He said they were on a distribution list.

The Taoiseach does not understand-----

The Taoiseach has been caught out.

I agree with the Minister's comments about all the staff in CAMHS who do a wonderful job. However, let no Minister or politician hide behind staff in an attempt to avoid or dodge political responsibility for failures in the system. There are obvious capacity failures which have been identified for many years. This is not something that we learned about from this interim report. This echoes and reinforces what we already knew that capacity was not there. There have been governance issues in the system for many years…

The situation facing the Irish fishing sector has been well and truly set out by all of the previous speakers. I thank the Rural Independent Group for bringing forward this motion. I thank an Teachta Michael Collins and his colleagues for the work they have done. I also commend my colleague, an Teachta Mac Lochlainn, the Sinn Féin spokesperson in this area, for his efforts in engaging with the Irish fishing community in recent years. He visited Waterford last year and we met with fishermen in Helvick, Ardmore, Dung…

I have ten minutes and I am sharing time with some of my colleagues. I welcome this Bill. I am sure the Minister will agree it has been a long time coming. Sinn Féin will be supporting this Bill and we will work with the Minister to ensure it is enacted as quickly as possible. I wish to first address Part 3 relating to post mortems before returning to Part 2, which deals with transplantation and the new soft opt-out organ donation system. We have been waiting for too long for this legislation. A human tissue Bill w…

I commend the Regional Group on bringing forward the motion. I have been raising similar issues with the Minister for some time, as have many other Deputies in the House, which he acknowledged. The starting point is the waiting lists, which paint their own picture. There are 13,000 children and adults on waiting lists for dental and oral surgery in the public system and a further 13,000 on orthodontic waiting lists. Of those, more than 1,000 special care patients and 3,000 children are on waiting lists for dental s…

I move: That Dáil Éireann: recognises that a succession of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael Governments made decisions which caused and exacerbated the crisis in our emergency departments (EDs) today, including Fianna Fáil's decision to close thousands of beds in their last term in Government and Fine Gael's refusal to invest in an adequate number of beds over the past decade, which have left the public health service with less acute inpatient beds for the last 23 years than when the Tánaiste, Micheál Martin TD, became Mi…

Hear, hear.

The speeches this evening from both the Minister, Deputy Donnelly, and the Minister of State, Deputy Butler, were breathtaking. In response to an emergency in our hospitals, the Minister's biggest complaint was that Sinn Féin did not give him a pat on the back for the good work he believes he has done. That was his chief complaint, repeated time and again in his script. The Minister of State, Deputy Butler, was concerned that we were too robust in our criticism of Ministers past and present. In fact, we were not ro…

Vótáil.

I move: That Dáil Éireann: notes with concern that: — 12,624 people were admitted to hospital without a bed and left on a trolley or elsewhere in ward corners and corridors in November, the worst November on record for overcrowding according to the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO); and — on 29th November, the INMO identified that 660 patients were admitted without a bed, one of the single worst days on record; further notes with concern: — the findings of the INMO on the emigration intentions of studen…

He is right.

It is about recruitment. Covid did not stop recruitment.

It has a number of great Teachtaí Dála who have facilitated its success.

That is down to good management.

It is transformative.

I thank all of the speakers, including the Minister and Minister of state, for their contributions. The Minister's contribution was much different from the script we were handed. It was less harsh, which may speak to the Minister's style. That is commendable but I want to address some of the issues raised in the written text, which were much more strident. I am afraid the Minister's officials or somebody over there had a bad day and decided that Sinn Féin was to be attacked for tabling a motion raising very importa…

I know the Minister did not say it. I am talking about his written speech. In fact, it is quite the reverse. I think the work that University Hospital Waterford management has done is phenomenal and I have said for some time that it is a beacon of hope for other hospitals. We need the same level of management elsewhere. It has not only been the manager, who is really important as the person who drives on the team, but the team effort in University Hospital Waterford that has resulted in hitting the milestone of 1,0…

This question relates to healthcare waiting lists. At various points during a meeting of the health committee, I asked about the total number of people on waiting lists. I am unsure as to whether that information can be provided in the format I want. I received some information yesterday, but it did not include people awaiting diagnostic scans or planned procedures. When will we see the multi-annual waiting list plan that was promised some time ago?