Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank both Deputies for their questions. The Minister of State, Deputy Noonan, is driving forward the electoral commission. Art O’Leary, the former Secretary General to the President, is moving to the commission and we want to get it established. I expect and hope the Bill will come to the committee in this quarter. It will be significant legislation. We have a census this year as well. There will be a requirement for a boundary review of Dáil constituencies and we want the commission established to have input into that. I will have to check with my officials on the citizens' assembly. Citizens' assemblies are generally initiated in the Department of the Taoiseach. I welcome the announcement in that regard. Citizens' assemblies have worked very well.

Deputy Devlin asked a number of questions. On Irish Water specifically, I visited the Ringsend facility for the opening of the second plant, which is the second biggest plant in the country. It will make a major difference to water quality in the Dublin Bay region. The plant has been commissioned and is up and running. Its capacity is expanding by close to 500,000 population equivalent, PE. Further work is being done on one plant with regard to storm water run-off and so forth. There is much we can do in that regard. Investment in water and wastewater infrastructure in the coming years is unprecedented and is now allocated on a multi-annual basis in order that we do this better.

The Deputy asked a couple of questions on heritage funds. He may have missed our comments on that in the opening statements. Funding has increased significantly in 2022. The historical structures fund is in place and will fund about 100 projects. More than 150 projects across the country, many of which I have been able to visit, will be funded under the community monuments fund. What is great about that fund is that it gets local communities involved with their local history. Local authorities and their heritage officers have done a superb job bringing people on board with them. In some instances, the amounts of money involved are small but they make a massive difference to local communities and generate interest in history and the sites on our doorsteps that most of us did not know about before the pandemic. During the pandemic, people became far more in tune with their local areas.

Under subhead F11, €200,000 has been allocated to progress relevant actions under the climate change sectoral adaptation plan for built and architectural heritage. That has been incorporated into the climate action plan 2021. Those actions will be overseen by the National Monuments Service and the built heritage policy, which will look at examples of best practice in this area, while ensuring everything we do is compliant with our climate change strategy.