Micheál Martin

We are obviously talking about the next school year. As I said earlier in respect of Our Lady of Good Counsel, no school should lose close to six SNAs in one fell swoop or one decision. I have communicated that to the NCSE. I said it to both Ministers as well when we discussed this. Everyone acknowledges that it is too severe an impact. It is probably because there have not been regular reviews of…

Sorry, we are increasing the number of SNAs. There will be no cuts to the number of SNAs in our school system, no SNA will lose his or her job and no SNA will be taken from any school in this school year. Those are the fundamentals. It is important that needs are reviewed and assessed on an ongoing basis. That is logical and that is the way it should be. For the next school year, we will be at 25,…

I met with the Before We Die campaign group and we had a very good discussion. These are very serious issues. There needs to be stronger co-ordination between local authorities, section 39 bodies and Government Departments, particularly the Department of housing and the Department of disability. I am placing it on the agenda of the next Cabinet subcommittee meeting with a view to creating a struc…

Between the local authorities, Government and the approved housing bodies, we should be able to create a structure that is proactively supporting families in this situation.

I think the Deputy asked me about this last Wednesday.

I have spoken to both Ministers. The Minister for public expenditure, Deputy Chambers, will be back to me fairly shortly on this and we will try to get it resolved. I do not have a date yet.

There was always contingency funding within the Department of Transport in terms of damaged roads as a result of flooding. There was a lot of damage as a result of the recent flooding, and we have made it very clear, through the Department of Transport, to say to the local authorities that they should get on with doing the roads that have been damaged, specifically by the flooding. They should not…

I will talk to the Minister with overall responsibility for An Post. I do not have the specifics of the case here yet but I will certainly talk to the Minister to see what can be done.

I propose to take Questions Nos. 1 to 19, inclusive, together. The Department of the Taoiseach tracks the delivery of actions committed to by Government Departments in the climate action plan and publishes quarterly progress reports. The progress report for quarter 1 of the Climate Action Plan 2025 was published in July 2025. The latest progress report was published in January and is available on…

I thank all of the Deputies who asked questions. There were quite a number. Deputy Byrne raised the issue of the offshore wind clearinghouse and the private wires Bill. The offshore wind clearinghouse is where we bring in the industry to meet Departments and regulators to discuss generic issues. It is not specific to any company but is to cut through a lot of the to'ing and fro'ing and ask what th…

We are not going to build interconnection just like that. We have interconnection but there is a problem with it. There are threats to it. Guess who is a threat to it? Russia. I know Deputy Murphy probably does not believe that. There is a naivety in his approach to Russia. He always sees the US as the aggressor. Anyway, we will not go into that.

There is an issue there. We have been warned about it. We have to act on that warning. We have an obligation to people, jobs, the economy and society to heed that and that is why that is going ahead. We have made a lot of progress. The population has increased by 50%. We have grown our economy very substantially over the past two or three decades and our emissions are coming down. We have success…

In fairness to Sinn Féin members, they have the capacity to speak out of five sides of their mouths at different times on policy issues. I do not mean that personally; I am talking generally.

It is extraordinary. The retrofitting programme could not be done without the funds that come from the carbon tax.

Some 240,000 houses have been retrofitted as a result of that programme over the past number of years. We have transformed retrofitting, we have transformed ACRES and environmental farming supports compared to what was there. Some 40% comes from the European Union and Sinn Féin has had an on-off relationship with Europe as well.

You are against it all the bloody time.

I agree with Deputy Conway-Walsh on the Skillnet project. Bord na Móna is a transformative State agency. It is a great example of how to go from being a contributor to probably making one of the better contributions among State agencies to the climate change agenda and to addressing climate change. There will be further economic dividends arising out of the transformation Bord na Móna has undertak…

I thought Deputy Tóibín's comments on former Minister, Noel Dempsey, were not really warranted because no matter what-----

No matter what Deputy Tóibín's perspective is, I think he was a very effective Minister nationally.

Yes, and it is going to happen.

It is not 42 years. To nail it all on Noel Dempsey is a bit rich.

In fairness, that project is progressing and will happen because of this Government and the previous one, in particular, and because we are in the position to allocate money to it and get it going. That is an important point as well in terms of the scale of the investment that will be required.

I would think Deputy Tóibín would pay tribute what the former Deputy and Minister, Noel Dempsey, did for road safety. He was a singularly impactful Minister in that regard. He saved a lot of lives, even though many in the House at the time disagreed with him on the measures he took. Deputy O'Hara spoke about wind energy guidelines. I will engage with the Minister. I am hoping he will have those b…

I get you. I hear you. Flexibility and funding is a great line.

Energy prices are not just an Irish issue but are European one as well. In fact, we discussed it at the informal competitiveness council last week and it will be discussed at the March European Council and the President of the Commission will be bringing some ideas around that. We tackled that a number of years ago. The problem is the connection to the price of gas. Renewables should decrease. Ren…