Every year 4,500 people leave behind an empty home when they enter long-term nursing home care. Just 300 of these homes are rented out. Unlike the social welfare means assessment, where a capital asset when rented out is included in the calculation just once, under the fair deal nursing homes scheme, the same property is included three times in the means assessment. It takes an average of six years for these homes to go through probate, to be sold and to be refurbished. This means that 25,000 homes, mainly family h…

I do not expect the Airí Stáit to be able to give me a response to my questions today but I would appreciate if someone would come back to me with a detailed response after this debate. What sometimes happens is that commitments are given in the House that we will get replies but no such replies are forthcoming. I have three specific issues I want to raise, two of which, sadly, relate to bureaucracy. First, patients who are undergoing hospital procedures must have a negative Covid test in advance of going into hosp…

Unfortunately, the senior Minister is not here.

It has been agreed by the Business Committee that all issues relevant to Covid-19 can be raised here. The Ceann Comhairle can clarify that for the House.

I congratulate the Minister, Deputy McEntee, and her husband, Paul. With the strong footballing genes, I hope that in future their son declares for County Roscommon. While I welcome yesterday's decision by the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, to waive the €125 per table licence fee for outdoor dining, Government support needs to go much further. On average we have 225 days of rain per year in this country. If there is to be a shift of the mindset in Ireland to outdoor dining, it will require a significant outlay b…

I support the principle behind this legislation. While many have highlighted this issue today, 12 months ago, during the first lockdown, I was pressing this issue. It was not just the private providers who were involved. The University of Limerick refused to give students back their funds for its own campus accommodation. Many landlords, including the University of Limerick at the time, turned their backs on students who had paid substantial deposits and upfront payments for accommodation. Sadly, this was replicate…

At the outset, I want to pick up on something I believe was discussed at Cabinet earlier this week, that is, the measures that will be introduced this year to bring about a regularisation scheme for undocumented families in this country. I welcome the significant progress that has been made in the past 12 months, particularly since the Green Party went into government. This is something on which I have long campaigned and on which we made some progress during the previous Government, although not nearly enough. I w…

Some 66 days ago, the National Ambulance Service, NAS, started to vaccinate an estimated 2,700 housebound people over the age of 70. The plan was to have all of the first doses administered by last Sunday week, namely, 11 April 2021. I am being contacted by people in their 80s and 90s who are still waiting to receive their first appointment from the NAS. To be quite honest, when trying to find information, the HSE locally and regionally does not know what is going on. It would be easier to find out the Third Secret…

This particular Bill, as currently drafted, is anti-climate, anti-democratic, anti-Irish and anti-poor. Do not get me wrong, climate change must be addressed and I believe we need a new climate law to make it happen in urban and rural areas in Ireland. I was Ireland's first Minister with responsibility for the climate and did not have the legal tools available to me to bring about the type of sustainable change that was needed. For example, after a long and protracted battle, I secured a Cabinet decision in January…

I support my colleagues who have raised the issue of the "RTÉ Investigates" programme. It is bad enough that individuals were forced to go to the courts to vindicate their rights but it is immoral that there is any assertion that information was being collected that would force them to withdraw those particular actions. There is huge concern among people who have taken a case against the State to vindicate their rights or to address issues of misdiagnosis or malpractice that such files exist, not just in the Depart…

I know that my amendment on carers has been ruled out of order but I want to flag this issue. While there is rightly an acknowledgement of women who could not avail of their full maternity leave being facilitated through the extension of parental leave, the small number of carers in receipt of carer's benefit who cannot go back to work because they are providing full-time care for someone who may still be waiting for a vaccination and worried about catching Covid-19 are not in a position to return to work. Flexibil…

I ask the Minister to engage with the Minister for Social Protection regarding the small number of people who are due to go back to work now and the current two years of carer's leave.

I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time." Insurance fraud should never pay. Insurance fraud costs each and every one of us in this country. Someone making a fake injury claim believes there are no consequences but there are significant consequences for each and every one of us. The difficulty is that there is no downside for the individuals involved in making fraudulent claims. We hear regularly that fraudulent claims are thrown out of court but there is no follow-up or no penalties imposed on the individu…

On 11 March, the National Ambulance Service began the vaccination of housebound patients, initially across the Dublin area. A week later, 300 of the estimated 1,500 housebound people in the country had been vaccinated. There has, however, been a vacuum of information since then. I cannot find out when housebound people across the west of Ireland will be vaccinated. HSE management in the region cannot tell me nor can these people's own GPs. Will the Taoiseach intervene and direct the HSE to provide these very vulner…

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this Bill and thank the Minister for being present. I welcome the legislation. It is a very positive development. It is a response from Government on foot of the campaign that was run last year for the extension of maternity leave for women who were on such leave when Covid-19 initially kicked in. They had been losing out on part of the maternity leave and this provision was introduced in response to the impact of Covid-19 on families. I welcome the provision as a result of tha…

As the Minister will know from looking through the files in his Department, after a long and protracted battle the Government took a decision in January 2019 to not purchase any new fossil fuel buses for public transport. Disappointingly, the first double-decker electric vehicle will not go onto the streets here in Dublin until January 2023. It will be a full five years after I secured that commitment when I was in government.

Ours is a small island off the coast of western Europe and beside us is quite a large island which, funnily enough, has had right-hand drive, zero-emission buses for many years in London. The Minister, therefore, should pull the other one in that regard. In January 2018, the NTA and the Department sought a delay of 18 months on the implementation of the ban on fossil fuel buses, which they got, but the delay was extended for a further six months until the end of 2019. Since then, 380 diesel-hybrid buses have been p…

In places such as Heuston Station, buses already have priority. Turning to the Bill the Minister published yesterday, which I welcome, section 6 makes specific reference to cost-effective actions in the context of climate change. This comes back to the fundamental problem with the public sector expenditure code, which I had to spend a long time to get implemented by the Government. Would the Minister not agree that the fundamental problem here is that until now the NTA has chosen to buy buses based on the purchase …

That excuse was not used three years ago.

On Monday evening, Professor Philip Nolan said there had been indications in the previous ten days of accelerated progress in suppressing the virus. This resulted in a collective sigh of relief across the country and, in particular, among front-line healthcare workers. These people are mentally and physically exhausted as a result of the third wave of Covid-19 infection, which far exceeded the previous waves in hospitalisations and deaths. Now that the third wave is being suppressed, we must consider two actions fo…