Answer the question.

Not to screw renters.

Answer the question.

The dark shadow cast by what was done to children in Ireland's industrial and reformatory schools is a horror with which our country has never fully reconciled. Indeed, it may be impossible to do so. The scale and depth of the abuse, violence, hurt and life-lasting trauma suffered by victims has rippled and reverberated for decades, sometimes as quiet as uncertain as a whisper, sometimes powerful enough to rock our collective conscience but always there. The industrial schools were a State-sanctioned system of abus…

The Government's plan to take away special needs assistants from vulnerable children was met with massive public anger. Last night, we held a public meeting against the Government's proposed SNA cuts and more than 1,000 people turned up - parents, SNAs and teachers all calling out Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael for their cruel treatment of children. They are now determined to fight back against this, tooth and nail. Last week, in the face of this anger, the Government announced that it had called a pause to its plan to …

What the Taoiseach has given us is a demonstration of a complete unwillingness to accept realities on the ground. In fact, I would say his response was gaslighting parents and SNAs.

The Taoiseach needs to know that those parents, children and young people who rely on their SNA to participate in school life and learning, to stay at school, to build confidence, esteem and relationships and who require behavioural regulation need to have the security of the SNA. They cannot live on a wing and a prayer from year to year, hoping against hope that the SNA is not taken away. The Government attempted to remove SNAs from schools. That is what it attempted to do. Parents and SNAs have fought back and th…

It needs to accept the reliance of children and young people to function and to operate-----

-----within the system on those SNAs. It needs to announce not a pause-----

-----or a review of a review but a complete reversal of this disgraceful policy.

Wow.

Wow. The Taoiseach is arrogant.

He is an arrogant man.

The Taoiseach is one arrogant man.

Oh, it is.

I am sure parents are watching this to see the Taoiseach's arrogance-----

The report of the investigation into mental healthcare given to children and young people in Kerry has now been published. The young people affected, their distraught parents and their families have waited years for answers. The investigation of these case files of 300 children in north Kerry was, as the Taoiseach knows, originally ordered in the aftermath of the 2022 Maskey report. The distressing findings of that report into the care of vulnerable children by south Kerry CAMHS provoked shock and public anger at t…

The difficulty is that the priority and focus has not been on the well-being of children and young people. In fact, many families and parents wonder what on earth is going on with this litany of appalling treatment of children and young people. We have children whose SNAs are being taken from them, children waiting for an assessment of need, children with no school places, parents forced to campaign and fight for basic services, and children with scoliosis and spina bifida waiting for surgery. Seven-year-old Roxann…

Of course it is not.

No, I am not.