I thank Sinn Féin for tabling this motion. I will say something to my Sinn Féin colleagues who are bemoaning the absence of the Minister after 20 minutes - at least he turned up for their debate. He was not present for any of our housing debate a couple of weeks ago. Maybe he will be here for at least an hour of People Before Profit's Bill on the same issue tomorrow morning. We will build it up from there. The motion is concise and simple. As Deputy Ó Broin stated, it will not solve the housing crisis or build more…

I am looking for an update on the strategy for counselling and bereavement services throughout the State. The two areas I will focus on in my contributions are bespoke supports for people who lost someone during the Covid crisis and bereavement and counselling supports for young children.

Level 3 is where we find that people are unable to access the service, particularly young people. Phoneline support is not something that young children need. They might need group therapy or one-to-one therapy. Rainbows Ireland is a wonderful organisation that provides counselling and bereavement services and services for children whose parents have separated. It provides public and school-based services but it is not in every school. It is very difficult to get its public service for children in a school where it…

Upskilling teachers in terms of being aware when children are bereaved is important but is still not the primary function of a teacher's job, and probably will not provide what the child needs in terms of bereavement and counselling support. There might be a need at some point for the Government to review our policy and strategy on this. With regard to Covid, I am still contacted by people who lost loved ones during the height of the crisis, when there was separation and they could not say goodbye, and there were i…

Since the report in the Mail on Sunday on 29 January 2023, we have seen the report of the Attorney General, which was utterly disappointing, and have heard the statements from the Ministers this afternoon that ricocheted off the central injustices that have been exposed rather than grappling with and accepting them and detailing a path we need to travel. In the report last Sunday week, it was revealed that successive Ministers of Health employed and maintained a secret legal strategy to block or minimise compensati…

The Minister of State made the comment that nobody has a monopoly on wisdom. That is true, which is why we wanted the provisions in our motion to be accepted and worked on by the Government, in conjunction with us, instead of a countermotion being presented. The latter, quite frankly, has angered many Deputies in opposition. Before I go on, I thank everyone for contributing to the debate on our motion, both those who agree with it and those who do not, which is fair enough. I will pick up on one point made by Deput…

It is.

At today's Business Committee, it was agreed that the Labour Party would give time to the Independent Deputy MacSharry, who has just arrived. I believe I have seven minutes. The Minister and Minister of State are present. We have seen, with the demonstration today and with the reaction from the public up and down this country to the proposed Gresham House deal, how strongly people feel about their woodlands, their ancient woodlands, which have been under pressure and under stress after centuries of mismanagement, a…

The interim report of the Mental Health Commission on CAMHS is one of the most damning reports to have been presented to a government in living memory. There has been discussion of the issue this week, including this evening. The presence of both the Minister and the Minister of State, Deputy Butler, is testament to the issue's importance. It is often the case that evening debates on a Thursday in this Chamber will not attract the presence of the senior Minister, whatever the topic under discussion. The senior Mini…

We welcome this Bill and will be supporting it. We had been assured several times last year that this Bill would come before the Dáil and it was a cause of great distress for many that it had been delayed for so long. Yet, it is here before us now and there is no doubt that it is a highly technical and sensitive Bill that required a lot of time. The Bill does a number of important things. It puts into practice the recommendations that had been made in the Madden report concerning post-mortem practices and procedure…

A number of communities in north County Dublin have been experiencing huge disruption in their lives caused by aircraft noise for the past couple of months. Some from the outside might say that they live near the airport, but that is not the reason these communities are angry. They are angry because these routes of take-off and landing do not comply with any of the routes set out in the 2007 planning permission for the north runway or any of the routes that were presented in multiple public consultations since. Has…

First, we need to know how the initial flight paths that have been used for the past couple of months and will be used to the end of February managed to go through, considering they are so outrageous relative to the planning permissions. The revised flight paths we are expecting at the end of February were published by the IAA two days ago. There is great concern that the revised plans are not going to be similar to what was granted in the 2007 planning application, and that aircraft will fly over communities that …

As a Deputy and Minister of State who will be familiar with this issue given his constituency borders the airport, I am sure he has attended many of the public consultations. I ask him to ask the DAA and Irish Aviation Authority, IAA, to make a presentation to the communities on the new the flight paths prior to them coming into operation. The communities have requested this on a number of occasions. They are engaged communities that understand the airport, flights and the issues involved. They are adept and experi…

Following our Private Members' motion last week on the decriminalisation of drug users, I wish to ask about the timeframe for the citizens' assembly that has been agreed by the Government. Are we any closer to understanding when we will have that assembly?

That is encouraging. I am conscious that following last night's debate on the Patient Safety (Notifiable Patient Safety Incidents) Bill, the Department of Health is having to do more work on that going into January. That is understandable and a good thing. I am conscious of the pressure the Department is under but this is something we feel must be brought forward as early as possible. The work of the national drugs strategy that would complement the health-led approach to drug use and, ultimately, decriminalisation…

Last week's two-hour debate included many examples, stories and emotive words on this. This question is not replaying that but is a demonstration that we are continuing to push this until it is delivered beyond the citizens’ assembly. The work of Deputy Ó Ríordáin on this especially is to be commended. Public opinion is with this. When speaking to families, communities and people impacted by this, they know the direction of travel and they want to see politicians on all sides of this House support it. There is a Mi…

Deputy Alan Kelly set out our position on a number of elements of the Bill, including notifiable incidents, anonymisation, lack of consultation with the 221+ group on the Bill itself and auditing. I will speak to amendment No. 14, which is in my name and Deputy Kelly's. The Bill is trying to make open disclosure of certain incidents around patient care mandatory, but the quid pro quo for this open disclosure, such as it is, is that information or an apology given at an open disclosure meeting will be made inadmissi…

We welcome what the Minister has said in terms of moving on a duty of candour. It is interesting that the Minister has moved in the past couple of hours when he should have moved much earlier. As I said in my earlier contribution when I mentioned the final Scally report, this has been well flagged as a serious and fundamental ask of this legislation. We are happy to give it extra time in order to get it right. We are talking about going into January. What does that mean? What are the modalities of how we go from th…

Okay, it will be done there. If we are going to January, the Minister must mean January. The Minister must see this being done by the end of January. He will have time over the Christmas period to get this right. In his final summing up, if the Minister could expand on how this will get from here to where it needs to go, we would appreciate that.

In politics, when the answer is more gardaí, sometimes it does not matter what the question is. It has been an evergreen answer for politicians over the years. Sometimes it is the right answer. With organised crime, murder, public order, cybercrime, and burglaries then yes, we need to resource the Garda. In the case of a drugs policy and tackling people with problematic addiction, more gardaí is not the answer. In this motion and led by Deputy Ó Ríordáin, we are trying to move this conversation, along with others, …