Rose Conway-Walsh

21. Deputy Rose Conway-Walsh asked the Taoiseach for an overview of his Department’s annual report for 2024. [1829/26]

I want to talk about the section of the report on building consensus on a shared island. The Taoiseach will be aware that, last week, there was the launch in Belfast of the public media Ireland report. This is the first time I have seen a report in preparation for the media around this subject. Academics from DCU and Ulster University considered what would happen to the public service media in a r…

It is unfortunate we are here discussing AI at this particular time because it forces us into a space that nobody wants to be in. At the outset, I want to talk about the benefits. If everything in the plan presented by the Minister of State is to be implemented to its fullest in a timely manner, then we will be making progress. As a party, and personally as the spokesperson on enterprise, tourism …

15. Deputy Rose Conway-Walsh asked the Taoiseach when the Cabinet committee on EU and international affairs will next meet. [1828/26]

Recent public statements by US President Donald Trump have raised the extraordinary prospect of the United States seeking to forcibly take control of Greenland, a territory of Denmark, an EU member state. Such an action, if pursued, would present a fundamental challenge to international law, the sovereignty of small states and European security. It would also have serious implications for the str…

I never mentioned Venezuela.

22. Deputy Rose Conway-Walsh asked the Taoiseach when the Cabinet committee on Government co-ordination will next meet. [72043/25]

I want to raise the issue of the lack of ambulance services, particularly in north Mayo and the west of Ireland more widely. It is a dire situation that I have never seen as bad in all of my time, where people cannot get an ambulance on time. There are incidents where people have had to travel 50 miles on very bad roads to get to the nearest hospital. When people call an ambulance, they cannot eve…

Destabilising rural livelihoods is not fair trade. It is a race to the bottom. What has happened with Mercosur is not right. We all understand trade and the necessities of it but I come from a rural community in Mayo and see the promises that have been made. We were told me must stand back and look at it in the wider context but I see what was done over the years going back to the EU directive in …

108. Deputy Rose Conway-Walsh asked the Minister for Enterprise, Tourism and Employment the steps he is taking to support small and medium enterprises facing rising costs of doing business, including energy, insurance and regulatory costs; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [64579/25]

SMEs and self-employed individuals are being crippled by the cost of doing business in Ireland in 2026. The Government is ignoring their pleas for help and rejecting every Sinn Féin proposal to alleviate their situation from our motion to tackle insurance costs to our motion to bring energy costs. I ask the Minister to outline the concrete steps his Department is taking to support these businesses…

How come the business owners I speak to every day of the week are struggling so much if the Minister is saying that so much is being done for them, as measured through the CSO's wholesale price index? That is not the reality on the ground. It is certainly not the reality in the businesses that I see every day. The SMEs are the backbone of employment in towns and villages right across this State. …

Then how come there are 848 insolvencies? That does not add up in terms of the supports for small business. I recognise that there are increased costs in wages but we cannot have a situation where workers are subsidising businesses. That is why the proposal for a PRSI rebate was put forward in our pre-budget submission to mitigate those costs, but the Minister did not take that up. Behind every …

110. Deputy Rose Conway-Walsh asked the Minister for Enterprise, Tourism and Employment to outline the measures his Department plans to introduce to correct the imbalance in unemployment rates between regional areas and urban centres; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [2418/26]

What does the Minister plan to introduce to correct the imbalance in unemployment rates between the regional areas, particularly the north and western regional area, and the urban centres? Despite the song and dance the Department and the Taoiseach made today over the strong overall employment statistics for the State as a whole last year, recent figures have revealed a growing imbalance between t…

Let us look at the figures. They are not mine, obviously; they those of the CSO, backed up by reports produced by the Northern and Western Regional Assembly, whose work in this regard I acknowledge. It is very important for us to know the picture. On regional unemployment, the CSO states that the State's overall figure for unemployment at the end of quarter 3 of 2025 was 5.3%. The northern and wes…

In that case, why are so many people moving to Canada, Australia and Great Britain? It just does not add up. If they had jobs and a place to live, they would be staying at home. The Government’s enterprise support structure and investment and skills programmes remain disproportionately concentrated in already prosperous areas, while towns and rural regions struggle to attract sustainable employmen…

112. Deputy Rose Conway-Walsh asked the Minister for Enterprise, Tourism and Employment to outline the specific North-South tourism initiatives included in the Government’s new tourism strategy; how these initiatives will support the growth of sustainable all-island tourism; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [2419/26]

We are all aware that the Good Friday Agreement established tourism on the island of Ireland as a key North-South co-operation area, and it markets the island as a single destination for visitors. Will the Minister outline initiatives in the Government’s new tourism strategy that aim to grow sustainable, all-island tourism on a North-South basis? My concern is that the plan will leave parts of our…

While I am happy to finally see a regional focus on the Government's latest tourism policy document, which aims to grow sustainable tourism in historically overlooked regions, I fear that we have missed an opportunity to integrate successful tourism campaigns from both jurisdictions. Ireland's Hidden Heartlands, for example, only recently expanded to include a fraction of County Fermanagh. While I…

I welcome the work that has been done in that area, but I want to encourage more of it, and I want to encourage it to go beyond the marketing. In particular, tourists travelling North and South still face poor public transport options. If I tried to get public transport from Mayo to Belfast, it would take me hours upon hours, and I would nearly be in New York by the time I would be in Belfast. The…

What we have seen over the past few weeks is an absolute and abject failure of the Common Fisheries Policy. Even the 1996 Hague preferences have failed. That was the very mechanism that was set up to guarantee Ireland a minimum level of fish to catch in our own waters. That is what it would have meant. However, France, Germany, Poland and the Netherlands banded together to ensure that not even a …

9. Deputy Rose Conway-Walsh asked the Taoiseach when the Cabinet committee on housing will meet next. [69660/25]

I ask the Taoiseach to consider issuing an upfront fund to local authorities, but to Mayo County Council in particular, in order that they can turn around the vacant properties they have without having to go through the bureaucratic nightmare of applying for funding from central government on a house-by-house, unit-by-unit basis. Can the Taoiseach imagine what it is like to be a homeless person in…

103. Deputy Rose Conway-Walsh asked the Minister for Defence if all protocols were followed during the incident involving five drones endeavouring to intercept the plane carrying President Zelenskyy recently; if a C70 form was completed to ensure a Garda-Defence Forces co-ordinated response; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [72042/25]