I would to get the up-to-date situation from the Minister for Education on what is happening in our schools regarding secretaries and caretakers. As the Leader knows, caretakers and secretaries turn up every day and are the first there in the morning and last to leave at night, in all kinds of weather. They keep schools up and running. I know a man in Donegal who is 26 years employed and has four years until retirement, and he does not know if he is entitled to anything because there is nothing there. Caretakers an…

I thank the Minister of State for coming in today. I am asking the Minister to provide funding for the low-cost accident scheme or a capital funding scheme to address a serious speeding issue in the village of Fahan in County Donegal. Fahan is on the Inishowen Peninsula, which is a beautiful part of Donegal. It is a seaside town with a beautiful view over Lough Swilly Over the years there have been numerous accidents in the village of Fahan. Thankfully, none have been fatal. Due to the way the village is laid out, …

I thank the Minister of State. It is one of the issues that keeps coming up all the time with people phoning from Fahan about the speeding issue, so we decided that we would raise it. It is on the peninsula and it is very close to Derry so there is a lot of traffic going and coming, especially on the weekends as there are a lot of holiday homes on the peninsula Anything we can do to help the situation would be greatly appreciated because the last thing we want to have is an accident. We are here to prevent accident…

I have it.

I want to raise an issue I feel really strongly about. A couple of weeks ago my daughter fell and I took her to an accident and emergency unit. We arrived at the unit on a Sunday afternoon about 4 o'clock and there was a lady there with severe disabilities. My daughter and I were there for the guts of ten hours. I am not giving out about the wait as it was a busy place but that poor woman was in a wheelchair and her husband had to try to look after her for the guts of ten hours. I offered her my daughter's place to…

I welcome the Minister of State. I have submitted a Commencement matter about Dunkineely National School. I am not sure if the Minister of State knows Dunkineely. It is built on the N56. I would also like to mention Keeloges and Killaghtee national schools, which also have a problem with the N56. The priority today is Dunkineely. It is built on a hill. If you come from Donegal town or Mountcharles, you climb the hill heading for Killybegs and, going the other way, you descend. This issue was raised in 2023 when a c…

I thank the Minister of State for coming in to answer the question. It is disappointing to hear that no money will be made available until 2026. This has been going on since 2023. I ask that the Department pay a visit to the school, along with me, to see the problem. I am here to try to help the people of my area. I hear about this weekly from parents and grandparents. They ask why this is happening in Donegal and they are not being looked after. This happened in 2023. It is totally unacceptable. I do not mean to g…

I express my sincerest condolences to the families of the two young boys who drowned in Buncrana over the weekend. It was yet another tragedy in Donegal. I send my heartfelt apologies to the families. I stand here again to speak, like a broken record, about the National Ambulance Service. On Saturday, I got a phone call from a mother in Portnoo, Ardara. On Wednesday evening, her son took sick with a spiking temperature. He started convulsions and had rapid breathing. This scared the life out of the family. They ran…

I raise a planning issue concerning the N56, in particular, the lack of access to the N56, which remains a serious challenge for the communities in south-west Donegal. At present, many people living at home and away want to come home and build on their local farm or along the N56, but they cannot get planning permission along the road. This is totally wrong. We need the Government to intervene to convince the TII this policy is unsustainable and does not work in rural Ireland. We need planning along our major roads…

I will again talk about the National Ambulance Service. I will keep bringing this up until somebody listens. On Saturday, 26 April, an 86-year-old man fell outside his home in Kilcar. His daughter called 999 at 11.02 and was told there were no ambulances available in County Donegal on the day. That is hard to believe for a county of that size. The only ambulance that was available was in Boyle, County Roscommon. She was told it would be 55 minutes before the ambulance would be there. As the Leader will know, there …

After the last contribution, I should thank Jim McGuinness and the Donegal team for seeing off Down.

We will be waiting for you. I raise the issue of defective concrete blocks in Donegal, which has been raised here a couple of times. On behalf of the Fine Gael councillors in Donegal, Jimmy Kavanagh, Martin Harley and Michael Boyle, I express deep concern regarding the defective blocks scheme. Numerous homeowners face real financial hardship. The delay in the implementation of the scheme is costing families many thousands of euro. Children are living on building sites. Last week, I visited a couple of the affected …

I raise an issue I also raised several weeks ago, which is benefit-in-kind for the National Ambulance Service. I spoke to the Minister for Health, Deputy Jennifer Carroll MacNeill, about it. She told me it comes under the remit of the Minister for Finance and involves the Revenue Commissioners. That was nearly a month ago. Will the Leader give me an update from Revenue on where the issue is at? It is a vital issue for people in rural County Donegal, which he will appreciate coming from rural county himself. These p…

I rise to talk about three schools in Donegal which are all located adjacent to the N56. The first school is St. Naul's National School, Keeloges, which is a national school off the N56. There is a problem there in the mornings and the evenings with traffic going to and from the school. They are trying to get back onto a main road, something it is very hard for people to do with the speed of the traffic coming. It is an accident waiting to happen. The second school is Dunkineely National School. I raised the issue …

I welcome the Minister of State. Naturally, I am glad to hear so many counties are being looked after but I did not hear Donegal. I may be being parochial about it, but, as the Minister of State knows, there are many flooding problems in County Donegal. For example, there is Killybegs, Donegal town, Pettigo and up in the north of the county. There are a lot of problems there. In my part of the country there is a lot of coastal erosion and houses are being affected. That is something I have talked about with the Min…

I will start by congratulating Jim McGuinness and the Donegal team on their great win over Derry at the weekend. It was great to see and gives the whole county a lift. I also thank the Donegal fire service, the Garda and local volunteers who turned out on Sunday night to put out a gorse fire in Barnesmore Gap. It was great to see how the community came together to help and work along with the fire service. I stand here very annoyed. Over the weekend - it was a busy weekend - an Irish vessel landed 750 tonnes of top…

I want to bring up an issue that is very dear to my heart, which is the National Ambulance Service. It is very important we get a review of the National Ambulance Service for rural communities. To provide a brief background to this, a while ago my mother became very ill. Thankfully, my sister managed to get out to the dispensary in Killybegs where the local doctor kept her and looked after her until the ambulance came. The ambulance was an hour and a half away. It came from Letterkenny. We have an ambulance base in…

I want to address the issue of occupational therapists. It has been brought to my attention that there are many vacant OT positions in Donegal. There are a number of areas in the county with no OT arranged for them. These areas are Bruckless, Killybegs, Ardara, Glenties, Portnoo, Kilcar, Carrick and Glen. At the moment, only priority one clients are being seen. Priority two clients remain on a waiting list. The role of an OT is to assess people, keep them in their own homes and support them to remain independent. P…

I have a question for the Department of Health. It is about the NowDoc out-of-hours service in Donegal. We appreciate it and it works well but I had a phone call over the weekend from a lady who went to the NowDoc service. She told me no patient records are shared with the NowDoc service in any part of the country for the out of hours service. It is great if you go and your local doctor is there and he knows you and your records, but 90% of the time when you go, there is a doctor you do not know. They have no digit…

First, I thank the people in Donegal for the parades they put on. They were first class all over County Donegal this year - everybody from marching bands and so on. It is something we should support in this House because it engages the local community. I travelled most of Donegal last week and it was great weather. It was beautiful, and it is Ireland’s most beautiful county, as we all know.