Mark Daly (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

With leave from the House, I seek an amendment to the Order of Business to the effect that No. 19, the Immigration Reform for US Citizens Living in Ireland Bill, be introduced today. This is tied to the fact that the new US ambassador to Ireland will go before the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations today and I hope the appointment will be ratified. This has been the longest period of absence of a US ambassador to Ireland. The issue of immigration reform for the 50,000 undocumented Irish in America should be foremost in his mind, but also in the mind of the Minister of State with responsibility for the Irish overseas and the diaspora, Deputy Jimmy Deenihan, whom I congratulate on being appointed to that role. He is the first such Minister of State, a position Fianna Fáil has called for these past two years. Indeed, we were the first political party to produce a policy paper regarding the Irish overseas and the diaspora.

Since we are looking for immigration reform for Irish citizens in the United States, we must also be fair in providing immigration reform here. Many US citizens who want to live in, work in or retire to Ireland are being deported by the Government. This is why we are introducing the Bill. We hope the Government will support it because we cannot be sending the Minister for Foreign Affairs to Washington looking for immigration reform for our citizens when we do not do the same here. I hope the Leader will facilitate some time to do that.

I support my colleague, Senator Terry Leyden, on the issue of commercial rates. We want to see this legislation annulled because of part V, which relates to imposing half commercial rates on vacant properties. This will destroy rural Ireland. No regulatory impact assessment has been done on the effects of this. It is quite simple. Where a person who owns a commercial premises cannot run a business there himself or rent it out and cannot afford to pay the rates, he will simply tear down the building. We will see buildings being ruined, destroyed and knocked down in rural Ireland as a result of this legislation.