Cathal Crowe
Clare · Fianna Fáil · Ireland
“The Oireachtas education and youth committee, which I chair, recently compiled a report on school meals. It is a fantastic scheme led out by our colleague, the Minister, Deputy Calleary, and was hugely supported by the Minister, Deputy Foley, when she was at the Department of education.”
“If I can illustrate what imbalanced regional development looks like in the aviation realm, tomorrow, starting early in the morning and right up to about 9.30 p.m., 13 direct flights will depart from Dublin Airport heading to Amsterdam Schiphol, which is recognised as one of the principal and most important European airport hubs.”
“Although it is not in the spine of this legislation, I think there need to be addendums and a new national aviation strategy brought in in the autumn, because the current one is outdated and deals with a time, pre-pandemic, when aviation was going well. It has floundered since and recovered since.”
“There have been some major events in Irish aviation over the past four or five months while this legislation was evolving. I believe there was scope for those to be added in by way of miscellaneous provisions. Perhaps the Minister might bright other legislation before the House in due course.”
“We now need to get to a point where Shannon Airport's and other airports' primary radar and secondary radar are protected by insisting that all wind energy zonings within a five- to eight-kilometre radius must be removed. It is not safe. It has been deemed that by the aviation regulator and by AirNav Ireland.”
“In nearly every Government decision, whether it is on the provision of healthcare, housing, water or sanitary services, there is usually a reference to balanced regional development and other hubs outside of the capital. There is not in this legislation.”
The complete record
Every one of 389 lines we hold for Cathal Crowe, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 6 of 8.
“Amendment No. 2 in the names Deputies Clarke, Cullinane and Ó Murchú arises out of committee proceedings. Amendments Nos. 2, 3, 5, 34, 39, 49, and 121 to 133, inclusive, are related and will be discussed together. Does Deputy Clarke wish to speak to these amendments?”
“I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Butler. Amendment No. 1 in the names of Deputies Clarke, Cullinane and Ó Murchú has been ruled out of order. It was previously rejected in a committee of the whole Dáil.”
“The Select Committee on Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science has completed its consideration of the following Revised Estimate for public services for the service of the year ending on 31 December 2025: Vote 45 - Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science. The Select Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation, and Taoiseach has completed its consideration of the following Revised Estimates for public services for the service of the year ending on 31 December 2025: Vote 1 - President's Establishment; Vote 2 - Taoiseach; Vote 3 - Attorney General; Vote 4 - Central Statistics Office; Vote 5 - Director of Public Prosecutions; and Vote 6 - Chief State Solicitor's Office.”
“Tá Roghchoiste na Gaeilge, na Gaeltachta agus Phobal Labhartha na Gaeilge tar éis a bhreithniú a chríochnú ar na Meastacháin Athbhreithnithe seo a leanas i gcomhair seirbhísí poiblí le haghaidh sheirbhís na bliana dar críoch an 31 Nollaig 2025: Vóta 42 - An Roinn Forbartha Tuaithe agus Pobail, agus Gaeltachta, clár D - an Ghaeltacht.”
“The Select Committee on Transport has completed its consideration of the following Revised Estimate for Public Services for the service of the year ending on 31 December 2025: Vote 31. The Select Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade has completed its consideration of the following Revised Estimates for Public Services for the service of the year ending on 31 December 2025: Votes 27 and 28.”
“In light of that ESRI report, which overwhelmingly identifies the need for new hospital beds and new hospital environments, some of that data needs to be fed into nursing home care. Do we have enough nursing home beds and facilities, public and private, going forward? We already know what the answer will be. Let us see it and let it lead public policy. I wish the Minister of State well in his role during the lifetime of this Government.”
“On staffing stability, as recruitment embargoes in various areas of the HSE begin to lift, there is a real fear in the voluntary not-for-profit nursing home sector that it will begin haemorrhaging some of the nurses brought in from overseas who will leave and migrate to the HSE, having gone through all the paperwork and rigamarole of bringing them in on visas and training them up to the highest standards of Irish healthcare. The Minister of State needs to have eyes on that scenario. The Minister of State's colleague, the Minister for Health, Deputy Carroll MacNeill, has directed HIQA to look at the ESRI report when it examines the University Hospital Limerick capacity for emergency care.”
“In the previous Dáil, Milford hospice in Limerick, which is a cause and a hospital close to the Minister of State's heart, my heart and the hearts of most people in the mid-west moved over to a section 38 organisation. That was transformative and incredible. It no longer has to go around shaking the biscuit tin, trying to collect money and holding fundraiser after fundraiser. It now has a direct line of funding that means it can get down to the real high quality care it provides. More of that needs to happen.”
“I know that creates other huge problems for healthcare, such as where do the residents go and how do we provide for their needs? That is the ultimate sanction HIQA has over them. It should not be a roll-over after an inspection and that it will see how they have improved the next time. It needs to use the ultimate sanction sparingly, but in scenarios like this it should have been used. As others have said, State-provided care, or the old county homes as people call them, such as St. Joseph's in Ennis and St, Camillus's in Limerick, which a lot of people in my area would go to, provide quality care. The State should be more involved.”
“I welcome the opportunity to speak in these statements. Like everyone, I was appalled by what I saw on the "RTÉ Investigates" programme. The flood of emails and phone calls that came in the following day from sons and daughters of elderly people who are in nursing home care, fearing that HIQA does not have eyes correctly on the situation in many scenarios. I agree with others that it has unfairly tarnished best-practice healthcare for older people. Sometimes the reaction to these things is rightly an outpouring of anger, frustration and huge upset, but sometimes that spills over into painting all with the one brush, which is not the case. It is important that when HIQA identifies areas of non-compliance and neglect, it uses the ultimate nuclear option to shut down some of those facilities.”
“It does not refer to any of the new forms of aviation. I thank the Minister for recently visiting the University of Limerick, where he saw how aviation and undersea robotics are advancing. I hope that is an area on which he will give further leadership within his Department.”
“I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this discussion. As other speakers said, it is important that we move in the near future to full membership of CERN. It is an incredible organisation at the cutting edge of science. The health sciences showed us during the Covid years how important it is for countries to work beyond international borders. Scientific questions, health problems and crises no longer follow the linear boundaries of nation states but move far beyond them. If we are to advance scientific causes further, we need to work on a transnational basis with European partners and organisations like CERN. In realm of cutting-edge science, we saw during the previous Dáil term Ireland's first satellite launch into space. Yet, the national aviation policy still speaks of things like commercial air traffic and cargo traffic.”
“I will continue my personal efforts in the Dáil to speak up and stand up for the people who are suffering unimaginably in Gaza.”
“I want to see a united Ireland, and I yearn for the day when there are no more British military personnel on this island. I want to see continued peace in our nation in accordance with the Good Friday Agreement. The next time I speak on any of these matters, I will use a better prepared speaking note that accurately conveys what I wish to say rather than speaking off the cuff and causing unintentional hurt and offence. I ask Members to please accept the bona fides of what I am saying. I made a mistake. I was wrong and I apologise. Those who know me a long time know my interest in history, republicanism and campaigns for justice for all who have suffered. The focus of yesterday’s debate was Gaza, and we need to get back to that. While a lot has been done by the Irish Government, I feel that the international community could do more.”
“Many Members will remember the boycott I led in early 2020 to oppose a planned State commemoration of the Royal Irish Constabulary. I know that the British armed forces have been involved in many heinous attacks on Irish people historically, including Bloody Sunday in Croke Park in 1920, the massacre of 26 civilians in Derry’s Bogside in 1972 and the countless other actions in recent history and further back for which they are responsible. My family also suffered at the hands of British military in the past. I make this apology entirely of my own volition, and it is genuine. My apology is to the victims of British state terror and atrocities. My apology is also to those who care about Irish history and the accuracy with which it should be conveyed.”
“I wanted to convey the magnitude and the visceral hatred which has been behind the Israel Defense Forces' actions in Gaza. I also wanted to convey the huge disproportionality the Israeli state has adopted following the reprehensible Hamas attack on 7 October 2023. Regrettably, speaking largely off the cuff, I clumsily and wrongly stated that they “never retaliated by bombing or shooting the civilian population of Ireland.” Let me be clear. It was not my intention to say this. I did not realise how woeful all of that sounded until late last night when I received the transcript of what I actually said. It was a genuine slip-up on my part, but it was wrong. I wish to unequivocally and profusely apologise. I studied history in college and taught history in the classroom. I am a republican.”
“I wish to clarify a speech I made yesterday in the Dáil, correct the Dáil record and apologise profusely to anyone who may have been offended by my comments. The speech I made was during the debate this House had on Gaza. I was speaking without a scripted speech and instead using a series of bullet points. I began by stating that the Israeli eye-for-an-eye approach has been reprehensible and that the bombing of hospitals, schools and tents alongside the killing of babies, including newborn babies in hospitals amounts to genocide and ethnic cleansing. I then wanted to make the point that brutal, bad and all as the British armed forces have been on this island for a very long time, they never resorted to sending over the Royal Air Force, tanks and missiles to pummel Irish cities.”
“Last year, one quarter of all presentations at UHL were County Clare people. I hope the report will come out soon and be positive. Is there any detail the Taoiseach can share with us today?”
“I thank the Ceann Comhairle for the leeway; I was chairing a committee. I want to ask about the HIQA report into emergency care in the mid-west region, in particular University Hospital Limerick. The report was commissioned early last autumn and is due to come to the Government by the end of this month or possibly early next month. Is there any update on that? When might we know the outcome? There will surely be a recommendation that UHL needs to be beefed up with more beds and investment. That would be a good thing, but my concern as a Clare TD is that peripheral areas in north and west Clare are a long way removed from what is dubbed the golden hour of healthcare. I would like something to be done about developing emergency care in County Clare because the golden hour does not exist for some people.”
“Looking at the CVs of several Cabinet ministers, they are children of survivors of the Holocaust. They should understand better than anyone what genocide, the loss of life, the weaponising of food and the killing of children involve. They do not. What is happening at the moment is disgusting. It is the genocide of our time. While the Irish Government is doing a lot, the European Union can do an awful lot more. I ask the Minister of State to take that message from this House to Europe that we need to move en bloc and it needs to be in the realm of sanctions next time, not just debates in the Chamber.”
“The European bloc was very quickly able to combine and impose sanctions on the Putin regime following the declaration of war on Ukraine but there does not seem to be that same unanimity when it comes to Gaza. Ireland is doing a lot but the European bloc can do an awful lot more. I am delighted that the occupied territories Bill will finally be enacted. The progression of that needs to be swift. It needs to include services. However, while it is important, it is a small quantity of goods and services in the overall scheme of trade in the European Union. What is really needed is that we have sanctions on Israel by the European bloc of nations, not just a stand-alone occupied territories Bill adopted here in Ireland. Others have spoken of this. I, too, studied history in college. The Israeli people have a very tragic history of their own.”
“The 7 October terror attacks on Israel are to be condemned outright but the eye-for-an-eye approach adopted by the Israeli state since has been indefensible. The bombing of hospitals, schools and tents and the killing of children and babies, including newborn babies in hospitals, is reprehensible. It is the worst we have seen in our lifetime. What is happening is not a war anymore; it is ethnic cleansing, genocide and, more recently, the weaponising of food. The British army was a bad actor on this island for many centuries but even in the worst of days, when its cities were being bombed by the terror organisations of the IRA, it never retaliated by bombing and shooting the civilian population of Ireland. It is important that the European Union move more in step.”
“It is the same in Limerick and most big cities where there are tidal rivers. Local authorities could do more. Maybe a little nudge from Deputy O'Sullivan, as Minister of State, asking them what they are doing might prompt some of them to take action. Legislators should not be conducting business by putting out embarrassing little tweets. The following morning, you see local authority staff cleaning up the river. That is not how it should be done; it should be done on a proactive basis, not a reactive one. Best of luck to the Minister of State.”
“The same applies in Dublin. Just as you go over the little cast-iron bridge at Heuston Station, you see the river is full of litter of all sorts. We may care about everything in the sky and everything that grows on land but we should also be looking at what is in our waters. It would be great if the Minister of State could write to some of the local authorities and ask them what they are doing to make sure that riverbeds are kept free of the debris and junk that are particularly visible when the tide is out, that whatever settles in the silt is taken from it and that biodiversity and nature can thrive again. All the junk in the river looks pretty ugly to tourists on the quayside at Heuston Station, Dublin. I do not know if our counterparts responsible for the River Thames in London or the River Seine in Paris would tolerate it.”
“Also on trees and the lack of biodiversity, in the 1980s people in Ireland became obsessed with the cypress tree. They are ugly, sprawling, green conifer trees that were very problematic during Storm Éowyn. It is time that we banned these trees. They are not a native species and they take over. Some say they can become invasive in woodlands, and they do not offer any biodiversity. They are damned dangerous when there is a storm or high winds blowing. In the past year, I tweeted on a couple of occasions about how dirty our riverbeds can be when the tide goes out. I tweeted to Limerick city council. The tweet was a little embarrassing. It showed that, down in the depths of the river, there were trolleys and old bicycles. It was not the council's fault but it does of course have a role in keeping the area neat, tidy and cleaned up.”
“I ask the Minister of State to lead an initiative in his Department to reinstate the sessile oak by growing it in nurseries again and replanting it. I am part of a local group that, in the autumn, collects some of the acorns, propagates them in little tubs and pots, and replants them in and around Cratloe. I would love to see the Minister of State lead this initiative. Why not? We do not have a big island and 600 acres is not a whole lot of land. Why not consider giving us back our heritage woods, which would far outlive the 30-year cycle of conifer trees? The latter just get felled. It is like a post-apocalyptic site when they are felled. We could have beautiful oaks that will outlast all of us and that some other generation will talk about here in many years to come.”
“Therefore, when our counterparts in Britain were debating during the First World War, the Second World War and many other significant historical events, they were doing so under a roof of sessile oak grown in Cratloe, County Clare, a very special plantation. However, if you go there now, you will see conifers, including spruce and Scots pine. All the beautiful native trees have been taken. Of the 600 acres of the plantation, only about 40 or 50 acres have the native sessile oak. Some of them are on the border of my farm. I see how beautiful they are and the biodiversity that surrounds them. When you go deeper into the forest, where there are spruces and other conifers, you see no biodiversity.”
“Best of luck to him in his role. For all the passion the Minister of State has for biodiversity, I have a passion for history. This is linked to biodiversity because, in my home parish, or just behind it, is Cratloe Woods, which was once western Europe's most famous oakland. It had over 600 acres of prime oak trees – sessile oaks, the pride of Ireland. It was a forestry plantation that the British Navy looked at with envy. It looked at the battleships it could build. Indeed, the oak from Cratloe Woods was used to build HMS Victory and the Royal Palace of Amsterdam. Most famously, it was used in the period 1840 to 1857 to put a roof over the House of Commons.”
“I am sharing my time with Deputy Cormac Devlin. Sometimes they say a Minister is well geared to his Ministry. There is no better Ministry for Deputy Christopher O'Sullivan than the one he has. I congratulate him on his new role. It is great to see him sitting on the Front Bench. Those who do not know Deputy O'Sullivan, or Christopher as we know him on this side, should note that when he is not here in the Dáil and has done his constituency work, he will climb over ditches and go along cliff paths to do something called twitching, which I did not know was a thing until two years ago. It is nothing illegal, by the way. He goes down sea paths looking for rare birds and then photographs and documents them. He eats, sleeps and drinks biodiversity, and it is great to have him leading the associated section of the Department.”
“A lot of these people want to be at home to be able to do the school pick-up and school drop-off. During the day they should be able to work a considerable number of hours as a home help without being penalised by the taxman. Consideration of the taxation issue could free up a lot of people to work in this area.”
“The majority of them have never had respite and if we want someone to be cared for in a loving home environment, it is crucial that we look after the carer. Far too often, they are not looked after, and they quickly see their own health suffer. They are often of a similar age to the older person they are looking after. They may have health problems themselves and that all gets exacerbated the more entrenched they become in this care scenario without respite from the State. I will speak about the home support service, which is more commonly known as home help. Some 98% of people who are home helps or home carers are women. We struggle to find people to work in this area even though it is hugely funded by the HSE. I suggest that we make an adjustment for the people who work in this area. Let us look at taxation.”
“I note that the programme for Government states that the means test will be incrementally wound back across the five years of the Government's term. It should be brought forward and front-loaded to the Government's first budget in October 2025. We are going to be reducing the VAT rate on food and beverages in the autumn. That is very important but it is more important that we do this for carers. If we are going to front-load the reduction in VAT, we should front-load the abolition of the means test for carer's allowance. It should be done in the budget in the autumn, and I ask the Minister of State to fight for that. I will speak about respite, as have others. Carers are at absolute burnout. They do not get breaks.”
“It is my first time seeing the Minister of State sitting on the Front Bench. I congratulate her. She is a fine representative for Carlow and it is great to see her in the elevated office of Minister of State. I will make a few comments as part of this debate. I am glad that the programme for Government includes as a priority the abolition of the means test for carers. It is only right. It is shameful that it has taken this long for it to happen. However, I will make the point that there are currently 100,000 people in this country availing of carer's allowance. It is costing the Exchequer €1.24 billion per annum. Abolishing the means test will, of course, allow more people to qualify for the payment. It will cost the Exchequer an estimated €3 billion per annum.”
“I do not know the reasons but I am sure the Minister of State's officials can gauge that. To second some of them out or to require testers to move beyond their county and test across county boundaries in another town 30 or 40 miles away, as others have suggested, would free things up. The waiting lists in Clare are very long. This is very punitive in rural areas where we do not have the DART, the Luas or other public transport.”
“The Minister of State can imagine that, if we were to really apply the spirit of that law in a rural area, the mom or dad would have to take time off work to drive their child to college and sit in the car while they attend eight hours of lectures before driving home. It just does not work in practice. The reality is that we are criminalising many young people every day with this. I suggest that we look at a secondment system to get driving instructors into driving tester roles. I was a primary teacher for many years and, when there were gaps in our sector, people were seconded out of the classroom into the inspectorate or other roles supporting the education sector. In recent years, there seems to be a trend of testers leaving the role and going into private driving instruction. I am sure the hours are better. Perhaps the pay is better.”
“It is unacceptable. There is no public transport network and this criterion is unacceptable. It is criminalising a lot of young people who just cannot have that college experience on campus. They are living at home and using their car to get in and out. If there is a smarter or more sensible way to approach this, it is to work in tandem with the insurance sector because many insurance companies require learner drivers not to exceed a certain speed. Surely that is the way to have controls on how they drive rather than this punitive rule requiring them to always have an accompanying driver in the car with them, which is not realistic.”
“I am glad to have an opportunity to speak on this matter. I disagree with the previous speaker. I believe learner drivers should be allowed to drive without someone accompanying them in the car. I live in a rural county and west of Ennis there is no Luas line, no DART and no public transport of any significance. It is costing youngsters in the region of €600 to €1,000 per month to stay in on-campus student accommodation. They simply cannot afford it and it is not available anyway so mom and dad buy a car and get a learner permit for their son or daughter, who then drives that car to and from college every day, sometimes bringing other students who live in the catchment area to the college campus with them. We are criminalising all of these young people with the requirement that they must have an accompanying driver in the car with them.”
“If we go back two or three generations, we will see that the families of every Member of this House, even the most urban Member, come from land where there were horses and carts at one point, but we moved on. No one has a god-given right to own an animal. Certainly, if they cannot control the animal or look after it, the animal should be taken from them. The State has to get far tougher on this.”
“I raise the issue of horse control. Legislation in Ireland largely falls under the Control of Horses Act 1996. I was sent a photo by an American tourist over the weekend who visited our county. They saw a horse tethered to a metal pole outside a supermarket. This happens all around the country and it is inexcusable. The law is robust, but the enforcement is not. Nobody in this country can claim to have a cultural or traditional entitlement to own horses. If you want to own a horse, buy land, rent land or pay for a livery, but do not tie them up outside a supermarket tethered to a pole or leave them to die in a ditch with a ribcage that is hollowed out. It is happening far too often. It paints a poor picture of our country, but more so it is a poor picture for animal welfare. I asked that it be dealt with. There is no cultural tradition.”
“It appears there is not a shortage of driving instructors but there is certainly a shortage of driving testers. Some of the instructors could be brought over on secondment to do a day or two a week, perhaps in their own county or in the neighbouring county, so they could try to clear some of this backlog. That suggestion was made to me recently by the driver of a large vehicle, who said the waiting time was inordinate and has disrupted the company's logistics chain. Why not use some of these people and bring them in on secondment? I was a teacher for 14 years. When the Department of Education had a gap in a certain area, it would seek secondments to backfill the shortages.”
“It is wrong that Dublin has an 86% dominance in the aviation market and that airports such as Shannon, Cork and Knock are vying for everything else. It is also wrong that there is hub connectivity 12 times a day from Dublin to Amsterdam Schiphol while there is none from Shannon. Putting a regional development clause in that policy would be transformative in terms of bringing more flights to the west of the country.”
“I do not know whether it should be a ten-year strategy for aviation given aviation operates on a seasonal basis. So much can change from a winter to spring period. New routes get set up and some get pulled. It would be better to have a five-year plan with a midway review. I was out of breath earlier as I ran up Kildare Street and did not realise this question had been grouped. I make the point that when an airline seeks to operate a brand-new route, it applies to the Irish Aviation Authority for a slot or a permit. When that permit is lodged, it is approved or disapproved in a matter of weeks. However, Project Ireland 2040 is the bible by which this Government has set out its goals for balanced regional development in healthcare, housing and a whole load of other areas and realms. However, there is no reference to aviation in it.”
“I am sorry; I have just run up Kildare Street and did not realise my question was part of a grouping. We want to know when the review will happen. Importantly, when someone applies for a landing slot at the moment, it is solely judged through the metric of "Yea" or "Nay". It is either approved or disapproved by the IAA. We could have a regional development criterion to that application. It is unfair that 12 flights a day go from Dublin to Schiphol whereas none goes from Shannon. Hopefully the Minister can review this.”
“I heard at one point they made their way onto the desk of the then Minister, Eamon Ryan. He had concerns about the noise output of turbines. Fine, but where are they? When will we see the new guidelines? The industry is demanding them, as are the communities where planning applications have been lodged. We need detail. Will the Minister of State come to that in his response?”
“When we talk about planning, we do not talk so much about forward planning as about applications that go in for an eight-week period and result in a decision. We need to significantly beef up in all local authorities the number of people working in planning enforcement and pre-planning. There was a time when you would apply for a pre-planning meeting and a few weeks later would be called in and given a pretty good indication of whether it was a runner. That does not seem to happen anymore. Planning guidelines on wind energy are grossly outdated. I think they date back to 2008. They are not purposeful for the industry and they are not fit for purpose in terms of protecting the communities these colossal pieces of infrastructure go into. We heard time and again through the lifetime of the last Government that the guidelines were coming.”
“The cost of the scheme is €5 million and they crudely said that works out at roughly €50,000 per house to connect to sewerage and is economically unviable. That does not factor in the environmental damage that non-action involves. We will have to deliver these schemes. They have waited 40-plus years for them. Government has funded and approved them. It is time someone in the Department drove on and overrode these illogical arguments being put forward by way of resistance from Irish Water. Population targets cannot become caps. Also, in a county like Clare, where much of our road network is constituted of regional and national routes in the west of the county, we cannot prohibit people who have always lived there intergenerationally from building in those areas.”
“A package of schemes to the tune of €50 million was announced about a year and a half ago. None of them have progressed so far. I want to say on the record something that concerns me greatly. Irish Water at a high level has been briefing against the scheme. This is a wonderful scheme that needs to happen. There are many villages in our county and country unsewered. When you flush a toilet, it percolates somewhere into a drain and ends up in a local stream, river or lake. That has to stop. Broadford and Cooraclare are two villages in my county that were selected for this pilot scheme. I have overheard senior officials in my company say it does not make economic sense to do that. They use the example of Broadford, which has approximately 100 houses that would benefit from the sewerage scheme.”
“It is quite different when someone is dairying; the farm is generating enough income that the entire family can work at that enterprise. It may not always be like that because it fluctuates, but the trend in suckler in recent years has been that one or two adults in the household have to work during the day and do foddering and all the other jobs in the evening. The metric by which "farmer" is defined does not work anymore and can be rather punitive. Someone with 28, 30 or 35 suckler cows needs to be able to live on their farm. They have a social need to be there. To crudely assess their social need on the basis of their income filed with Revenue in the past year does not cut it. The Minister of State, Deputy Cummins, and the Minister, Deputy Browne, need to keep a close eye on the pilot sewerage schemes.”
“There cannot be large swathes of a county where pretty much no one gets to build thereafter. Another thing I have seen creep into our county - and I think it is replicated across the country - is the definition of what constitutes a farmer has changed. In County Clare and perhaps other counties, the majority of a household's income must come from farming. In County Clare, 85% of farm families are suckler farm families. Each year, the cows calve, the calves are sold after nine months when they are weaned and the cycle continues. That is how it has gone for generations. County Clare is not dairy country so it is hard to find a family where the majority of the household income comes from a farming enterprise.”
“It would be useful for each local authority to present an audit of refusal reasons across a defined period, maybe a two-month period, and that this be brought into the Department by way of analysis. Some refusals are applications that should never have been lodged in the first place, people who did not qualify to build in areas. However, like the last speaker, I can say that in the part of County Clare in which I live, the predominant amount of land is designated as being under urban-generated pressure. It means unless you are born or bred in, or have a social link to, the area, you will never get to build. If we are looking at population increases and urban growth, then what we define as an urban-generated pressure area also needs to change by virtue of that.”