And questions to the Minister.

I thank Deputy Cullinane for moving this motion on unnecessary hip surgeries in children. It is not one or two but, frighteningly, we now understand this could be a routine practice. It is staggering to have to stand here in the Dáil and actually say that, but that is potentially what we are looking at. We are talking about children as young as two years of age being put through invasive surgery - as Deputy Cullinane said, cutting into their hip bones followed by painful recoveries. It is a harrowing experience for…

Gan dabht, tá scrios déanta ag an scannal i dtaobh cúram sláinte leanaí ar leanaí agus ar theaghlaigh ar fud an Stáit. Tar éis muinín a mhilleadh i measc go leor daoine, tá an Rialtas anois ag gníomhú mar lucht féachana, cé go bhfuil freagracht air dul i ngleic le seo. Tá tuismitheoirí amuigh ansin nach bhfuil a fhios acu go fóill ar dhéanadh obráidí ar a leanaí gan ghá nó gan chuireadh. Níl sé seo maith go leor. Children's lives have been devastated by the litany of failures in healthcare. The public have been lis…

The former Minister knew about this since May last year. Parents found out last week. The Minister is absolutely right about how it must feel for parents. Imagine thinking that was your child. The draft report has been published. It found that hundreds of children did not need this operation. We now have this other information from 2016, which I just put on the record, where a second opinion was sought. The parent talked about how the child was going to go under the knife and have her hip sawed into, a second opini…

I am asking the Government to stop being a spectator. It knew about this issue for a year. Does the Minister believe her colleague, the then Minister for Health-----

-----should have been open with the families and the families should not have just found out about this last week?

Last week, mothers from Donegal travelled up here to sleep outside the gates of Leinster House. They did so in desperation because their children, ten with additional and special needs, do not have a school place for September. There is only one school in the county that they can go to, and that is Little Angels. It is now more than six weeks since I raised this on the floor of the Dáil with the Minister. It is a month since I put a proposal to her, with my colleagues, on how to resolve this issue, and I am in regu…

This needs to be sorted because a school in the hands of the State could be lying empty.

When?

Hear, hear.

President Trump's tariffs are an unjustified act of aggression that will damage the US and the global economy. A full trade war has the risk of unleashing a global recession and that is the scale of threat we possibly face. The stakes are high and now more than ever is a time for cool heads. Irish interests and the interests of ordinary workers and families need to be at the front and centre of every decision. It needs to be the prism through which we make all these decisions. We cannot get away from the fact tarif…

That makes no sense.

Hear, hear.

My understanding is that priority questions cannot be grouped.

I have never seen that in the history of the Dáil. Priority questions are-----.

I ask that they not be grouped, with the indulgence of the Chair. It is not fair for them to be grouped. Question No. 1 relates to a major issue.

I propose that we not group them

I thank the Cathaoirleach Gníomhach for that.

This question relates to the potential impact on unemployment and tax revenues as a result of the announcement of US tariffs. We heard what Donald Trump had to say last night, with 20% tariffs being imposed on this State. Pharmaceuticals will not be the subject of a tariff, although we hold our breath in relation to that. We have the Economic and Social Research Institute, ESRI, and Department of Finance modelling on 25% tariffs and a reciprocal tariff from the EU and their impact in the context of job losses and p…

Given that the ESRI and the Department of Finance have worked out these models, I put it to the Minister that we should very quickly have information on the 20% scenario outlined by the Trump Administration last night. The analysis done by the ESRI and the Department of Finance examined the potential impact of a US Administration tariff and gave us the numbers for it. They also looked at the impact of countermeasures from Europe. These are still unknown, but different scenarios were assumed. In all circumstances, i…