Renua’s plan to abolish the TV licence would bury RTÉ and end public service broadcasting in Ireland, Labour TD for Galway West Derek Nolan has said. “The license fee makes up the bulk of RTÉ’s funding. Renua’s plan to gut RTÉ by depriving it of almost €180m would devastate the media landscape in Ireland. We…

Any involvement by the Independent Alliance in the next government would be quite simply a recipe for chaos. This much at least became clear from John Halligan on RTE’s This Week today, in an interview that to be honest, didn’t offer much clarity on anything else! Deputy Halligan admitted that because of the dramatically divergent…

I welcome the findings of the Expert Panel on the provision of ambulance services in Dublin and the of rest of the country. The Dublin Fire Brigade (DFB) mainly serves the greater Dublin area while the National Ambulance Service (NAS) mainly serves the rest of Ireland. Because of their separate geographical remits, the Expert Panel…

Listening to Mary Lou McDonald today, it is clear that Sinn Fein would have no problem whatsoever putting Fianna Fáil back in power. On RTE’s Saturday with Claire Byrne, Deputy McDonald was asked whether there were circumstances where Sinn Fein would go into government with Fianna Fáil after the next election, and she said quite…

Dublin Labour TD and member of the Oireachtas Justice Committee Sean Kenny has welcomed the announcement of seven new Garda Youth Diversion Projects that will be getting underway in 2016. In addition, a new pilot mentoring service which deals with young people who come to the attention of An Garda Síochána will also be implemented….

The insurance companies can’t have it both ways. They won’t insure where they believe there are inadequate flood defences, and where adequate flood defences have been installed, they won’t insure either because there was flooding there in the past. Parts of my constituency of Dublin Central were prone to flooding in the past. East Wall,…

Cork South Central Labour TD Ciarán Lynch, welcomed the news that funding of €50,000 has been confirmed for Cork International Choral Festival this week, saying that it would help the event to expand and grow into the future. Deputy Lynch added: “This vital funding, approved by Fáilte Ireland under its 2016 National Festivals and Events…

The public confidence in and the credibility of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is completely shot following last night’s Prime Time investigation. The programme completely exposed the failings and shortcomings in the corporate culture, governance, reliability and competence of the EPA as it is currently constituted. Underpinned by legislation the EPA is virtually unaccountable and…