Charitable and Voluntary Organisations

151. Deputy Ciarán Ahern asked the Minister for Children, Disability and Equality if any funding is available through her Department to support the continued operation of a children's charity (details supplied), which provides free books to more than 5,000 children across Dublin 24, but which faces significant funding pressures. [69106/26]

Immigration Policy

554. Deputy Ciarán Ahern asked the Minister for Justice, Home Affairs and Migration the evidence base for raising the marriage/civil partnership residency requirement from three years to five, separately from the general increase in reckonable residence from five to eight. [68181/26]

Public Transport

121. Deputy Ciarán Ahern asked the Minister for Transport if he will provide the €70 million in funding that the NTA says is required to avoid the increase in public transport fares; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [68009/26]

Road Safety

224. Deputy Ciarán Ahern asked the Minister for Transport further to Parliamentary Question No. 96 of 15 January 2026, whether his Department has had any engagement with the UNECE Working Party on Lighting and Light-Signalling task force regarding excessive brightness and intensity of modern LED and HID car headlights; and the nature of that engagement. [67638/26]

Social Welfare Eligibility

370. Deputy Ciarán Ahern asked the Minister for Social Protection the reason a person aged under 66 years-of-age who moved from receiving an invalidity pension to a bereaved partners contributory pension is no longer eligible to receive the living alone increase; whether this distinction has been reviewed for fairness and equality; if he will consider amending legislation to include widows and widowers under 66 years-of-age who live alone and are in receipt of a bereaved partners contributory pe

Road Safety

221. Deputy Ciarán Ahern asked the Minister for Transport if his Department has examined any additional infrastructural road safety measures on motorways following a number of incidents in recent months, including fatal collisions involving motorists driving the wrong way down slip roads and motorways. [67643/26]

34th Dáil debate — 2026-10-01

Deputy Ciarán Ahern I welcome the Bill, which the Labour Party will be supporting. While it is largely technical in nature, it is important. It is kind of crazy that it has taken this long to get around to aligning the statutory limits for drugs and alcohol for rail workers and train drivers with those in road traffic legislation. Deputy Wall will be raising some serious health and safety concerns about overcrowding on commuter lines between Kildare and Dublin. The current system of self-regul

34th Dáil debate — 2026-10-01

Deputy Ciarán Ahern Will the Tánaiste provide us with an update on the work under way to change regulations here to allow for plug-in solar panels? We were previously told that this work would be complete by September. There are over 1 million plug-in solar panels already in use in Germany. Regulations in the UK have recently been updated to allow for the sale and installation of such panels. This is a simple and cheap solution to help households bring down their energy bills, particularly for

34th Dáil debate — 2026-09-29

Deputy Ciarán Ahern I thank Sinn Féin for bringing forward this motion today. It is a great motion. I think we in the Opposition are all of one mind on this. There is absolutely no way we would be proceeding with an increase in public transport fares at this time. I have read the Government's counter-motion and I read the Minister's comments earlier. By reading them, you might thing we were living somewhere in continental Europe such is the level of propaganda about how great our public transpo