Ba mhaith liom comhbhrón a dhéanamh le Mary, Joan, Emer, Lisa agus Rory, leis an ngarchlann, na deirfiúracha agus na cliamhaineacha ar bhás Noel. Tá an-áthas orm go bhfuil deis agam cúpla focal a rá anseo inniu in ómós do Noel mar Gael uasal a bhí ann. Duine thar a bheith uasal a bhí ann. Duine a bhí mar an gcéanna is cuma cé leis a chas sé. Bhí an uaisleacht sin ag baint le chuile déileáil a bhí aige le daoine. Occasions like this are obviously sad, but they are also an opportunity to pay tribute to the huge commi…

Fáiltím go mór roimh an mBille seo agus tá súil agam go dtiocfaidh sé trí Thithe an Oireachtais gan mhoill. It would be very appropriate if there was not an inordinate delay in bringing this Bill through, because it is all about delay. In recent years, delay seems to be increasingly endemic in every system. Even in the remedies to deal with delay, there can be delays. I raised a number of cases with the Ombudsman recently and this takes much longer than it did initially when the Office of the Ombudsman was set up. …

I wish to ask the Minister of State about the review that is taking place in the rural social scheme, RSS, and when it is likely to be completed. Changes are needed urgently to the scheme, which has a large number of vacancies on it.

When Ministers are advising in scripts that it will be by the end of the year, and so on, I always take it with a pinch of salt. It could be well into next year. In fact, we could be on top of an election if the Taoiseach calls the election when he said he would call the election, which is autumn 12 months.

In the meantime, will the Minister of State consider reversing the change that was made to the means-testing under the scheme? By definition, all of these are small farmers and all of them have an income. The reality is that for people with adult or child dependants, they are getting paid €27.50 for 19.5 hours per week, which is €1.50 per hour. It is fair to say that all someone needs to do is go to all the football pitches around the country and around all of the villages and towns to see all of the Tidy Towns wor…

I will let the Minister of State into a little secret. I went to a Minister for Finance and he said, "Get a scheme to me by breakfast time tomorrow morning." I wrote the scheme out in one morning, it was passed in the budget and set up. If we went back to the people who participated in the scheme, and particularly the people who had dependants, they would say the scheme was a good scheme and that a lot of work was done. It was very popular in rural Ireland. There were high participation rates until they changed the…

Tá áthas orm go bhfuil an deis agam cúpla focal a rá inniu. Is ábhar fíorthromchúiseach é agus ní dóigh liom, le 50 bliain, go rabhamar in áit ar an domhan seo chomh contúirteach agus atáimid i láthair na huaire. Twice in the past century, military fever overtook many countries. They armed themselves, threatened each other and eventually went to war. The killing of one person in Sarajevo ignited the First World War. I worry that, worldwide, we could be heading in the same direction as was the case before the First …

Gabhaim buíochas leis an Aire Stáit as ucht teacht anseo agus gabhaim buíochas leis an Aire. Fuair mé glaoch gutháin uaithi ag rá nach mbeadh sí ar fáil tráthnóna agus thoiligh mé dul ar aghaidh leis seo. Tá áthas orm an deis a fháil an cheist thábhachtach seo a thógáil leis an Aire Stáit. As the Minister of State knows, the Government made a good decision recently to make a payment of €200 to each person in receipt of a long-term primary payment. However, a mistake has been made. I will focus on pensioners but it …

I thank the Minister of State kindly. To be quite honest, whoever in the Department wrote the reply must think I know nothing about social welfare. They have informed me about all the schemes that the Minister of State and I know about, and that every Deputy in the House knows about because we deal with them every week. It is a little bit patronising for the Department to dodge the issue. What did it say about the nub of this issue? It made a bald statement that qualified adults do not have an entitlement to cost-o…

I thank the Minister of State.

I have raised this question many times but no progress has been made. Another long, cold winter has gone by. I raised the issue of Travellers living in totally unsuitable mobile homes and caravans. The only response was an inadequate pilot caravan loan scheme that only reached a tiny fraction of the people who urgently require proper accommodation. When will we be able to say each and every Traveller family who lives in a mobile home or caravan has adequate accommodation? It is a simple ask. It does not involve a h…

Just in time, JIT, díreach in am. The question is very simple. The Government and the Minister have the money but we are not getting delivery of big and small health projects as speedily as we need it. We can go into this in more detail in the supplementary questions. What has been done to speed up procedures so that we can get necessary health facilities in place? The old barriers are gone but if we eliminate old barriers, we always seem to arrive at a new one.

I am reasonably happy that the four big projects are going ahead. I have a specific question on that. Is the limit of €100 million per individual project? Will the elective hospital be taken as one project, the ED as another and the cancer and the laboratories as another or is it a cumulative €200 million between the four projects put together even though they will not be physically conjoined together? One Taoiseach said that it is the little things that catch you, and we have that syndrome. I can name for the Mini…

To give an example of what we face in practice on the ground, there was a health centre planned and planning permission for Inishbofin in the 2000s. It never happened. They are trying to move site but it is going on forever. More than two years ago, the Minister might remember the need for the ambulance base in Connemara. We got the ambulance and we got the staff within four months. They were to convert an old health centre into an ambulance base. We seem to be running into all sorts of problems even though it is w…

These are the kinds of issues. I could give the Minister a list. I note the Leas-Cheann Comhairle is absolutely dying for me to go on because she is as interested in this subject as I am.

I will not delay the Leas-Cheann Comhairle but I would say that we need a rapid way of dealing with these problems. It might also need issues such as planning and so on to be fast-tracked where there is an obvious need for health reasons.

They say it is better to light a candle than curse the dark. We have a housing crisis and a crisis in the provision of a lot of other facilities. One thing adding to the crisis is the phenomenal delays still in getting decisions from An Bord Pleanála. I have cases that have been with the board for over a year and a half. These are all projects which, if approved, could go ahead. I know extra staff were approved but I am wondering about two things. First, what extra short-term steps could be taken to clear this back…

I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time." Tá áthas orm gur roghnaíodh an Bille seo le plé agus tá súil agam go nglacfar inniu leis ar an Dara Céim. Bille cuimsitheach atá ann agus tá tairbhe mhór ag baint leis. Bunaíodh an chéad bhanc in Éirinn in 1782 agus ó shin tá daoine ag cur rudaí luachmhara i dtaiscí i mbainc. Tá chuid mhaith taiscí nó boscaí, deirtear liom, ag dul i bhfad siar nach bhfuil a fhios ag éinne cé leo iad. Is iarracht é seo le tabhairt faoi a fháil amach cé leis na boscaí, nó murar l'éin…

Ba mhaith liom buíochas a ghlacadh leis an Aire agus leis an Teachta a tháinig anseo inniu. As I said, I do not know whether the lack of participation by the whole Opposition is a sign of agreement but I will take it as such. The Minister of State raised a number of valid issues. On the other hand, we must be cautious because the system will always state the problems but not the solutions. My belief is that there are two different roles, one for public servants and one for politicians. The public servant's role is …

Beidh sé deacair. Mar is eol don Leas-Cheann Comhairle, tá an obair seo ag teastáil go práinneach ar an mbóthar seo agus caithfidh mé cás láidir a dhéanamh. The N59, as a coastal national secondary route, was included in Transport 21. The idea was that those parts of the country that were far away from national primary routes would have decent national secondary routes to service them. There are 113 km of N59 in Galway – 80 km from Galway to Clifden and 33 km from Clifden to Leenane. Priority was given to the secti…