There are ongoing negotiations on fees for pharmacy dispensing. In the context of the budget and the recent announcement, I am seeking an update on those negotiations and where they are going.

I agree with the Minister that pharmacists are all of those things. I am sure he will agree that they are also highly trusted in the community. The great potential of unlocking more community care that is in situ and close to where people live is an aim of both the Minister and me. The funding allocation is welcome but now the negotiation fee must be addressed. Before the financial emergency measures in the public interest, FEMPI, legislation was introduced, the dispensing fee was €6. It is €4.51 now. The IPU’s ask…

A lot of the discussion among pharmacists concerns the volume of administration and paper-based work they must do. We had a debate last week – I brought this issue up in my budget discussions - about the move towards electronic health records and, more generally, towards an e-health model. We need to see that in the pharmacy sector as well. Pharmacists operate in a private retail environment but I am talking about the public side of their model. We cannot just say they will always get a few bob from selling deodora…

The Minister's Government allocated €1 billion to Irish Water for non-domestic projects for next year's budget. Can the Minister indicate how much of that money would go towards projects that are caught in the Irish Water system already which are non-domestic related? I am thinking specifically of the pumping station upgrade works that are needed in Portmarnock. There is a huge ecological issue there. We have a special area of conservation down at the beach that is under threat. We have the toilets there which need…

On behalf of the Labour Party, on a day when we discuss and debate, and scrabble over the many billions of euro we have in this country, our thoughts are with the innocents in Lebanon and Gaza and throughout the Middle East who are living in fear under a hail of drone, rocket and artillery fire as that war not only continues but escalates.

The Government has done a remarkable job trying to frame this budget as a budget that has no losers and only winners, that it is a budget that will benefit everyone, particularly children and families. If we look beyond our shores economically, we can see that the three largest economies in Europe, namely, Germany, France and the UK, are facing gloomy economic predictions of varying degrees. What are we doing in Ireland with this budget? We are shrinking the tax base. We are inflating our spending and funding this …

It is needed to help build, to help care, to help teach and to help deliver a public service. Today, in our health service and hospitals there are 576 people on trolleys. Our trolley count is a crude, but powerful, indicator of the health of our health service, and 576 people on trolleys on the first day of October is a near record for the first day of this month. We need new staff but we also need to keep existing staff. They are overworked and underpaid. This is the reality of our healthcare workers and nothing i…

We have never had soft landings before. The way the Government is setting this country up means we will fall hard, maybe harder than we have ever fallen in the past. I will leave that there as I am running out of time. The Government is really playing fast and loose with our finances and with the country's economy. This budget is not as glossy, as shiny or as helpful to the ordinary people of Ireland whose children are on waiting lists, who are on waiting lists themselves, who cannot get to work or to college on ti…

We welcome this Bill, which is very long overdue and the purpose of which is to provide, among other things, a legal basis for the development and deployment of digital health records. The Minister admitted that we have lagged significantly behind the rest of Europe on this. The reality is that our people have not been getting the best care they could due to the paper-based nature of our health records. We live in a world where technology is rapidly transforming our day-to-day lives, yet in our healthcare system, d…

I thank People Before Profit–Solidarity for this comprehensive motion on this most important area. As Deputy Cullinane said, we could paper the walls of the Dáil with debates we have had on disability and special needs provision. The figures on assessments of needs are stark, considerable and shameful. Just under 11,000 children are awaiting an assessment of need and 110,000 are awaiting essential therapies. Behind all these figures are individuals, children. I want to talk about Frankie Edgeworth, a beautiful boy …

I raise the shambles of the timetable change in the northern commuter line implemented by Irish Rail in two stages over the past three weeks. We, the commuters of north County Dublin, Fingal and indeed some of the Minister of State's constituents, are not happy. They are experienced commuters used to timetable changes throughout the years. This has been an absolute shambles for a number of reasons. There are major gaps in the peak-time service, ranging from 26- to 27-minute gaps between 7.45 a.m. and 8.10 a.m. to 4…

Nobody understands timetables and public transport efficiency than the users themselves. I am aware of the operational issues on Monday and Tuesday and there has been an increase in correspondence to my office since the Monday change as well, notwithstanding those operational issues. Connolly Station has always been congested and it is getting worse. There are issues right down to Grand Canal Dock Station. These are knock-on impacts that only manifest themselves now that the timetable change has come into effect. W…

It feels like an overdue relief that this Bill has finally made it to the floor of the Dáil. It is long overdue and it has been a long road to get here and rightfully there are concerns from all of us as to whether this legislation can be progressed in however long there is left in the lifetime of this Government. To make it the first key legislation to be discussed after the recess is a good step and hopefully we can all get to work through Second Stage and into Committee Stage, to put our amendments through and s…

I welcome the opportunity to discuss early years education in the Chamber this evening. Unfortunately, for those of us who are serious about a publicly provided system of early years education, this motion does not meet the vision of that goal. This motion from Sinn Féin, and the confusing and contrary contributions we have heard so far, do not speak to where the early years education debate is in this country at the moment. The debate is within households, such as my own, who are in the midst of early years educat…

Beaumont Hospital is 37 years old. Its catchment area has more than trebled since it opened yet many of the facilities remain the same. While we can talk about a number of issues in regard to Beaumont, I want to focus on capacity and space. I had the privilege of being shown around the hospital by clinicians recently. There are solutions to provide space in accident and emergency, resus and ICU so the great clinicians working there can do their jobs safely and more effectively, help more people and save more lives.…

I congratulate the Minister of State on his elevation and new appointment. Deputy Sherlock and I are here 12 months after bringing this issue up previously regarding the treatment of pensioners in An Post. It is always topical and it has come to our attention again, given developments in pay increases for An Post workers announced in recent months and other issues. What is rooted in all of this is the exceptionalism with which pensioners in An Post are being treated. This year, the CWU reached a two-year pay agreem…

The response, which is very similar to the response received 12 months ago, mentions section 46 setting a minimum level of parity between the An Post scheme and the scheme that applied to staff members as it stood on the day and that it does not provide that the conditions in the An Post scheme "must continue to match any subsequent improvements in pension conditions". However, as the former pensions ombudsman stated, and as I stated in my opening contribution, based on his experience, pension increases are in prac…

I thank all contributors. On the issue of sexual and gender-based violence and violence in general, you always think there is a case that will be a tipping point and kick the State into action to put in place measures ensuring it never happens again. Unfortunately, that is not the case and with the assault on Natasha O'Brien we are again debating and discussing this and retraumatising the victim. As has been summed up, Natasha intervened to help a member of the LGBTQ community who was being abused. She was brave en…

Public transport workers keep our cities, towns and rural areas moving. They get essential workers to their jobs and people to college and to school. They connect us all. Far too often, they face abuse and violence on the job. Following a recent survey by SIPTU, it was revealed that more than 80% of public transport workers suffer regular instances of abuse, which is absolutely unacceptable. SIPTU's Respect Transport Workers campaign demands change now. Even over the past couple of weeks, we have seen further repor…

I thank Deputy Harkin and the Independent Group for bringing forward this motion. I have a speech prepared but I received an email from a principal in a school in my constituency at 10.05 a.m. which I would like to put on record because it relates to funding challenges for the provision of autism classes, which is within the broader scope of this motion. There is a school in my constituency which is one of the leaders in providing special classes for children with autism. In 2021 the school was granted €590,000 for…