Joe O'Reilly (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Ar dtús báire, déanaim comhghairdeas leis an gCathaoirleach. Níl amhras ar bith agam ná go ndéanfaidh sé jab den chéad scoth agus go mbeidh sé díograiseach, ionraic agus féaráilte agus é á dhéanamh. Táim cinnte faoi sin. Guím rath Dé ar a obair.

I congratulate you on your election to this prestigious high office and I wish you well in it. I worked with you on the Joint Committee on the Implementation of the Good Friday Agreement for a long time and found your work there impressive and committed. I wish you well in your present role. It is, of course, a big day for your family and I wish them well too.

Very briefly, I will race through a few references to people and then suggest a challenge or two that face this House. Senator O'Donovan merits mention today in positive terms for his good work.That is a universal view and does not need elaboration. My constituency colleague and friend, Senator Wilson, who contested for the office of Cathaoirleach also merits congratulations for that participation and for his personal integrity. His services and qualities will still be available to the House in other ways.

I am delighted my good friend who inspires me a lot through her work, Senator Regina Doherty, is the Leader of the House. People show their true mettle or lack of it in the face of adversity and Regina Doherty was confronted with personal and national adversity recently and she shone through brilliantly. That is the measure of somebody. That is an indomitable spirit that cannot be repressed and is there for the right reason. I am delighted she will lead the House. I equally wish Senator Lisa Chambers well as Deputy Leader of the House every personal success in that role.

Senator Jerry Buttimer, my colleague and friend, set a very high standard as Leader last year. That is a universal view in the House. He showed erudition, fairness and a capacity to knit people and bring them together. That was very important.

I welcome our new colleagues. Many of them have spoken and it is very clear that they are high-calibre people. I also welcome those who are returning. For our former colleagues from the last Seanad, today could be a difficult and emotional day and I wish them well. They did themselves proud and that is what matters, that we do things right when we are meant to do them and whatever happens afterwards is a bonus.

There are a few serious challenges facing the House in the context of the national and international tragedy we have had recently. The challenge to the House is to be part of the solution, to propose solutions and to work in various areas to achieve solutions. One of the biggest challenges confronting the House is to address the question of how we care for our elderly, and how we provide facilities for our elderly in terms of accommodation, retirement villages, dispersed housing, satisfactory nursing homes and, very important, that we augment and improve the role of full-time carers on the carer's allowance, make it a much more attractive package and increase and put on a statutory basis home care packages throughout the country for every old or ill person who wants to avail of them. This is a fundamental challenge with regard to care of the elderly.

Another fundamental challenge, and it ties well into the fact we now have the green agenda at the forefront, is to provide in every town in Ireland digital hubs and facilities to provide communal local working, thus reducing traffic but not isolating people in their homes exclusively, so they can work in villages and towns in communal situations and not suffer personal isolation and a certain depression that could go with totally living at home. This is a very important challenge. I have been a great advocate for the broadband plan, and my good friend, Senator Dooley, will remember working with me on it on the committee that pushed it through. That plan is crucial for home working. This is another great challenge.

It is clearly a great challenge for the Seanad that we address the entire question of childcare and that we look at augmenting the State element of childcare and early childhood education, which can be accessed by everybody and that can be affordable for everybody.

Among the many challenges to which the Seanad must pose solutions, and for which we must be part of the solution, is Seanad reform. Real Seanad reform rests, as previous speakers said, in the quality of all of our work and on the quality of our collective efforts. That is Seanad reform; it is not about structures.

Another great challenge is to address the entire area of education and, in a very specific way, third level education and the various education sectors in the context of possible further outbreaks of Covid or other pandemics, and how we can put in place online learning and provide the infrastructure for everyone to avail of it, and how we can give young people the university experience, which is so critical and part of the formation of those who can avail of it.

There are many areas. It would be remiss of me not to mention, given my background, that there is a challenge to provide a REP scheme to incentivise farmers who want to do the right thing for the environment. It is in the programme for Government but it needs immediate action and to be given teeth, depth, quality and real money.

These are the issues on which we must be relevant. I am very confident that with the Leader we have in Senator Regina Doherty, and with her experience, that she will lead a movement towards making our contributions so relevant that they are taken up and something is done with them.