Overall, funding is increasing in health and continues to increase dramatically and exponentially, certainly for the past five years.

The Limerick surgical hub is expected to be operational in quarter 4 of this year. Medical assessment units are extending services. Opening hours have been extended from 8 a.m. until midnight in Ennis and Nenagh hospitals. Overall, significant progress is being made in the HSE Mid West region on both waiting lists and waiting times. Compared to December 2021, the April 2026 total waiting list in HSE Mid West has reduced by 12%. The average length of time that patients on lists have been waiting has also reduced fro…

I am not aware of the specifics of that case. It seems a fairly unusual one in terms of the interaction of a potential wind farm with radar. Normally, the aviation authority has a role in housing, for example, close to an airport, which I would be familiar with. It is difficult to understand how things got to the stage they got to. An Coimisiún Pleanála has made its decision but I am not sure it would have as wide an impact across the country as it has had in the specific circumstance the Deputy raised.

The Deputy should not be condemning himself so much. It is only 16 months that this Government has been in place. The idea that we are not getting to 50% because of the past 16 months is nonsense. The Deputy must know that. Policies take a lot of time to bed in and deliver. The last Government did a lot, including Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Greens. The Green Party does not have a monopoly on climate. What is the Deputy saying? Is it that what happened when he was in government was not sufficient? He cannot blam…

I thank the Deputy for raising this important issue. I know he has been advocating strongly on behalf of children and families in Cavan-Monaghan. Those counties have been facing some of the longest waits in the country for children's therapies. The root cause of that has been a chronic staffing deficit. At the Deputy's instigation, the Minister, Deputy Foley, visited the region recently and acknowledged directly that the system was not serving children and families as it should. However, there is a national recruit…

First of all, there has been very significant investment in GP services, significant increases in recruitment and additional placements and positions in our third level colleges. Parallel with that, there has also been the expansion of pharmacy in its role in primary care, which should not be dismissed either. I would argue that a lot of investment under the various negotiations have occurred in respect of primary care and particularly in terms of GP care.

I am going to come back to the Deputy on that. I will talk to the Minister in respect of that specific issue but the idea that there has not been investment or significant resources allocated to GPs needs to be questioned.

It is happening.

I will ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Finance to have a look at that issue and to give some background information to the Deputy in respect of it.

I have been a lifetime advocate for family resource centres and, in government, Fianna Fáil has always been very supportive of them. That is why we approved in the last budget ten new family resource centres. The Minister also levelled up certain family resource centres because there were different levels of core funding to different centres. I will talk to the Minister to see what we can do in the forthcoming Estimate in the context of the core grant to such resource centres because I do believe that they provide …

I will engage with Iarnród Éireann on this. A lot of expansion is happening and there are a lot of costs attached to it, investment required and so on like that. On the specifics of what the Deputy has raised, I will communicate to Iarnród Éireann his concerns in terms of the lack of frequency of such services.

I fully accept the urgency and seriousness of this for those who require Skyclarys. The engagement between the HSE and the company has perhaps at times been problematic. When I saw "problematic", delays have taken place, but meetings did happen. I will talk to the Minister again to see if we can get an outcome to this as quickly as we possibly can for all concerned.

I think I was at the site some time back, albeit not when the school was operational. It was a private school for many years and came over to the public system in 2012. It is an historic listed building. It is my understanding that modular provision has been made. I am getting a lot of prompts from behind me from the Minister of State, Deputy Butler, who is very familiar with the issue as well. It is an historic building and in fairness to the community there, it provides a significant contribution to education. Th…

Broadly speaking, I favour what the Deputy says in terms of a proper regulatory framework. In many instances, established practices and existing laws have not been comprehensive enough to deal with all of the issues relating to road safety, including the general safety of people, and there are also the issues of equine welfare and animal welfare concerns. The welfare of equines is protected by legislation. There is a commitment in the programme for Government to build on existing inspectorate supports across the co…

Ní aontaím leis an méid atá ráite ag an Teachta mar tá Éire agus a Rialtas chun tosaigh agus muid ag seasamh suas do na Palaistínigh. Tá sé sin ráite ag na Palaistínigh. Deir Údarás Náisiúnta na Palaistínigh i gcónaí go bhfuil ár dtír chun tosaigh maidir le tacaíocht a thabhairt do na Palaistínigh. I do not accept the Deputy's proposition in terms of how she has distorted the Irish Government’s position in relation to the cause of Palestinian self-determination. From the outset, we have taken a series of measures t…

-----International Court of Justice in terms of the case there in respect of genocide. We have provided very significant support to Palestinians, up to €146 million up to this year. In terms of UNRWA in particular, we took a leading role in Europe to stem the momentum at the time of taking aid away from UNRWA after Israeli allegations against UNRWA personnel. We held back that momentum and then we doubled down in terms of doubling our own provision of finance to UNRWA itself. We did this consistently in all interna…

My experience has been that as soon as we do something, like we did with the recognition or whatever else, Sinn Féin moves on very quickly and dismisses it.

That has been the standard practice. First of all, the original Bill could not go through the House because it would not have been legal in terms of how it was framed. In terms of services-----

On goods, by whatever yardstick is used, about €200,000 worth of goods - fruit and vegetables - come in from the settlements. That is what comes in. Services are intangible, as someone described them. It is impossible to implement. Could we have some honesty about that? There is an issue in terms of what will happen if services were included in terms of jobs in this country and potential attacks on multinationals that are based here.

That is the reality. People can dismiss that all they want; I do not dismiss it. I have to protect about 250,000 jobs in this country too, and there is a real issue-----