Cian O'Callaghan
Dublin Bay North · Social Democrats · Ireland
“Unification presents distinct challenges that need to be carefully planned for and managed. The analysis done by Professor Doyle shows that the cost of pensions would be unlikely to transfer to a united Ireland straight away. Following Brexit, the UK and Ireland signed a bilateral convention on social security in 2019.”
“Ireland spends less than that defending a much larger territory and has decades of underinvestment to catch up on. We need increased investment, particularly in systems and technologies, including sonar and air surveillance radar.”
“I welcome this important discussion on the topic of Irish unity and its fiscal implications. It deserves analysis and fundamentally respect for the people, who will ultimately decide the future of this island. There are real challenges in any transition to unity but there are also very significant opportunities.”
“These are highly skilled jobs with union representation and apprenticeship programmes. They are of fundamental importance to the local economy and community. They should never have been left exposed in this way.”
“The Tánaiste must surely know that these exports are feeding Putin's war machine. Does he not think it is unusual that Ireland is one of the very few European countries where our exports to Russia have increased since Russia invaded Ukraine? That has been driven by the exports of alumina that have more than doubled.”
“We know from the investigation carried out by The Irish Times and the organised crime and corruption reporting project that alumina from Ireland is ending up in Russian owned smelters in Krasnoyarsk. Krasnoyarsk is Russia's only smelter producing high purity aluminium.”
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“Under his watch this is getting worse, as year after year more and more public bodies are set up but are not named as being covered. This is urgent. Surely the Minister agrees this is urgent. Every single public body should be covered by the ethics legislation. Surely there should be no more delays in that. If the Minister is not able to get his act together on the digitisation, he could always come back to it later and get it done through additional legislation.”
“When the Minister issued a press release on it this week, I was genuinely delighted. I thought this was finally coming to fruition and completion but then I read the press release and saw that was not the case. The rationale the Minister is giving is that we are going to move from a paper-based system to an online system, which is absolutely correct but at the same time, we are not able to get on with what was completed four years ago. We are in 2026 now. How does it take so long to develop a digitised system? Meanwhile, year after year, more and more public bodies escape the provisions of the ethics legislation. Is the Minister not really concerned that we now have 49 public bodies not covered by the ethics legislation?”
“Every year SIPO publishes a report saying that it needs stronger powers. The substantive work on this was completed four years ago. When are we actually going to see the heads of a Bill? When is this going to come into force or is the Minister just going to slow this down and delay it further? That is what is happening now.”
“With respect, the Minister has talked a lot about the need to speed up the delivery of critical infrastructure, which I support. Yet here he is, giving an answer about how he is slowing down this process. The statutory review was completed almost four years ago, and the heads of Bill were promised by the Minister’s predecessor, Paschal Donohoe, as almost ready in May two years ago. These processes were substantially concluded four years ago but now the Minister is saying that we need to do more. Meanwhile, the Government is setting up more public bodies year after year and the number of such bodies that escape the SIPO requirements under legislation grows year after year. We now have 49 public bodies not covered by SIPO because of the inaction of the Minister and his predecessors. It is growing year by year and that is not acceptable.”
“As the Minister knows, the ethics in public office legislation is very important in terms of public confidence in officeholders and public bodies. The review of the statutory framework was completed in 2022, almost four years ago. The heads of Bill should have followed quickly after that, yet here we are, in the middle of 2026, and there are no heads of Bill. What is causing the delay? When are we going to see the heads of Bill? We were promised two years ago by the then Minister, Paschal Donohoe, that it was almost ready.”
“The economist has given very specific advice on what the Minister and his Department need to do to correct this. We need that information and that transparency, so why are the Minister and his Department not providing it? Why is it just the same talk of how we are doing levies, efficiencies and reforms? We do not know what that means, what impact it is going to have and what the Minister and his Department are actually doing to get under the bonnet to fix this budgeting process.”
“I thank the Minister. What we are lacking here is any clear information from him or the other Ministers about what is actually going on, why this is happening, what he and his Department are going to do correct it in terms of their budgeting process and where these savings, efficiencies and reforms are going to come about. A senior economist at the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council said: A better and more transparent approach would be to: Estimate the cost of existing services based on actual year-to-date spending—not original allocations, as is the current approach Publish estimates of the change in cost of existing services, decomposed into its causes: demographics, pay, and price pressures [Then we would have transparency around this.] Only then, set and publish estimates of savings targets (following negotiation) ...”
“That responsibility lies with the Department of Public Expenditure. It went on to accuse the Minister and his Department of "bad budgeting". The Irish Fiscal Advisory Council doing that is very serious, so what is the Minister doing to address this? The council made recommendations to him on what he should do. Are he and his Department listening to the council and taking what it says on board? Are he and his Department going to change their process or will they continue to just blame the Departments when the independent body is clearly saying the responsibility lies with them?”
“I appreciate that, but this is what the Minister has been saying publicly for the past number of weeks. What I am seeking to address with him is strong criticism of him and his Department in terms of their budget allocation process. For example, the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council points out that the Minister's Department got the allocations and estimations in terms of what we would spend on doctors and nurses in the last three months of last year wrong and that every year his Department does not base its budget allocations on what was spent the year before and often reducing them back to an unrealistic level. The council said: The budgetary allocation was too low from the start. Delivering planned services on budget becomes nearly impossible if funding was never sufficient.”
“My question is related and asks the Minister what he is doing to protect public service provision in light of the levies he has put on other Departments. We keep hearing about efficiencies and reform, and we are all for that, but it is quite vague. There has been strong criticism of his budgetary process from the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council. Has he taken on board its criticisms and what changes will he make in light of that?”
“We really need the kinds of actions that we are talking about to get us out of these short-term crises. Sinéad O'Sullivan has written extensively about the need to build up the State's ability to invest in public services, capacity and renewable energy in order that we are not just having to put more money into emergency measures time and again, which, of course, reduces our capacity to be able to invest in medium- and long-term measures.”
“During the election campaign, Simon Harris promised that within 100 days of the new Government being formed, there would be a proper roadmap in place for affordable childcare in order to get the cost down to €200 a month. Of course, that was not produced. In the budget, there were no measures to reduce the cost of childcare for families. That is a massive block for families. That should have been done. There were promises, again by Simon Harris, to phase out third level fees. In the budget, the Government actually increased fees by €1,000, thereby putting families and students under even more pressure. There has been promise after promise by the Government about helping people with the cost of living. What it actually did made matters worse.”
“We would not need such high levels of income supports if the Government took the correct and necessary actions, like those taken by other European countries, to ensure that more disabled people could participate in the labour markets. It is incredible that the Government's targets for employment for disabled people in the public sector are below the current employment rate. That is an incredible indictment of the Government's record in respect of this matter, which came to light during the Estimates process in the documentation that the Government produced. It is indefensible. A great deal needs to be done to address these issues. Other measures that are needed include affordable childcare, another matter in respect of which the Government broke all its promises.”
“We need an emergency cost-of-disability payment for disabled people who, incredibly, had up to €1,400 taken off their annual incomes by the Government in the budget before this latest crisis even hit. It was an incredibly cruel move on the part of this Government to cut disabled people's incomes by up to €1,400. Having promised a cost-of-disability payment to help disabled people with the extra costs they face in both the general election campaign and the programme for Government, the Government took up to €1,400 off disabled people. That was a cruel, unnecessary decision in a country that has a lot of resources available to it. We should also be working on the more long-term measures. We have the highest unemployment rate of disabled people in Europe.”
“The Social Democrats have put forward a practical proposal for something that could be done quickly by the Government to help with this. Our solar for all plan would increase the grants available to households, because availing of the grants available in order to invest in solar panels is currently out of reach for most households. This would bring down household electricity bills and help us to meet our renewable energy targets, which would mean we would be less exposed to current circumstances and to the future shocks which, unfortunately, are going to come. I implore the Government to take on board our practical proposals. They could be implemented quickly. We need those on top of emergency measures, such as targeted energy credits of €400 to help households through the immediate crisis.”
“Spain has broken its dependency on gas in the context of electricity generation. It has put more renewable wind and solar energy in place, which means it has some of the cheapest electricity bills for households and businesses in Europe. Contrastingly, in Ireland, we have the highest electricity bills for households and businesses in Europe. Not only that, our country is one of the most reliant in the EU on imported fossil fuels. We are incredibly exposed to what is happening in the Middle East at present and to any future shocks. We are on the way to paying out billions of euro in fines for not meeting our climate targets because of the failure of the Government to invest sufficiently in renewable energy.”
“People will literally go to bed and wake up worrying about them. The Government response has been wholly inadequate. At the same time, we have to adopt a long-term approach which means that we are not just going from crisis to crisis. I will talk more about that. The Minister referred to moving towards domestic sources of renewable energy to increase our energy security, boost competitiveness and reduce the burden on ordinary people during shocks like this. The key words there are "moving towards." Fine Gael has been in office since 2011, and we still have no offshore wind at all. We had an offshore wind farm at that time, so we are actually going backwards in terms of offshore renewable energy. That is an incredible indictment of this Government. It is all the more incredible when you look at what Spain has achieved in recent years.”
“An important part of our response has to be measures to help people who are struggling to keep food on the table today and who are worrying about when it gets cold again and how they are going to heat their homes. They are making difficult, impossible choices day in and day out. Coming into the summer, there are parents who know that they cannot afford to pay for activities for their kids. Their kids' friends are able to take part in activities that cost money but they are not. There are families who know they will not be able to take a holiday. There are also families who are already thinking about the start of school at the end of August or the beginning of September and how they are going to meet costs relating to iPads, technology, etc. All of these worries gnaw at people day in and day out.”
“Ar dtús, ba mhaith liom a rá go bhfuil rudaí an-deacair do dhaoine anois. I thank Independent Ireland for bringing forward this motion and giving us the opportunity to talk about these very important issues regarding the cost-of-living pressures people are facing day in and day out. We would take a different approach to dealing with this crisis from the one outlined in the motion, because we believe it is fundamentally important that people have the emergency short-term supports that are needed and that we take action that is focused on the medium and long term in order that we do just not go from crisis to crisis. I want to talk about that more during my contribution.”
“The Tánaiste expresses the views of the House to the NTMA on a frequent basis. That is welcome but, at the same time, he is equivocating a bit. He is asking how much they profit, how much they are involved and saying that is not clear, so he is kind of sending a signal, that perhaps, as the person responsible - the Minister for Finance, the shareholder - for funds, the Government is against it, but maybe it is okay. He is equivocating so I ask him not to do that. I want him to be really clear - and I think these are the views across the House and country - that we do not want a single cent of our public money to be used in this way. Will he be clear about that and clear with the NTMA? That is the kind of support that is needed on this, not equivocations saying that maybe it is okay in some circumstances.”
“This requires action from the Minister as the shareholder, on behalf of the public, to ensure our money is not used in this way.”
“I thank the Tánaiste. I acknowledge the huge importance of the Irish support of UNRWA, the funding that is in place and the real difference it makes. I also acknowledge the Government's complete opposition to illegal occupation of Palestinian territories. However, when we are talking about the ISIF - and it has complete independence - this is public money the Government hands over the NTMA to manage on its behalf. It is fine to say the NTMA monitors this and that it is meant to be a responsible investor and is meant to worry about its reputation and so forth, but this is public money. I do not think there is any support in this House or in this country for public funds to be invested in companies profiting and operating illegally, against international law, in the occupied Palestinian territories.”
“The ISIF remains invested in companies that are profiting from illegally held Palestinian territories. More than €6 million of public money remained invested in six companies identified on the UN database at the end of 2024. Irish people do not want this. Will the Tánaiste ensure that the ISIF, which is public money, is divested fully from companies operating in illegally occupied Palestinian territories?”
“I thank the Tánaiste. Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, clearly stated, “International law says that all financial actors have to abstain from being directly linked to human rights crimes”. That applies to the financial actors and authorities in Ireland, Luxembourg and across the European Union. I welcome the Minister saying he is going to raise this at a political level. What does that mean? I welcome that he is going to raise it with the Taoiseach. Who is the Minister going to talk to and when? Will he give us details of the timeline for his plans to raise this at a political level?”
“What follow-up action is the Minister taking with the European Commission to push it into acting on this, because its response simply is not acceptable?”
“I thank the Tánaiste for his response and for the work that has been done on this. What he said earlier, in response to a different question from a different Deputy, was that while we are part of the EU, we do not simply do what it tells us. Rather, we are part of shaping what it does. Clearly, therefore, the response from the European Commission is not satisfactory and is not in line with what we want as a country. What is the Tánaiste going to do to follow up with the European Commission on this? It saying it has no plans to do anything about this simply is not acceptable. We need to do as much as possible in Ireland and more broadly in the EU to address this. We cannot have a situation where bonds are being sold in Europe that have been marketed by Israel to fund its war and genocide.”
“Israel is still issuing war bonds across the EU and using this money to fund a genocide. While our role in approving these bonds has been moved to Luxembourg, Ireland remains the home member state for Israeli bonds. We have a legal and moral obligation to do everything we can to stop genocide when it is taking place. What action is the Minister taking to ensure we are not complicit in the sale of these bonds and in implementing the recommendations from the committee's report?”
“I urge the Minister of State to take them on board, either through amendments to the legislation or, as I would welcome, if there are other ways that he can provide that information without requiring amendments to the legislation.”
“Deputy Nash referenced them, but I will refer particularly to recommendations 5 and 6 of the committee. Recommendation 5 is that the Minister for Finance provides a table outlining the value of NAMA-managed properties at time of their sale, compared to their current or most recent valuation. That would provide important information in terms of the learnings from NAMA. The committee and the Oireachtas, but also the public, should be provided with that information. Recommendation 6, which is key, is that a report be commissioned detailing a constructive and critical examination of learnings from NAMA and how to best reflect those learnings in the future operations of the NTMA, the Land Development Agency and any other relevant bodies. These are good recommendations from the all-party committee.”
“Finally, apartments and houses should never be treated as speculative assets; they are homes. Before I conclude, I want to talk about the pre-legislative scrutiny report that was done by the committee. It is relevant. Why was pre-legislative scrutiny brought in to the Oireachtas? It was brought in post the crash. It was one of the learnings from the crash to make our legislative process stronger. It is regrettable, in his opening remarks, that the Minister of State did not address the committee's recommendations. It is regrettable that six recommendations in the all-party report were not taken on board. In fact, the analysis done by the library and research service, in its excellent Bills digest, shows that the six recommendations were not properly taken on board and, in fact, four of them were not taken on board at all.”
“It is absolutely unacceptable that Ireland is still investing in companies that are taking part in this illegal occupation, and doing that through the NTMA. This Bill is about transferring NAMA into the NTMA. The Irish taxpayers do not want their money invested in companies profiting from stolen Palestinian land. The NTMA must take immediate action to fully divest from all these companies without delay. It appears that Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil seem hell-bent on repeating the mistakes of the past. The handouts for property developers are back, the tax cuts for vulture funds are not going anywhere and property prices have gone far beyond their Celtic tiger peak. Lessons must be learned from NAMA. The market will not come to the rescue of the housing crisis. The State must take a leading role in affordable home building.”
“Yes, it is absolutely related to the Bill. I raised it at pre-legislative scrutiny. I am putting in an amendment on Committee Stage of the Bill. The NTMA is managing ISIF funds. It has some of our public money in companies that are operating illegally in the occupied territories in the West Bank. I am referring here in the Dáil to some of the repercussions of that. A 14-year-old boy was killed at the school gates by Israeli settlers and yet our public money, managed by the NTMA with Government approval, is being used to fund companies operating illegally in contravention of international law in the West Bank. It is absolutely relevant to this Bill and the NTMA. I raised it previously in pre-legislative scrutiny. I am giving the Minister of State notice that I will be raising it on Committee Stage and tabling an amendment on this.”
“This is relevant. This is absolutely relevant. The Bill is transferring NAMA into the NTMA. I am questioning the record of the NTMA in terms of how it is managing public funds through ISIF. The NTMA is using public money-----”
“Section 40 of the National Treasury Management Agency (Amendment) Act 2014 provides that the National Treasury Management Agency "shall determine, monitor and keep under review an investment strategy for the assets" of the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund, ISIF. ISIF still has investments in companies operating in the illegally occupied Palestinian territories. This is part of the investment strategy decided by the NTMA. It flies in the face of our obligations under international law and the Genocide Convention. The illegal occupation in Palestine is intensifying. A few weeks ago, Aws al-Naasan, a 14-year-old boy, was murdered while he stood at the gate of his secondary school in the West Bank. He was shot in the head by an Israeli settler.”
“The former Fine Gael finance Minister, Michael Noonan, defended these vulture funds in 2016 when, talking about the funds that effectively were brought in and welcomed into Ireland in this context, he said that "vultures provide a very good service in the ecology through cleaning up dead animals that are littered across the landscape". This sums up the entire NAMA episode. Ordinary hard-working people were treated like fools by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael and like cash cows by developers, bankers and vultures. As what is left of NAMA is folded into the National Treasury Management Agency, we should also look at the operating practices of the NTMA.”
“The vulture funds were here to stay, buying up loans, buying up homes and pumping up prices. Cerberus alone has seen the value of its assets in Ireland increase by €1.63 billion. Tens of thousands of homes are owned by these funds. People who have had their mortgage sold from underneath them know what a nightmare this can be with exorbitant interest rates, faceless companies and endless debt that they often cannot get out of. There are real people suffering very real consequences because of these political decisions. I recently met a renter in Galway city being evicted from her home of 20 years by one of these vulture funds. Can you imagine being evicted from your home of 20 years by some faceless vulture fund?”
“In the midst of this housing crisis, NAMA continued its fire sale of desperately needed land and homes. It could, and should, have changed tack but the Government sat on its hands. Homes should have been turned into social and affordable housing. Land should have been developed as housing that people can afford. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to shift housing away from speculators was not taken. Speculation was doubled down on and the vulture funds made billions of euro. In 2014, the vulture funds began to make their move. Project Sand saw a pool of residential loans worth €1.1 billion bought by Lone Star and Oaktree Capital. The Project Stone loan portfolio, worth €6.85 billion, was acquired by CarVal, Lone Star and Deutsche Bank. Project Eagle sold €5.6 billion-worth of commercial loans to Cerberus.”
“Ireland is not currently suffering from a lack of money. There is nearly €39 billion in cash sitting under the management of the NTMA. What we are suffering from is a chronic lack of affordable housing. There are a record 17,517 people living in homeless emergency accommodation. Shamefully, 5,571 of them are children. The median price for a house in Dublin is now €500,000. The average rent for a two-bed apartment in Ireland is over €2,000 a month. Home ownership is becoming a pipe dream for most workers on normal wages. People are struggling just to keep a roof over their head. NAMA took on 60,000 individual assets. Included in this were huge land-banks capable of delivering thousands of affordable homes. While the economic crisis subsided the housing crisis accelerated.”
“Houses and apartments should be looked at as homes and not as assets. Treating housing as an investment opportunity is what got us into the mess of the most recent recession. NAMA was the Government's plan to tidy up the mess to sell off thousands of homes and land-banks for knock-down prices to the highest bidder, taking lands and homes off the bankers and handing them over to vulture funds. It was a Fine Gael solution to a Fianna Fáil problem. The civil servants in NAMA achieved what was set out in their statutory remit. I commend their hard work and competence in a time of immense pressure. The problem is the politicians in charge of coming up with what this remit was and their lack of any foresight or imagination. NAMA will have delivered over €5 billion back to the Exchequer by the time it is wound up.”
“When the Anglo Tapes came out in 2013, the public got a glimpse behind the curtain of those at the top. Anglo Irish Bank executives were in stitches laughing as they discussed their collapsing bank. They joked about running rings around an incompetent regulator and straddling the Irish public with generational debt. John Bowe, Anglo's head of capital markets, spoke about never paying back the taxpayer and in his words, "pulling made up figures out of his arse". It was all fun and games for those at the top but it was no laughing matter for ordinary people. Jobs were lost, homes were repossessed and emigration returned. Hundreds of people lost their lives to suicide as a result of the economic downturn. The consequence of the recession for these families who lost loved ones could not have been more severe.”
“This Bill provides us with an opportunity to reflect on what NAMA was, why it existed, what it could have been, and what lessons we should learn. The word "NAMA" immediately brings to mind one of the darkest periods in recent Irish history and reminds us that when the rich and greedy gamble at the casino, it is ordinary people who pick up the bill. It also reminds us of an era when brutal austerity was inflicted on people by Fine Gael as a direct result of the actions of dodgy bankers and cowboy developers. We should also not forget that NAMA represented a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reshape our housing system for the benefit of ordinary people; an opportunity that was shamefully wasted. Cailleadh an deis seo. Bunchloch dhínit an duine is ea an tithíocht.”
“The pensioners of CIÉ have been left waiting 18 years for any increase at all in their pensions. This is causing huge hardship during the middle of a cost-of-living crisis. The increase was agreed between CIÉ and the unions last May, which is one year ago now. When I raised this issue with the Taoiseach in February, he said it would be done imminently. When I raised it with him last week, he said he would talk to the Ministers. Has the Taoiseach talked to the Ministers and when will this long overdue increase for the pensioners who have been waiting 18 years finally be signed off on?”
“Why does the Government not actually take our proposals on rolling out solar on the scale we need and bring down people’s electricity bills by approximately 40%, break our dependence on fossil fuels and take the kind of action we need to be a world leader in renewable energy, not a laggard? Why is it taking the Government so long to act in these areas?”
“Fine Gael is 15 years in government. It does not have a single offshore wind farm to show for that entire time. Has the Tánaiste nothing to say for himself? We should be a net exporter of clean electricity to Europe. Instead, we are one of its biggest importers of fossil fuels. We have the highest electricity bills in Europe because of the Government’s failure to deliver in terms of renewable energy. It is fine for the Tánaiste to say repeatedly that the Social Democrats are putting forward good ideas, the Government will look at them and they have merit, but we need it to act. People in arrears on their electricity bills need it to act. Why is the Tánaiste just saying that our proposals merit consideration?”
“However, according to the Economic and Social Research Institute, ESRI, the Government’s grants are out of reach for people struggling to pay their bills. This failure to deliver is not abstract. It is felt by ordinary people every time they are hit with a bill. This is the legacy of the Tánaiste’s party’s decade and a half in government. The Government has the resources to help people now while investing in our future energy security. We should have wind farms in our seas and solar panels on every home in the country. Our bills should be some of the cheapest in Europe, not the most expensive. Will the Tánaiste support the Social Democrats’ solar for all plan to break our dependence on fossil fuels and give struggling households the clean and cheap electricity they need?”
“It does not need to be like this and should not be. Fine Gael has been in power for 15 years and there has not been one single offshore wind farm built in this country. We have had 15 years without proper investment in the grid and 15 years of being chained to volatile gas prices in a time of global uncertainty. Wholesale electricity prices in Ireland are nearly four times higher than in Spain. Spain is now producing enough solar and wind energy that electricity prices are no longer tied to gas. While the Irish Government has dithered and delayed, Spain has delivered. We can act quickly by rolling out solar panels. They are relatively cheap, easy to install and immediately bring down people's electricity bills.”
“Níl ganntanas gaoithe againn in Éirinn; tá neart gaoth againn. A windy island on the edge of the Atlantic, our potential for clean, cheap energy is immense. We could and should be a green energy superpower, exporting electricity to the rest of Europe. Instead, we are laggards. People are stuck paying the highest electricity bills in Europe. There are now more than 300,000 households in arrears. People are unable to pay for the basics in a country that is supposedly rich. Some €523 million worth of wind energy was wasted last year because of our crumbling grid infrastructure. That was 10% of all the wind energy produced. Meanwhile, the Government's insatiable appetite for data centres is cannibalising any increase in renewable capacity. The red carpet is rolled out for data centres while people freeze in their homes.”
“The intention of my amendment is that it could go through the Houses of the Oireachtas in a matter of hours. That is the amount of time that would be needed. It should not be causing any delays. It could happen within a matter of days. Indeed, if the Minister has made a designation, it is not as if the project just stalls in its entirety until the designation order is ratified by the Houses of the Oireachtas. There is still work that can go on in the project. I wish to press the amendment.”
“It would give greater transparency and oversight to the process, and put more confidence into it. The Oireachtas, Members of this House and the general public have a right to know why these decisions have been made, why certain projects have been prioritised, and why certain projects are not being prioritised. This will prove to be controversial because there will be geographic areas, for example, that do not get their infrastructure project prioritised and they will wonder why that is the case when other areas did. In the past, there have been instances of certain parts of infrastructure getting a much higher priority than others. We are talking about not just prioritisation under this Bill but also the money behind that, which is public money. The more oversight we have of that, the better.”
“It is simply that the designation order shall be laid before both Houses of the Oireachtas, and the order shall be made only after a resolution approving the draft has been passed by each House of the Oireachtas. That allows for proper scrutiny, debate, questions around the process, how this designation was arrived at, and whether one project is being prioritised as critical infrastructure when another is not. The current provisions in the Bill put the onus on Members of the Opposition to use limited Private Member's time to put down a resolution. Smaller parties and groups may not have time to do that. Just to ask questions about the designation should not require having to put down a motion in Private Member's time when we have limited opportunities to do that. This is a sensible proposal. I do not see the issues with it.”