Brian Stanley

I appreciate what the Minister has said about the ones being provided by developers. The Tánaiste in reply to me said a lot will be provided by developers. It is okay if this can be done but the Minister and I know that Uisce Éireann is reluctant to take in charge infrastructure provided by developers. I can show the Minister an example in Laois which has been held up because of this. There has be…

Family resource centres around the State do fantastic work but are under significant pressure due to rising costs and increasing demands on their services. The level of core funding is simply not keeping pace with their escalating overheads. Portlaoise and Mountmellick family resource centres are providing vital services to families that are making a real difference with services, including parent…

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this but it is a bit of a charade. It is my 16th year here and year after year, we come in here and it is renewed by Government. The Offences against the State Act was first introduced in 1939. There was an emergency then; there was the Second World War. The fact is that this is renewed annually now, 89 years later. That is a cause of great concern. Numerous …

I welcome the fact that these proposals are before the Dáil tonight. Only a few short weeks ago, I brought similar proposals to the floor of the Dáil and to Deputy Micheál Martin and set out a lot of what is in this motion. However, it is good that we are here and that parties are getting behind this. I have raised these issues with successive Ministers for Health: James O'Reilly, Leo Varadkar, D…

Over the past week or so the Tánaiste has been very critical of county councils which he said think they have "done enough" on housing. He said, “There’s too much sluggishness in parts of the system, in terms of zoning land." Laois cannot be counted as one of them if one looks at what it has done on zoning this week. It has exceeded the Department of housing's targets. We need more affordable and …

I have to say to the Tánaiste that the Minister, Deputy Calleary, the Minister, Deputy Browne, the Minister of State, Deputy Cummins, and the Minister, Deputy Carroll MacNeill, have all been in the constituency. It is kind of like an election year, but it is good to see them all down there. The Minister of State, Deputy Cummins, was the only one who did not tell me he was coming. Yes, funding has…

He was a conservative man but he came up with a very practical solution regarding the cost of land.

The cost of land is one of the things driving up the cost of housing. The Government needs to go back again and look at this.

A 23-year-old woman from Portlaoise was not diagnosed with scoliosis until she was 17 due to inadequate services. She had surgery last December and four weeks later developed tremors in her leg, which have affected her ability to walk meaning she has to use a rollator or a stick. Her condition has worsened. She has serious mobility problems. She is facing a four-year wait for the Mater neurologica…

The question with this Bill, as with previous ones, is: will it help families, particularly low-and-middle income families, to access affordable and secure accommodation? I have particularly in mind those in private rented accommodation. The concern is that the Minister of State is bringing in further measures and amendments to what was brought in in March. That was one of the most far-reaching Bi…

I thank the Social Democrats for bringing forward this comprehensive motion. Football is very important and I certainly do not want to be stopping any sport but there are other things that are more important. It is important that the slaughter that we have witnessed in Palestine, not just in the past two or three years, but going back over generations, is stopped. Medics, journalists, families and…

People up and down the country, and certainly people in County Laois, are infuriated by the war crimes carried out by Israel and what it has got away with: the illegal occupation of Palestinian lands, the genocide and slaughter we witness on our television screens evening after evening, the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian West Bank, the occupation of southern Lebanon, the massacre of Lebanese …

There are some good parts in this Bill but I have some serious concerns as well. The decision in the 1990s to remove the power of the Comptroller and Auditor General and indeed direct accountability of RTÉ to the Committee of Public Accounts was a huge mistake by the Government at that time. During the four and a half years when I was Chair of the Committee of Public Accounts, when we started look…

The debate we are having is very welcome and I thank Independent Ireland's group for putting it forward. With the economy, we have to radically reset how we are doing things and the next budget has to be different. Over €9.5 billion extra was given out last year in measures but none of it went to the disabled, the self-employed or PAYE workers. They were left out. The disabled finished up €1,400 a…

The last thing is that on government procurement, we need to get better value for money. We cannot keep spending €336,000 on bike sheds, €2.5 billion on the children’s hospital and €1.4 million on a security hut. We need to spend money better.

This is an important debate. A high proportion, in excess of 60%, of our young people go to third level. It is good that people are becoming highly qualified and are able to get quality jobs. However, there is a skills shortage and an imbalance. There is a shortage of people with construction skills and a shortage of people undertaking those apprenticeships. That was not addressed during the Celti…

I again with to raise the issue of the shortage of GPs again, particularly in the context of Laois. There is a shortage of GPs in the main towns across the county. There is a problem for medical card and non-medical card patients, including families with children. In the past few days two families tried to get a GP in Portlaoise, Portarlington and Mountmellick. One parent had to take time off wor…

The Minister was down last week. We had the opening of the accident and emergency unit but it is getting clogged with people who should be getting treated in primary care.

88. Deputy Brian Stanley asked the Minister for Rural and Community Development and the Gaeltacht to review the level of funding for local improvement roads schemes for the current year, in view of the level of demand; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [37944/26]

The local improvement scheme is very important for local roads. The local community makes a contribution of between 10% and 15%. The level of funding this year in the case of Laois dropped by €1,000. I was hoping it would be a bit more. I ask that the funding for this year be reviewed.

I think the Minister will find that with Laois not too much money comes back to the Department. It tends to get used. I agree with him about using it well. It is a 10% contribution where there are five residents or landowners or fewer and 15% where there are more than six. The funding for Laois is actually €469,000. It was €470,000 last year and nine schemes are approved locally for this year but …

In his reply the Minister said some local authorities may not use it. There may be indications throughout the year that some local authorities are not going to use it. I understand there is not an endless pot of funding and it is not down to the Department of community and rural affairs solely but in relation to this scheme, it is. I ask that where there is a surplus of funding or unused funding t…

I move: That Dáil Éireann: notes that: — Irish Neutrality has been central to the sovereignty and independence of the State, that it was first enunciated by Theobald Wolfe Tone and upheld by successive generations; — despite being a small country, our neutrality has enabled Ireland to play a positive role in international affairs; — the Defence (Amendment) (No. 2) Act, 1960 encompassed neutra…

No disrespect to you-----

-----but the Minister for Defence should be here. There is legislation planned to go before the Dáil to abolish the triple lock and, we contend, to abolish neutrality. The fact the Minister is not here is an absolute disgrace. It shows total disrespect for the Parliament.