I was amused by the Deputy's commentary. I apologise if he found that a bit disconcerting. You could not make it up really; a left-wing Deputy like himself invoking the right-wing Tory press to attack the Irish Government and the Deputy is taking The Daily Telegraph seriously. There are local elections today in Britain. The Deputy talks about a PR boon-----

We will see by the end of the night whether it has been a PR boon or not. There is no one at any border. There are no checkpoints at the Border. I remember when I met a former British Prime Minister in my time as Taoiseach. There were blazing headlines across the British press, saying the frigates are going to France. Does anyone remember that headline? Can the Deputies not stand back and reflect a bit? Do not get taken in by The Daily Telegraph is my advice.

I am familiar with the issue. A number of bodies are involved in this. The Deputy mentioned the HSE and CUH. University College Cork has priorities in respect of a range of capital investments, involving the Cork University Business School, CUBS, building, the Tyndall National Institute and others, including the dental school. It is regrettable that given the prioritisation of the dental school and the work that has been done on it to date, that there has been a pull-back from it. The Government is open to seeing w…

Is the Deputy suggesting taking the Garda out of the process of vetting passports? Is she suggesting that we take out the security dimension that is essential to passports?

In a passport?

Through the Chair, two or three years ago there was a lot of concern in the House about backlogs and delays in getting passports. The speed at which one can get passports today online is quite dramatic. It is tremendous all round. More staff have been recruited and we continue to do this. It is a good service and it is responding well. When there are individual problems it equally responds well when people make presentations.

The real issue with passports is that we work with people and we can just get the procedures correct but there is always a security dimension. We have it in other debates in the House on other issues, where people are condemning the Government for the absence of security dimensions.

There is an issue with disability services and CDNT teams. My view is that the progressing disability programme has not worked. The progressing disability policy was announced in 2013 and it simply has not worked and we need to change it. I have been working with the HSE and various education and equality bodies. Parents and children cannot wait any longer. This should not impede the provision of school places and, to be fair, the NCSE with the Department of Education have expanded classrooms, special classes and s…

I cannot talk about an individual case but from what I understand, the position in this particular case is that the person in question sought international protection in Ireland and inquiries identified he had previously been an applicant in the United Kingdom. Under the arrangement in place since 2020 the United Kingdom agreed to accept his return and also advised that he had been convicted of sexual assault in the United Kingdom and was subject to sex offender reporting requirements there. Ireland initiated the i…

The Minister for Justice has asked for a review of the case to be carried out.

From what I have been presented with, it seems there has been a very serious lapse in regard to this case.

What the Deputy is presenting is ridiculous. It should be resolved between the two State agencies. The Deputy has said the county council and Uisce Éireann have an issue. They should sort it. With the greatest respect to everybody, there are people on the ground working with the two agencies. For God's sake would they go away and get it done. That is all I would say. I am not disagreeing with the Deputy.

While the Deputy cannot be calling everyone a joke, this needs to be resolved.

I agree that it should be resolved. We need to be clear also that those responsible on the ground should do their job.

I support absolutely the recruitment of further bus drivers. I believe the NTA is before the Committee of Public Accounts today and as much pressure as possible should be brought to bear. We are in a full employment era, which means many agencies have challenges with recruitment. Certainly we will be very supportive of this.

The Deputy is saying there are four additional classes required in the school.

I will follow that up with the Minister for Education. It is very devastating news for parents. It creates a lot of anxiety when parents cannot be clear or certain that their child will get a place next September. We have worked hard to try to deal with that in the first two years of Government. We dealt with the backlog and got new schools and new classes. The NCSE has approved more classes. We have approved substantial funding for education build this year, so these situations should not be manifesting. I will ta…

I commend the Deputy for raising this issue. We need to try to find a way now to resolve it and deal with it. It is a very serious issue. I have had presentations from people who have been victims of what the Deputy has outlined, which resulted in the loss of a child for a period by one of the parents. It is quite frightening that it happened. It needs perhaps the relevant Oireachtas committee, the Minister for Justice and the Minister for children collectively to examine it and see what can be done within the fram…

While we did announce our intention to do it, and legislation is being prepared and has been approved by Government, I cannot give the Deputy a guarantee that this is all going to be through both Houses between now and-----

That is a tall order. Inevitably in situations like this, when we announce new departures and new legislation, there will always be those who will be outside of the enactment of that legislation.