Regina Doherty (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Not at all. The students are very welcome.

I probably could not even count the number of times Senator Craughwell and I have spoken about search and rescue here. For the past number of months, he and I have attempted to get the tender process he has, to be fair to him, been aggrieved about for the past number of years on the work programme of the Oireachtas committee. We have invited in the Secretary General, the deputy Secretary General, the Minister and the Minister of State. Nobody wants to talk about anything. Nobody wants to talk about the process for the past number of years and nobody wants to talk about the resulting awarding of a contract that uses a helicopter we excluded our own Coast Guard from using. Senator Craughwell was therefore right to talk this morning about millions and millions in State money being used to pay for the last round of helicopters we have used for the past 20 years, and now we will pay for the next round of helicopters - the same helicopters our own Coast Guard could have used in providing search and rescue. This has a long way to run. It is not about depriving any company of millions it may make - good luck to them - but there is a real question to be asked here as to why we excluded our own men and women, our own airline pilots, from doing the search and rescue for our own people to the benefit of foreign companies. It just does not make any sense to me. I am sure the Senator will not let it go, nor will I.

Senator Fitzpatrick spoke about the Sinn Féin alternative budget announced yesterday. Well done and fair play to Sinn Féin for announcing it, but it does obviously show the massive differences between its policy and the current policy, which absolutely is working and which will deliver 30,000 houses this year and 37,000 houses next year. Most notably, scrapping all the schemes Sinn Féin proposes to scrap, I am not really sure how it proposes to help people to buy their first home. Also, given that Sinn Féin will use the same builders the State is currently using, I am not sure how it proposes to build the extra 7,500 homes next year. Anyway, we have these debates in the round, and it is to be hoped the people buying the houses will win out in the end.

Senator Dolan started our contributions today by kicking off the budget negotiations in the Seanad. We have a full evening booked for next Tuesday, after the Ministers for Finance and Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform announce the 2024 budget, when we will all get an opportunity to welcome the good things, I hope, and maybe point out some of the things we might have liked to see in the budget.