What about access to playgrounds?

It was announced last week that Greyhound is increasing its bin charges again. Over the last 18 months, these charges have increased from €16.50 to €30 per month. One woman has said that in June of last year she was paying €22 a month to have her bins collected by Greyhound Recycling and now expects to be paying €30 from July. This is an increase of more than 30%, which is well above the increase in the cost of living. This is a failure of privatisation. People campaigned against this in the 2000s because we knew t…

We need legislation as well. Legislation needs to be changed.

I thank Sinn Féin for bringing forward this Private Members' motion. I welcome the opportunity to speak on it. Last week, the Society of St. Vincent de Paul released its minimum essential standard of living, MESL, 2023 report. Over the past 12 months, the cost of being able to live with dignity has gone up by 10%, climbing by 13% for those who live in a city. The cost of basic items has gone up by nearly 20% in the past three years. The Society of St. Vincent de Paul predicts a 6.3% increase in this year and into 2…

There are questions around the wording there.

I was asked to raise a particular issue that has escalated this week. I refer to the ongoing industrial dispute at the Irish franchise of the Iceland chain over poor conditions, unpaid wages, sick pay and leave. The owner, Naeem Maniar, appears to be using an opaque corporate structure to avoid paying his workers what they are due or engaging with their union, which is the Independent Workers Union. Furthermore, workers who went on strike at the Coolock store on 19 May, whom I met on the picket line, have been targ…

I read the Taoiseach's interview in the newspapers last week and I thought it was a particularly sly bit of politics to talk about building public housing and the lack of homes to buy in the same breath. The reason homeownership is going down is that successive Governments led by Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, the Labour Party and the Green Party have allowed our housing market to become a casino through speculation, financialisation and massive vulture and cuckoo funds. They cannot challenge the extortionate price of hou…

Before I speak on the motion, I would like to express my deepest condolences and sympathy to Vera, Paul and the family on the loss of their daughter, Ava. We should put that on the record of the Dáil. Last June this House passed a Private Members' motion brought forward by Deputy Connolly. It called on the Government to: - immediately reinstate all respite beds closed as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic; - undertake a comprehensive audit of respite services, funded in whole or in part by the Health Service Executi…

I thank Deputy Bríd Smith for introducing this Bill. It is very timely, this being the fifth anniversary of the significant referendum on the right to access abortion. The important point is that abortion is a healthcare issue. The review was initiated to determine where we were and how the legislation allowed women access to healthcare. We have to say that, in some areas, it is falling short. These are the areas we have to discuss. Several areas in the Bill before us deal with this. Section 2 would delete the foet…

I welcome the debate on the issue of services in autism disabilities. I thank the Labour Party for bringing forward this motion today, giving us the opportunity to discuss it. I wish to read into the Official Report part of the contribution by Mr. Adam Harris from AsIAm to the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Autism on 16 May 2023. He encompasses a lot of the issues we have discussed: Many members of our community can point to numerous policy initiatives over the years that were promising and that reflected community …

Last week, Age Action, the Irish Senior Citizens Parliament, Active Retirement Ireland and the trade union SIPTU, launched their pension promise campaign. The campaign is to hold the Government to account on the promises made in the pension reform policy, A Roadmap for Pensions Reform 2018-2023. The policy states the State pension should be indexed at 34% of average earnings and tied to the consumer price index on average earnings. That commitment would put our State pension at €310 per week, which is €45 more than…

You did.

It is 2018 to 2023.

It was A Roadmap for Pensions Reform 2018-2023. It is now 2023 and we are going into the next budget, for 2024. The policy states the State pension should be indexed at 34% of average earnings and be tied to the consumer price index and average earnings. As I said, the commitment would put our State pension at €310 per week. The increase of €12 per week that was given in the previous budget was below the cost-of-living rate. It was below the €20 figure that many of the organisations and NGOs which represent people,…

It is a policy the Government committed to.

It is what people depend on every week. It is like a wage and people depend on a wage.

I have had contact from a woman with a young family who is a healthcare worker in my constituency. She is facing eviction from a rental accommodation scheme, RAS, tenancy in Meath on 31 May. Meath County Council has told her it will stop the RAS payments if she overholds, that she needs to leave the home on the date of the termination and that she needs to find a housing assistance payment, HAP, tenancy because there is nowhere to house the family. I have email evidence of that from the council. It is near impossib…

Five hundred asylum seekers were living on the streets a couple of weeks ago. The Taoiseach said today that was down to 250. Ours is one of the wealthiest countries in the world, and it is totally unacceptable to have any asylum seeker living in the street, just as it is unacceptable to have any Irish citizen living in the street. I understand it was going to be a struggle to provide for everyone who arrived over the past two years, but there is a context to all this. Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil, the Labour Party and th…

I thank the Ceann Comhairle for selecting this Topical Issue matter. I am raising this issue on behalf of Migrant Nurses Ireland, which explained its members' plight at a presentation in the audiovisual room two weeks ago. The meeting was organised by Deputy Barry. The issue of recruitment and retention remains a huge problem for the HSE. The Joint Committee on Autism discussed it as recently as today. As part of an international recruitment campaign, through the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, the …

I was not expecting that answer. I thought there would be some sort of clarity about how the HSE will resolve the issues these workers are facing. The point that Deputy Barry made is quite correct. When these nurses finish at 8 o'clock in the evening, they cannot ring their children up because it is 1.30 a.m. in India, and when they finish an early morning shift at 8 o'clock, their children are in school. In many ways, they can only contact their children at the weekends. Yet, they must be earning €30,000 per annum…