Results 9,881-9,900 of 40,897 for speaker:Simon Coveney

Ceisteanna ar Reachtaíocht a Gealladh - Questions on Promised Legislation (16 May 2019)

Simon Coveney: I will raise that with the Minister. I assure Deputy O'Loughlin that anything we agreed to in the confidence and supply arrangements has been followed through on and will continue to be. With the indulgence of the Ceann Comhairle, I will respond to a question asked earlier because I have helpful information for Deputy Brady who asked a question about 12 homelessness emergency beds in...

Ceisteanna ar Reachtaíocht a Gealladh - Questions on Promised Legislation (16 May 2019)

Simon Coveney: There is an ongoing conversation between the Minister for Health, Deputy Harris, and Rehab. The immediate result of those discussions is that Rehab has now said that it will continue its services for the foreseeable future and there is no imminent threat of a reduction of services. I understand that the conversations are continuing to ensure financial sustainability into the future. I do...

Ceisteanna ar Reachtaíocht a Gealladh - Questions on Promised Legislation (16 May 2019)

Simon Coveney: I thank the Deputy for giving me the opportunity to Government's very clear position on the record on this issue. The Government has noted with some concern comments made by the UK Secretary of State for Defence, Penny Mordaunt, on Tuesday and is seeking clarification. The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Karen Bradley, wrote in reply to me on 18 April and stated, in relation to the...

Ceisteanna ar Reachtaíocht a Gealladh - Questions on Promised Legislation (16 May 2019)

Simon Coveney: We need to ensure that loose comments are not damaging in terms of trust and the willingness of all sides to co-operate to ensure that the legacy structures that have been committed to, agreed by both Governments, and supported by all political parties, move forward in the spirit that they were intended.

Ceisteanna ar Reachtaíocht a Gealladh - Questions on Promised Legislation (16 May 2019)

Simon Coveney: I will have to ask the Minister for Education and Skills to come back on that particular case because I do not have the detail on it. We are adding about 20,000 primary school places every year because of the type of population growth the Deputy is talking about. The Government is investing heavily in doing that but there is obviously a particular case here that needs a specific response...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (16 May 2019)

Simon Coveney: These are good ideas. Some of the kinds of things about which the Deputy talks are happening. For example, the Department introduced a scheme whereby local authorities could provide grant aid to people who own homes to upgrade them and make them suitable to rent or lease to the local authority. That scheme had limited success and must therefore be reviewed and tweaked. More generally, I...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (16 May 2019)

Simon Coveney: We all recognise that the pressures on the housing market will not be solved by one silver bullet. It is about a combination of lots of solutions which are tailored for different sectors and circumstances. We have changing demographics in Ireland and over the next ten to 20 years, we will see a doubling of the number of people who are 65 years of age and over. That will place major...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (16 May 2019)

Simon Coveney: That is why we launched a five-year strategy to solve this problem. I think that strategy will be judged very positively at the end of those five years.

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (16 May 2019)

Simon Coveney: The Government is listening to what is being said by all of the organisations, political parties and people who will be at the Raise the Roof campaign protest on Saturday. We understand the pressures and frustrations many families are facing because the general rental and housing market is not delivering for people in the way it needs to. We are changing that. That is why almost 5,000...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (16 May 2019)

Simon Coveney: This debate descends into working class people versus, supposedly, other classes of people whenever Deputy Boyd Barrett raises it. Our job as a Government is to recognise that all types of families and people from different backgrounds and incomes have housing needs. Some of those people, including some in the city centre of Dublin, need the help of the State to be able to live and work in...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (16 May 2019)

Simon Coveney: -----critical assessment and make it a political decision when it should be a medical one.

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (16 May 2019)

Simon Coveney: I thank the Deputy for raising the issue of housing because it gives me an opportunity to share with the House factual data. I refer to the figures published this morning by the CSO showing how housing policy on increasing supply, which is at the core of this problem, is working. The number of new homes becoming available for use in the 12 months to the end of March 2019 was 22,242. This...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (16 May 2019)

Simon Coveney: When the Deputy gets into the space of name-calling and trying to turn this into some kind of class war debate-----

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (16 May 2019)

Simon Coveney: -----it is proof that Sinn Féin is losing the argument. I assure the Deputy that the largest political party in the country speaks to all types of people in all types of circumstances, and we have them coming into our clinics just like Sinn Féin Deputies do.

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (16 May 2019)

Simon Coveney: We hear their stories and we respond to them through policy. Last year well over 25,000 housing solutions were put in place for people and we are spending billions of euro trying to ensure that what is a broken housing market is fixed as quickly as possible. However, we are not in the business of cheap headlines or short-term fixes that will cause increased problems in the medium term....

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (16 May 2019)

Simon Coveney: They will drive more landlords out of the market, which I think other parties in this House recognise. It is just as well we have other parties in the House that recognise the difficult decisions-----

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (16 May 2019)

Simon Coveney: -----that are made and the fact-----

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (16 May 2019)

Simon Coveney: -----that it takes time to fix something as fundamental as a broken housing market.

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (16 May 2019)

Simon Coveney: Like the Deputy, I want to provide certainty to the families feeling the impact of this. I met one of those families and its members were incredibly dignified and very frustrated by the fact that the child in question cannot access a medicine that could make a major difference in the quality of her life. The Deputy knows how the process works and it is not politicians who make the...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (16 May 2019)

Simon Coveney: As the Deputy knows, so far this year the HSE has approved the use of 23 new medicines and five new uses of existing medicines, representing an additional investment by the HSE over five years of approximately €175 million. It is not as if the HSE wants to deliberately prevent the use of these drugs. We are effectively in a negotiation between the HSE and the company involved to...