Micheál Carrigy (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I concur with a number of Senator Currie's comments on special education. I welcome the review which will take place and is being launched by the Minister of State at the Department of Education, Deputy Madigan, with regard to school places. Regarding the Joint Committee on Autism still has a number of months to meet, so it is not due to finish shortly. We are publishing an early report tomorrow on the school summer programme for 2023 but that is not the final report. There are a number of months left for that committee to run before we make our final report.

With regard to funding, the Minister of Rural and Community Development, Deputy Humphreys, has been instrumental in reviving rural Ireland. I know the community centre fund which she announced this year was massively oversubscribed, so I hope extra funding will be found for the significant number of applications. There is a large number from my county of Longford in under measures two and three. The local community centre, like the local GAA club, is the heart of the community. This needs to be a fixture. There needs to be increased funding yearly for this scheme to make sure the vast majority, if not all, of those applications are successful. As I said, the community centre is the beating heart of every community and is used by all the relevant other organisations, so I would like to see that fund expanding.

I mention another issue I brought up in the House a number of months ago regarding drink spiking and the use of plastic lids on drinks. I met with representatives from the Vintners' Federation of Ireland, VFI, and the Licensed Vintners Association, LVA, in relation to this issue and have also spoken to the Garda. I thank Young Fine Gael which has taken on a campaign over the past number of months in a number of university bars. I have been provided with plastic lids to put on glasses by a local company, Sherpack Limited, from my home county of Longford. This initiative has been proved to be very successful and is warranted and needed by the student population that is using it. We are looking at expanding this to other universities and then bringing a final report to the licensed vintners and to the Minister to try to make this mandatory. We are coming into the Christmas season and there will a significant number of parties, etc. I would like people to be cognisant of the threat which, unfortunately, is out there. We need to bring in a mechanism such as that to protect people when they are out socialising.