I will talk to the Minister for children about this very serious issue. I would be somewhat surprised if the recommendations were not being followed through. I will get a report back from the Department of children in respect of this and forward it to the Deputy.

I thank the Deputy. I fundamentally agree. We have all been shocked by the recent loss of life on our roads and concerned by the worrying increase in road fatalities after many years of progress in making our roads safer. I have always given great credit to the former Minister, Noel Dempsey, who took on a lot of opposition in the House when he brought in some fundamental measures recommended by the Road Safety Authority, which ultimately led to a substantial decline in road fatalities and injuries. Part of that was…

The Department is working on this. As the Deputy said, the key recommendation of Judge Dr. Geoffrey Shannon's independent review report on the handling of past complaints of abuse in St. John Ambulance was the appointment of a national safeguarding officer by the St. John Ambulance Ireland organisation. The national safeguarding lead is to work with the organisation for an agreed, specified time to ensure it is fully compliant with the safeguarding regime in operation. The safeguarding officer's role is essential i…

Sinn Féin is all over the place these days. Some 38,000 social homes have been added to the social housing stock, up to Q4 of 2023, since this Government came into office.

I know. Some 12,000 social homes were delivered. Of these, 8,110 were built in 2023, while, yes, others were leased. Why was this? It was because the Deputy, and others, have come into the House and spoken, rightly, about homelessness and everything else. If we did not lease some of these houses, then we would have more homelessness. The Deputy is talking about 25 years' time. I think the families concerned, however, are happy to be in a social house funded by the State in the interim.

It is evidence of us doing everything we possibly can to try to house people-----

-----who are homeless or are in significant difficulties.

We will get more houses built.

For 2024, about €2.7 billion is being spent on special education. This will allow for the opening of 400 new special classes and 300 additional special school places. We had a meeting last week of the Cabinet sub-committee on education and special needs education. The Minister for Education, Deputy Foley, and the Minister of State with special responsibility for special education, Deputy Naughton, have been very clear that they will meet all the needs and will provide an adequacy of places for all children requirin…

That work is under way.

The Government is very committed to expanding Garda numbers all over the country, including in Drogheda. During Covid-19, with the closure of Templemore training college, there was a reduction in the number of gardaí coming through. The most recent Garda recruitment campaign, though, which ran in January and February of this year, has received a very strong response, with over 6,300 people applying to become a garda. This is a significant increase on the 5,000 people who applied last year.

It is great to see so many people wanting to join An Garda Síochána, especially among people aged 35 to 50. We are determined to ensure that An Garda Síochána will grow to 15,000 members.

That complement will then enable us to increase the numbers of gardaí in towns like Drogheda. That is the commitment. We are going to increase the number of gardaí but we have to recruit them and get them trained first.

I studied archaeology in my first year in college and I have always had a strong affection for it ever since.

I studied under the late Professor O'Kelly who was involved in Maynooth and discoveries in Lough Gur. I will talk to the OPW.

In fairness, when people say they do not discuss sites publicly, this is meant in good faith because it can inflate prices if somebody thinks the State is going to roll in.

It seems very exciting in terms of what the Deputy is suggesting-----

-----and I will talk to the OPW about it.

I do not accept that the current embargo, as it is called, has caused this issue because 28,000 extra people have been recruited into the health service since 2020. One has to wonder why specific healthcare professional categories were not recruited with the same success as other categories have been. I have recently asked for data on audiologists because, as the Deputy knows, there are now significant increases in the number of places in third-level colleges to increase the training places for a whole range of the…

I will refer this matter to the Minister for Health, Deputy Donnelly-----