I wish the Ceann Comhairle, all her staff and everyone across the House a very happy Christmas. There is a chronic shortage of pathologists to carry out post-mortem examinations in Ireland and pathologists are withdrawing from the post-mortem service as they are not contractually obliged to provide post-mortems. The Minister for justice will be aware of this due to an internal briefing paper. This Christmas in Limerick, unfortunately, we will have no pathology cover between 23 December and 29 December. Anybody who …

Gabhaim buíochas leis an Aire. In the spirit of Christmas, I too have no particular issue with what is being proposed here. Broadly speaking, I support anything, within reason, that helps somebody to turn a vacant commercial property into a permanent home. I also support measures that would make it easier for people to increase the provision of animal housing and exemptions for stand-alone slurry storage, within reason. I caution this by saying we have had a number of issues in Limerick in recent times in relation …

I thank the Leas-Cheann Comhairle, and I also thank him for calling that out. I mean, this is Dáil Éireann; it is not Kilmallock cattle mart. Every Thursday we are treated to the same thing.

I heard it.

Today I again raise the issue of overcrowding in our emergency departments. Last week, we saw 14 ambulances queued up for up to eight hours outside Wexford hospital. As a local representative for Limerick, this healthcare crisis is something I know the Minister is also familiar with. In our city of Limerick on 3 December, UHL management once again urged the public to avoid the emergency department as 350 people attended in one day. Last month the Minister for Health opened another 96-bed unit at UHL, which has done…

I thank the Minister for his response. I am glad he acknowledged options A and B were happening anyway because we did not need the HIQA report for them. We need the Government to commit in the longer term, beyond the next five years, to option C because we need a new stand-alone hospital in the mid-west. The Minister referenced staff burnout, which I am very concerned about, as well as staff leaving. I am concerned that the opening of the new Bon Secours Hospital in Towlerton will cause more staff to leave UHL. In …

I have only been a Member of Dáil Éireann since December of last year. In the short time that I have been here, I have witnessed the Minister and his Department do things like this at the last minute, railroad them through without giving us, as Oireachtas Members, enough time to properly consider what the implications of these changes are. This is an entirely inappropriate way of doing what the Minister is trying to do. We had a briefing this afternoon. I am very grateful to the departmental officials for giving us…

I support these amendments. They are sensible amendments and they lay out what is wrong with this scheme. Although this is legislation to lift the cap and the cap needs to be lifted, the fact is that lifting the cap alone, in combination with what the Minister is proposing here, is not enough. We know what works and we know what does not work. The end-to-end Fingal pyrite scheme has worked really well. It has been effective. It does not get talked about very much. Pyrite does not get talked about much any more here…

It is not at all clear to me what this amendment will do because this is something that I have dealt with in my constituency with one of my constituents whose property is a semi-detached house and the house next door does not meet the damage threshold. I do not even know how the Minister will realistically get builders to do this work. It is incredibly complex. It involves essentially splitting something that in essence cannot be properly split because what is in one block has to be in the adjoining block and the d…

Certain.

I want to go back to something Deputy Ó Broin said earlier. It goes to the point I am trying to make. I am dealing with a constituent at the moment who is in a semi-detached house. She has met the damage threshold but the house next door has not. If she can be included in the scheme and the house next door has been told it does not meet the damage threshold, by what mechanism under what is proposed tonight can they access the scheme?

I support the amendment from Deputy Ward. I too tabled an amendment about the arbitrary deadline of 29 March. I understand why the amendments were ruled out of order, because they place a charge on the Exchequer but the Minister needs to look at this again because the deadline is arbitrary. It is bad enough that the Government took a year to come up with what is simple legislation to lift the cap. Why did the Minister come up with the date of 29 March? Was it to coincide with the SCSI report? Surely the report woul…

I congratulate the Minister of State on her uplift to higher office. I welcome this Bill. I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak on it and more broadly in support of the arts, one of the most powerful forces shaping our culture, society and reputation around the world. The success of the Irish film industry is something we in the Labour Party are very proud of. It was Michael D. Higgins, as Minister for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht, who established the Irish Film Board way back in 1993. He had the foresig…

This decline is not sudden; it is the cumulative result of years of neglect. In the time I have available to me, I want to talk about the fantastic work being done in my constituency by Film in Limerick, which is an initiative of Innovate Limerick that provides valuable local supports and acts as a point of information and contact for film in the region. We had a film lab that launched in Limerick last July, bringing 18 producers from Ireland, Canada and Scotland together. We really need to see a return of the regi…

Hear, hear.

That is our-----

I am proud to stand here today as a Labour Party TD to close this motion. I commend Minister of State, Deputy Buttimer, on his very thoughtful and heartfelt contribution. It really reminded me why we are here and why we do what we do, especially compared to some of the contributions we heard before it. However, I am disappointed that this debate is coming to a conclusion at 11.45 a.m. I am disappointed by the nature of some of what Deputy Cullinane said. I am disappointed that Sinn Féin has not used its full speaki…

Hear, hear.

Gabhaim buíochas leis an Aire. After months and months, we finally have the Government's new flagship housing plan. After almost a year in office, we finally see how the Government hopes to bring an end to the housing catastrophe in this country. However, what did we get? We got very little. We got, essentially, an admission of failure and a total and complete lack of any vision or ambition. We got a plan that scrapped targets, provides no serious pathway to secure affordable homes for ordinary people and is not am…

As far as I understand it, the position at the moment is that the 2000 Act is still partly in force and the 2024 Act is only partially commenced. My understanding of this is that section 4(6) of the 2024 Act allows the Minister, by regulation, to modify any provision of the Act if there is a difficulty with bringing it into operation. Such regulations cannot be made more than three years after the relevant provision has come into operation. The unspoken assumption is that problems can only be identified in the proc…