Chomh maith leis an Teachta McHugh, gabhaim comhghairdeas le gach duine mar gheall ar International Women’s Day. Téann a lán daoine gach bliain, nó gach seachtain, ag iarraidh freagraí dá ngearán leighis. Faigheann siad endoscopies agus colonoscopies chun freagraí a fháil dóibh féin. Sna laethanta roimh na mion-obráidí seo, b’éigean dóibh troscadh a dhéanamh agus beagáinín leighis nó cógais a thógáil. Many patients seeking answers for medical difficulties are sent for an endoscopy or a colonoscopy. Sometimes it cou…

I thank the Minister of State for the clarity she provided. We all have jobs to do from here on in, the first of which will be to engage with doctors who are prescribing these medications in order to ensure that if other medications are on the list, people, particularly medical card patients, will be directed to those ones. We must also engage with the companies if there is an easy fix in the context of them getting on the list. I have come across cases where it perhaps suited companies not to be on a particular li…

The impact of the energy crisis in my constituency in County Kerry has been far reaching. Average gas and electricity prices have doubled in the past two years. The number of households in energy poverty has increased by 29% and all the time, the Government refused to reduce and cap energy prices, or introduce the windfall tax. The result has been that older people are in the dark; families are checking how much they eat in a week in order to keep the lights on and businesses face bills that tripled or quadrupled c…

I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time." A couple of years ago a good old friend and colleague came to me with a story of her friend, Mike. He had got first class honours as a mature student when he returned to college and a job came up in Dublin, to where he travelled, at his own expense, only to discover when he arrived for the interview that the rates of pay would be far less than he anticipated. We got to work on this, and I would like to thank Lee Daly in my office, and the staff in the Bill's Office…

I thank the Minister for the fact the Bill is unopposed. We are open to working with him and with any of the other Senators who are working on this issue. In my own experience at work, although I did not do very many employment law cases, anyone who came in with a problem in the workplace was not unionised and they had been messed around because there was no backup for them in the workplace. It is important to have small pieces of legislation pushing along in one direction to help them because the system tends to w…

Eligibility for the tenant purchase scheme has evolved over the years and continues to evolve. However, a widow recently contacted me to say she had made an application to purchase the house she has lived in for the past 30 years, after she lost her husband, only to be told that, because she is on a widow's pension, she is excluded from the scheme because a State pension is regarded as earned income but a widow's pension is not. Will the Taoiseach take steps to amend this and to end the discrimination against widow…

In the dying days of Tralee Town Council, there was a focus on housing for the elderly. A scheme was enacted in respect of land at the rear of an old convent in the centre of town that was gifted by the Sisters of Mercy. The development there is called Tobar Naofa. I visited the area last week. There are 56 housing units constructed to the highest specifications, with their own heating system, which also covers some other houses in the area. It has come to my attention that ten of those 56 houses are vacant. Until …

I read the Minister of State's reply, but what is not stated is the average length of time it takes Kerry County Council to turn around a vacant house. I understand that we have to deal with families and that there are items left behind, which is sometimes the case. In Tobar Naofa, there ten units are vacant. One vacant house facing onto the Dean's Lane side of the complex has been vacant for two years. It was constructed eight or nine years ago and would not need significant work in order to turn it around. Someon…

I listened while others were talking about the upcoming anniversary. There is another anniversary coming up, as the Taoiseach is aware, with regard to Ballyseedy. People may or may not know of the incident, nearly 100 years ago, when eight prisoners were taken from custody, tied to a landmine and blown up. I recently spoke to the nephew of one of the men who was killed. He is upset that, following the massacre, a court of inquiry was established and the results of that inquiry were read into the Dáil record, statin…

I will share time with Deputies Ward and Paul Donnelly. Tógfaidh mé deich nóiméad dom féin. I commend the Minister of State's speech, which is excellently written. I will deal with a few things in it. There is reference in it to assisting people with mental health and addiction conditions. As we know, I believe there were 7,000 call-outs to An Garda Síochána last year to deal with mental health crises. While we welcome the acknowledgement that this is taking place, any changes should happen in conjunction with ment…

Last Friday I was in the Mitchels area of Tralee. I visited an award-winning social housing scheme for older people of 56 houses. I was informed that ten of those houses are empty and another four have been unoccupied for more than three years because the tenants are part of the fair deal scheme and have been in a nursing home for up to three years. Almost 25% of the houses in this scheme, which was constructed in around 2014 or 2015, is heated from a central source and is award-winning, are currently empty. At a l…

When a patient has been diagnosed with cancer and their life is in turmoil, the first thing they need is a bit of stability. Oncology patients who have to attend University Hospital Kerry have been at various stages in the palliative care unit, then there was a proposal to send them to a private hospital and they are currently in the day ward. What plans does the Minister have to give oncology services a permanent home?

I have also been in contact with the new general manager and I wish her well in her endeavours over the next few years. However, while I hear what the Minister is saying in regard to capital stages and the design team, the Minister still has not given a date as to when he expects the new permanent unit to be completed. He is right in referencing palliative care but, from 1 March, I understand that, quite rightly, patients have to leave the palliative care section and move somewhere else. Unbelievably, there was a p…

Can the Minister even give a year as to when he expects this to be open? He mentioned the problem with day surgery. The problem in the last three or four years has been that whenever there is a surge, whether due to Covid or otherwise, elective day surgeries are the first to be cancelled. On any given day, University Hospital Kerry cannot guarantee that an elective surgery will actually take place because it does not have the beds or it is using the day wards as surge capacity for the emergency department. They are…

It is nearly two years since the Government published its White Paper on ending direct provision. This followed on from the Catherine Day report into the system and recommendations from the Joint Committee on Justice. Both offered some hope of an end to the inhumane system of direct provision, which is totally inefficient and expensive and where one provider earned €400 million. Direct provision was originally established as a stop-gap measure. The Day report was clear in most of its recommendations and committed t…

If ever there was a scheme that epitomised the lack of planning, co-ordination and consistency by the Government to a level that was almost calculated to cause division, it is the pandemic bonus payment. The 11 officers in the stores and material management department of University Hospital Kerry changed their shifts and organised PPE in the hospital and in the community, as well as doing their normal jobs of organising beds and wheelchairs. Having done that, they now see workers in other hospitals have received th…

The efforts of the Civil Service, civil society and ordinary communities in welcoming Ukrainian people to Ireland have been nothing short of extraordinary but surely the recent allocation of responsibility for integration to the Minister of State, Deputy Joe O’Brien, is an acknowledgement that the Government's response needs a more focused approach. That Minister of State already has responsibility for two other Departments. In order to properly deal with the ongoing problems of implementing the White Paper and the…

I wish the Minister of State well in his new role. What are the responsibilities of the newly appointed Minister of State with special responsibility for integration? Is it an acknowledgement that this Ministry has become, or always was, too big and broad? From what we have seen in recent weeks, were Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael Deputies reluctant to step into this role or were they allowing another Green Party Deputy to walk the plank on this issue?

Are there any plans to expand the integration fund and community engagement? Has there been an acknowledgement by the Government that this Department needs to be improved? There was talk in some of the earlier engagements of the cross-government approach. We have heard about pressures on GP care. Are there any plans to expand Sláintecare? Are there any plans for the HSE to employ GPs directly in areas where GPs say they are under pressure? Are there any plans to increase the number of medical cards? Has the Ministe…

I am somewhat worried given the Minister of State is now working in three separate Departments, yet this is such an important area. We are seeing the rise of the far right and we do not want what happened in the Netherlands and Sweden to happen here. Should some Minister or Minister of State have sole responsibility for this such that it would be his or her one job to deal with integration? Perhaps the Minister of State is spreading himself too thin in dealing with all the other issues. I note he took questions in …