I thank the Minister. I appreciate we are at an early stage in negotiations and they have to take a route through all of this. The budget, as I said at the outset, is the key and what most farmers are concerned about, in that we see the budget being eroded. In every CAP negotiation for the past number of decades, we have seen that happen and that needs to be very firmly fought against to ensure we keep the budget in …
TDs / Martin Kenny
Martin Kenny
Portrait: © Houses of the Oireachtas (Oireachtas (Open Data) PSI Licence) · source file
446
questions asked
Oral and written, to government departments
90,042
words spoken in the chamber
Across 358 contributions. Plus 23 contributions from the chair, not counted
389
votes recorded
Each Yes, No or Abstained in a recorded vote
103
topics asked about
Across 17 departments
From the Dáil chamber only: committee meetings are not in this archive.
What they ask about
The subject headings the Oireachtas filed their questions under.
Who they ask
The departments their questions were addressed to.
Month by month
Low months are usually recesses, when the Dáil does not sit. The archive runs to 22 October 2026.
Questions asked 446 in all
Dec 2024Oct 2026
Contributions to debates 358 in all
Dec 2024Oct 2026
Show as a table
| Month | Questions | Contributions |
|---|---|---|
| December 2024 | 0 | 0 |
| January 2025 | 11 | 0 |
| February 2025 | 8 | 11 |
| March 2025 | 35 | 18 |
| April 2025 | 23 | 20 |
| May 2025 | 42 | 34 |
| June 2025 | 14 | 7 |
| July 2025 | 19 | 14 |
| August 2025 | 0 | 0 |
| September 2025 | 26 | 5 |
| October 2025 | 13 | 27 |
| November 2025 | 20 | 24 |
| December 2025 | 19 | 7 |
| January 2026 | 29 | 29 |
| February 2026 | 22 | 51 |
| March 2026 | 39 | 21 |
| April 2026 | 23 | 13 |
| May 2026 | 25 | 27 |
| June 2026 | 34 | 13 |
| July 2026 | 9 | 19 |
| August 2026 | 0 | 0 |
| September 2026 | 24 | 5 |
| October 2026 | 11 | 13 |
Debates they spoke in most
Plus 179 contributions in the regular slots, such as Leaders' Questions and Priority Questions. Speech from the chair is not counted.
Asked about similar topics
Worked out by computer from the subject headings of each TD's questions, giving more weight to headings few TDs use. It shows shared subjects, not shared views.
Party, constituency and offices
- constituency Sligo-Leitrim 29 November 2024 to now
- party Sinn Féin 29 November 2024 to now
That is a very retrograde step and I would caution against that type of move.
Then explain it to me.
I accept that there is a proposed increase in the budget for generational renewal. The issue for many farmers is that, when programmes were put in place for them in the past, such as schemes to pension them off, these included an exclusion order. They could no longer have anything to do with the farm. They were out of it altogether and had to stay clear of it. That was a very bad proposal to put forward because the v…
Deputy Healy-Rae supported our motion in 2019.
I support Deputy Stanley on this issue. It is obviously something that has taken up a huge amount of time and energy for everyone involved. It is positive we are at a stage where there is at least the bones of a resolution in place. The key issue is that people who are involved in State boards have a responsibility to adhere to the codes of conduct or practice that are in place. The review of all this will be short, …
The reason we are here tonight is because for the past two-to-three weeks we have been listening to people the length and breadth of the country, as I am sure the Tánaiste has as well, who are under serious pressure because of the vast increase in the cost of their home heating oil but also of their fuel when they want to go to work and whatever they want to do in life. That has an impact. It has an impact on everybo…
People are very annoyed it has taken so long for the Government to come to this situation that the Tánaiste is now able to stand here this evening and say the Government intends to do something. Up until now the Government would not even acknowledge that it intended to do anything. All it intended to do was examine the situation and monitor it. What people hear when the Government says that is that it is going to wai…
That just seems a little bit-----
It just seems a little bit rich that the Government could do nothing but monitor it until this evening and now that we are here and we are actually going to produce something that will have an effect for people and will reduce the tax rate that people have to pay on their fuel and home heating oil, all of a sudden the Government has managed to find the road to Damascus. The Government has turned and is going to do so…
As the Minister and Ministers of State will be aware, we have a contraction of services across rural Ireland, and it is not just the post offices. It is other services as well. All these things go hand in glove. Across my rural community, I have seen many post offices over the past decade close. It removes that central piece of contact from the rural community. The Minister talked about the services that are provided…
Five people are occupying the offices of Bord Bia at the moment. They do not want to be there; they want this situation to be resolved. In fairness, the Irish Farmers Association, IFA, in recent days put forward a proposal to try to resolve it. The IFA has offered a suggestion to the effect that the chairperson of Bord Bia step aside while a full review of the situation takes place. Will the Government please, in the…
Deputy Mac Lochlainn spoke about the "big five" and the big corporations that are out there, which have such power. They seem to have more power than countries and certainly seem to have more power than Ireland. That seems to be what the outcome of this is. We also have to recognise that their role in all this has brought us to where we are. It is these very corporations and their greed, where they put out these mass…
We need to see an action plan. With due respect to the Minister of State, that action plan has to be driven by the very top of Government.
This has gone on for almost two weeks. The point was made earlier that it is a battle a day for the parents of children with special needs. All of us in this House know that because all of us are being contacted every day of the week by families who are trying to get an assessment of need, a place in a school or an appointment somewhere in the health service for their children but cannot get them. They are fighting c…
I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."
As the Minister of State will know, across the country, the issues facing family farms are very difficult for many people involved in farming. It has been a tradition in Ireland that most people came from a family farm. The mother, the father and maybe some of the children were involved in farm activity for a major portion of their lives and perhaps all of their liv…
I was just reading through the Minister of State's list in his statement. "The work ahead is substantial", it reads. It refers to making farming "attractive to young people". The difficulty is that young people do not see a way of getting into farming because an awful lot of them cannot afford to buy the land when it comes up, if there is land beside them, or even to lease land because the bigger you are, the longer …
I thank the Labour Party for bringing forward this Bill today. I have long been a proponent of remote working. I attended a conference in Tubbercurry in 2018 that was organised by Grow Remote. It was one of the first conferences it held about organising work in this way. It had another one the year later in Athlone. I attended both of them because I saw the opportunity that remote working offered, particularly for ru…
We are all somewhat at a loss as to how we got into this situation. We now have bluetongue both north and south of the Border. We have a major difficulty with animals moving up and down across the Border. That is a very difficult problem, particularly in my part of the world where an awful lot of the marts are experiencing a huge loss in trade because of it. Bluetongue is obviously a virus that is mainly a summer pro…
It is everyone else's fault but the Government's.
I am sure the Tánaiste watched the "Prime Time Investigates" programme on the mental health service and the catastrophe within it. The families of Natalie McGuinness and Jimmy Loughlin, both of whom lost their lives as a consequence of failures within the mental health service, appeared on the programme. Both families live in my constituency, and I have their issues here several times. Many other families who appeare…
I am dealing with constituents who are in a situation where they have loved ones who are afraid they will lose their lives because the system is failing them-----
-----and the Tánaiste stands over that system.
The programme was very clear.
The Tánaiste is stonewalling the families.