Alan Kelly

It is the Minister's responsibility to produce the speech.

No, it is the Minister's responsibility to share it.

I have been there, done that.

Thank you, a Cheann Comhairle.

I will be sharing time with my colleague, Deputy Conor Sheehan. I do not like to criticise the Minister or his Department but bringing in a Bill in this way is crazy. There is so much in it. It is all over the place. That is why we wanted the Minister's speech. He said he spoke off the cuff. Frankly, most of the time he does.

On this occasion, he read it verbatim. The reason he read it verbatim was he has to be very careful about what he is saying on a lot of these things. From a legislative point of view, it is very tricky. This is not good practice and I am surprised at the Minister for behaving in this way in this House. This is so diverse. It includes pepper spray, community service orders, counselling records on s…

I commend my colleague Deputy Mark Wall on bringing this forward. For anyone watching us discussing a motion on congestion and the requirement for flexible work, it is absolutely ironic that a man who left his house before 6.30 a.m. is walking through the door of Dáil Éireann at 10.05 a.m. Why? It is because there were accidents on the motorway and everybody across the commuting areas of Kildare, …

It is quite obvious to me that as a country we need to go ahead and deal with the issues relating to AI, Grok and X. The Taoiseach had a high-level meeting last night with various Ministers. I commend the Minister of State, Deputy Smyth, on her work to date. I will ask the Taoiseach two questions that are outside of political rivalry in here or anything like that. Will he help me as Chair of the …

Not for sharing images.

Is the Taoiseach absolutely certain?

Perfect.

Before the Minister leaves, I commend Deputy Ward on this Bill. This should have been brought in years ago. The issues with nitrous oxide, otherwise known as laughing gas to the common man and woman, have been causing damage for years. However, what has happened in recent years is that it has become a component of criminal activity. I am sorry, but the large-scale canisters have little use in this…

I was sad to see the senior Minister leave but the Minister of State, Deputy Cummins, knows full well what I will say. It is over for him and the senior Minister when it comes to providing housing and developing the level of housing required in this country. I refer to what I predicted on 27 April 2012 in this very House. I encourage the Minister of State to go back and look at the speech. It stil…

Sympathies from this side of the House also to those affected by the terrorist attack in Sydney. There was an outstanding piece of journalism, which I keep referring to, in the Limerick Leader two weeks ago. I have in my hand the front page of the newspaper, which shows the faces of four young women who lost their lives because of the health issues in acute care in the mid-west and University Hos…

I thank the Taoiseach for that, but he has to answer the question. Will the capital allocation for the Department of Health - HSE capital spending - be increased dramatically to deliver the project? It cannot be delivered at the moment. This decision cannot be executed. It is impossible. There is not enough money there, particularly if we look at the existing commitments relating to elective hospi…

This is new.

Christmas is here.

Policing and Community Safety Authority Ireland reported on performance levels in An Garda Síochána today and has said that unfortunately, it is failing in 11 of the 18 areas the authority made recommendations in. Recruitment and retention, which we have spoken about often here, is a major issue. However, the authority complimented and pointed out how high visibility policing is working in the cap…

I hope there will not be a second college.

Okay good. I am delighted.

We only got one in the last allocation for the whole county.

Go to Roscrea and look at it. You cannot find a garda.

There are no gardaí there.

I thank the Minister of State from being here. She is from the relevant Department, and I appreciate it. That should be the norm in this House. It used to be. An exceptional piece of journalism was published last week by the Limerick Leader. The front page article spoke about the catastrophic failures in University Hospital Limerick, UHL, which we have discussed in the House. No other topic have …

I thank the Minister of State for her response and I acknowledge the improvements that have happened in UHL in the past couple of years. However, we have serious issues when it comes to staffing and high-level consultants as regards attracting them, given the situation the hospital is in. Politics has failed the people of the mid-west on this issue. I am not going to start blaming certain parties…