Gabhaim buíochas leis an gCathaoirleach. First, I welcome Senator Clonan to the House. I congratulate his family and friends because behind every politician who is successful in an election, there is a great team of tired and enthusiastic people who sometimes have more faith in you than you have in yourself. Well done to his house and to the team behind him.

I have some experience of working with modal shift and behavioural change in infrastructure around people with disabilities, having worked with schools for 14 years where I often came across that issue and sometimes encountered a lack of awareness. I would love to work with the Senator on that. Perhaps we could work on things with Engineers Ireland because design is a very significant issue. I look forward to working with Senator Clonan on that and on many other things. I welcome him to the House.

I will use the final few minutes of my time to raise again an issue that ties in the IPCC report, the war in Ukraine and the challenges of living in rural Ireland. The solar panel Bill, which the Green Party brought forward over a year ago now, has been delayed over and over again. Finally, it looks like everything that needs to be done has been done. The ecology reports have been completed, the i's have been dotted and the t's have been crossed. This Bill would enable communities, community groups, schools and farmers to put photovoltaic solar panels on their roofs without planning permission. We already have companies offering 17.5 cent a unit to farmers as soon as they can start selling them energy.

This Bill is very important because it does many different things in many ways. It can save the Department of Education money on its bills for schools as they will be able to sell energy during the summer. It will get us off the addiction to fossil fuels which we have had for too long, and which we have been calling to move away from for many years. It has always been a priority for the Green Party to look at our fossil fuel addiction, to leave everything we can in the ground, to become self-sufficient and to become net exporters of energy. For people living in rural areas, especially for farmers who have many sheds with roofs, this will get rid of the limit to what they can put up and eliminate the need to apply for planning permission. It will help them to make another income. We all know that farmers, especially small rural farmers, unlike the big farmers - I always make this distinction - need other incomes because their farming is marginal and they can barely survive on what they are earning. Most of them have second and third jobs. It is very important that this Bill is brought to pass. I hope the whole House will support me on this because it will enable community groups and community halls, farmers, rural dwellers and anyone who has a bit of a roof anywhere to get photovoltaic panels up on their roofs without the cumbersome bureaucracy that we had created for years to make this prohibitive. People can then own their own energy because there is nothing better than owning your own energy and becoming aware of how much you use. For too long, we have been removed from the source of our energy and the amount we use. This is partly because we have not been producing it ourselves. It would be great if we could see this Bill brought forward. I encourage the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, to make it one of his top priorities to get away from this overdependence on fossil fuels. At the moment, we are fuelling Putin's war which is a disgusting thing.

I remind the House that tomorrow, when the President of Ukraine makes his address to the joint sitting of the Houses, it is hoped that most people will wear the Ukrainian colours to show him, even if it is only a token gesture, that we are behind him, as stated by Senator McDowell. Senator Clonan may not yet have received the memo on this but he may have some blue and yellow in his house. The Bill I have mentioned is very important for many people in many ways.

Ba mhaith liom fáilte is fiche a chur roimh an Seanadóir nuathofa, an Seanadóir Clonan, agus é anseo linn inniu.

I look forward to working with Senator Clonan and learning from him. He gave us a great insight into his character, his experience and his intentions in the Seanad, and all of them are admirable. I hope people will not judge me disrespectful if I say I found myself a bit more invested in and enthralled by the election count for the Trinity College by-election than I did for my own count. I can only imagine what it was like for the Senator having to go through all that.

Senator Ó Donnghaile has a safe seat.

Well, you never know. Is there any such thing? I wish Senator Clonan well agus go n-éirí go geal leis.

First, I wish to note the remarks of the Minister of State with responsibility for overseas development aid and the diaspora published in the Irish Independent today. It might surprise people that I read the Irish Independent, but there you go. The Minister of State said the Government will commit to holding the referendum on presidential election voting rights before 2024. While I welcome the assertion, I would like to think it will happen before 2024, given it is a programme for Government commitment. What we need, and what I would like, is for the Minister of State, Deputy Brophy, or the Minister for Foreign Affairs, who has lead responsibility for taking this legislation through the Houses, to come before us after the Easter recess and outline the timeframe involved in the legislation. We cannot wait any longer. We cannot keep travelling the world on St. Patrick's Day and lauding our global diaspora, telling them how important they are. We cannot commit to telling citizens in the North they will no longer be left behind and then, when we have the opportunity to do something tangible that would assert and affirm their citizenship, not actually do it. It is commendable the Government is committed to this. It has been committed to it and has made announcements around it for a very long time. What we need now is for the definitive timeline to be laid before us and, if necessary, to initiate the legislation in this House. I am sure we would be happy to help it along the way.

I want to finish by raising the following. A few weeks ago, our colleagues in Fine Gael brought a very commendable motion before us in relation to the Passport Office, which I supported. It outlined a number of asks of Government. In March 2022, more than 100,000 applications were made to the Passport Office. In February 2022, in excess of 150,000 applications were made to the office. The month prior to that, more than 137,000 applications were made. There is a huge backlog. It seems to me all the Department has done up until now is to tell people to check earlier before they book holidays. I am sure it is the same across the Chamber, but there are people contacting me who applied for passports, particularly for young children, in November 2021 that are still being tracked. The Deputy Leader is aware of that herself. That is the reality. This is now becoming a supply and demand issue. When people apply for a passport, they pay a fee. It is not a nominal fee. It is a fairly significant amount of money. That is going in. It is time the Government invested. The staff are doing a fantastic job. They can only operate in the confines in which they find themselves. We need greater investment and greater service delivery. Only the Government can deliver that. I encourage colleagues in government, and I say this sincerely, to keep at their colleagues on this issue, if they have not done so already. It needs to be sorted.