Michael Mullins (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I support Senator Higgins’ call for a debate with the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine on the beef genomics scheme. The one bit of good news is that he has announced an extension of the deadline for applications, giving farmers an additional week to apply. Approximately 15,000 applications have been received to date. Hopefully that number will increase significantly over the coming week. There are a few issues of concern to the farmers and it is important to have a meeting with the Minister to tease some of those out so that the level of applications will increase significantly.

I very much welcome that €91 million is being made available for social housing initiatives, as announced today. Of this €5 million will be spent in County Galway, €689,000 will be spent on bringing 42 units back into use. In total over 1,000 units will be refurbished nationwide. In Galway city and county €2.7 million will be allocated for investment in housing adaptation grants for older people with disabilities, which is very welcome. In addition, €1.2 million will be spent on retrofitting social housing in Galway to make it more energy efficient. I hope this is a significant start in making much more social housing available so that the long waiting lists in our county can be reduced significantly over the next couple of years.