I wish to raise the urgent need for reform of child and adolescent mental health services, CAMHS. Serious concerns about CAMHS have been raised here repeatedly by me and many other Deputies over recent years. A review of CAMHS was conducted by the Mental Health Commission and the Maskey report on CAMHS in Kerry was published recently but we have seen no action to improve the situation. Around 22,000 children who were referred to CAMHS are languishing on waiting lists in what is a failed system. The Government has b…

Níl aon Healy-Rae anseo so tógfaidh mé an t-am go léir, or I will do my best to anyway. Tá siad i gContae Chiarraí. I am delighted to speak on this Bill. The rent a room scheme, which the Bill tries to enable or help, is a very imaginative scheme. It has been a success but there are unintended consequences to every scheme and provision we make. The scheme should be expanded to ensure people are not disallowed medical cards as a result of exceeding the income threshold. As we know, the scheme is a tax-free initiativ…

No, it is not in the Bill but it is with regard to mismanagement. I appreciate that. It is total mismanagement and two fingers on both hands to every taxpayer out there. The job that was created for him in Trinity went horribly wrong, and rightly so, when the academics objected, and rightly so. Why would a man with no expertise in this area be brought in? Now they found a home for him in cancer research that is funded by the HSE. I do not have the exact details but it has to do with cancer research. When we think b…

These are the facts. The facts are there and the court cases that all those people had to go through. Cian O'Carroll is-----

He was the CMO.

He was the CMO.

If we think of the smears and people who died.

You are actually hearing about the Bill.

You can all you like but the facts are the facts

Yes.

And I welcome them.

Yes.

Déanfaidh mé mo dhícheall but I am just saying I am not dissociating myself from anything I said. This is what is happening and what is going on in front of our eyes. Yes, the extension to the medical card is very welcome, as are the changes to the 1995 Act's provisions, but we will have questions and no answers and around the house and mind the dresser. All these things are going on in the HSE. It is back to mismanagement and a lack of accountability. The Minister for Health is at variance with what is going on. F…

The CMO.

The Chief Medical Officer.

I thank the Deputies of all parties who have supported this motion. I wish to express my sympathies to Deputy Michael Collins on his tragic loss and to his brother Danny and the mother of the young man. I thank Triona and Brian Ó Domhnaill in our office for putting this motion together. I am disappointed because, as usual, the Government has put forward a countermotion. Everyone knows that something is wrong. Somebody quoted figures earlier and said that spending has increased by €800 million, or 40%, since 2019. I…

We have a route option selection process going on for the new N24. I am talking specifically about the Cahir to Waterford stretch, or Cahir to Carrick-on-Suir in our case in Tipperary. Clonmel has a bypass for 20-odd years and it is like a car park morning and evening. It is proposed now to use that same bypass to link up with the new road. This is totally impractical. Clonmel town needs an outer ring road to take the traffic out of the town. It beggars belief that after all the planning, designing, land sterilisat…

I speak on behalf of my colleagues in the Rural Independent Group on the lack of gardaí in our country. Since the trouble in Dublin, gardaí are coming up from Tipperary and every other county to man the situation here in Dublin. Places like Carrick-on-Suir, Clonmel, Tipperary Town, Cahir and Roscrea are very short of guards. They have pathetic numbers if people knew the real numbers, when sickness and gardaí confined to barracks and working night duties are taken into consideration. We see this morning another stic…

Last year, the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, announced a postponement of development fees and water connection charges in an effort to encourage people to build amid spiralling construction costs. Huge delays are being experienced by individual self-builders and, indeed, bigger builders waiting for connection from Uisce Éireann. There is a fear now among these people that the delays will mean they will not be able to achieve the goal of having the houses built and completed by 1 April, which they are supposed to be and…

I, too, support this motion. It is a terribly sad situation. I issue a fíorfháilte do na daoine óga is aosta sa Ghailearaí freisin. I welcome the people to the Gallery. They should not have to come here but, unfortunately, in this country, especially with health, while so many good things happen, which we acknowledge, in this area of scoliosis and, indeed, urology, it beggars belief. When I was first elected to the House, and it was a privilege, in 2007, I think the budget for the HSE and the Department of Health w…