The Government ploughs on with its intention to deny people the right to retire at 65, something the people of this country were quite clear on at the time of the last general election. Sinn Féin has reinforced that message in this House, and it is only because of the pressure exerted by us and through public opinion that a stop was put to raising the age further to 68. Now the Government is proposing to hit workers and employers with five consecutive blanket PRSI increases. As I say, things are tough enough for em…

I too thank People Before Profit for bringing this motion before the House. This motion notes the systematic abuses of Palestinian people over the decades, as well as the current bombardment, displacement and discrimination of the Palestinian people. A system of apartheid is firmly in place when it comes to the attitude adopted by the Israeli State towards the Palestinian people who, it has to be said, are not treated with the equality that the Israeli Government would demand for itself. Instead, we hear the dehuma…

I raise the issues of what approach is being made to secure staff for the children's disability network teams, CDNTs, in south Tipperary, and what is the availability of private providers to fill the gaps that are being left because of lack of services, especially regarding provision for children who have been assessed. On the first issue, I have been told that staff in the CDNTs in Clonmel are leaving at an alarming rate and are not being replaced or not being replaced at a regular pace. This is having a massive i…

The Minister of State is here.

People have a right to their good names.

I welcome the opportunity to discuss this issue. Ireland can play a significant role in laying the groundwork for international pressure to be put upon the Israeli Government to end its actions in Gaza, but that role is not being played to its full potential. We take great pride in how we use our stance as a neutral, but not isolationist, country to be a champion for human rights and how we can, when the will is there, advocate measures that may have the effect of moving other states, through various means such as …

Hear, hear.

I too welcome the opportunity to discuss the Bill. We will support it, given the large number of people who are reliant on private healthcare providers to receive care in a timely manner. Risk equalisation, which the Bill will provide for annually, ensures costs will be constant across the lifespan of the individual. It seeks to ensure that, where possible, age, gender and health status will not influence the cost of an insurance product. Let there be no doubt, however, that this support is not immune to our misgiv…

Cashel, which is my home town, is a tourism centre. The OPW recorded slightly fewer than 400,000 people visiting it last year. That figure does not include tourists who come to Cahir, Holycross and the surrounding area. Despite the level of footfall, the Garda station in the town only opens for seven and a half hours a week. You cannot even find out on which days it opens because the schedule changes from week to week. We are being told it is going to be closed for several months while renovations take place. Is th…

The need for collective bargaining has never been greater given the various factors that are contributing to the rise of insolvencies. We have seen the challenges that have been posed by Brexit and the pandemic. The hike in energy costs as part of overall inflation, due in part to the war in Ukraine, has brought pressure to bear on companies across the country and, by extension, workers. Earlier this year, the European Central Bank, ECB, outlined how corporate profiteering had contributed more to inflation than wag…

I also thank the commission for this report and I welcome the opportunity to discuss the Bill. Representative politics as we have in this country should enable representation with a diversity of views inherent in a properly functioning democracy. I welcome the report and the legislation. I acknowledge the commission's independence and the fact that it had the difficult task of working within the parameters set out through the terms of reference. While we will support the Bill, I want to address elements of the para…

International humanitarian law is not being defended as long as countries watch while war crimes and crimes against humanity are perpetrated against the people of Gaza. Today, 170 bodies, including those of newborns, are being buried in a mass grave near Al-Shifa Hospital after vital hospital equipment failed due to bombardment and power cuts, bringing the death toll to over 11,000 people, including 4,630 children. The call we are making here is not being done in the absence of evidence, or in the absence of key fi…

I thank an tAire for taking the question. Before I start, I also congratulate Deputy Troy on the new arrival. The fun starts now for him. I raise this question in light of the fact that €708 million in funding has been allocated for existing levels of service in 2024. That is less than half the shortfall identified for 2023, and that is even before covering other pressures in 2024 as a carry-over and demographics and pay. I would like to know where Tipperary University Hospital fits into the terms of this and the i…

I appreciate that work is going ahead there and that there is funding there. It is, however, beyond unacceptable, at a time the pressure on all our hospitals is at its greatest, that the hospital is now faced with tightening its belt even further, with the added complication of it being unsure precisely what the impacts of the cuts will be. The year began with a total of 2,467 scheduled care cancellations and, as the year progressed, the hospital has been continuing to deal with the increase in presentations and ad…

I am confident that the management will do all it can to maintain the existing levels of service there. It is committed to advocating for the community locally and for the service demands to meet people's needs. We need, however, to hear the same commitment come back from the Government on this. The Minister mentioned primary care centres. I have brought up several times here, as we have brought up locally, the matter of primary care centres trying to get doctors into them in the first place. I had a case recently …

I will make one last point about home care. I have a situation in Carrick-on-Suir involving a family, a man and a wife, depending on their neighbour for home care. She has applied since May and cannot even get an answer back as to whether or not that family can have home care. If I give the Minister the details, will he look into it for us? That family is depending on a neighbour who is working-----

I thank the Labour Party for bringing the motion to the House. I welcome the opportunity to discuss the work done and the challenges faced by our home care and home support workers in the face of a Government that speaks about the importance of community care but fails to invest in the way it should. The Government's underfunding of the health service has been met with dismay by service providers and, indeed, by hospital managers whose ability to address the high numbers presenting to emergency departments is depen…

On 25 October, when pre-European Council meeting statements were being discussed, the Taoiseach noted that the death toll in Gaza at the time was 5,000. The government of Israel has been moving quickly since then and attacking the Gaza Strip at such a rate that the number of deaths as a result of the bombardment of Gaza is now in excess of 10,000. It is precisely because of this rapid increase in deaths that Sinn Féin has called for a ceasefire from the earliest days of the conflict. I advise all of those who have …

This House will be well aware of the tragedies we have seen on the roads of County Tipperary during the last couple of months, with seven people dying over the space of a few days in August. We have had accidents since. The two accidents in August got national headlines, but I send my condolences to all the families who have lost loved ones. It has been a terrible time in Tipperary and nationally and this trend is deeply worrying. Despite this, the number of gardaí is down. In Tipperary, as of July, it was 382 as o…

I am happy to speak on this motion. I congratulate the Joint Committee on Disability Matters on all the work it has done. I want to note how fast problems are increasing when it comes to the challenges faced by children in need of disability services. This report was published in February. At that time, the HSE had confirmed that an average gap of 28% existed in respect of vacant positions across the CDNTs. Recently the Road Map for Service Improvement was published. It noted there is now an average vacancy rate of…