I will come back to the Minister of State's earlier reply when she talked about additional SNA supports. I welcome that additional resources are being put in there. The specific point I will put to the Minister of State is that the SNA exceptional need review took place over the summer. The results of that were available to the Department at the beginning of August. The schools, however, were only informed more than six weeks later in October. They must either go and recruit those SNAs or, if they were unfortunate …

While budget 2021 looks to the combined challenges of Brexit, Covid and housing, it fails to bring about structural change to our economy to make it more sustainable for all sectors of our economy. We are spending €3,600 for every man, woman and child in Ireland but I do not get the impression that this money is being spent any differently from the money spent last year or the years before that. This was the opportunity in a generation to reform how we work and live in this country but today we did not take it. Whi…

I am opposed to this carbon tax structure because it fails to differentiate between those who can avoid paying this tax and those who do not have any choice but to pay it. Carbon taxes must be about driving change to a more sustainable country which is far less dependent on imported fossil fuels. It is not supposed to be about increasing Government income. It is about getting people out of cars and onto buses and trains. I strongly believe that those living in rural areas, 37% of our population, do not have alterna…

I raised this issue with the Minister for Finance earlier this week. Any person with mobility issues who is not on the public transport network is now effectively marooned in this country. That particularly applies across rural Ireland. The mobility allowance, the motorised transport grant and the primary medical certificate have now been suspended. No financial support is available. This needs to be dealt with in an expeditious manner and legislation must be brought forward as a matter of urgency.

That proposal is not agreed. We are to have a 100-minute debate on health tonight starting at 8 o'clock. If the Ceann Comhairle will recall, the Taoiseach here on Tuesday, disagreed with the way that debates were being shoehorned and crammed into the middle of the week. The Taoiseach said, "If we want a serious debate ... we should have it on Friday morning and I will take part in [that debate]." We are not having a serious debate. It is being crammed in here on Thursday and the Taoiseach is not taking part in it. …

I support my colleagues on their request. One of the big issues here on the roadmap is the issue of confusion. Under the Government’s roadmap we know when we can get a pint and where we can get a pint but people with a disability do not know when their facilities and training centres will open and their elderly relatives or parents do not know when these facilities will open. We need clarity on all of these issues.

Page 49 of the programme for Government commits to recruit additional front-line allied health professionals such as occupational therapists, physiotherapists, speech therapists and so forth. Is there any chance the Government could get the existing front-line therapy staff back to work to deal with the four-year waiting list, instead of continuing to allow them to work at desks as contact tracers? It is seven months since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. Can the Government not find ways to provide these vital t…

I tabled amendment No. 61 in my own name and in the names of members of the Regional Group. It introduces a statutory provision that appeals must be dealt with within 60 days. The whole objective of this legislation is to address the backlog in respect of appeals. It is pointless to bring forward legislation to address a backlog if we do not set a specific target for how long it will take to process applications, such as we see with regard to An Bord Pleanála and the local authorities. That is the case with An Bord…

The reason this issue animates people is that sawmills have fallen silent. I got notice this evening that there are no more logs at the Murray Timber sawmill in Ballon, County Carlow. The staff of this sawmill are now without employment because there just are not any logs at that particular sawmill. I have listened to the Ministers' contributions. They made the valid point that there is a backlog and that an opportunity to address that backlog is needed. I understand their argument that the introduction of a strict…

Waiting lists are at a record high. It is all well and good to have a winter plan but we are still waiting for the detail of that plan and what will happen in each of our hospitals around the country. It is difficult to see how our hospitals will cope this winter as some are already struggling and it is still only September and we are facing into a second wave of Covid-19. At the last Leaders' Questions session I contributed to in July, I spoke about a number of practical measures that could be taken to relieve thi…

I accept this is an operational matter, but every Member can tell a similar story in respect of other hospitals across the country. It is not just about the lack of upgrading of equipment or the purchase of a software package. The issue of medical politics is also at play. After I placed pressure on the then Government in 2015, it eventually installed a state-of-the-art telemedicine rapid access for stroke and neurological assessment, TRASNA, telemedicine stroke machine at Portiuncla University Hospital which would…

Deputies representing other parts of the country can speak for themselves as to what is happening in their areas.

I will discuss three issues briefly. First, our group will not have the opportunity to speak on the Forestry (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill tonight even though we have tabled 12 considered amendments to it. An opportunity needs to be facilitated. Second, we have been promised briefings. Statutory instrument after statutory instrument is being introduced in secondary legislation relating to Covid-19. These instruments have far-reaching implications for every citizen in the country. Some of them are contradictory an…

Yes. I would like clarity from the Taoiseach on the winter plan, which will be debated in the House on Thursday. When will we see the detail of that plan? None of us yet knows what will happen in the country, but we are supposed to be debating the plan on Thursday.

If I may comment very briefly on the same issue of the regional balance of financial services, has the Minister met with the Carrick-on-Shannon Chamber of Commerce? As he will know, Avantcard is based in Carrick-on-Shannon. It is doing tremendously on its own. A massive facility and a skilled financial services workforce is available there. We need to redouble efforts to land new financial services investment in Carrick-on-Shannon and at that site.

House-hunters are returning to their native counties as they turn their backs on city living and take advantage of remote working. That will have a significant knock-on benefit in terms of housing pressure and demand in Dublin. Properties with home office potential are being snapped up around the country. Seamus Carthy, a neighbour of mine in County Roscommon, has 43 potential buyers on a waiting list for homes with garden space. However, direction and support from the Government are needed if this is going to happ…

The Minister talks about the issue of equity but there is not much equity for those young couples who are on the housing ladder trying to get a house in Dublin at present. There is not much equity for families who are spending hours sitting in traffic or queuing to try and get childcare places. We have a situation where we have the schools, the childcare facilities and streets that have not seen a child kick a ball on them for a generation across rural communities and there is an opportunity here to achieve a balan…

I will pick up on the Minister's last point. There is a reference attributed to him in the Sunday newspapers where he is privately concerned about the amount of empty office space across Dublin and elsewhere as employees are encouraged to work from home. I would be concerned that this could be a vehicle used to undermine the objective of blended working and remote working to shore up the pension funds - pension funds that could convert this office space into housing accommodation to meet the needs of people in the …

I have time for one more intervention. There were two questions grouped. I am glad that the Minister clarified that. It is important that we try to get the balance right and that we look at blended employment. I can confirm for the Minister that there is demand, but it is only a drip at present. That could be progressed along the lines Deputy Murphy spoke about. We need to look, and we are looking as part of the pre-budget submission that I forwarded to the Ministers, at developing an initiative similar to the bike…

Some three-quarters of speech and language therapists in counties Roscommon and Galway are currently involved in contact tracing. Before the lockdown, there was a four-year waiting list to access speech and language therapy in those counties. That means a preschool child referred to speech and language services might not get support before his or her Holy Communion. At present, 1,049 children in the two counties are awaiting access to speech and language therapy but three-quarters of the speech and language therapi…