Conor Sheehan
Limerick City · Labour Party · Ireland
“If a student does not have access to one of these devices or access to one at home, there is often no alternative and that could leave them excluded. Many families are forced to pay hundreds and thousands, particularly with the rising cost of microchips, for these devices.”
“I thank the Minister for her considered response. We need to get rid of voluntary contributions and move to generic school uniforms. This is something that has been done in the UK.”
“This digital divide is resulting in a severe and growing level of inequality where so many communities, students and families are unable to purchase the devices they desperately need for their children's education.”
“I raise the issue of the community access support team, CAST, in Limerick, which has prevented 133 detentions under section 12 of the Mental Health Act and reduced the number emergency department presentations. It has responded to over 1,000 incidents.”
“Do not worry. We need to have a debate this week before the House rises about the imminent report on Aughinish Alumina. There are up to 2,000 direct and indirect jobs at stake in Limerick. We cannot have a situation where the State is inadvertently complicit in the export of alumina to Russia. Where there is a will, there is a way.”
“It is absolutely reprehensible that planning permission has been granted for apartments on the site of the former mother and baby home at Bessborough. We have 19 mothers and 859 infants associated with Bessborough still missing. Now 140 apartments are going to be built on a mass grave. We need statements on this next week.”
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“In addition, while all of this is going on, renters will continue to be crushed by these astronomical rent increases. The Government has gutted the rent pressure zones regime in order to feed this system. It will never be able to feed it enough to satiate it properly and, in the meantime, renters have been thrown to the wolves and the housing and homelessness crisis, the worst in the history of the State, is continuing to break its own records. What depresses me most is that there is a lack of constructive engagement with anyone in opposition on any of these issues. The countermotion, in my view, embodies that because when legislation is tabled, it is voted down on Second Stage if it is Opposition legislation or, if it is a Government Bill, the guillotine is used and it is rammed through.”
“In Galway and Limerick, the figures are 45% and 35%, respectively. This Government, through the policy interventions it has taken, is subsidising and sponsoring what I can only describe as a build-to-rent cartel. The Government is either not being honest with people or it genuinely does not understand the cause and effect of what it is doing. I do not know which is more worrying. The policy framework the Government has assumes that lifting rent controls on new properties will fast-track investment into these high-density apartment blocks and enough of them will be built to level off rents and start to bring them down. This is notwithstanding the fact that the apartments can take years to materialise or that they will not materialise in most locations in the country.”
“For the Government to put into a countermotion that it is "fully committed to tackling high rents" is simply factually incorrect. It is untrue and misleading. The countermotion is not grounded in reality. Elsewhere, it states that "recent reforms to the rental market aim to encourage investment and development, which will encourage the building of new rental apartments, help slow down rent increases and moderate rent levels over time". The rent levels for new build luxury apartments and luxury student accommodation are tied directly to the consumer price index, CPI, and are exempt from the 2% rent cap. That means these newly built apartments enter the market at already over-inflated rents and because they are exempt from the cap, they drive rents even higher. In Dublin, rent consumes about 50% of a worker's after-tax income.”
“I was enraged when I read the countermotion because it states that "the Government is fully committed to tackling high rents". When I saw that statement, I nearly fell out of my chair. How can the Government put that into a countermotion when it has legislated to allow landlords to put rents in this country through the roof under the market reset element of the legislation, which I begged the Minister to remove during the Committee and Second Stage debates on the rent pressure zones amendment Bill. I even tabled a sensible middle-ground compromise amendment providing for a rent break to moderate the worst of the Bill and to protect renters. On every Stage, I was completely ignored and the legislation was guillotined.”
“Time and again, we hear the same mantra about the need to incentivise supply and the need for private sector investment. The Government repeatedly uses this as its reasoning for the rental reforms introduced as part of the rent pressure zones amendment Bill. The type of supply the Government talks about incentivising is a small number of high-yield, expensive, build-to-rent luxury developments. What this means in practice is a small number of expensive apartment developments, maybe in the docklands, Sandyford or Cork, but certainly not in Limerick where there was a 12.6% rent increase, and not in Galway either, where there was a 9.9% increase. The Government is doing nothing to address this. There is no acknowledgment of it in the countermotion.”
“Last week, while canvassing in the by-elections, as many Deputies across the House were, I met an individual in the north inner city of Dublin who told me he has been homeless for nearly six years and has moved 78 times during that period. That level of displacement, poverty and insecurity has stuck with me ever since. It is not just that man I met last week, however. People with decent jobs, decent salaries and decent lives are living completely precarious lives because being renters means their lives are built on quicksand. What really depresses me is the way the Government treats skyrocketing rents as necessary but unfortunate, or unfortunate but inevitable. The fact of the matter is, we now accept things that would have been politically unimaginable a decade ago.”
“New rents average €1,755 a month. Rent is more than €2,200 a month for new renters in Dublin and more than €2,100 in Galway and Limerick. In loads of counties we have had double-digit rent inflation. We have had 12.6% in Limerick and 9.9%, just under 10%, in Galway. The Government can repeat ad nauseam the talking points it has in its countermotion in respect of supply, but the fact of the matter is that homelessness has risen in this country to a level that we have never seen in the history of the State. House prices continue to rise, and all around the country we see young people postponing key life milestones because they cannot secure a stable home. We have couples in their 30s who are back in their childhood bedrooms and families going from homeless hub to homeless hub.”
“They are people who have children in school. They work hard and contribute to their communities. They are involved in their GAA clubs and in other activities. They pay their rent on time. They do everything right, yet they received the dreaded notice of termination at the start of this year. The most depressing thing about being having this debate tonight is that it is all fairly predictable. I worry and wonder how bad things must get before the Government takes its head out of the sand and acts. It was repeatedly warned that weakening protections for renters, failing to control rents and relying on an overheated market in the way it has done would make this crisis worse. The consequence of the Government's rental reforms is that eviction notices are up by 51% and disputes with the RTB are up by nearly 18%.”
“Ba mhaith liom ar dtús mo bhuíochas a ghabháil leis an bPáirtí Sinn Féin as ucht an rún seo a thabhairt faoi bhráid na Dála anocht. Molaim agus molann Páirtí an Lucht Oibre an rún seo. The most basic test of any housing system is really quite simple; it is whether ordinary people can access secure and decent housing. In this country, we have arrived at a situation whereby the country is divided between haves and have-nots. The haves have property and secure housing and the have-nots do not. When the Minister of State, Deputy Cummins, was sitting opposite me, he spoke about 762 eviction notices. He said that we were not to consider the figure in the round but in light of other RTB data. I get all that, but at the same time 762 people got notices of termination in the first couple of months of this year.”
“I have had people come to my clinic who, nine year on, are still absolutely traumatised. The Government has the O'Shea review, which has been published. The recommendations are there. It falls to an Opposition party to bring forward legislation to deal with that, because the Government does not have the political gumption or courage to implement those recommendations. To be fair, the Social Democrats have had to come in here on a Wednesday morning and use their Private Members' time to deal with this matter. That is ridiculous.”
“Savita Halappanavar had to die in 2012 before this country would move on this issue. While I welcome the Bill I think that in many ways it does not quite go far enough. We will still have women who are going to be forced to travel and the narrow distinction around the 28 days puts doctors in such an unenviable position. It is a no-win position. We know the 72-hour clause is paternalistic and we know why it was put into the legislation. The fact is that when we are too prescriptive when talking about a very narrow distinction around fatal foetal abnormalities and very severe non-fatal foetal abnormalities, somebody always gets lost. Somebody always falls through the cracks and somebody is always forced to travel elsewhere to get the healthcare they need.”
“I welcome the Bill and the opportunity to speak in this debate. I used to work for a TD who sat on the Joint Committee on the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution. I remember when that legislation was going through and how politically difficult it was. I also remember all the stuff that went into the legislation in order to get the legislation through the Dáil and to get the referendum passed. While the eighth amendment referendum brought us in out of the cold and stopped us being so abnormal and so cruel it was never meant to be a ceiling. It has not gone far enough. I welcome the intention of this Bill. As Deputy Cullinane alluded to, we never had a consensus approach to these things. This country had to be dragged kicking and screaming by activists. Somebody had to die.”
“They are working full time and yet they have sweet feck all left at the end of the week. The fact of the matter is that we know from what the ESRI has said, and from what the Department has said, that the Government's budgetary measures are not prudent. They leave families worse off on average and they hit the lowest-income earning families the hardest. Yet, the Government's counter-motion today does not acknowledge any of this. This is about political choice. We have made our choice. We back workers, we back families and we back people who are struggling. We do not partake in leprechaun economics. We have set out very clearly how we would pay for this. The people that all of us represent deserve much more from this Government than being told to just wait until October and that help is coming not now but in six months.”
“I wonder if the people who come into my clinic, the people I represent, have to get their Toyota Corollas and line them up outside O'Connell Street down by the GPO in order for the Government to actually listen to them? What we have put forward is very clear. It is targeted and we have said how we will pay for it. The Government's entire budgetary policy is based on the idea of people getting a fiver at budget time but six months later they get a €500 bill. The families the workers I represent in Limerick do not need a restatement of budget 2026 from this Government. They need action on the cost-of-living crisis. Their groceries have gone up, their energy bills have gone up, their rent has gone up, and their mortgage interest rates in many cases are going up.”
“It is not even funny because what the Government does not get is that the Government has lost the dressing room. Look at the anger that was out there on the streets. A Government backbencher cannot put a post up on social media at the moment about getting a hole in the road filled without an abundance of stuff underneath it because people are furious. In many cases what the Government has done with that fury is come to a house fire with a can of petrol. Let us go back to the week of the fuel protests. Monsignor Micheál Martin came out to lecture the nation followed by Colonel O'Callaghan saying that he was going to send in the tanks. It was absolutely ridiculous.”
“It is not just that the Minister of State does not get it or that individuals do not get it; I genuinely think that the Government as an entity does not get it. Consider the counter-motion the Minister of State has put forward. It is a rehash and a restatement of what the Government said it would do in budget 2026. If we want to talk about budget 2026, we can talk about the fact that it leaves families 2% worse off. That is a fact. It is not me pointing that out; it is the ESRI. We could talk about the blunt measure of the poorly targeted VAT cut with 60% of the benefit going to fast-food chains and not to struggling local cafés. That is not me pointing that out; it is the Department of Finance. For the Government to come in here with a counter-motion and to literally reprint and rehash that statement is completely laughable.”
“If this Government does not consider nearly 5,500 children in emergency accommodation to be an emergency, then what number of children in emergency accommodation counts as an emergency? This Bill seeks to give protections to renters who are following their rental obligations, to give them certainty for three years and give them an assurance that they will not be forced into homelessness, giving renters time until supply starts to improve and to give some breathing space. This Government needs to take stronger action on homelessness because we are at a stage where homelessness has almost become acceptable, and this Bill goes some of the way to achieving that.”
“This Bill seeks to protect the more than 80% of renters who were following their obligations in the final three months of the year but who, according to RTB data, were still given notices of termination. This is well past the point of an emergency. The fact is there is no acceptable rate of homelessness. We have a situation in this country where the homeless figures are at record highs every single month of the year and have effectively become wallpaper. This is not acceptable. It should not be considered so, and it should not be considered normal. Homeless figures continue to surge again and again, as they did under the previous Government. This Bill does not seek to reinvent the wheel. It is extending a ban on no-fault evictions that was in place during the Covid emergency and should be used again in this emergency.”
“This Bill seeks a temporary moratorium on no-fault evictions to protect renters who, through no fault of their own, are being forced into a brutal housing market. It is for renters such as those in Hazelwood estate, Wexford, where 37 households were initially given notices to terminate with little warning as the company that owned them wanted to sell. It is for renters in Ballybane, Galway, and renters in my constituency of Limerick city. This Bill seeks to protect renters from having to look again for HAP accommodation, which is an uphill battle at the moment with a recent Simon Communities report saying that in 16 areas surveyed, there were only 14 properties available, and none in my constituency.”
“Exceptional times call for exceptional measures in the public interest. I believe these are needed to respond to the current dysfunctional nature of the residential tenancy market, much of which is a response to repeated legislative interventions that have been poorly designed and implemented. Since I was elected in November 2024, homelessness has risen from over 15,000 to 17,500 in March 2026, the highest figure ever recorded. This Bill seeks to give renters certainty over the medium term and give them breathing space from the daily fear of a notice of termination coming through the door. Since this Government has not met its own housing targets, it should at the very least do whatever it can to remove the fear of homelessness from renters, the most vulnerable people in the housing system.”
“I move: That leave be granted to introduce a Bill entitled an Act to make exceptional provision in the public interest for the prohibition of certain termination notices under the Residential Tenancies Act 2004 during the period of 3 years following the enactment of this Act, and to provide for related matters. I introduce this Bill because we are in a housing and eviction emergency. Figures published by the RTB show that the number of terminations rose by 41% in the last three months of 2025 compared with the same period in 2024 and that there was a 21% increase for the year as a whole compared with the previous year. I introduce this Bill in the context of a housing market where rent has increased by more than 100% in the past ten years and by 50% since the onset of the Covid pandemic six years ago.”
“If this regeneration is not carried out in the way that has been agreed with Dublin City Council, that development in Oliver Bond is not going to be able to be regenerated within, say, the next decade.”
“Homelessness has doubled since June 2020 under the Taoiseach's watch. He will not ban no-fault evictions and we have the highest level of homelessness ever recorded. Today the residents of Oliver Bond flats are coming to terms with the Government's refusal to fund phase one of a long-promised regeneration project. This development has been beset for decades by damp, mould and severe antisocial behaviour. The Taoiseach visited it himself and committed to the regeneration. Now the Government and the Minister have pulled the plug. What in the name of God is going on? How can this be justified? Will the Taoiseach immediately go back and investigate this?”
“How many more times are we going to be here incrementally chipping away at the scheme, adding this county, that county and that local area? Technical amendments to the Bill have failed to fix the core issues. The 2025 amendment Bill missed an important opportunity to address side-by-side rebuilding. The scheme by its nature is far too narrow, exclusionary and limited. Where is the review of IS 465? It has been repeatedly delayed. This is cruel and indefensible, with families stranded in dangerous and defective homes. It is vital that the redress is based on the latest scientific understanding of this crisis and not on flawed data. We also need to see the review of the scheme urgently in July of this year. While more than 3,000 applications were made by the end of last year, only 7% of applicants have completed the necessary work.”
“There is nothing to cover social housing or childcare facilities. We still have the outstanding issue of the side-by-side rebuilding, which Deputy Ward very eloquently raised on Leaders' Questions earlier. The scheme is fundamentally unaffordable. Homeowners in counties that have not yet officially been designated face immense stress watching for structural cracks while waiting for their county to be approved. Meanwhile their property, the thing for which they have worked night and day, is devaluing in front of them. We all know that this issue is more widespread than originally feared. That is why we need an end-to-end remediation scheme, as many others have stated in the House over the years. This should be based on the premise of the Fingal pyrite scheme and not this grant scheme, which is inflexible.”
“While we very much welcome the inclusion of Wexford and Fingal in the scheme - my colleague Deputy O'Donoghue, who will speak after me, has done a lot of work in this regard - it still does not cover the fundamental issues that exist with the scheme as it stands. While these changes may be necessary, they are still far too incremental. Because of the way the Government has designed it, the scheme has effectively been designed to fail. The fact the Act still requires rigorous case-by-case technical assessment by the Housing Agency to designate a new area delays urgent repairs for homeowners in areas that are awaiting designation. There are also the other issues that, at this stage, have been well aired in the House for many years regarding the fact it is still not 100% redress.”
“The comments are made in cases where the father is accused and sometimes convicted of domestic and sexual violence against the mother. While the in camera rule is in place, there is no accountability for the manner in which some judges and barristers treat women in court. I support the amendment Deputy Gibney is going to move. We need access to relevant case law on the Bench. Australia's National Domestic and Family Violence Bench Book provides a good example. We need to introduce something like that here.”
“It feels like the groundwork is being laid to push back against the deeper reforms that are necessary. It has become internationally accepted that the blanket enforcement of in camera rule-style procedures in family law matters is unacceptable. We need to at least see a pilot on changes to the rule. Women have come to my clinics and tell me that the in camera rule is a cloak of invisibility for the failings of the family courts. I have been contacted by women who have been threatened by judges with the Dóchas Centre and having their children removed from them for non-compliance with contact orders. When they try to challenge these decisions or explain, they are shot down and often told that it is the woman the father has a problem with and not the children.”
“When is the Minister going to take action on foot of recommendations for reform, including the introduction of transparency orders? The independent research report was published almost a year ago. We need a commitment to transparency as a priority rather than just an acknowledgement that the Minister values it. On the specific issue of transparency orders, the reply I received to a parliamentary question sidesteps the question and says that officials are examining developments in England and Wales. We need an indication that such orders are being actively considered for Ireland. There is a clear gap and we need a structured transparency regime such as that provided by transparency orders. There is a notable emphasis throughout on privacy as opposed to transparency.”
“I welcome the opportunity to speak in this debate. There is clear evidence of the need to reform and change the in camera rule. In practice, the rule restricts evidence and protects perpetrators rather than victims. It has created a culture of secrecy that shields abuse and effectively acts as a gagging order. While in theory it protects privacy, in practice it often prevents public accountability and hinders supports for vulnerable people through its misapplication. In the Minister's amendment, he mentions that a detailed examination is being undertaken by officials and also mentions findings and recommendations from the report on the operation of the in camera rule, including a review of the Transparency Project and the use of transparency orders in England and Wales.”
“Principals have a highly intensive work load and in many cases the POD may not have been updated in the fullest sense. Will the Department carry out a review on the roll-out of DEIS plus to look meaningfully at some of the issues I have raised around the rigidity of the application process? There is a school on the left hand side of the road in Limerick that has been included and meets the criteria as set out by the system but there is a school on the right hand side of the road that does not when it essentially serves the same population and has the same issues. One school has now been given a leg up while the other has, unfortunately, been given a kick back.”
“I thank the Minister for being here today. It is very rare that one gets the actual Minister when one raises a Topical Issue. We have the OSCAILT network in Limerick and 12 schools are identified in that. It is very similar in the north east inner city where we have the North East Inner City initiative that works with ten of the most deprived schools in the inner city and operates on the same principles as OSCAILT. My understanding is that those schools were all identified and included in DEIS plus. I have a couple of follow-on questions. Will the Minister or the Department flag to principals in advance of next year the importance of updating their primary online database, POD, and post-primary online database, P-POD, before the DEIS plus assessment?”
“Further gaps exist due to the self-reporting data collected by schools for the POD and P-POD because if the parents do not provide the information on a child's ethnicity, it is not captured by the identification model. We are falling short because the selection process fails to recognise the lived experience of poverty and disadvantage experienced by the children in these schools. In the appeals documentation the Department states that no additional data can be submitted on the appeals process. Therefore, appeals will be considered only on the DEIS plus identification model. We need to find a way to make sure that schools like this are picked up by the DEIS plus identification model.”
“The exclusion of these schools reflects not a lack of need but a failure of the system to respond appropriately to that need. The DEIS plus identification model is too rigid. It does not consider the lack of services in areas of high socio-economic deprivation or the crippling and destructive impact for children, families and communities of the many complex issues in these communities. It relies heavily on self-declared census data, and in many of these communities a high proportion of responses to the census return do not state certain details. For example, in Limerick city centre a large cohort of individuals chose not to disclose their ethnic or cultural identity or level of education, and these are two specific areas looked at in the DEIS plus identification model. This tells us that there is a gap in the data.”
“A significant proportion of the students come from migrant backgrounds. Third level attainment is also very low. Our Lady of Lourdes has 162 pupils with an early start preschool and two special classes for autism. Most of the school's pupils come from families experiencing long-term intergenerational poverty, and their community is directly impacted by ongoing gangland feuding in the local area. Presentation, CBS and St. Michael's are on the one campus. Some 30% of their students are homeless, including hidden homeless, 20% are in IPAS accommodation, 10% are from a Traveller background and 40% are in DEIS band 1. The principal of CBS primary had to purchase mattresses himself last year as he found 15 people living in a one-bedroom apartment, a fact not picked up by the POD system.”
“Research by the Oscailt network in 2025 highlighted the need for multidisciplinary support across all 12 schools and not just the six selected. I will give the Minister examples of some of the statistics from some of the schools that were excluded. St. John the Baptist Boys' National School is an all-boys band 1 school located in Garryowen. It serves a community with complex needs where the majority of the students require interventions from SETs, local unemployment is at 33% and lone parent rates exceed 42%. Third level education in this community is as low as 14.8%. The school was unsuccessful. Similarly, next door, St. John's Girls' and Infant Boys' School serves 220 pupils and is in the John's A electoral district, which is statistically recognised as one of the most deprived areas in the country.”
“DEIS plus is a crucial step to break the cycle of poverty and educational inequality. Several Limerick city schools have been included, which I really welcome, but, unfortunately, six schools have not been and they serve some of the most deprived communities in the State. Those schools are Our Lady of Lourdes, St. John's Girls' and Infant Boys' School, St. John the Baptist Boys' National School, Presentation Primary School, CBS Primary School and St. Michael's Infant School. These schools all form part of the Oscailt network of DEIS schools in Limerick city consisting of all band 1 primary and post-primary schools in the city. There are 12 schools in the Oscailt network. Six were successful with DEIS plus and six were unsuccessful.”
“We are waiting the bones of a decade for the Government to take meaningful action on short-term lets. Where is the Bill? Where are the guidelines? When are we going to see the national planning statement? Will the register be in force for the previous May deadline that was agreed? We need to have a debate on this.”
“Deputy Paul Nicholas Gogarty - To discuss the extension and refurbishment project at Lucan Community College. Deputies Seán Crowe, Paul Murphy and Ciarán Ahern - To discuss challenges facing Scoil Maelruain Junior National School and Senior National School. The matters raised by Deputies Louis O'Hara, Naoise Ó Cearúil, Paul Nicholas Gogarty, Seán Crowe, Paul Murphy, Ciarán Ahern and Naoise Ó Muirí have been selected for discussion.”
“Deputy Barry Ward - To discuss the need to promote an increase in the uptake of flexible work practices. Deputy Malcolm Byrne - To discuss the planned new Courtown coast guard building. Deputy Louise O'Reilly - To discuss the need for out-of-hours GP services for Fingal West. Deputy Maurice Quinlivan - To discuss the ongoing crisis of capacity at University Hospital Limerick. Deputy Rory Hearne - To discuss the number of affordable purchase homes delivered in Dublin city. Deputy Colm Burke - To discuss Mayfield library and community centre. Deputy Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire - To discuss delivery of a permanent school building for Owenabue ETNS, Carrigaline, Cork. Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett - To discuss the detention of an Irish citizen by German authorities.”
“I wish to advise the House of the following matters in respect of which notice has been given under Standing Order 39 and the name of the Member in each case: Deputy John Paul O'Shea - To discuss the provision of bus connections to and from Charleville train station. Deputy Ged Nash - To discuss the fact that no schools in disadvantaged areas of Drogheda are included in the DEIS plus scheme. Deputy Naoise Ó Muirí - To discuss the issue of "ghost buses" and the rollout of the new NGAVL system. Deputy Louis O'Hara - To discuss the lack of respite care services in County Galway. Deputy Albert Dolan - To discuss battery energy storage systems and solar planning guidelines in rural Ireland. Deputy Naoise Ó Cearúil - To discuss junior cycle certification processes for students in special schools.”
“Would the Taoiseach live in a shed? The Government's plan to allow landlords to rent out modular units risks subjecting renters, vulnerable young people and migrants to this very phenomenon. This is potentially opening the door to the exploitation of vulnerable renters in the private rental market. Yes, we need more flexibility for exempted development but allowing landlords to rent these units out is not acceptable. This will lead to poor-quality expensive rental accommodation. It is absolutely outrageous, in my view, to rent these out on the open market and to treat tenants as licensees with very few protections. Will the Government at least pause this until a full review of licence arrangements is completed and basic protections for tenants are put in place?”
“I do support in principle what the Minister is trying to do here, even though I may have some issues with the way he is trying to do it. There is a piece in the infrastructure task force report on the Minister for justice seeking to put the judicial review process on a statutory basis. Surely that would address the issue the Minister is talking about in terms of judicial review. I have concerns here, which the Minister did not address when he responded to me, on what exactly could be defined as critical infrastructure and whether the State could define something. We have seen a worrying precedent in the Dublin Airport passenger cap and the LNG terminal. I am just concerned at this proposal to give the Executive power to disapply a public body duty under the State's climate Act to perform actions that are consistent with our climate goals.”
“First, I will go back to what I said on Second Stage. I am disappointed that we could not do even some limited, quick pre-legislative scrutiny on this Bill. I think we could have teased through some of these things. I want to go back to a point the Minister made there. He was talking about building the low-carbon economy but in his concluding remarks on Second Stage he referenced, for example, the ring road in Galway which, in my view - and I know there are many views on it - is hardly the best example of climate-sustainable development. In particular, could the removal of section 15 stop a piece of critical infrastructure from being prioritised because it could have, for example, positive climate benefits? I am talking about a new train line and potentially a new Luas line.”
“I ask the Minister to outline when the Critical Infrastructure Bill will be enacted and how it is going to comply with our obligations, as they currently stand, under the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act, given that section 15 of this Act is going to be disapplied under section 7 of the new Bill.”
“In that time, we have had budget overruns and delays. We have had a national development plan that was published without listing the projects, yet the Bill itself talks about listing critical infrastructure projects. As a member of the infrastructure committee, we have met with countless witnesses over the past 11 months, and they have all said the same thing. There is a need for multi-annual funding, the need to give way to the common good, the need to speed up decision-making and there is a shortage of properly trained construction workers.”
“The decision to bypass pre-legislative scrutiny for this really undermines our ability as legislators to ensure it is legally sound and robust. I would like the Minister to address how this Bill intersects with our obligations under Aarhus. It seems to me from a lot of the media commentary and utterances from Government that it is excessively focused on judicial review and limiting public participation and legal challenges, as if they are the main or only cause of the failure to deliver infrastructure in this country. The fact is that we have the slowest regulatory and planning processes in the European Union. That is not a new problem. That is the Government's problem. It is a direct consequence of this Government's more than ten years in power. Six years have passed since Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael effectively consummated their marriage.”
“We have a lot of water-intensive industries like pharmaceuticals and data centres in particular. I do not want to see a situation where fossil fuel infrastructure or data centres could potentially be designated as critical infrastructure. While I welcome the intention of the Bill to deal with fragmented decision-making and the imposition of binding duties on public bodies to prioritise, co-ordinate and resource critical projects I have significant concerns about the disapplication of section 15 of the 2015 climate Act. Judicial reviews for climate have a high degree of success because of real procedural flaws by regulatory bodies in complying with their climate obligations. It brings me back to the 2020 Supreme Court judgment, which deemed that the 2017 national mitigation plan for climate was quashed for being too vague.”
“Sometimes it feels like the planning system in this country is a bit like a multi-stage obstacle course as opposed to a facilitator of national development. The Draghi report highlighted that we have some of the longest permitting processes in Europe for onshore wind projects for example. The thing identified as a key bottleneck for renewable energy was the long and complex permitting process. I see in the infrastructure Bill that public bodies will be required to do everything in their power to accelerate approval of projects designated as essential by the Government. I have no issue with that in principle. The issue I have is that we have not really had clarity in real terms as to what that will actually mean. We know that our economy places significant pressure on water.”
“The slow pace of infrastructure delivery is a huge barrier to the provision of housing in particular. When it comes to legislating for critical infrastructure, I take a bit of a Victorian view on these things. I believe the Legislature should authorise major infrastructural development by statute, as was done in 1925 for Ardnacrusha. In relation to this Bill, I think there is an outsized reference to or emphasis on judicial review as the primary blockage or bottleneck, when the primary bottleneck for the delivery of infrastructure in this country is the planning system and the plethora of complicated planning and consenting processes that were not actually simplified by the 2024 Planning and Development Act.”