The Government is putting up fees. Just to clarify, we are in the South and the Government is putting up fees.

Thank you.

You are very considerate.

Sinn Féin supports an auto-enrolment pension scheme. We believe it is the Government's responsibility to foster a retirement framework that ensures workers are financially secure in their retirement. However, both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have a poor track record on retirement policy. While Sinn Féin believes workers should have the right to retire at 65 should they choose to, or continue to work if that is not their choice, the two Government parties would deny workers that right. Even after decades of backbreaki…

I disagree with Deputy Byrne. As far as I can see, school transport is getting worse every year. Every year I am contacted by parents whose children have been utterly failed by this Government. With little to no notice parents are left to shoulder the burden of attempting to reschedule work and other commitments to deal with the Government's failures while children see buses full of their schoolmates and classmates passing by their homes with no space for them. However, there are spaces. Tickets have been allocated…

I welcome the parents in the Gallery. These parents suffer every day because this Government is not doing its job. Every child deserves a place in school and every child with additional needs deserves a place in school. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have failed, and continue to fail, children. It is the ordinary families like the parents here tonight who break their necks and are left simply to cope on their own, to pay for every intervention their children need. An estimated 260 children were without an offer of an ap…

Unbelievable.

Keep paying taxes.

I thank the Independent and Parties Technical Group for bringing forward this motion on this very important matter. This Government is utterly failing in terms of dental services. The Minister's role is to provide a framework in which services can reliably and efficiently be delivered and to adequately fund these services. As I see it, the Minister is utterly failing. Of the 200,000 schoolchildren eligible for dental screening appointments, only half received what they were entitled to. Blaming the pandemic might h…

That is a new excuse.

The Taoiseach should start driving the roads.

Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil introducing legislation to provide for revised governance and accountability for the HSE is farcical. In effect, the most substantive aspect of governance I see is a chief executive whose grossly substantial salary facilitates their operating as a mudguard for the Minister of the day. Regarding accountability, with scandal after scandal in our health service, the one certainty is always that no one will be held to account and that there will be no transparency. This should not come as a su…

There has been underfunding.

I welcome all the ladies in the Gallery who have suffered long enough. I thank Senator Maria McCormack who has travelled the length and breadth of the country to be informed of endometriosis. I have said in the House before that this State has a sad history of failing women. The Government continues to fail women today when it comes to the diagnosis and care for those with endometriosis. It is accepted by clinical specialists that the true prevalence of this condition goes beyond the official figure of one in ten w…

I would like to acknowledge that the Minister is currently progressing legislative proposals on the guardianship rights of those who have murdered their spouse as well as the disclosure of counselling notes. It is important that we get the proposals right and it is welcome that they are progressing through the Oireachtas. I am delighted to hear that the Minister is visiting refuges, but an area that remains of particular concern to me, because it impacts my constituency of Cavan-Monaghan, is that of refuge spaces i…

The Taoiseach correctly described the failure of the European Union to come to a unified position on Gaza as a huge strain on the bloc. He also said that if it fails to do so, Europe will have no credibility. European Union Commissioner, President Ursula von der Leyen, today lacks any credibility on human rights or international humanitarian law. It was Ursula von der Leyen who, at the onset of Israel's onslaught against the civilian population of Gaza, through offering Benjamin Netanyahu unconditional and unqualif…

I welcome the students here tonight. We in Sinn Féin appreciate their efforts to go to college and better themselves. In a matter of weeks, students will be returning to their studies or setting off to college for the first time. What should be a time of excitement for so many will turn into a very stressful situation as they face the challenge of funding for so-called free education being impacted. Not content in recent weeks with weakening protections for student renters and driving their rents up further, the Go…

The people of Monaghan and Cavan deserve adequate health services and care within their community. In 2002, the Taoiseach, as Minister for Health and Children, refused to give a commitment to protect emergency department services at Monaghan hospital at that crucial time. In 2009, the hospital's emergency department was closed for good. The minor injuries unit lacks basic equipment. As a result, people in Monaghan are referred to Cavan hospital, where they face double the waiting time they previously faced, which c…

Who was over that?

I am going to keep at it.