I welcome the Minister's availability and his commitment to meeting with the Women of Honour group and to engaging with the chairperson. We all have the same objective. We want change and accountability, sooner rather than later. Obviously, I do not speak for the Women of Honour group, but we need to ensure they will be satisfied. If there were a commitment at the meeting with the chairperson that the matter would be looked at objectively, which will be the case, there could be a parallel process. Some of the issue…

What progress has been made in implementing the mental health and well-being strategy for the Defence Forces?

This is an extremely important debate. There are very serious charges here. It shows an absolute failure of the system to protect and to look after these children and their parents. Significant harm was suffered by 46 children over a four-year period, which is a lifetime for somebody with a mental health issue and their family. I question the supervision. Who is ensuring that the prescriptions are right? Who is watching them? What are the pharmacists and GPs doing? A friend of mine who is a pharmacist told me that …

Does the Taoiseach agree that now is the appropriate time to establish a Government commission of inquiry into all of the circumstances surrounding the deaths of 23 residents from Covid in Dealgan House nursing home in April 2020? Of the 460 nursing homes in the country, this is the only one where the HSE took over operational management to ensure appropriate medical and nursing staff were in place to make sure that residents' well-being was looked after. There are major concerns over the way the home was run and t…

The Leas Cross inquiry worked.

People will not be satisfied unless there is an inquiry into this.

It will not go on for six years.

This one will not.

This is the only home that was taken over by the HSE. No other home in the country-----

Like everybody else, I offer my deepest sympathy to Ashling's family and, indeed, the whole community, who have suffered enormously. The most important thing we could do now as a community is to make sure that her family continue to be supported at this very difficult time. The total and absolute devastation and what they had to face is just unbelievable. Our support and that of the community is very important. She was a wonderful person - a brilliant and caring teacher so obviously and clearly loved by all her fam…

I welcome any legislation that makes it easier for tenants to live free of fear and in a property that meets basic standards. I welcome the legislation introduced by the Minister, but there is an untruth at the centre of a lot of the properties rented in the country. It is epitomised by an article published recently in the Irish Independent which stated that 19 out of every 20 private rental properties were found to be in breach of the regulations for registered tenancies. It is unacceptable to allow landlords to p…

It is a very important perspective. Development plans are a key part of the business of planning and it is the councillors who make that plan.

I will just make my point if the Deputy does not mind. There is not much time and I hope he will be interested in what I have to say. When the development plan for County Louth was being put together recently, I received a complaint from two people who made a submission about their land. They wanted it zoned to build a family home and they very kindly received an invitation from the Sinn Féin Party in Dundalk to attend a Sinn Féin meeting to discuss their planning application. This is the issue which is at the core…

I had the temerity to bring the matter to the attention of the Office of the Planning Regulator and it was not too interested in it. There are many abuses of planning but political planning, where people must attend the headquarters of Sinn Féin or any other party to make their case is absolutely unacceptable.

It is wrong and disgraceful and Sinn Féin Members of this House should come in here and tell the truth about what is going on up there. I have one last point and I hope I make it well and fairly. It is wrong for a county council to have a rule stating that if someone owns a house anywhere else they cannot apply for planning permission. That has to be unconstitutional. At the end of the day, the responsibility rests with the councillors who make the plan to exclude that as an option in the development plan. If that …

Leave it on.

I welcome the Minister and the Minister of State to the House. I listened with respect and interest to what they said. Like my colleague, Deputy Crowe, I would like to pay tribute to all of the people in the health service, such as the nurses, the doctors, the healthcare assistants, the people who test and the people who get the test results and who work on them. Their commitment is fantastic. We all acknowledge that they are under extreme stress at the moment in this difficult time. More than 5,600 people have die…

I welcome this debate and the Minister of State. I will concentrate on air quality and related issues and the future of all our health. The Environmental Protection Agency tells us that since the regulations controlling air pollution were introduced in 2015, some 1,300 people die annually as a direct result of solid fuel emissions from home heating and fires. One problem is that there is no enforcement of those regulations. The regulators are the local authorities. I reckon about 9,100 people have died as a direct …

I welcome this important debate. One of the key points of the debate in Europe concerned the question of energy. Many speakers today have addressed the issue of rising prices, how they can be controlled and what more we can do in this regard. I take a totally contrary position to Deputy Paul Murphy in regard to how we produce electricity in this country and how we should react to the huge increase in prices, for which the monolith called the ESB is partly to blame. It is time the ESB was broken up because its domin…

Following the murder of Keane Mulready-Woods in Drogheda, the Government published the Geiran report, which is a very comprehensive document containing lots of timelines and recommendations on actions to be taken. I ask the Minister to outline, in particular, what is happening in relation to the Drogheda implementation plan. I wish to acknowledge the fantastic work done by the Minister, the Department of Justice, and locally, by the Garda. There has been an increase in the number of local gardaí of over 30% since t…