This afternoon I raise the issue of the crisis in our rental car industry. We are all very much aware of the inflation in prices. This morning I got a quote to rent a car for ten days. The sum of that, if I were to take it up, would be €1,800. That is quite extraordinary to see the inflation in the rental car trade. Some 20% of visitors who come to Ireland use rental cars. This inflation imposed upon our tourism market will have a huge knock-on effect on our credibility as being an affordable place to go on holiday…

We need to have a real and comprehensive debate with the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage about his vision for what local government will be. We are just over 100 weeks away from local elections and there are huge issues around what powers members of local authorities have. There has been an erosion of those powers over the last decade. This evening I am going to a meeting in the GAA complex in Minane Bridge, where we will be discussing a road traffic issue. A section 38 application was made by t…

I join others in acknowledging Senator Buttimer in the Leader's chair. It is great to see a fellow Corkman there. If I may talk about something very serious, namely where we are going with our housing issues, we have a real issue when it comes to the Airbnb crisis. Yesterday I was in Kinsale, where I met probably the biggest employer in the town. I met 16 members of staff, all going through issues with rental properties. Either they had got notice to quit or they had been told they would have to leave in the next f…

I thank the Minister for her wonderful Bill. I have not tabled over 200 amendments like Senator Higgins and simply wish to acknowledge the amount of work that the Minister has done on this important legislation. Today, we are speaking about something that an awful lot of us are passionate about whether that is in what we do in life or in society. I will now try to flesh out this amendment and must state that we all approach this subject from different angles. I am first a dairy farmer, second a politician, third a …

I compliment the Cathaoirleach on naming the 13 men who were, unfortunately, shot just over 100 years ago. I was at that ceremony on Wednesday of last week in Dunmanway. It was a touching and moving ceremony. The acknowledgement today by the Cathaoirleach is very important. It is part of that healing process. We are going through a decade of commemoration and this a part of our commemoration. It is important we have seen here this afternoon that this Chamber is not afraid of dealing with tough issues. This was and …

I welcome the Minister of State to the Chamber and it is good to have him here. I am looking for an update in regard to a primary school in my part of the world. Summercove National School is a wonderful school that has such potential but it has literally been at the bottom of the list for the past 20 years. We have been trying to ensure that it can get the appropriate new build that it has been seeking for more than 20 years. Kinsale is a wonderful town that has seen massive development, particularly on the educat…

I am disappointed with the response, which is almost verbatim the response I received in the previous Commencement debate. Six months later, the only thing that has happened is that the price of construction has gone up by perhaps 35%. The cost of the majority of projects has gone through the roof. I was speaking to a major contractor with regard to concrete blocks yesterday, and he said they are going up by 12.5% on 1 May, having already gone up by 10% on 1 January. Because of this delay in the past six months, we…

Before the Minister of State responds, I welcome our visitors in the Gallery. They are more than welcome. I call the Minister of State.

Yesterday evening I took the unusual course of action of going back home to Cork to attend an event. I went back to Dunmanway at 5 o'clock yesterday evening. There was a commemoration of an event that happened 100 years ago, when 13 Protestants were shot in a 24-hour period in Dunmanway. Hundreds were relocated out of the area. It was an unfortunate and ugly part of Irish history. It is a part of our Decade of Centenaries, where we have to celebrate the good, the bad and the ugly. Unfortunately, this was one of the…

It was a sensitive issue for the people of Dunmanway, in particular, and the entire Bandon Valley area. We had families come from the North and the UK to attend the event. Their loved ones were tragically shot 100 years ago in that 48-hour period. It brings home that this is about reconciliation, trying to move forward and to acknowledge exactly what happened. It was not all triumphalism or saying it was all for the greater good. Unfortunately, people on all sides were grossly affected and, 100 years later, they ca…

I raise the Ukrainian crisis and where we stand in respect of that dilemma. We are 40-plus days into the war and thousands of refugees have come to Ireland. On Tuesday last, 42 refugees turned up in Clonakilty, where there was no accommodation, after leaving Dublin Airport at 2 a.m. They arrived in Clonakilty in the afternoon to be met with no accommodation and had to be shipped off to Killarney. I am really concerned about where we are regarding accommodation for these refugees. A really unfortunate war is putting…

First, we need to acknowledge the unusual and wonderful experience we had this morning in the Dáil Chamber, where we had a joint sitting of the Houses of the Oireachtas. I compliment our Cathaoirleach, who attended and the Ceann Comhairle. It was an emotional occasion that captured the Ireland’s feeling about Ukrainians and their coming to Ireland and the need for us to do more. As a society and a people, we need to do what we can to help Ukrainians in their hour of need. I compliment the President of Ukraine on hi…

I will be very brief because time has been limited. I would like to raise two things. One is the cruise liner industry and where we are going with it. In Cork, it has a huge impact on our tourism trade. It is a real driver for our economy. However, we need to make sure that we get the boats down to Cork. We have more than 100 boats traditionally. Our liners sort of came to Cobh on a traditional basis. There seems to be an issue in Dublin Port that it is limiting the number of cruise liners coming in. If they cannot…

I raise our national sport, the GAA, and how a percentage of those games are on pay-per-view platforms. We do a great deal to support the GAA and are all actively involved in it at local level, in particular. To have a scenario whereby some games will only be available on a pay-per-view package, whether it is Sky or whoever, is inappropriate. Ireland is a sporting country. It is so involved in this and to have your county on a package that you would have to go to the local pub to watch, in some cases, makes no logi…

I welcome the Minister of State to the Chamber. It is great to have him here. I am raising the issue of mandatory training for teachers of children who are dyslexic. It is probably the most common learning difficulty that we have in our schools at the moment. It affects one in ten children, from a mild to an extreme degree. This equates to an amazing 100,000 children in primary and secondary school education today. The figure is an average of three per classroom. These children and young people have the right to re…

This is about ensuring not only that teachers who are going through teacher training college will be able to undertake this module but that they will be required to do so. At the moment, it is not mandatory. Given this affects 100,000 kids in the system and the teaching of dyslexic children is so significant a responsibility, the module needs to be mandatory. We need to get together the management groups of the teacher training colleges before September next and make it mandatory. Otherwise, yet another cohort of s…

The module is not mandatory.

The module is not mandatory.

I want to raise the matter of our tourism industry and where it is going at the moment. Obviously, we have moved out of Covid-19, which is very welcome, and, hopefully, we are moving back to a normal cycle when it comes to tourism. Unfortunately, the war in Ukraine has affected confidence in the tourism market. The US visitors that we would like to see coming back to west Cork in numbers this summer season seem to have a confidence issue in the marketplace at the moment. We need to have a very significant debate ab…

I thank the Leas-Chathaoirleach. If I thank the Minister of State, my time will nearly be over already. This is a very important debate and I welcome the opportunity to contribute to it. For the past decade, we have had 250 Ukrainians living in Bandon in west Cork, where I come from. They are very much involved in the community and many work in two major food plants in the area. For this reason, people are coming automatically to Bandon. The services in the one-stop shop as regards where they stay and how they will…