Results 28,761-28,780 of 40,330 for speaker:Leo Varadkar

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (6 Mar 2019)

Leo Varadkar: I thank the Deputy for raising the important issue of disability services. The Government cares for people with disabilities and those who care for them. We have made it a priority in the past couple of years to improve rights and services for people with disabilities. I acknowledge that there is an enormous need and that there are many complex individual cases, with which we struggle....

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (6 Mar 2019)

Leo Varadkar: I am very aware of these issues, both the global issues affecting thousands of people across the country and the many individual cases. Like the Deputy, I have a constituency clinic and well understand the complexities of many individual cases. There is a story behind each one of them.

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (6 Mar 2019)

Leo Varadkar: We are making a big difference. For example, consider the people with intellectual disabilities who have to live in congregated settings in institutions. There are 2,200 fewer people living in institutional congregated settings. They have been moved out into homes in the community, which is a big change. We have a multi-annual plan to continue that programme to move as many people as...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (6 Mar 2019)

Leo Varadkar: There is funding in place to provide additional emergency places. The number in receipt of respite care services will increase by 8% this year.

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (6 Mar 2019)

Leo Varadkar: I appreciate this is a very important issue and an issue of great concern to thousands of people who cross the Border every day in their cars, whether it is roughly 10,000 cross-Border workers going from North to South or South to North, whether it is students or just people passing through Northern Ireland on their way to and from Donegal, for example. It is an issue that the Government is...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (6 Mar 2019)

Leo Varadkar: I thank the Deputy and I recognise his support and that of his party for the omnibus Bill, which is likely to get through the Dáil today. As the Deputy will be aware, the omnibus Bill applies to this jurisdiction. We do not have the authority to pass laws in this place for Northern Ireland. Only the Northern Ireland Assembly has the authority to do that. The Northern Ireland...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (6 Mar 2019)

Leo Varadkar: Yes, of course.

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (6 Mar 2019)

Leo Varadkar: As we are all aware, there are approximately 70,000 beef farmers in Ireland. Beef farming and the beef industry are essential parts of the agricultural and rural economy, extending well beyond the farm to marts, processors and other aspects of the meat industry. On what the Government is doing to support farmers, the Deputy will be aware that we have put in place a successful beef data and...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (6 Mar 2019)

Leo Varadkar: The Deputy knows as well as I do that the factories are a private industry, that we do not control the beef factories and that the Government does not control the price of any commodity, whether it is a foodstuff, a material, oil or gas. The prices are determined on the markets, taking into account supply and demand. The Deputy should not tell me I do not get it while he pretends he does...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (6 Mar 2019)

Leo Varadkar: I understand the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government is appearing before a committee today, answering questions on the matter, and has produced those numbers for the committee. More than 18,000 new homes and apartments were built in Ireland last year. That is the highest number in any year for a decade and we will do better again this year. We have to because of the...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (6 Mar 2019)

Leo Varadkar: I have seen the joy on their faces when that happens. Nobody ever said to me it was Part V housing, or that it had been built by Clúid or the Peter McVerry Trust and not by the local authority and that they did not want it.

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (6 Mar 2019)

Leo Varadkar: Nobody ever said he or she did not want a nice new house in Waterville in my constituency because it had been bought directly from a developer and had not been built by Fingal County Council. No real person who receives a social house ever says that to me.

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (6 Mar 2019)

Leo Varadkar: What they want is a home with security of tenure. There are many ways to achieve this. Local authorities can build social housing as they used to do in the 1950s and 1960s.

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (6 Mar 2019)

Leo Varadkar: It can be done through the affordable housing bodies such as Clúid, the Peter McVerry Trust and the Iveagh Trust which do a great job. It can be done under the Part V system, under which a certain amount of houses in a new estate are set aside as social housing. It can also be done by direct purchase. Why is it bad that local authorities buy derelict and unused houses in rural areas...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (6 Mar 2019)

Leo Varadkar: What matters is that last year 9,000 families, more than the number in any of the last ten years, moved into social housing in secure tenancies. We should not obsess about whether it is done through an affordable housing body, a local authority or a trust or under Part V, Part 8 or section 26. That is not what matters.

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (6 Mar 2019)

Leo Varadkar: I am advised by the Minister of State that the figures are available. As I have seen breakdowns, I imagine that that is correct and that they are available. I think the Deputy has got it wrong. The truth is that after years of running into problems and delays when we did not have the money to do it, we are now delivering on the issue of social housing. We increased the social housing...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (6 Mar 2019)

Leo Varadkar: We will increase it by even more this year.

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (6 Mar 2019)

Leo Varadkar: As the Deputy does not want people to know that-----

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (6 Mar 2019)

Leo Varadkar: -----she is trying to make out that housing provided by an affordable housing body such as the Peter McVerry Trust or the Iveagh Trust or under the Part V mechanism does not exist.

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (6 Mar 2019)

Leo Varadkar: They are real houses with real people in them.