Simon Harris

I thank Deputy Bacik for raising this issue. It deserves a more considered response from me because it is a very important issue. We need to get it right. On foot of Deputy Bacik raising this matter, I will discuss it with the Minister, Deputy Foley. I will also discuss with her the Government's response to Patricia Carey's analysis in relation to the current scheme and the processes relating to i…

I thank Deputy Cummins for raising this issue. I am so sorry for Maud's family and Maud, and indeed the Deputy who described her relationship, which is obviously one of closeness, with the family. I am pleased to hear the Minister of State, Deputy Butler, will meet the family in relation to the ten points. I would be happy to talk to the Deputy in relation to it as well. I will certainly talk to t…

I thank Deputy Ward for raising this issue. I will speak with the Minister of State with responsibility for the OPW, Deputy Boxer Moran, today in relation to the situation. From memory, I know the Minister of State was in Donegal in recent days. I will get a brief from him, my Oireachtas colleagues and, indeed, the Deputy in relation to that visit. We had a Cabinet committee meeting on flooding y…

I thank Deputy O'Donoghue for raising the issue. I do not want to give a knee-jerk response, other than to say that I will certainly give consideration to what the Deputy said. I will also talk to the Minister, Deputy Browne, in relation to this. There is a broader issue, if I can raise it, in relation to the Deputy's question around Uisce Éireann and its accountability to elected representatives…

I am pleased Deputy Brabazon raised this matter. It is an issue that is coming up quite a lot. The Department and the NCSE tried to do something good here, which was to get ahead of things earlier this year through better planning and the like. As is often the case, however, other things happen and, through no fault of their own, not all parents were in a position to apply. Something that was abou…

I thank Deputy Ó Muirí for raising this matter. He is entirely right. Every lever and every stage of the process needs to be expedited in relation to homes, housing and getting the housing market moving. Tailte Éireann tells us that it is working to address the registration backlog through both increased resources but also improved processes. It also makes the fair point that many applications are…

I thank the Deputy for counting how many days I have been in the Dáil. I am grateful to the people of Wicklow for returning me to this House each and every time I have asked them. I never take that for granted. I work very hard for them and for this country. I think the Deputy has been here since 2016 and I am sure he tries his best for his community too. In relation to University Hospital Limeri…

I thank Deputy Daly for raising this issue. I genuinely appreciate his expert knowledge, as well as his knowledge as a TD, of health services in the west and north west. One piece of work we have undertaken as a Government is we have created regional health organisations so that we can see the full spectrum of health, population, budget and staffing. This should allow us to be much more analytica…

I thank Deputy Callaghan for her question. As is often the case, she has highlighted an issue which we need to give some consideration to. I am very conscious that in her part of the country, in my part of the country in the south east and in much of the east of the country, we saw significant rainfall over an extended period, with flooding, including of farmland, particularly in the east and sout…

I thank Deputy Daly for raising the matter of SNA provision in his own county and, indeed, Donegal. I will certainly speak to the Minister for education and the Minister of State with responsibility for special education on that point and the point he made about the interpretation or definition of significant need and how it is being applied in various schools. I will ask the Minister to come back…

I will. I am conscious that the Deputy's part of the country, as well as all the benefits he has outlined, has also produced a fair few Olympians and people who have represented our country with distinction as a result of the experience and training they have had in the water and on the sea on our south and south-west coast. From my time in the Department of further and higher education, I know th…

I note and appreciate the Deputy's work on this and his engagement with the Taoiseach. Indeed, I read his comments on the issue. We are all absolutely appalled, sickened and disgusted at the depraved - and that word does not fully capture it - conduct we are seeing in some of the Epstein files. Like the Deputy, all of us are seeing that many files are being put out with different bits of informati…

I thank Deputy Hearne for raising this. I genuinely thank Dublin Simon Community for the work it does on behalf of our country and homeless people and its advocacy. I note and take seriously the report; I do not dismiss it. I was also looking at some figures which show that 272 new HAP tenancies were created in those 16 areas in December, but I do not take from the seriousness of the issue the rep…

I thank Deputy McGreehan for raising the point. In my own constituency, I see something similar. Yes, I think it is a statement of fact to say the demographic situation in relation to primary schools might be changing but it is not equal across all parts of the country because there are some parts of the country where the population is continuing to grow very quickly and a lot of that is on the ea…

I thank Deputy Neville for raising this issue. He makes this point quite often and he is right about County Kildare and the population and the need for public services, including education, to keep up with it. The Department tells me that it basically divides up the country into what it calls school planning area levels. It looks at both enrolment and child benefit data. It updates it annually and…

I do recognise this and I thank the Deputy for raising it. I know Deputy O'Rourke's part of the country is one that has been badly impacted. We had a meeting of the Cabinet committee on climate yesterday that was dedicated to the issue of the recent floods and the impact. The Department of Transport provided an update on that. It is fair to say the damage will run to tens of millions of euro. The …

I thank Deputy Nolan for raising the issue of sulky races and making the point in relation to the current laws that exist regarding that. It is important they are enforced. I know the Minister for agriculture is working on animal welfare proposals too. The Deputy is quite right in relation to sulky races in terms of the animal welfare abuses, the abuses of horses, the lack of care for them, and th…

I thank Deputy Nash for raising this issue, which he has raised on a number of occasions. As the Deputy and the House are aware, the living city initiative is a targeted measure aimed at specific areas in need of regeneration. It offers either income or corporation tax relief for qualifying expenditure incurred in the refurbishment and conversion of qualifying residential and commercial buildings …

I agree and I want to pick up on that point around the local authorities. Although I am quick enough to criticise various local authorities on various occasions, I want to acknowledge the speed at which Louth County Council and the councils for the other three areas moved. That shows, as Deputy Nash said, the scourge that dereliction and vacancy are, and in a housing emergency. We are all aligned …

The Deputy is right that the living cities initiative is just one tool. That is fair. The derelict sites tax will be another. It is my intention to update the Government in March on the policy direction in relation to that. We are working closely on it. There are meetings, at least weekly, between my Department, the Department of housing at official level. It is, as the Deputy knows, my intention …

I thank the Deputy for the question. As he will be aware, the standard rates of stamp duty currently applying on the acquisition of residential property are 1% on values up to €1 million, 2% on values exceeding €1 million and 6% on any balance above €1.5 million. However, in May 2021, a higher stamp duty rate was introduced with the aim of disincentivising investment funds from buying up large num…

That is what we do in the budget.

Here is what we actually did. The Governments I have been part of, first, introduced a higher rate of stamp duty. Second, the Government I led when I was Taoiseach and wrote that letter increased that rate of stamp duty from 10% to 15%. Each year, as a result of taking those measures, the number of homes being acquired has fallen. It fell in 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025, and it is expected to fall in…

The policy every Minister for Finance undertakes is to review all taxation measures in the context of a budget. That is what we will do this year, as we do each year. We have already shown that we have a willingness to act and to take further policy measures to make sure the intervention was having more of the required effect. The Deputy calls them "vulture funds" because that is a loaded term. W…

I thank the Deputy for this important question. There is a wide range of measures in place to protect mortgage holders through the consumer protection framework, but it is an issue on which we must always remain vigilant. I am pleased to see that arrears over 90 days are now at their lowest levels since 2009, at 3.4% of all private dwelling house accounts. We all welcome that after the horrific pe…