Wages are being cut.

We are one year on now. Survivors deserve an answer as to what happened with the leaking of this information. When are they going to get it? The failure to provide answers is adding insult to injury. The redress scheme has already excluded many people from it, including people who were born and lived in the institutions for less than six months. These people were profoundly affected by what happened to them and have been cut off from the scheme. It is divisive and is an attempt on the part of the Government to play…

I was reading some of the online debate about the situation with CAMHS in south Kerry. One comment struck me as if I had been punched on the nose. The person said that if anybody had listened to the teenagers subjected to CAMHS, this would have been discovered years ago. There was significant harm to 46 children. The harm included putting on a lot of weight, increased blood pressure, the production of breast milk and sleepiness during the day. According to the report there were unreliable diagnoses, inappropriate p…

The Taoiseach raised some interesting points in the previous discussion about a wage price spiral. He seemed to indicate he was against the idea of workers submitting claims for pay increases that would be in line with inflation, leaving aside the fact that he did not seem to express the same concerns when Robert Watt got a pay increase of €81,000. It is one rule for the top people and another for ordinary working people. Let us look at the matter at hand. We are told the consumer price index is up 5.5%, and that d…

I have a final point. There is talk of giving people €100 when their energy bills are up by €1,000 per year. That is a joke.

The Taoiseach was targeting the idea of-----

Let us check the record of what the Taoiseach said.

Let us check the record of what he actually said.

It is on the Taoiseach's watch.

On several occasions during the pandemic, our health service was threatened with being overwhelmed. Ministers argued that this was due to the power of the virus, but this was only partly true. It was also down to the weakness of our public health service infrastructure. There were not enough beds, including ICU beds, and there were not enough staff. We got through it thanks to the heroic efforts of the health staff but we were also lucky. The result of this was that society was locked down for considerably longer t…

Regina Coeli hostel in Belfast is the sole female-only homeless hostel in Northern Ireland. With domestic violence at a 15-year high in the North, it provides accommodation and support services for up to 200 women a year. Many residents are vulnerable women who have left abusive relationships or struggle with substance abuse. The Legion of Mary has decided to close the building, stating it cannot afford the cost of necessary repairs. I salute the workers, mainly women, who have decided to fight the closure and are …

Last week, 500 school students in Cork, Dublin, Galway, Waterford, Wexford and Roscommon held a joint protest to demand that there be no traditional leaving certificate examination this year. I understand students are discussing the possibility of protests on a bigger scale. I sincerely hope such protests will not prove necessary. However, if the Minister and the Government choose not to listen to students and decide instead to drive forward with the traditional leaving certificate examination, there is a real poss…

Ten years ago Savita Halappanavar died in an Irish hospital. Four years ago, the Irish people voted overwhelmingly for change. The Government, however, seems to be very slow to get the message. Half of Ireland's maternity hospitals still do not provide abortion services and just one in ten GPs provide abortion services, but the situation with this proposed new national maternity hospital takes the biscuit. Will the Minister clarify whether the press reports we have read are true? Is the Government seriously conside…

This is not a normal year. Why then is the Government still entertaining the idea of a normal leaving certificate examination this summer? To do so would fly in the face of the wishes of the large majority of sixth-year students, who made their views very clear in the Irish Second-Level Students Union, ISSU, poll. Anyone who has been in touch with these students will know that real mental health pressures are bearing down. The Government should not compound them by taking a clumsy approach to this issue. Nor should…

They are very minor.

I send deep condolences to the family and friends of Ashling Murphy on behalf of myself and of the Socialist Party and Solidarity. The horrific events in Tullamore are a wake-up call to Irish society and the reaction must mark a watershed for change. The death of Savita Halappanavar was a watershed moment but only because of a struggle for change that was then waged from below. Does anyone seriously believe that Ireland's political establishment would have organised a repeal referendum were it not for the ferocious…

A society which experiences 244 femicides in 25 years is a sick society that needs radical change. What kind of change? We need programmes in our schools that educate against sexism, misogyny and male violence against women. We need to teach consent. We need schools to bring young people of all genders together. We need an end to single-sex education. We need an end to religious control of schools. We need to separate church and State. We need to end sexism in the legal system. Victim-blaming and rape myths have no…

A leaving certificate student at the gate today asked me in this debate to ask that all of the windows in the Dáil Chamber would be opened up so that all the Deputies can see the conditions that they have to work in. It is in all weathers, including freezing cold. Of course, I cannot ask that that be done because there are no windows in the Dáil Chamber. However, the basic idea is good. What he was saying to me was that we should put ourselves in the students’ shoes. They missed months of direct classroom teaching …

The Minister said the Department is offering students more choice in the papers and that some exams have been postponed until the Easter holidays. That does not really matter a damn. It is not the point or the issue. The issue now is whether there will be a traditional leaving certificate or non-traditional leaving certificate. What is the Minister's answer on that? On the mental health issue, the Minister and I both know there is a mental health crisis in schools. Is she going to compound that further by imposing …

What will happen in our hospitals in January? On Tuesday Dr. Mike Ryan of the World Health Organization said that the sheer weight of numbers with the Omicron cases will put hospitals under pressure internationally. This morning Dr. Susan Hopkins, the UK Health Security Agency's chief medical adviser, told the House of Commons health committee that the R value of the Omicron variant could be as high as five, making it four times as transmissible as Delta. By today it will be the dominant strain in London. Public he…