Many students have been in contact with me ahead of the 2021-22 academic year, which I know sounds like a lifetime away. As the Taoiseach will be aware, however, for those receiving it, the Student Universal Support Ireland, SUSI, grant will be based on 2020 income. The Covid-19 payment, which a lot of students received and continue to receive, will play havoc with the grants next year. Now is the time to address this issue. The new SUSI scheme will issue from the Department in February 2021 before SUSI opens for n…

I have continually condemned the Government and the HSE for their stupid ads and posters saluting front-line workers. I have said time and again that the Government should honour nurses' pay agreements, take care of student nurses and midwives and give them the pay they deserve. People working in the catering staff of hospitals throughout this country have not received a pay increase in 13 years. Moreover, student nurses are charged registration fees. These should have been waived. The young nurses we train feel th…

I raise the very important issue of home care support assistants in County Kerry. I will explain what happens. The Taoiseach will know of the excellent work these home care assistants do in our communities taking care of people who want to stay in their own homes. They get paid travelling expenses for going to people's homes. Some use one or two full tanks of diesel or petrol every week in doing their work. They get paid retrospectively. In other words, they should get November's money this December. They have been…

I want to follow up on what Deputy Mattie McGrath has said. There are people out there who feel like the forgotten people in all of this. These are people who have worked very hard, including musicians, taxi drivers, people involved in the haulage industry, people who are on the road and who never wanted anything for nothing. They never wanted anything other than to be given the opportunity to work in a very fair way. They feel that they are being hit in an extraordinary way. They feel that what is being discussed …

I would love to have a verbal engagement with the person who dreamt up the term "wet pubs". It should be banned from our language completely because it is an insult. There is no such thing in Ireland, or anywhere else in the world, as a wet pub. It is a stupid statement dreamt up by a stupid person. A pub is a pub, end of story. A pub is run by a person called a licensed vintner, who is respectable and must go before the courts every September to get a licence to trade. It is a highly regulated business. Having thi…

I thank Deputy Boyd Barrett for tabling this very important amendment. Musicians and people who create entertainment are a very special group of people in that they cause merriment, whether in an old folks' home on a Sunday evening, inside in a public house or at a wedding. They entertain people the evening of a funeral, when they are at their lowest. They are a very special group of people. I am, of course, modest about this but we have the finest musicians that have ever graced this land in County Kerry and comin…

I very much resent what has been said so far. Deputies have told mistruths about the respectable people involved in this industry. The image of 6,000 dogs disappearing per year is factually incorrect. Under the IGB system, dogs are registered at 12 weeks of age and are named before they are 12 months old. If a dog gets two trials and races on an Irish track, that dog can then be sold in England or elsewhere. It can be retired abroad if it is not good enough for racing here and can finish up in a good home in German…

Almost 1,000 farmers have not been paid their basic payment scheme payment because the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine states it is awaiting a software update to allow it to finalise their applications. This is unacceptable. It is not an acceptable reason not to pay the farmers a payment that has been due to them since 16 October. Farmers are depending on it to pay for rations, to pay contractors and to live. The Taoiseach should investigate this and get the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Mar…

This place is too big; I have been indicating for quite a while. Obviously, Brexit will cause an awful lot of upheaval and complications in many sectors of all our lives. I do not know whether it was good or bad fortune, although I enjoyed it thoroughly, to work with the excellent, hard-working Oireachtas Joint Committee on European Union Affairs, comprising all parties and none, over a number of years while preparedness for Brexit was taking place. One issue that I have begged the Government to address relates to …

Two weeks ago, on behalf of Deputy Mattie McGrath and our group, I stated that it was the proper and correct thing for the Minister to come in. When you are in a hole and when you are digging, the best thing to do at some stage is to stop. The Taoiseach knows in his heart and soul this is not going to be given up. The leaders of the different groups are not going to give up. This will be relentless and there is no harm in that if there is nothing to hide. Why should the Minister not come into the House and answer b…

There was a lot of praise in this debate for the people working in our healthcare service. As I have said on numerous occasions, I do not want them to be praised. I know they are not looking for praise. I want them to be paid. Wage agreements are in place for our nurses. Catering staff who have worked in our hospitals have not received a pay increase in 13 years. If I am wrong about that, I would like to be corrected and told that I am wrong. Unfortunately, I am correct. That situation is wrong. The Government has …

I raise the issue of funding for Irish Water projects which are administered in our county of Kerry. I will give some examples. We have a water main in Farranfore that keeps breaking. It causes awful trouble because it is on a main artery road through our county. From there up to Ash-hill and Farmers Bridge, everything needs upgrading and replacing. An upgrade is also needed to the water scheme at Moyvane and Knockanure. The Kenmare sewerage scheme needs an extension. In the great town of Kenmare, for example, it i…

It is Desmonds Avenue.

I thank the Taoiseach very much for that reply. On sewerage schemes, Irish Water seems to want to work in areas where infrastructure is already in place. Unfortunately, there are areas in County Kerry that have no schemes whatsoever, which is hard to believe. Places such as Caherdaniel, Scartaglin and Currow have no schemes at all. How are these areas supposed to develop? How are they supposed to grow? How are we supposed to cater for the future needs of young people who want to live and work in those areas? Planne…

Will the Taoiseach and the Government commit to reviewing the Student Universal Support Ireland, SUSI, grant scheme before next April? In light of the cost of living and other considerations, the income thresholds are not appropriate to the times we are living in. Students who were entitled to and received the pandemic unemployment payment, PUP, will not receive a grant in 2021, which means that many will not be able to continue their education. I ask the Taoiseach to ensure that the PUP is not considered reckonabl…

On behalf of the Rural Independent Group, our leader, Deputy Mattie McGrath, stated at the time that he believed a clear separation between this House and the Judiciary was very important. Therefore, I welcome the statement the Taoiseach has made today. It is important to reiterate here on the record of the House that the standard set down regarding the removal of a judge, or anything like that, is a deliberately high constitutional standard. That is so important, and it is important for us to uphold that separatio…

I thank Sinn Féin for bringing this very sound and worthwhile debate before the Dáil. Sinn Féin is trying to do what we would all like to do, that is, protect people's peace, quiet and safety. In turn this would help to ensure the safety of the people partaking in this nuisance behaviour. If they are not capable of ensuring their own safety, we have to do so by encouraging legislation. I do not welcome every new law or restriction because we can sometimes tie ourselves up in knots, but this is sensible. We do not c…

Can I make a point, which I also made here last week? I am not speaking on behalf of politicians but on behalf of every usher and every other member of the staff. I am speaking for those workers who have been informed that the Dáil has to sit until 1 a.m. When the sitting adjourns at 1 a.m. in the convention centre the workers here will have to stay on for at least an hour and a half, bringing us up to 2.30 a.m., and they will be expected to be in here again tomorrow morning. On behalf of the ladies and gentlemen w…

I thank the Chair for his indulgence.

I, too, was informed this morning by the chief executive of a hospital in the North. This Saturday I have a bus going up to the North. I went on Radio Kerry this morning to discuss this important issue. I raised this with the Taoiseach in the Dáil before. To be clear, 5,500 patients have used this scheme every year for the past four years. It is not only for cataract operations; it is also for having tonsils removed and orthopaedic procedures, to name a few. If we take it that 5,500 people will be unable to travel …