I appreciate both of the Deputies raising this matter and the sincerity of their concerns with regard to it. As already stated, it is something we are committed to improving and resolving as soon as possible in order that children and families who do not have a place for September will know that they have one, as soon as possible. In the context of the various therapy supports which the Deputy mentioned, I am a big advocate of providing these in schools rather than through the HSE. It is much better if therapists a…

What the Deputy describes is, quite simply, a misrepresentation of the facts that does not describe what is going to happen on 1 July. For those who are interested in the facts - I know most people are genuinely interested in the facts - I am going to set them out. First, this is not a pay increase; it is pay restoration. It is the reversal of pay cuts that happened more than ten years ago. Ten or 12 years ago, there were pay cuts across the board in the public sector. Those on the highest salaries had the deepest …

To answer the Deputy's question, a pay increase is not a pay increase when in 2022 a person ends up earning the same as he or she did in 2012. It is the reversal of a pay cut. It is pay restoration. The Deputy may choose to misrepresent them, but those are the facts. I heard the Deputy speaking on the radio yesterday. One thing I have to say is that I respect his sincerity. He believes in an ideology, namely, socialism, and I respect that. Nevertheless, he made two statements that are totally wrong. He mentioned pr…

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue. I am informed that on 31 May, Iberdrola announced that it would be exiting the market in a controlled exit. I understand that while the company is profitable globally, it was not profitable when it came to its Irish operations. The supplier of last resort protocol was introduced. That is managed by the Commission for Regulation of Utilities, CRU. The primary objective is to ensure that customers' electricity and gas supply is not interrupted. Under this, all customers of e…

I am probably not across this issue in the detail that I should be. I will speak to the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, about it and will ask my office to make contact with the CRU to see if anything can be done. I know that no business or customer can be charged twice for the same unit of electricity. I suspect what the company did on this occasion was try to buy market share by selling below cost. It did not work out, it lost money and it has now decided to leave the State. I take the Deputy's point. Contracts shoul…

I thank the Deputy. It is very hard to find anywhere to rent in Ireland at the moment. There are very few properties available for rent. That is true for people who are on HAP and also for those who are not on HAP. It is very hard to find somewhere to rent even in small rural towns where it would have been very easy in the past. It has become a very serious issue. What can the Government do about it? It can increase housing supply through the cost-rental programme which we are accelerating, providing properties to …

Almost certainly not. I have not seen a draft yet, so it is probably not completed. However, we are committed to doing it. We will try to get it done in the next few weeks. It is evident to everyone that in Ireland we need more electricity. We need it for all the new homes being built, all the new business that are being established, all the electric cars that people are going to buy and for data centres in the future. The solution is more supply of electricity - ideally renewable electricity. That is the priority …

That is with the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage at the moment. Obviously, there is a cost to the Exchequer in raising those thresholds. It is something that will have to be considered in the context of the forthcoming budget. As the Deputy knows, I am somebody who broadly believes in the concept of indexation as a principle, not just for tax credits and tax bands, but also for social welfare, pensions and entitlement to things such as medical cards and social housing. One can argue about whethe…

That may well still be the case. I will have to check with the Minister.

I honestly do not know the answer to that question. I will make inquiries with the Minister and Tusla about it. It seems to be the kind of information that should be collated. It is a relatively new agency, but I would have thought that at least in recent years it would have been able to collect that kind of data. It is important to have it for lots of reasons. I will make some further inquiries about it.

I met with the CEO and senior team of Irish Water just in the past two weeks. As the Deputy can imagine, these issues are brought to my attention all the time. Often, smaller towns around the country that need to expand cannot because wastewater services are not available. There is industry that cannot be built because water is not available. In some cases, housing developments cannot proceed because water services are not available. In fairness to Irish Water, it pointed out to me that it has a pretty massive capi…

This is, as the Deputy said, a very big problem. It is driving homelessness in some cases. What is happening is traditional landlords who might have one or two properties are leaving the market. For every one that comes in, two leave. This is a big problem. The reasons why that is happening may not be all that comfortable for us to absorb fully. What are they saying? They are saying huge numbers of new regulations in recent years are making it very hard to be a small landlord, the 2% cap on rent increases is making…

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue. It is not a funding issue. Funding was provided in both the national service plan in 2021 and 2022 to progress the home support management system. The Minister of State with responsibility for mental health and older people is aware that an IT system is an essential foundation to drive reform of home support and to make it more efficient and responsive to people's needs. In this regard, the identification and procurement of an ICT system is being progressed by the HSE. The…

In the distant past, I used to work in North East Doctor on Call, seeing patients in an old prefab right across from the emergency department in Navan Hospital and also the cottage in Drogheda. It was a very good service, I have to say. I think that, as much as possible, these services should operate 24-7, for reasons we will all understand. I understand this is principally a funding issue, although the availability of doctors is an issue too. We have asked the Minister for Health to engage on this with the HSE to …

That is a good idea and definitely worthy of examination. My Department has responsibility for consumer affairs and the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, CCPC, falls under our remit, so I will talk to my officials about that to see if there is something we can do around price monitoring. I should say that it is clear to me that the drivers of inflation are multifactorial. Some of it is down to monetary policy and the amount of money printed in recent years, combined with very low interest rates by cen…

I think that sometimes there is more than one solution to a problem. I very much support late-night and 24-7 public transport. The Deputy will be aware new services are coming online and for the first time we have 24-7 public transport services. Improving conditions for taxi drivers can help as well. I do not think we should rule out giving consideration to additional solutions. Like the Deputy, I travel the world. When I have been in cities in other parts of Europe and America, I have used services such as Lyft an…

I will speak to the Minister for Health, Deputy Stephen Donnelly, on that issue as I am not as up-to-date on the issue as I would have been in the past. Certainly, 12 people seems a very low number. I appreciate that many consultant neurologists have doubts about the clinical efficacy of cannabis as a treatment for certain illnesses. While it is not for us to tell doctors what to prescribe and when, it nonetheless seems a very low number and I will definitely raise the issue with the Minister.

I was in Geneva for the World Trade Organization talks last week. As the European Union negotiates on behalf of Ireland in these talks, decisions were made at European Commission level rather than at member state level. We did however manage to come to an agreement on a waiver in respect of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, TRIPS. It may not be the agreement that many people wanted but the World Trade Organization works on the basis of unanimity and consensus. Many countries, s…

To be frank, I am not fully apprised of the detail of that treaty. It probably falls under the remit of the Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications, Deputy Eamon Ryan, so I will make sure that he knows it was raised and I will ask him to come back to Deputy Costello directly.

I concur with Deputy Bruton's remarks. Some good work is being done around the Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) (Amendment) Bill 2022 and the advocacy services linked to that. That is a very narrow area of the issue to which Deputy Bruton refers. He is talking about a wider area so I will talk to Deputy Bruton about it in more detail offline and see what we can do.