I thank Deputy Cullinane and Sinn Féin for bringing forward this motion. The Minister provided a few quotes as to what our front-line workers were hearing. When he is summing up, perhaps he could say where those quotes come from. I do not believe they came from the proposers of the motion. They are not from me and I do not believe they will come from the Deputies who will speak after me. It is important to say where those quotes are coming from.

I have watched it on screen. I say this in the context of a debate of this nature when many of us, including the Minister, are trying to be serious about this very concerning budget. At a meeting of the Joint Committee on Health earlier, we heard from Bernard Gloster, CEO of the HSE, and Robert Watt, the Secretary General of the Department of Health. While both were coming at it from slightly different angles, they told the same story, which is what we have known for more than two weeks and which was brought into s…

Deputy Cullinane made a point that is worth repeating. The statements by the Minister of State, Deputy Naughton, and the Minister, Deputy Stephen Donnelly, are fundamentally contradictory. The Minister of State indicated that funding "to maintain existing services has been provided to meet inflation and rising patient demand", whereas, according to the Minister, "Some areas are not getting the same level of investment ... as they have [done] ... due primarily to an increase in inflation and patient demand being wel…

I thank the Rural Independent Group for bringing this motion to the Chamber. It is something we have spoken about on many occasions in the Committee on Transport and Communications but to have a two-hour debate on it in the Dáil is most welcome. We are in the midst of a huge problem in road safety and many other issues in our roads. Chief among that is the wait list for driving tests. As of May of this year, up to 60,000 learner drivers were facing wait times of up to ten months to do their driving test. In places …

I welcome the opportunity to debate this issue. It is a difficult one to discuss for a number of reasons. I found the Minister of State's opening statement to be helpful and very honest about the complexities in the epidemiology and the difficulty with calculating excess mortality. Those are very real difficulties and complexities. This issue was first introduced to many of us, including me, through online debates during the Covid pandemic, particularly in the misinformation wars in which excess mortality was weapo…

I have stood across the House from the Minister of State more often than I have stood across from any other Minister in my time in the Dáil. While I may have taken issue with figures and things she has said before, I have never had such an issue with something she has said in the Dáil as I have with one of the lines in her contribution today. She said there is a collective responsibility to exhaust all opportunities and avoid further anxiety. She said there has been constructive engagement. She went on to say that …

Last year, I stood here with my colleagues in the Labour Party, hoping that we would have a budget that would provide that very thing: hope. Hope for people who are looking for a home, hope to tackle our climate crisis, hope to tackle the cost of living, hope that our health service would be improved and hope that there would be a very real investment for those most vulnerable in our society, people with disabilities and their services. One year on, that hope has been extinguished and absolutely diminished. Year af…

What a poverty of ambition. Where will the Government even get those 10,200 units?

There is no plan whatsoever. With Fine Gael, its senior Ministers seem to be more connected with any vacant role in Europe than they are with their own communities. What have they done? They have allowed any energy in the Government to be led by Fianna Fáil. In this budget, we have seen Fianna Fáil invest in their own reliables: landlords and developers. For people of my generation, it sends a chill down their spines that the fox is indeed right back in the henhouse. Fianna Fáil is beginning to carve up and structu…

It will be one of the toughest actions we will have ever seen in the history of this State.

We are a week away from it and there is no mention of it. We will have statements on that in particular on Thursday, but why is there no mention of it? Why is this important? I think it is because these workers are in an area that this Government does not care about, namely, people with disabilities, who are the most vulnerable in our society. This is a €14 billion budget. It is a “step change” budget. However, it is not a “step change” for people with disabilities. It is the same old case of being forgotten and be…

We have seen money being allocated to hire 22,000 nurses. I do not know where the Government is going to get them, because it was not able to hire the nurses it accounted for last year.

This is the most disingenuous nonsense I have ever seen in a budget. On free GP care, it was finally extended to children under the age of eight this year and beyond to those under age 12, announced three or four years ago at this stage, and two or three Ministers ago. What the Government could do to actually improve access to our GP services is bring in a pharmacy-based minor ailments scheme. This is in the Labour Party’s alternative budget. That would allow more capacity within our existing GP services and within…

These are relatively small investments that would have a massive impact but no, the Government does not want to roll up its sleeves and get involved in the tricky negotiations it can take to deliver schemes such as these. Again, this is a tired Government that is abandoning its people. Today is World Mental Health Day. It was hoped by people in the mental health services that maybe they might see something real being delivered for mental health services. Again, there is nothing. We have seen reports that there are …

Absolutely nothing is happening - nothing. This is not just assessment of needs, which we need for education services. Even though the HSE says that you do not need it in order to get on a therapeutic or clinical list, we know that, really, you do.

We have seen nothing, never mind actually getting to dealing with the lists themselves. We want to see the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, and this Government follow through on their commitments that were made in the early summer. They got them through a 24-hour news cycle that day, but it has not actually followed through to budget day or followed through to the services in our communities up and down the country. Consistent underfunding in primary care has resulted in huge delays in appointment times and exac…

I am three and a half years in the Dáil, and the only time we debate tobacco reduction and smoking prevalence is on budget night through the instrument of a taxation measure. The aim is for a tobacco-free Ireland by 2025, which is a smoking prevalence rate of less than 5%. It is a 12-year campaign. We have a smoking prevalence of approximately 18% at the moment - 750,000 people. It is failing on every level. The taxation measures that have been brought in are not bringing the prevalence rates down enough. We are no…

Three weeks ago, construction work began at Portmarnock train station, which cut off the majority of car parking spaces and threw many people’s travel arrangements into disarray. What are the long-term plans for improved bike security measures, turning points for buses, EV charging points and long-term car park measures at Portmarnock train station?

There are an awful lot of encouraging plans for Portmarnock train station but the situation is a bit chaotic at the moment. There are a couple of elements. Regarding BusConnects, for someone living in Portmarnock who wants to get a bus to the train station, it is almost handier to take the bus to Malahide than it is to go directly to Portmarnock station. The L81 service will not remedy that for many people who live in Portmarnock, given the planned route. People living west of Portmarnock, particularly in the older…

Yes.