These are the words of a county council tenant: The overflow in our attic was fitted incorrectly, so eventually it burst and came down through the lights in my bathroom and down through the ceiling into the sitting room and kitchen. There is water damage in the ceilings, both upstairs and downstairs. The extractor fan is hanging by one screw. These are the words of a city council tenant: The leaks have damaged a lot of my belongings. Afraid the ceilings are going to cave in as they are all cracked, radiator is all …

I thank the Minister of State, Deputy Naughton, for taking this matter. It impacts on the constituency we share, so I thought it would be good and appropriate to raise it with her. I have been contacted by a parent who is worried about her child’s special language class and is concerned it will not go ahead next year. As the Minister of State will be well aware, this is a fantastic class for children in the area. This child was supposed to attend it for two years but it now looks as though it will be cut in the mid…

I thank the Minister of State. I welcome her constructive message and the fact there has already been a meeting. I hope another meeting will resolve this issue. Everybody would like to see this class being set up. Parents are concerned, which is completely understandable. We all know what it is like once we get into the summer months. There are concerns that parents would not get the support at that stage. The reality is that families can see how beneficial this class is for their children. That is probably the cru…

First, I congratulate the Minister on his new position. I look forward to working with him and hope we can work together in a good, collaborative way going forward, doing our best to remedy some of the difficult issues that lie ahead for both students and staff and within the entire further and higher education sector. My question relates to the student accommodation crisis.

The Minister and I have had dealings in the past when I was the Opposition spokesperson on public expenditure and reform. I have always found the Minister to be very honest, frank and straight to the point, which I think is a very good quality and I hope it is a quality he will bring to this portfolio. If I am honest, in my view, that was lacking in the previous Minister. The Minister referred to the UCD beds. There was a continuous reannouncement of these same beds. They were first announced in 2018, then paused i…

I would be the first person to say I think something is going well but I genuinely believe that in terms of student accommodation, we are dramatically failing students. If we look at last year's budget, not a red cent was given to capital for student accommodation. If we look at the announcements by the Minister's predecessor, there were continuous re-announcements of the same beds. In my view, that is very unfair to students and parents who are trying to plan for the year ahead. Where are we at with regard to the …

Not for capital.

The Minister was just talking about capacity issues. One of the big things in terms of capacity is to make sure we have the workforce that can build the different projects that we need, particularly when it comes to accommodation needs. That is why I would like the Minister to outline what progress is being made at the moment with regard to the current challenges in the apprenticeship system. Craft apprentices are coming to me and telling me they are in crisis.

The Minister's own Department and SOLAS recently produced the Report on the Analysis of Skills for Residential Construction & Retrofitting 2023-2030. That report estimated that we need to increase the size of the construction sector by 50,831 new entrants by the year 2030 if we are to meet our targets. What is interesting is that the report used 2019 as its base year. Between 2019 and 2022, however, the size of the construction workforce actually fell. If the craft apprenticeships were pumping out qualified tradesp…

I totally agree with the Minister's first point about people having certainty. In addition, that again shows us the role of the State. At the end of the day, the State is the largest employer, and that is a very important point. Of course people were concerned about certainty after the crash, but I am looking at those who are in the system right now and who feel like they are not heard or listened to. A lot of the time they feel their voices just are not heard. I think the Minister is saying he is willing and hopin…

I do. I talk to SOLAS.

But we are missing the targets.

The Minister mentioned how important digs are in the provision of student accommodation. This year, I published a very workable regulation on student digs. Will he give a commitment to taking a look at that Bill and outline his own plans in this area?

The Minister mentioned a cliff edge. Has he read my legislation and where does he think it would result in a cliff edge? It would not provide an equal level of protection as someone in a typical tenancy because I have recognised that these students would be living in someone's home. However, it would have ensured they could not be made homeless overnight. I think that is reasonable. It would have ensured a young woman was afforded a degree of privacy whereby she could have a lock on her bedroom door which would giv…

I totally get that, and that is why I put together reasonable legislation that was regularly mentioned by the Minister's predecessor. Because of the housing crisis and the disastrous response by the Government, people do not realistically have much other choice than to go into digs. Digs are fantastic and it can benefit both the person living in them and the homeowner. My Bill is very reasonable and doable and its language mirrors that of the existing Residential Tenancies Act. I ensured there was input from expert…

I remember when the student contribution charge was brought in. Everybody knew it was fees by another name. Realistically, it is long past time for it to be removed. Instead, what we saw in the last budget, which surprised me, were more one-off measures. We are past the time for that; we need to do better than one-off measures. We need to hear a commitment from the Government that multi-annual funding will be set aside for the permanent removal of this charge in order to allow people to plan for the future. Just li…

I concur with Deputy Stanton. This is a really important issue that has been raised previously. As the Deputy stated, it is an issue not just for those in the south of the country but also for everyone. There has been a 25% increase in the number of patients in the public system, and we are breaking at the seams in respect of the number of dentists there are versus the number we need. Between 24 and 26 students can go through the CAO process in that regard at the moment, but we clearly need more students to come on…

Ba mhaith liom buíochas a ghabháil le Páirtí an Lucht Oibre as an rún seo a chur os comhair na Dála. Ar ndóigh, tuigeann muid cé chomh dona is atá rudaí ar na bóithre faoi láthair agus tá sé fíorthábhachtach go ndéanfadh muid chuile shórt gur féidir linn chun stop a chur le líon na ndaoine atá ag fáil bháis ar na bóithre faoi láthair. Má bhreathnaíonn muid ar Ghaillimh, feiceann muid go bhfuil líon na ndaoine ag ardú agus caithfidh mé a rá go bhfuil muid ar fad ag smaoineamh ar na teaghlaigh atá acu féin agus ar nd…

The Government's current target for apprentices in 2025 is 10,000, but it has not even reached the 2020 target of 9,000. There is no specific target for craft apprentices, which is absolutely crucial because these are the people we want to build the homes we so desperately need. The Taoiseach constantly says that the apprenticeship system is employer-led and demand driven. However, he always seems to overlook the largest employer in the State, which is the public service. We can directly create apprenticeships thro…

They are not all craft apprenticeships.