the Minister and my boss, Deputy Martin, for her contribution, as well as the other Deputies, Deputy Costello, in particular, for their contributions. I am like Deputy Ó Snodaigh in that I remember "Hall's Pictorial Weekly", and this summer I visited north-west Cork with Deputy Michael Moynihan. We came to the town of Newmarket, which I had never been in before, but I remembered Frank Hall singing a song about Newmarket in County Cork. That is the sort of world-----

It was shown after I was born but it was definitely recorded before I was born. It was shown into the eighties; there is no question about that. Some of us are destined for these types of careers from an early age. There is no question of the importance of archives and preserving and conserving the wealth of content which public service broadcasters produce. It is the history of the State and our society in audio and audiovisual form and provides us with records of what was pertinent at various times in our history…

The memorandum of understanding agreed in early 2020 between the Government and the FAI allowed Sport Ireland to restore funding of €2.9 million per annum to the association and to provide additional annual funding of €2.9 million for football development up to and including 2023. The memorandum also provided for a repayable grant of €7.6 million to the FAI towards the Aviva Stadium licence fees for the years 2020 to 2022. It was agreed at a point when there was a very real risk of the association becoming insolven…

I thank the Deputy for his comments. I have mentioned already the funding the Government gave the Football Association of Ireland in 2020 and it has looked at that over the past number of years. There was a real danger that the FAI would become inoperable if that funding was not provided at the time. The main funding levers through which the Government operates for infrastructure are through the sports capital and equipment programme and the large-scale sports infrastructure fund. The last large-scale sports infras…

Local authorities, to some extent take their responsibilities seriously in sports but I think that they have a great deal more to do. We especially invite applications under the large-scale sports infrastructure fund from local authorities in the coming round because local authorities have the capabilities to put these projects together. There must be an emphasis on participation, on playing the sports. Yes, we want to see stadiums around the place and they are very important but any funding which we give towards i…

The Minister and I have already confirmed that a new round of the large-scale sports infrastructure fund will open for applications in the first half of this year. We are still working out the dates and terms and conditions. They will be confirmed in due course. The programme is aimed primarily at national governing bodies of sport and local authorities but others such as philanthropic funders, clubs and voluntary organisations can apply. In general, they have to be prioritised by a local authority or a governing b…

I was delighted to visit Lough Lannagh with the Deputy and Senator Chambers some months ago. To be honest, the Deputy brought me but he should probably invite all the chief executives of local authorities around the country to see what is in Castlebar. It is a fantastic facility. I cannot give any commitments here on the floor of the Dáil to any particular projects but that type of project, which is genuinely community based, municipal, provides a variety of sport and is open to the public, is exactly the type of p…

There will be a competitive process for this. We will not be building stadiums all around Ireland. I want to get that message out. It is not financially possible to do that. Every application will have to come either from a local authority or a national governing body, or perhaps an education and training board. Those organisations then have to stand over the project and deliver it. Deliverability is key because, in the previous round, due to various factors, many of these projects are only starting to get delivere…

That is not happening in our name.