I welcome the Minister of State to the House. I welcome the opportunity to have a few moments to speak on this very important issue. I will be very focused on housing, wastewater and disability. In my remarks on housing I will focus on Galway County Council, which has only 66 acres of land zoned for housing. At Monday’s meeting of the local authority, the director of services informed the councillors that 70% of the 66 acres cannot be built on because it does not have infrastructure and if the council did build on …

I will fully support the Mental Health Bill 2024 as it proceeds through the Seanad. This legislation represents a significant and long-awaited step forward for mental health in Ireland. In addition to acknowledging the content of the Bill itself, I acknowledge the leadership and dedication of the Minister of State, Deputy Butler, under whose guidance this work has progressed with care, compassion and clarity of purpose. Since she published this Bill back in July 2024, she and her Department have been engaging in se…

I wish to share my time with Senator Comyn.

I thank the Minister of State for taking time to be here this afternoon for this conversation. It is very welcome to have a very open conversation about it. I acknowledge the good work of the Minister of State and that of the Minister, Deputy O'Callaghan, in the area of immigration. It is also important for me to acknowledge the work that the former Minister, Deputy Roderic O'Gorman, undertook while this area was under the aegis of his Department. I welcome the transfer of it from the Department of equality, as I w…

This morning I raise a particular issue for probably the third time. It relates to compulsory purchase orders, which are a very serious issue for any community but in particular for the farming community. I raise an issue that is ongoing for ten years. It is ten years since the first liaison officer was appointed by Galway County Council to inspect a person's land on 10 September 2014. In that period, there have been numerous communications. The road has been developed and completed but a number of landowners along…

I thank the Chair and welcome the Minister of State to the House. I thank him for being here. Several weeks ago, I said I would like to have the Minister with responsibility for sport to come to the House for statements. The whole purpose of my request was that over the past five years, more than €500 million has been handed out to clubs up and down the length and breadth of the country. This has been fantastic and transformative, as we all will acknowledge. I want to know from the Minister of State and his Departm…

Now.

Now.

I raise the issue of Portiuncula hospital and the moving of high-risk pregnancy and antenatal care from Portiuncula to University Hospital Galway or to the Midlands hospital in Portlaoise. While I understand that we must put the care and protection of the mum and the baby and the risk elimination front and centre at all times, it is important that I also raise that we were in this situation in 2018. A report in 2018 identified an awful lot of the same issues then as were raised yesterday by the Saolta group. I have…

The Minister is very welcome to the House. If he delivers the track to Sligo, I would like him to be the one who puts the shovel in the ground for the ring road in Galway.

That would be the one piece that I would really like to see happen. There is no doubt that we are completely congested at this stage. I will share the following little anecdote with the Minister. I love it when Ministers come to Galway We have to go into the university hospital to meet them and then they ask me for the quickest way to get out to another part of the city. There is nothing like putting them across the Quincentenary Bridge to get them caught for at least an hour to experience what every other person l…

Before I call the Minister, I welcome guests of Senator Fiona O'Loughlin in the Gallery. They are a group of ladies from Kildare who are celebrating International Women's Day. You are all very welcome here today. Women are the main topic of what we are discussing.

I thank the Minister. I call the proposer, Senator Nicole Ryan.

I thank the Acting Chair.

I do not mind at all. I thank the Minister. He is very welcome to the House this afternoon. I also welcome his opening comments. I thank John O'Meara for the tremendous effort he made and the diligence he showed at a time of great loss to him and his children. He found the composure to address the loss and he had the state of mind to recognise how more people could benefit and what the lack of recognition in legislation could mean. I am a person who had a loss also, but we were married. I cannot imagine what it is …

I move that the House suspends for ten minutes.

Next Tuesday.

I thank the Minister of State for attending and the Cathaoirleach for facilitating this debate. It is appreciated that we are having this conversation. I am glad to be joined this evening in the Public Gallery by my postmistress from Portumna, Sinead Salmon, and my former postmaster in Mountbellew, Peter Kitt. Listening to all the valuable contributions, and having a financial head myself, I was looking at the statistics. An Post assists in gathering €400 million when it comes to fraud, believe it or not. There is …

The compulsory purchase order, CPO, system is there to support development. I wish to raise a road that was developed in Galway, the N63. When a local authority serves a notice to treat, that is when it has entered into an arrangement, on behalf of Transport Infrastructure Ireland, TII, or the National Transport Authority, NTA, to purchase land to develop it. In this instance, the notice to treat was served in 2014 but, to date, the landowners have not got paid. They have made numerous representations regarding wha…

We will now address the Domestic Violence (Amendment) Bill 2024 on Committee Stage. This has been restored from the previous Seanad, just to put it in context.