Results 10,801-10,820 of 50,136 for speaker:Micheál Martin

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (4 Oct 2022)

Micheál Martin: Sorry? It is a serious matter. We have huge biodiversity loss in the country and we need to protect it. We need to create an income stream too and an incentive for farmers to help us to guard and protect our biodiversity. That is the point I am making. We are very open to trying to help and to being creative and innovative about it because that is the future.

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (4 Oct 2022)

Micheál Martin: When the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, talks about international obligations, he is talking about the need for the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, for example, to procure a lot of hotel accommodation for those fleeing war. We should not juxtapose people fleeing a terrible war with the student accommodation crisis. Many students would support the...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (4 Oct 2022)

Micheál Martin: I thank the Deputy for raising the issue. As he will know, the new ACRES is worth about €1.5 billion over five years, the largest ever and 50% higher than the amount for the previous scheme. The riparian scheme remains 2 ha for €3,000. That has not been cut or changed. It is important that clarity is out there. I have just confirmed with the Minister for Agriculture, Food...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (4 Oct 2022)

Micheál Martin: First of all, I would say that the situation is challenging in respect of student accommodation. It is reflective of the wider issues in terms of housing supply and new construction, and also viability issues in terms of land that universities own but are not in a position to develop with developers on the basis of what they believe is a viability gap between the cost of that student...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (4 Oct 2022)

Micheál Martin: It is not actually having a hugely distorting impact. The problem is that we are not building enough houses or apartments, full stop. The State-----

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (4 Oct 2022)

Micheál Martin: I ask the Deputy to look at the figures and be honest about this for once, and not to continually distort the debate about housing. It gets distorted as if the only players were institutional providers. They are not. They are minority players in the overall scheme of things in terms of the construction of houses. The State is the biggest actor, through social housing, affordable housing...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (4 Oct 2022)

Micheál Martin: Right across the board, the State is building the houses or contributing to affordability. We are not building enough houses. What I have noticed over the last two years is that the line of attack has been to pick one particular example or illustration and to endeavour to make it the norm in the narrative and presentation of how the housing situation stands. It is not that way at all,...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (4 Oct 2022)

Micheál Martin: The Deputy knows there is a limit on what they can do now. They cannot buy-----

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (4 Oct 2022)

Micheál Martin: I thank the Deputy for raising these two important issues. The weakness and distortion in her presentation have to do with her use of the word that the two individual cases she has identified "typify" the Government's response. They do not typify the Government's response at all and she should know that well. By this I mean that the State itself is building and, through the approved social...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (4 Oct 2022)

Micheál Martin: Yes.

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (4 Oct 2022)

Micheál Martin: Go bunúsach, an polasaí atá ag Sinn Féin ná Tadhg an dá thaobh, i gcónaí. They are on both sides all of the time. By the way, Animal Farmapplies to the Deputy’s party more than any other party in this Dáil any day. There is no question about that.

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (4 Oct 2022)

Micheál Martin: Ask a lot of the dissidents and a lot of the people who left her party down through the years. They can verify the degree to which Animal Farmapplies to it. That is why Orwell-----

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (4 Oct 2022)

Micheál Martin: I welcome our visitors from Ballyhaunis secondary school. It is why Orwell should always be a core part of the second level curriculum, just to prepare us.

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (4 Oct 2022)

Micheál Martin: The danger, of course, is that the party opposite, as I have said, in particular take 1984as an instruction manual and it does it very well, holding many contradictory opinions at the same time.

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (4 Oct 2022)

Micheál Martin: On the chartered surveyors, they have come up with a calculation without even seeing the detailed design of the levy. The Finance Bill will work out the detailed design of the levy itself. The Department of Finance’s calculations are much lower than what the Society of Chartered Surveyors Ireland has indicated. Of course, the working out of all of this will be in the context of the...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (4 Oct 2022)

Micheál Martin: I thank the Deputy for her contribution. When George Orwell wrote his great novel, 1984, he talked about the party’s emphasis on doublethink. Describing it, he explains that party members have “to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them”. Most people who have read 1984took it as a warning but...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (4 Oct 2022)

Micheál Martin: How else can we reconcile the party’s performance on this issue? We have just watched the Deputy condemn the Government’s proposal in respect of industry contributing to the cost of mica redress. Just last week, her colleague, Deputy Doherty, stood in this House, in the same place as the Deputy, and declared, "I also welcome the defective concrete products levy." I then...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (4 Oct 2022)

Micheál Martin: Then again, the Deputy’s party had a Private Members’ motion in June 2021 in which it demanded "that those responsible for the manufacture of defective blocks are held to account, and that industry contributes to the overall cost". In that debate Deputy Doherty was equally clear that builders and suppliers "are held to account with a contribution extracted from the industry...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (4 Oct 2022)

Micheál Martin: The Deputy's party is the party of doublethink and the three-card trick. It is for mica redress and industry making its contribution until it is not. It supports the levy on concrete products until it does not. The industry responsible for the problem should pay until it should not.

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (4 Oct 2022)

Micheál Martin: Sinn Féin is making this up as it goes along.