It is great to see Senator Brady in the role of Acting Leader. I wish him the very best of luck with it. I also pass on my condolences to the family of Seamus Carroll and all his friends here. It is very sad news. Suaimhneas síoraí dá anam. I want to speak in solidarity with the 100,000 public sector workers who are on a work to rule today. Many employees in this House will be affected by this. There are 19 unions involved, including the largest unions in the country, namely, SIPTU, Fórsa, Unite, the Irish Nurses a…

Tá fáilte roimh an Aire Stáit. I too am a member of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Transport. As my two colleagues outlined, we have had many meetings in this regard. I counted 11 such meetings. A huge emphasis has been placed on this. To be honest, the Minister of State has appeared before the committee a good few times more than most, and we are all grateful for that. The committee has heard from union and road haulage representatives, rehabilitation and victim advocacy groups and PARC. The list goes on. These…

The Minister of State is very welcome. I welcome Deputy Charlie Ward. He has informed me. I would be asking the stupidest questions about all levels of what is going on in Donegal. I also welcome Councillors Joy Beard, Ali Farren, Tomás Seán Devine and Denis McGee. I am someone who is new to politics and Deputy Ward gave me an awful lot of time explaining things in a very humble and generous way. That can be seen right throughout these Houses in a very considerate and respectful way. He was very willing to work wit…

I also want to speak about the Garvaghy Road. I lived and worked up North and many of my friends lived and worked around the Garvaghy Road. They lived around Portadown and were traumatised back in the late 1990s, and are still traumatised by the horrific and brutal violence that surrounded the Orange marches around that time. The community of the Garvaghy Road has the right to live free from sectarian violence and domination. They do not want to be sucked back in to polarisation and division. It is a violation of t…

Cuirim fáilte roimh an Aire Stáit. I thank the Fine Gael Senators for giving us the opportunity to speak about this today. We all know that energy and fuel costs are increasing rapidly as a consequence of war and conflict. An unnecessary war of choice has to be named as the number one cause of current fuel inflation around the world. There is a normalisation of war, which our President has spoken about so much, and we are accepting the normalisation of war. As a result of that, we can see the direct impact on price…

They are not.

I want to raise the conversation here and approach the Minister to look at independent radio and the funding of independent broadcasting. I met with representatives of Ocean FM, Shannonside FM and Midwest Radio. The service they provide, particularly in rural areas, is second to none. They are providing a public service, particularly regarding deaths, political coverage, current affairs, school closures and sport. They promote Irish music all the time, particularly local music. They have been hit with a 39% increas…

Cuirim fáilte roimh an Aire Stáit. I have spoken to her before about this issue. At the beginning of September, RTÉ's "Liveline" programme spent three days discussing the matter of dense breast material. The Minister of State might have heard it because it got huge coverage. It is something I have raised before in this Chamber, not only as a woman but as a representative of Sligo. I first became aware even of the existence of dense breasts with the tragic death of a Sligo woman named Marian Lovett. To give an outli…

I thank the Minister of State for being so responsive. No one is disputing this, and we are totally in favour of extending the BreastCheck to both sides of the existing age range. It is a wonderful service and it is picking up many cancers. If someone has dense breast tissue it does not appear often as a lump. It is like a spider web and women are not feeling it. They have been encouraged to check their own breasts. If they have dense breast tissue, it is not showing up as a lump. At the moment we are not even look…

Yesterday, there was a report by the National Youth Council of Ireland, NYCI, that found that seven out of ten young people feel they want to leave Ireland. Those figures are not just a lifestyle choice, which is very obvious from the research it did. It previously carried out research that found that nine out of ten young people feel the employment opportunities are not there for them, which is a shocking statistic. The NYCI did that report and I hope it will be considered in the budget. We could have a debate aro…

Cuirim fáilte roimh an Aire. I thank the Fianna Fáil Senators for bringing the motion forward. I know how committed the Minister is to this area and to education in general. We have to welcome all of the positive developments we have seen in the early years sector but we must not exaggerate the positives at the expense of reality. On the ground, providers, educators and parents are still facing problems with accessibility, affordability and sustainability. As outlined in the motion and as everyone has brought up he…

I also want to be associated with the expressions of sympathy today, particularly to my colleague, on Helen. Suaimhneas síoraí dá hanam dílis. I welcome the transition year student who is on placement with me from Summerhill College in Sligo, who is very welcome. We are going to be speaking about budget submissions. I went to the recent ESRI report conference about poverty, income inequality and living standards. The question of how we measure poverty came up. The Taoiseach was disputed or there was confusion about…

All of us were probably at the IFA briefing yesterday. When they gave us the briefing document I saw that it was exactly the same as the one last year and I wondered whether it had got anything it looked for. I was told not really, apart perhaps with regard to areas of natural constraint. I would like a debate on these, which affect farmers where I live. Is there any possibility we could have debate on this? As we all know, farming is different in different areas of the country. The areas of natural constraint paym…

I have called this a Trojan Horse in the House before. This week, a new version of Homer's Odyssey is being released in cinemas nationwide. It is the tale of Odysseus's protracted journey following the end of the Trojan War. We all know the Trojan War ended when the cunning Greeks infiltrated the fortifications of Troy using a horse that was filled with Greek warriors. I know we might not have been talking about this, but this is a Trojan Horse. To say that the gas is for emergency use is an absolute Trojan Horse. …

I will speak to amendment No. 15. If the stated intent of the FSRU is for it to be an emergency reserve, then the logical thing to do is to put it into public ownership. There should be no question that this will go to private providers. There is no room at all for commercial operators to make a profit out of this really dangerous gas. If we are going to end up with it as a reserve - I do not think it is a reserve - can we make sure it stays in public ownership and legislate for that? The Minister of State told us …

I am sorry but I just do not buy the argument that it is security. A floating LNG storage facility in Qatar was blown up. It is actually more of a risk to our security to have a floating LNG terminal. This whole thing is mad. Paul Griffiths, CEO of Predator Oil and Gas, publicly said 12 months ago that he would not live near an LNG terminal. He said, “Accidents can happen, so keeping facilities well out of the reach of habitation is vital”. He went on to say, "There’s like a one-in-1,000 chance perhaps of an accide…

I move amendment No. 3: In page 8, after line 39, to insert the following: " "hydraulically fractured gas" means liquefied natural gas, or natural gas in any other form, that has been produced, in whole or in part, by means of hydraulic fracturing within the meaning of section 5A of the Petroleum and Other Minerals Development Act 1960;". A definition of fracked gas or hydraulically fractured gas is required to accompany a reiteration of the ban that was introduced on fracked gas and which is necessary to protect o…

The Minister of State recognised that there was a grassroots movement and the documentary "Groundswell" captured it. There is also the documentary "Gasland", which was made in America and came out in 2010. We know it is going to come from America. Again, this is the Trojan horse. We know that if it is going to be LNG, it is going to be fracked gas and it is going to come from America. We know that it does have to be vented. The majority of LNG is methane and is 80 times more warming than carbon dioxide. It is 33% m…

Some €900 million is to be spent on the development of these. It is a lot of money to be investing. If it is going to be temporary why not invest it in renewable energy that is not going to be temporary? Nine hundred million euro is a lot of money.

With amendment No. 28, which we have submitted, we would replace the existing section 33 with a new section. We are spelling out the hard-won protections of the climate Act. This is the third time that the Government has adopted anti-climate policy. There is the Critical Infrastructure Act, the Dublin Airport (Capacity) Bill and now this legislation. The Government does not want to go down as the anti-climate Government, but there is risk of that happening if these protections are not put in. We tabled these amendm…