Regina Doherty (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Both the Minister responsible for charities and the Minister for Health need to intervene. No State-sponsored or State-supported agency in this country should be allowed to ignore the Workplace Relations Commission. I will come back to the Senator later and give him a call on that.

Senator Keogan echoed others' calls for the extension of the 9% VAT rate for hospitality and cited all the concerns that have been raised by people in the industry with regard to the 240,000 jobs that may be put in jeopardy.

Senator Kyne asked for an independent investigation into Inland Fisheries Ireland. What is bizarre is that the Senator has been raising this consistently, week in, week out, for months now. There have been five resignations and then the interim chair resigned in January and we still do not have sight of an independent investigation. I will write to the Minister for Transport to ask him when the internal investigation, which is all it is, in the Department will come to an end and what he expects to do thereafter.

We can all join Senator Kyne in expressing our deep sympathies to the people of Syria and southern Türkiye on what they have had to endure in the past number of days. We announced €2 million of emergency aid funding on Sunday. An enormous number of people in this country who would go to the region and help. It is something the Irish should consider doing, as opposed to just looking to international agencies and giving them money. I acknowledge the sympathies and I assume we all join with him in expressing them.

Apart from mentioning the very successful St. Brigid's Festival campaign the country enjoyed over the weekend, Senator O'Loughlin raised the very serious issue of lack of dog control measures and the need for increased oversight and stronger enforcement. At the moment, we do not seem to have any enforcement whatsoever. There was an article in the paper just over a week ago showing that a massive number of licences were not being purchased by dog owners but also that there was no enforcement at all by local authorities in a variety of counties, which does not seem to make any sense whatsoever. I will pass that message on to the relevant Minister.