Seán Ó Fearghaíl

13. Deputy Seán Ó Fearghaíl asked the Minister for Public Expenditure, Infrastructure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation the progress made to date under NSO No. 4 of the National Development Plan 2021-2030; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [51359/26]

12. Deputy Seán Ó Fearghaíl asked the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade the actions she will take to expedite EU membership for Ukraine and Moldova; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [50086/26]

In congratulating the Minister as she embarks on our six-month Presidency of the European Council of Ministers, my question seeks to establish what she feels can be done to expedite Ukrainian and Moldovan membership of the EU. I ask this while welcoming the fact President Zelenskyy was front and centre at the celebrations of Ireland's accession to the Presidency yesterday. However, we must remembe…

It is no wonder that Cyprus would be very sensitive to territorial integrity. As the Minister said, Ireland is committed to facilitating the opening of all remaining negotiating clusters with Ukraine and Moldova in the next six months. Enlargement is a merit-based process and, as recognised by the Commission, both Moldova and Ukraine have met the technical conditions for the opening of negotiation…

I think we are disappointed that the new government in Hungary is still causing some difficulties. I appreciate the need for sensitive negotiations with that new government so that it bring Hungary fully in line with European values, which would be very much supportive of this integration. The other matter is that there is a new government in Moldova, which has worked assiduously and has achieved …

56. Deputy Seán Ó Fearghaíl asked the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade if more Irish aid will be provided to Nepal, especially to areas impacted by leprosy; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [50087/26]

I have just returned from a visit to Nepal. It was my second visit to that absolutely wonderful country. However, it is a country afflicted by dire poverty, where 20% of the population live below the poverty line. We have seen in March of this year the election of a new Government that promises to bring radical change to a country where there has been an unsettled political situation for quite som…

I thank the Minister of State for his response and sincere interest in this matter. It struck me when looking at this that 2,300 people migrate from Nepal every single day and 30% of the GDP of the country comes from remittances. There has been political chaos for a long time in a country populated by people of incredible dignity, who have an interest in education, who are committed to progress an…

I am delighted to see the Minister of State has such a sense of youth about himself. The thing that struck me as well about that recent election, when I was there to participate in a training programme organised by INTER PARES for new parliamentarians, was the huge number of young people, even younger than the Minister of State, who have been elected to that new parliament. The deputy speaker of t…

In April and May, members of the Irish Defence Forces' 1st Armoured Cavalry Squadron travelled to the Fort Benning in the US, where they achieved historic success at the 2026 Sullivan Cup, becoming the first non-American team to win the competition since it began in 2012, and this while using fighting vehicles with which they had no previous familiarity. We frequently speak here of the pride we ha…

People with far greater knowledge than I have are deeply sceptical about the number of applications that are being shown, but anyway. I want to go back to that comparison with the health service because, for me, it raises the legitimate question of whether we should be looking overseas to secure recruits. If we were to do so, we should be looking at countries where Irish Aid is active and where we…

Successive governments have been derelict in their duty to respect and properly manage the extensive national resource that is the 5,000 acres of the Curragh Camp. The Government proposes to rectify that problem with a proposal in the programme for Government to bring forward a new management structure. A year and a half into the Government, we have yet to see that. In a year in which there is gre…

I thank the Ceann Comhairle for selecting this matter for discussion. It relates to something that I find myself returning to repeatedly. While housing continues to be the number one issue in County Kildare and in other parts of the country, there is huge public anger around the manner in which the Curragh Plains are managed or not managed as the case might be. What is the Curragh? It is a 5,000-a…

I thank the Minister of State for a positive reply. We have known for some time that the Government favours the idea of the National Parks and Wildlife Service taking on the management of the plains. I am not so sure the National Parks and Wildlife Service itself is wildly enthusiastic about the prospect. It involves huge additional financial resources, and extra manpower will be needed. Kildare C…

I commend Deputy Stanley on putting down a question on this important matter. I welcome the response from the Minister. I grew up in Kildare at a time when, like many generations before me, the Curragh was a vibrant, living community. Unfortunately, in recent decades, the Department of Defence took as its policy the depopulation of the Curragh camp. Worse still, in recent years, we have seen the d…

76. Deputy Seán Ó Fearghaíl asked the Minister for Defence her plans to increase cadet pay; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [33119/26]

This question is a logical follow-on from the one posed by Deputy Stanley. It asks the Minister about action on cadet pay. I ask it against the background of the continuing crisis in recruitment and retention. It is not just a question, but a call for urgent action.

I acknowledge the Minister's positive disposition to this matter in many aspects of her response but the general secretary of RACO, Conor King, recently set out in the Irish Examiner the fact that cadets are paid far less than the enlisted soldiers they work beside in their first five years. This anomaly would be indefensible in any other profession. Cadetship is a gruelling high-intensity apprent…

I have to proudly state that those who emerge from cadet schools are people of an extraordinary calibre that we are all enormously proud of. Low pay might be tolerable if the cadetships were short or if the financial impact disappeared once training ended but under the single pension scheme, earnings are averaged across an entire career and, therefore, at the end of a career, the cadet is still be…

8. Deputy Seán Ó Fearghaíl asked the Minister for Public Expenditure, Infrastructure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation for an overview of the progress made to date under National Strategic Outcome (NSO) 10 of the National Development Plan 2021-2030; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [27479/26]

10. Deputy Seán Ó Fearghaíl asked the Taoiseach to report on his recent visit to China. [24951/26]

I am proud of what the Minister and the Government is doing in continuing the work in the past of engaging with the diaspora. When we have thought in the past about the diaspora, we have tended to talk about the kings of industry around the world and then the disadvantaged and how we might support them but in recent times, we have large concentrations of highly skilled young people who have emigra…

I congratulate the Minister of State, Deputy Byrne, on having been the person dispatched by the Government for the St. Patrick's Day celebrations in Poland. I wish to ask him if while there his meeting with Secretary of State, Mr. Niemczycki, was successful and enabled him to build on the wonderful person-to-person relationships that exist now, and existed for many years, between Ireland and Polan…

It is quite extraordinary the manner in which the relationships have developed between Irish people and Polish people. Polish people were among the first major wave of immigrants that came to work in this country during the Celtic tiger. They demonstrated a fantastic work ethic and they built a relationship with Irish people. There has been a lot of intermarriage. I think Polish is now the third m…

Could I take it that the Minister of State is very satisfied that Donald Tusk is someone who will be able to ensure Poland remains very much at the centre and at the heart of the European movement? I wish to ask also about their other neighbours. How do Polish people feel about, and are they supportive of, Moldova joining the EU? What, if anything, was said to the Minister of State about the situa…