It is, because there are many people who do not have the tests within the target timeframes they should. The Minister may get a chance to respond again later. I want to refer to one example of a young man from Waterford who contacted me. He is not interested in glib responses from the Minister. He is interested in the Minister coming up with solutions and actually dealing with the problem. He needs his licence for work. He finished his lessons and was signed off at the start of September. He was originally told he …

Hear, hear.

Hear, hear.

Managers not consultants.

I will talk to the Minister of State about dual diagnosis and dual-diagnosis teams. As she will know, this is where a person has a mental health condition and an addiction. As has often been said in this Chamber, A Vision for Change and Sharing the Vision were very good on vision and on setting out what needs to be done. However, the implementation of both plans has unfortunately not been as good. A Vision for Change recommended general community mental health teams, which would have included addiction counsellors.…

I firstly welcome to the Public Gallery many of the parents from County Waterford who have travelled and who are doing everything possible to ensure their children will get the appropriate education they deserve. The facts are that they should not have to lobby, travel or protest because they have enough to do to look after their children. We met many of them and they talked about the strains that all of this is putting on their relationships. Some of them have left their jobs. It has upended their whole life. The …

Is it three minutes, a Cheann Comhairle?

I thank the Ceann Comhairle. Personal responsibility is important when it comes to road safety but it is important for us as Oireachtas Members to feed back local projects we are being lobbied on by constituents, officials from local authorities and campaign groups who believe that investments are necessary in road safety improvements. I want to pick up on one of the issues mentioned by Deputy Cleere which is the N24 Waterford to Cahir bypass. We have all been lobbied very heavily, and rightly so, by the chief exec…

I raise a very serious issue, one I would call a crisis, in regard to special educational needs for primary school children in Waterford city and county. Somewhere between 40 and 50 children are still unsure whether they will have a place come September. I have engaged on this, as has Deputy McGuinness, with dozens of parents of children with disabilities who cannot access a place for their child. Some of them have contacted between 15 and 17 schools and got refusal after refusal. It is heartbreaking for the parent…

I have to take issue with some of what the Minister of State has said in his response because it is insulting to the parents of those children. He stated, "As schools begin to enrol students and as places become available, the NCSE will advise and support parents to ensure all children have a suitable placement for September." That is not happening and there will not be places for all children because they do not exist. That is the problem. They do not exist. The NCSE accepts that. The SENOs who work in the area ac…

Yesterday, the Taoiseach accepted that 40,000 homes were not delivered last year. The truth is that the two most senior politicians in the Government, namely, the Taoiseach and Tánaiste, were running around the country claiming they would deliver 40,000 homes last year, a claim they knew not to be true. At the same time, data from the ESRI and Central Bank clearly showed that the Government was on course for failure. Even worse, in October, in the lead in to the general election, the CSO published the actual comple…

With respect, what actually collapsed is the figure the Tánaiste gave to the public of 40,000, which was instead 29,000. In fact, what has collapsed is the credibility of the Tánaiste and Taoiseach when it comes to housing matters. Their record speaks for itself. Every single month, we see house prices, rents and homelessness rising on their watch. Worse than that and to top it all off, they misled the public deliberately and consciously in the run-up to a general election, when even Government-funded organisations…

He would not answer any of the questions he was asked, of course. He ignored the questions.

We are not in government, he is.

He does not want to be held to account.

He dodged and dodged and dodged.

He has refused to answer any of the questions and he is dodging responsibility.

Several times over the last number of years I have raised with the Tánaiste the need to fund the runway extension at Waterford Airport. As the Tánaiste knows, there is a reference in the programme for Government to making sure that this happens but the problem is that there is no certainty in relation to the funding and there are no specifics with regard to the timeframe. The people of Waterford, and particularly those who are in management positions in the airport, want the Government to be very clear and unequivo…

The number of patients on hospital trolleys in the month of January alone was 13,972. This is quite phenomenal and broke all records. It seems the only thing the Government is good at when it comes to health, housing and other areas is breaking records for all the wrong reasons. All of the people left on hospital trolleys, and others sitting in chairs and corridors in emergency departments, are people who are not being treated with dignity and not being treated with respect. It is the same for the staff, who are wo…

Hear, hear.