Before I call Senator Burke, I congratulate him on his elevation to the status of father of the House. For the first time, I call the father of the House, Senator Paddy Burke.

There is no need to highlight that, a Chathaoirligh. I congratulate Senators Carrigy, Ardagh and Wall and the Cathaoirleach on the great work done in the committee in raising awareness of autistic people and the work they did to make this an autism-friendly Parliament.

I raise the issue of the severe storms in recent days that have resulted in a lot of damage to property and trees, in particular in my own area. I know the Leader will be very familiar with the tennis club in Castlebar, where the dome was completely blown away, and the exact same thing happened at the Galway Lawn Tennis Club. I ask the Government to look at this. I am sure both of those clubs were funded through sports capital grants in the past. They need to receive funding to put the domes back in place because they are essential to areas like Castlebar and Galway in order to promote tennis. Given the weather we have for six months of the year, it is very important that we have a cover over the courts, and the domes were ideal in that regard. I ask the Government to look seriously at funding the reinstatement of the domes at the tennis clubs in Castlebar and Galway. The Government has aided other places following flooding or storms in the past. These are two essential pieces of infrastructure for our communities. I ask the Government to look seriously at funding them in the near future.

I thank the father of the House. I congratulate him on his elevation as the longest-serving member of the House. He has been here since 1993 and has 31 wonderful years of service. We wish him many more years as father of the House.

I want to continue the congratulations for Senator Burke, who is an amazing man from Mayo in the west. It is an honour because his is an amount of experience that we are fortunate to have in the House. We are very lucky to have Senator Burke with us today.

I congratulate Senator Carrigy on his work on the autism-friendly Parliament. I know that each of us partook of training and it is training that we should be doing in many sectors. I admit that to do that training gave a great insight into how we can engage, how to be aware and how to get rid of that unconsciousness and unawareness, which is really what training is about. I pay tribute to Senator Carrigy and everybody in the Oireachtas who worked to achieve that.

Between Storm Isha and Storm Jocelyn, there has been quite a lot of damage, particularly in the counties of Galway, Roscommon, Mayo and Donegal, and there have been many power outages. I thank the front-line teams, particularly those in ESB Networks, Electric Ireland and Irish Water, who have done Trojan work over the last two or three days. In my own town of Ballinasloe, many were without power yet it was back again that morning, if not working throughout the night, once the storm status of yellow, orange or red had changed. It is very difficult as the teams cannot go out when there is an alert, but once the alerts are finished, they are pretty much out there straight away. I want to acknowledge that because it was not an easy time, particularly with the two storms coming together. They tried to prioritise everything but businesses in particular, some of which were closed for two or three days. It is crucial that we have those front-line emergency teams out working on this. Go raibh míle maith agaibh.