Results 1,921-1,940 of 50,064 for speaker:Micheál Martin

Ceisteanna ar Pholasaí nó ar Reachtaíocht - Questions on Policy or Legislation (17 Oct 2024)

Micheál Martin: I have no issue with meeting and will meet this representative group. I may not be able to do so today because the Iraqi Minister of Foreign Affairs is visiting Ireland and I have to meet him after this session. The Government is close to finalising a Covid inquiry. As I said, the objective of an inquiry into Covid and how the country managed it should be an evaluation to make sure that...

Ceisteanna ar Pholasaí nó ar Reachtaíocht - Questions on Policy or Legislation (17 Oct 2024)

Micheál Martin: Some 28,000 extra staff have been recruited since 2020. I regret that people, notwithstanding the context of 28,000 extra staff, including 9,000 extra nurses, feel that is a cause for industrial action. I acknowledge that there may be HR practices within the HSE that need addressing, but 4,000 staff alone have been regularised, which includes 2,000 extra people employed during Covid without...

Ceisteanna ar Pholasaí nó ar Reachtaíocht - Questions on Policy or Legislation (17 Oct 2024)

Micheál Martin: I already articulated my horror at what is happening in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon, and my condemnation of what I consider to be war crimes and breaches of international humanitarian law. However, the presentation that the Government is somehow facilitating this is an outrageous assertion. We are facilitating no carriage of weapons to Israel or any other part of the world. That...

Ceisteanna ar Pholasaí nó ar Reachtaíocht - Questions on Policy or Legislation (17 Oct 2024)

Micheál Martin: -----if they want to fly through our airspace with weapons. If that company has flouted law-----

Ceisteanna ar Pholasaí nó ar Reachtaíocht - Questions on Policy or Legislation (17 Oct 2024)

Micheál Martin: The way the Deputy presented it was less than accurate.

Ceisteanna ar Pholasaí nó ar Reachtaíocht - Questions on Policy or Legislation (17 Oct 2024)

Micheál Martin: In the Fianna Fáil Party, for close to a decade now, we have had a free vote on issues to do with life or an issue of conscience. That will remain the position in respect of this proposed legislation. Even though I do not agree with such legislation and have very serious reservations about it, nonetheless, it will be a vote of conscience for each individual member of our party. I...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (17 Oct 2024)

Micheál Martin: I commend the Deputy's mastery of alliteration but what he said is not true. The bottom line is-----

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (17 Oct 2024)

Micheál Martin: -----that very significant funding has been allocated to retrofitting.

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (17 Oct 2024)

Micheál Martin: Let me take the issue. There is an allocation to social protection that goes into the various schemes to do with fuel poverty and that is very clear in terms of what we have done on the fuel allowance.

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (17 Oct 2024)

Micheál Martin: I am answering the question. The retrofitting has been an enormous allocation-----

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (17 Oct 2024)

Micheál Martin: -----and has come from the carbon fund. That has also happened in terms of the €113 million in carbon tax funding that has been allocated to agri-environment schemes.

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (17 Oct 2024)

Micheál Martin: What we could do, and I invite the Deputy to support me in this because he has genuine concerns about where the funding is going, is legislate to ring-fence the funding.

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (17 Oct 2024)

Micheál Martin: I think that would satisfy the Deputy's needs but I wonder whether he would be supportive of that if the next Government was to bring in legislation to ring-fence the funding for specific purposes.

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (17 Oct 2024)

Micheál Martin: There is no missing money. It is all being spent.

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (17 Oct 2024)

Micheál Martin: I appreciate that the Deputy has been consistent and persistent in addressing the issue of balanced regional development. There are statistics, damned statistics and all the rest.

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (17 Oct 2024)

Micheál Martin: Hear me out, please. I was in a rural village recently during the local elections. A councillor pointed out to me that the population had gone from about 500 when he went into local government to 2,500 or 3,000, the point being that the place had grown. A lot of rural Ireland has grown in population yet the mantra is a declining rural Ireland. It has elected a lot of Independents to this...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (17 Oct 2024)

Micheál Martin: Somehow the truth is not reconciling here because there has been huge development in many parts of the regions. Equally, there have been big investments in Dublin and other urban areas. Post-Covid, it will be very interesting to see what happens because of the development of remote working, rural working hubs and so on. We are now getting a greater concentration of workers outside cities...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (17 Oct 2024)

Micheál Martin: Yes.

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (17 Oct 2024)

Micheál Martin: There are aspects of the occupied territories Bill that are clearly unconstitutional but they can be rectified and amended. It is clearly unconstitutional as it is currently drafted. There was a case just ten days ago concerning France v. the European Commission in respect of Western Sahara. There are very clear similarities between that and the West Bank. The ruling on that was not as...