Results 141-160 of 589 for in 'Dáil debates' speaker:Matt Shanahan

Ceisteanna ar Sonraíodh Uain Dóibh - Priority Questions: Rural Recreation Policy (26 Sep 2023)

Matt Shanahan: They do not have that in Monaghan.

Ceisteanna ar Sonraíodh Uain Dóibh - Priority Questions: Rural Recreation Policy (26 Sep 2023)

Matt Shanahan: 49. To ask the Minister for Rural and Community Development if she will outline the present and proposed spending in outdoor recreation measures in relation to Waterford city and county; and what future projects are under consideration by her Department. [41578/23]

Ceisteanna ar Sonraíodh Uain Dóibh - Priority Questions: Rural Recreation Policy (26 Sep 2023)

Matt Shanahan: I ask the Minister to outline the present and proposed spending from the recently announced outdoor recreation measures fund in Waterford city and county, and what future projects are under consideration.

Ceisteanna ar Sonraíodh Uain Dóibh - Priority Questions: Rural Recreation Policy (26 Sep 2023)

Matt Shanahan: I know the Minister has visited Waterford and I have had the pleasure of accompanying her on some of those visits. She rightly pointed out the very significant number of attractions. We are blessed in Waterford with the topography that we have, with lakes, rivers, mountains and the sea right on our doorstep. The measures that the Minister is announcing are very welcome. However, it is...

Ceisteanna ar Sonraíodh Uain Dóibh - Priority Questions: Rural Recreation Policy (26 Sep 2023)

Matt Shanahan: The Minister has done a fair advertising job there in terms of speaking about the amenities that are on offer. There are two that I would like to highlight and they may well be on the Minister's desk already, and those are the development of the blueways, particularly on the River Blackwater - the Minister referenced Cappoquin - and the Waterford estuary. We have great visitor attractions...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (21 Sep 2023)

Matt Shanahan: I notice the absence in the Government benches today. I hope that is because the Members are down supporting the farmers and not intimidated into not attending Dáil Éireann today. One of the strongest vestiges of our colonial mentality is our continuing to unthinkingly replicate the policies of other nations as though they somehow have things figured out. We think the Finns...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (21 Sep 2023)

Matt Shanahan: There is often a disconnect between aspiration and output. I hear what the Minister is saying about trying to stimulate the economic conditions to deliver on planning and, in particular, deliver one-off housing. However, I am not seeing it in my constituency. When I speak to my colleagues, I note there is a lot of difficulty, particularly in the rural areas, in securing planning...

Local Government (Mayor of Limerick) Bill 2023: Second Stage (20 Sep 2023)

Matt Shanahan: Okay, it is based on two constituencies but just the same, it seems like a lot of money to put into an election of this sort. It does beg the question of whether a person who can raise more money is in a better position to be potentially elected than somebody who cannot. That again speaks to the ability of people to do this job. I wonder as well how the division of labour, if you want to...

Local Government (Mayor of Limerick) Bill 2023: Second Stage (20 Sep 2023)

Matt Shanahan: As the Minister of State knows, a plebiscite was held in 2019 in three city areas to decide whether to have a directly elected mayor. Waterford was one of those and I voted in that. I actually voted against the proposal at the time. I could not understand exactly what this person was going to be doing in terms of the way the job was being framed. What I saw in essence was a job in which...

Ceisteanna ar Reachtaíocht a Gealladh - Questions on Promised Legislation (12 Jul 2023)

Matt Shanahan: Yesterday, during Leaders' Questions, I put to the Taoiseach, as I have done before, data obtained from replies to parliamentary questions to demonstrate that the three successive Governments of which he was a part from 2016 to 2020 unfairly distributed public capital spending. Projects in Ministers' constituencies proceed while elsewhere they are stuck in the hell of public procurement. In...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (11 Jul 2023)

Matt Shanahan: The figures relating to the underfunding of the region are stark. On the hospital, I remind the Taoiseach that despite the increases in revenue to the operating budget that he outlined and the capital grants, it is still the least resourced of all the nine model 4 hospitals in the country. Yet, its emergency department has been the busiest in the country since March. If the Taoiseach looks...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (11 Jul 2023)

Matt Shanahan: From the replies to my parliamentary questions, we are right.

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (11 Jul 2023)

Matt Shanahan: Frank McDonald, writing in The Irish Times, recently outlined the continuing dominance of spending and resource concentration in Dublin and its surrounds, to the detriment of the other regions. The article states: "We are sleepwalking our way towards a deeply dysfunctional, inequitable and unbalanced Ireland." The allocation of capital resources to Waterford is a clear reflection of that...

Matters Arising in RTÉ: Statements (4 Jul 2023)

Matt Shanahan: It must be a long time since the governance of a public body has been called into question for such a period of time and that so many questions have come to be asked and have yet to be answered. One of the main questions I have is what drove the derogation of trust and the need to conceal the spending of public moneys. Why did RTÉ management deceive the public and the Oireachtas for...

An tOrd Gnó - Order of Business (4 Jul 2023)

Matt Shanahan: In the coming weeks, the budget will be formed and presented to this House. It must be said that no other democratic parliament would accept such a black box of spending. We will see the money going in. There will be more than €12 billion in capital expenditure next year, the bits and bobs that may find our ramshackle hospitals, our unreliable public transport and our patchy and...

Ceisteanna ar Pholasaí nó ar Reachtaíocht - Questions on Policy or Legislation (29 Jun 2023)

Matt Shanahan: There was another high-profile assault in the capital last week where a visiting actor was bottled, slashed and bitten by three youths, both female and male. One public commentator described them as feral youths running wild on our streets. It is an assault that mirrors so many others occurring across the country every weekend and week. The Garda force now numbers less that 14,000, 1,000...

Courts and Civil Law (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2022: From the Seanad (28 Jun 2023)

Matt Shanahan: The Minister of State is treading on slightly dangerous ground tonight and using the Whip on his colleagues is also putting them on dangerous ground. As Deputy Howlin has outlined, there is a process here for bringing this type of legislation into being and it has not been followed in this case. This is a very late amendment to be bringing to the House, throwing in front of people and...

Courts and Civil Law (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2022: From the Seanad (28 Jun 2023)

Matt Shanahan: I only became aware of the amendment this evening and am not as well briefed as my colleagues who are present but I wish to share with the Minister of State some of the correspondence sent to me on the matter. The correspondence states that the new section 26A the Government proposes to insert into the Data Protection Act relates to information shared by citizens that could be deemed to be...

Culling the National Herd: Motion (Resumed) [Private Members] (28 Jun 2023)

Matt Shanahan: Agriculture has been the backbone of the Irish economy for many decades now and it continues to be the largest economic sector in rural and regional Ireland. Ireland is a world leader in beef and dairy production. If we take 2019 as a reference year, our total agrifood exports were valued at €14.5 billion. Of that impressive number, dairy accounted for €5 billion and beef...

Ceisteanna ar Pholasaí nó ar Reachtaíocht - Questions on Policy or Legislation (22 Jun 2023)

Matt Shanahan: Reviewing spends on projects such as the Mater Hospital, the Dunkettle Roundabout, the Cork and Dublin runways, the National Children's Hospital, it is clear how important it is to have a Minister to shepherd a project through our cumbersome public spending code. It appears to me that many fine and needed projects that lack ministerial political patronage are left strangled by toxic...