Results 9,921-9,940 of 40,897 for speaker:Simon Coveney

Ceisteanna ar Reachtaíocht a Gealladh - Questions on Promised Legislation (9 May 2019)

Simon Coveney: That means there is a different onus on the State in terms of pension entitlements. That is at the core of the issue.

Ceisteanna ar Reachtaíocht a Gealladh - Questions on Promised Legislation (9 May 2019)

Simon Coveney: This is a real priority for the Government and the Minister. In certain parts of the country, women have to wait far too long to get their results. The HSE has now secured additional laboratory facilities, which we are told can be used over the summer months to dramatically reduce those waiting times and return them to acceptable periods. The appropriate benchmark is a matter of weeks...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (9 May 2019)

Simon Coveney: I did not interrupt the Deputy.

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (9 May 2019)

Simon Coveney: So we are now wasting public money trying to put people into stable accommodation-----

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (9 May 2019)

Simon Coveney: -----and trying to take them out of inappropriate but improved emergency accommodation. By the way, I am a big believer in approved housing bodies, as they know from when I was Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, and the current Minister is as well. That is why we are funding them to the tune of tens of million of euro each year. That is why we brought the European...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (9 May 2019)

Simon Coveney: I have had direct conversations in that regard and it is not straightforward. It certainly is not being held up because of a lack of appetite from the Government. The issues raised by the Deputy are being addressed. We are not just talking about it; we are delivering thousands of homes now that were not being delivered a few years ago.

Ceisteanna ar Reachtaíocht a Gealladh - Questions on Promised Legislation (9 May 2019)

Simon Coveney: The question was whether we will support the No Consent, No Sale Bill. I do not believe the Government can support that Bill.

Ceisteanna ar Reachtaíocht a Gealladh - Questions on Promised Legislation (9 May 2019)

Simon Coveney: The Deputy has raised a lot of genuine issues. I reassure the House that, from a biodiversity and species perspective and from a climate change perspective, Members will see a lot of action from this Government. Before the end of this month, the Minister, Deputy Bruton, will bring a national climate action plan to Government for approval, and I am sure it will have many hours of debate in...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (9 May 2019)

Simon Coveney: There are issues in what the Deputy has raised, which I do not want to dismiss. We need to be careful though not to interpret trends in Irish agriculture on the basis of what is happening broadly across the EU. The starting position of many of the newer member states when they joined the European Union was one of very small farmholdings, in many cases with dairy herd sizes of five or six...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (9 May 2019)

Simon Coveney: It is not a coincidence that my party and this Government advocated to get the agricultural commissionership for Ireland because we prioritise farming and agriculture as an essential part of rural Ireland-----

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (9 May 2019)

Simon Coveney: -----and of the Irish economy and we will not be found wanting in terms of supporting agriculture, particularly the beef sector, through this difficult period also.

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (9 May 2019)

Simon Coveney: I do not believe we disagree that we need to significantly increase the output of housing of all types but the Deputy, like many others, misrepresents what the Government is doing in terms of its housing policy, and whether it is deliberate or not, I do not know. The idea that the Government has an ideological approach of relying on the market to solve the problem is simply not borne out by...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (9 May 2019)

Simon Coveney: No, we are doing it. It is happening.

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (9 May 2019)

Simon Coveney: At the very end of the Deputy's contribution we got what this is about, which is about party politics rather than delivering.

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (9 May 2019)

Simon Coveney: The Deputy asked whether the alternatives have been assessed. They have been assessed through this process but also before it. Some people ask why we are committing this amount of money when technology may change over the next 25 years and we may be able to do this through mobile networks, wireless systems and so on. This argument has held up progress in Ireland for decades. If we look at...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (9 May 2019)

Simon Coveney: We are satisfied that through this bidding process, which one should not forget has taken three years, there has been the appropriate due diligence to test the capacity of the remaining bidder to be able to deliver on the scope of this project, which, after all, is about rolling out fibre. It is not rocket science. It is about rolling out fibre into more than 500,000 premises. That is what...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (9 May 2019)

Simon Coveney: I know a bit about this issue because I was very much involved in the last discussion on the Common Agricultural Policy and how we would structure both Pillar 1 payments, which are direct payments, and Pillar 2 payments in terms of supporting more sustainable agricultural activity and maintaining and protecting the family farm structure, which is core to the make-up of rural Ireland. If we...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (9 May 2019)

Simon Coveney: It seems the Deputy does.

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (9 May 2019)

Simon Coveney: I am glad we agree on one thing, namely that rural Ireland needs broadband. We have been talking about this for far too long and not delivering it for homes and businesses in what is now referred to as the intervention area. There are 540,000 premises that have no prospect of getting the kind of high-speed broadband that most people in this House would accept that everyone - homes and...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (9 May 2019)

Simon Coveney: It is a letter of 14 or 15 pages. That is why the Government spent four hours in its meeting on Tuesday talking through these issues and getting detailed explanations from the Minister, Deputy Bruton, as to the response to some of the concerns raised by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. I am satisfied that those questions have been answered. This is about laying 147,000 km...