After a wonderful weekend of sport, I want to look ahead and think of Friday week, when the Olympic Games begin. We have an incredible Team Ireland going to Tokyo to wear our green and represent this island proudly and well. I hope the Leader and the Cathaoirleach will write a letter to Team Ireland to wish them the best of luck from us in this House. Representing one's country at any level, especially in the Olympic Games, is an incredible honour. My interest is in athletics and we have a strong athletics team. I pay tribute to every person who has given blood, sweat and tears to get on to the Irish Olympic team. I look forward to cheering them on and seeing them do the work and compete to the best of their ability.

As a member of the decade of centenaries, I was proud yesterday to be part of an event at Castlerea. It was the unveiling of the Proclamation stone and was a wonderful outdoor event at the courthouse in Castlerea. I spoke to the fact that yesterday was 100 years since we signed a truce to end the War of Independence and Ireland started to forge its own path. It was a special occasion and involved everybody and everything. There was a vintage car rally with cars from that period, including Kitty Kiernan's car. She was Michael Collins's partner. Ford Model Ts and other 1920s cars were there and it brought one back in time. The Minister of State, Deputy Chambers, presided at the event and had a tour around Roscommon in some of those vintage vehicles.

Given the day that is in it, I am thinking of the businesses that have invested in outdoors dining. I acknowledge the many businesses that have made a huge outlay and investment. There are funds there to support them through Fáilte Ireland and that is open until September. It is important that we support as much as we can shopping local in our towns and villages. Recently, ShopBallinasloe.ie won an award for being one of the most innovative groups. They opened a platform and over 50 businesses in Ballinasloe signed up for the online platform during lockdown. Businesses are slowly opening up properly but I encourage people to support shopping local.

I welcome what Senator McGreehan said on the Olympic Games and I congratulate two women from Roscommon, Aoife O'Rourke and Richael Timothy, who are going forward for the Olympics and Paralympics. I wish them the best. There are flags flying all around Roscommon and Galway for them.

Félicititions pour la fête nationale. C’est super d’entendre un peu de Français dans le Seanad.

For our lovely Italians, it was a wonderful celebration yesterday. I am sure they are celebrating a lot.

I join my colleague, Senator Gallagher, and those who wished a happy birthday to Councillor Ian McGarvey as our oldest public representative in Ireland at 91 years of age. He has been married to Marjorie for 67 years. She has been a stalwart of his election campaigns. When someone gets elected at 73, it puts it in perspective for us who would be thinking we should be retiring at 73. When someone becomes chair of the council at 82, they are putting in a long haul. I wish him a happy birthday as probably the oldest representative at local level since the foundation of the State. He is still hale and hearty and doing all the work. He will, no doubt, be at meetings all day today.

I was looking at the Cathaoirleach with disbelief. It is incredible to think Councillor McGarvey has had such a successful career in what we would consider the autumn of his life. He is obviously still raring to go and I will send a letter to him on all our behalf today wishing him a happy birthday and continued success.

Senator Dolan talked about the hospitality industry. Senator Keogan raised some of the concerns that have been shared with her. The difficulty is that nobody would willingly try to do something that would discriminate against some of the people who are not yet vaccinated but in the absence of any other choices, I am not sure what else we can do other than keep the entire hospitality and tourism sector closed, which is not palatable to any of us. While people will find bits of the legislation that will be published this afternoon difficult, and I am sure we will all express our concerns about it, I have not heard any other suggestions from any party or Independents about what we would do differently other than just open everything up and have a free-for-all. That is not something that society is ready for and it would not be wise. I am mindful that I have not seen the legislation yet. A large element of the legislation will refer to the future use of antigen testing in Ireland. Senator Gallagher opened the Order of Business by talking about the pilot project that has successfully been under way for a number of weeks in our university sector. Some 8,000 staff and students have undergone multiple tests weekly. The outcome of that will be available to us soon. Some of us have been talking about it for months. I am sick listening to myself talking about antigen testing. It will be more widely used in society as we move into the phase of living with Covid as opposed to trying to deal with some of the horrendous issues that we have been dealing with in the past year. I thank Senator Dolan for raising the matter.

Senator McGreehan has asked me to write a letter to Team Ireland, which I will. We have been spoiled for choice with sports in the past couple of weeks, between tennis, Formula 1, the Tour de France and the football. It is good to have something to look forward to. I will do that soon on behalf of all of us.

Senator O'Reilly talked about the single-use plastics ban, which probably has gone unnoticed in the past week. We were all busy doing other stuff. It is welcome and will certainly have an impact on our lives.

Senator Clifford-Lee, along with all our other colleagues, commended Deputy Ivana Bacik on her superb win at the weekend. The fact that we need more women is as obvious as the nose on all of our faces. It is something that we all have to be part of.

Senator Hoey talked about Disability Pride Month. It is unfortunate that we have to have special days and events to talk about the impact of the decisions that we make on people with disabilities but it is welcome that we will shine a light on it this July. I concur with the Senator and ask everybody else to do the same. We can talk about the difficulties that people face and the invisible challenges that they have every day. It is important to keep it on the agenda.

Senator Seery Kearney talked about the terms of reference with regard to the fire safety standard and defects group that has been working on in recent months. I read with interest this morning that we are at an impasse because the obvious solution for the people on the working group is for the State to provide a fund to make sure that we can compensate those homeowners who, as the Senator rightly says, through no fault of their own find themselves in terrifying situations. This is not the first time and it will not be the last. The State needs to be the first port of call for fixing the issue but those people who were responsible for building defective homes that did not meet the standards and regulations that existed at the time need to be made culpable. While they may have closed their companies so that they cannot be pursued financially, it needs to be ensured that they never build anything else in this country or any other European country again.

Hear, hear.

I look forward to the resolution. I acknowledge that the State is unfortunately the last port of call in these cases. These houses need to be fixed and that is the end of it.

Senator Ardagh talked about cancer care. I was mindful, when Paul Reid was doing an interview on Saturday, that we need to get our hospitals back to a scenario where they are dealing with the normal health challenges that people have. That is why we can never have a lockdown again. It is empowering to hear that he is of that mindset. He talked about the further, wider use of antigen testing in our screening process in future.

Senator Carrigy talked about hospitality and the serious issue of the 18-month backlog with regard to driver's licences. The Minister said that he has taken on 40 new driving instructors but an 18-month waiting list is unacceptable. We will have to think outside the box and come up with something different.

Senator Cassells talked about the online safety and media regulation Bill and the three young men who are only at the start of their professional career and are already legends for what they have done not just on the pitch but, more significantly for most of them, off the pitch. I thought it was abhorrent for a Conservative MP to state in her WhatsApp group with other Conservative MPs that maybe one of them would be more mindful if he spent more time concentrating on football than on feeding hungry children. My retort to her is that maybe if she was doing her job, he would not have to spend so much time feeding the hungry children of England. It is despicable. Bravo, Rashford. What he has done in the past year will leave a legacy for generations to come. A goal that he missed last night will be forgotten in a couple of weeks because I am sure that he will go on to have a successful football career, as will the other two young men. The online safety and media regulation Bill is something that we need to grab by the scruff of its neck to make sure that our media companies take responsibility.

This is not to make this about me but I reported a gentleman who called me the C-word, the c-u-n-t word on Saturday, just for pig iron because it happens quite often. If I was to do it all the time, I would be blue in the face. I got a lovely response back from Twitter that he has not broken any of its rules. If he has not broken the rules, then the rules need to be changed. It is not acceptable that we have such a level of discourse on what we now all take for granted as a daily part of Irish and international life. We need to take the online safety and media regulation Bill, grab it by the scruff of the neck, and make sure that these people are culpable. Society is changing. We sometimes make excuses for the kind of behaviour that happens on social media and state that it is not the kind of behaviour that happens in real life. These are real people, not pretend people. I know there are accounts with numbers in the names and such but they are still people. It is not acceptable and we have to take responsibility for making these changes and to make them quickly.

Senator Conway asked for a debate on water safety. I will try to do it as soon as we come back in September. The suggestion that he made that we should have it as part of a curriculum in second level schools is one that we should champion.

Senator Malcolm Byrne talked about protecting democracy. I have not seen what he has seen with regard to the powers for our directly elected mayor in Limerick, which will be the first, but I would be concerned if what he suggests will happen is true. I will talk to the Minister of State, Deputy Peter Burke, and come back to the Senator.

Senator Marie Sherlock talked about the drug and alcohol task forces and the independence of the chair. If she sends the letter, I would be happy to support her. The point of having these is to represent the challenges faced in communities. They are not to be talking shops that are to be managed and controlled by vested interests that want an outcome. They have to have at their heart the people living with these challenges to know what kind of a society they live in and life they have. I would be happy to do anything that I can to help the Senator. She can let me know.

Senator Paul Gavan asked for a debate on US troops using Shannon Airport again. In case he thinks I do not ask, I ask for them and I facilitate any debates that I can. The ones that do not make the cut are not necessarily down to me but I will certainly make that request again.

The Senator also raised the TRIPS waiver. I do not understand the logic behind it other than that we seem to be protecting the profits of big pharmaceutical companies. There was a report from the World Health Organization on Saturday that only 25% of the world's population is vaccinated. Here we are thinking that we are deadly in Ireland, with nearly 70% of people having had their first dose and 50% having had their second dose. If the whole world is not vaccinated, then we will be in a repeating cycle. It does not make sense to me. I do not know how I can help the Senator other than to try to have a debate on that when we come back in September, which I can try to organise.

Senator Boyhan talked about the Land Development Agency. He is right. He has been saying for months that there have been significant challenges and that all of the legal challenges that people have taken have ultimately been successful, which tells us that there is something wrong with the process. We look forward to the new solutions from the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage.

Senator Higgins talked about wishing people well on 12 July, which of course we all do. It is a celebration for that community and the people who live on that part of our island. I do not understand people burning flags to assert their own culture and causing offence to people of a different culture who live on the same island. Having a shared island means that we should have respect for each other, even if we do not necessarily agree. I concur with everything the Senator said.

Senator Gallagher started the day talking about UniCoV. We all look forward to the results of that pilot because it will be instrumental in helping Professor Mary Horgan, who was recently appointed to the new antigen task force, to ensure that we all live more safely by using all the screening tools that are available to us as part of social life.