You learn something new every day and I learned something today from a meeting with representatives of housekeeping attendants or domestic attendants in hospitals. They represented people who previously might have been categorised as cleaners in hospitals and they came from University Hospital Limerick, Cork University Hospital and Letterkenny hospital. What I learned was very interesting. As one woman put it, when she first became a cleaner 18 years ago, she was given a cloth, a bucket and mop. Today, it is necess…

-----and on PPE, infection control and a whole range of things. It has become a seriously skilled job, particularly after Covid-19 and especially concerning the whole question of infection control. If we do not have people cleaning places properly and who know how to do it in a professional way, then we will not have safe hospitals. These people had an evaluation done of their jobs. Other grades were given a new categorisation and, as a result, pay increases because there was a recognition their jobs had changed an…

The application of this group of cleaners to have their job recategorised was not accepted and they have not seen the evaluation report. I know the Taoiseach will not know the answer to this question but I ask him to look into it on behalf of these workers. The point is the vast majority of them are women.

As was discussed earlier, far-right elements utterly without justification are trying to target vulnerable immigrants and migrants for the housing crisis. That is why, on 18 February, we need to get out on the Ireland for All demonstration which has been widely backed by trade union and community groups, anti-poverty groups, housing groups and many others. Simultaneously, we need emergency measures to address the spiralling housing and homelessness crisis. Will the Taoiseach take a few emergency measures in that re…

The Taoiseach stated that NESC was looking into the issues of poverty and inequality. I put it to him that almost everything has changed since some of those reports were done. There needs to be a sort of an emergency response, again, to the shocking levels of poverty that are now becoming apparent. The Barnardos report published today is really shocking. The number of people accessing food banks has doubled to one in ten of the population. The number that has difficulty putting food on the table for their family is…

They are not enough.

I thank Sinn Féin for bringing this motion forward on mortgage interest relief. While there would have to be some debate about whether this is the best way to assist people, it highlights that something has to be done to assist people who are being hit with these increased costs to service their mortgages. I have certainly received quite a few messages and emails from people who have been pretty hammered with these mortgage interest hikes. It is difficult to see how people can absorb these interest hikes at the sam…

I welcome President Metsola to Dublin and Ireland. I welcome her commitment to supporting continued peace on this island and to preventing any return to a hard border in this country. I also welcome her comments about the need to address the cost-of-living and housing crises that are gripping Europe and significantly impacting this country. I have to say, however, that it is long past time the European institutions acknowledged the role they played, particularly in response to the economic crisis after 2008 and the…

Can the Tánaiste explain to the public why successive Fianna Fáil- and Fine Gael-led Governments, including many he was a part of, have pursued a systematic strategy over many years of denying rights and entitlements to vulnerable people and to people who have been wronged by the State, often pursuing a very hostile, cynical legal strategy to deny people their rights? Vulnerable people in long-term residential care with disabilities were denied their disability allowances; before that we had women affected by Cervi…

2001. By the way the report also found, and this is important, that people who had gone to private nursing homes were, in fact, entitled to public nursing home care but none were available to them and they were forced into the private system. The Tánaiste is still saying these people were not entitled to this care when that report made it clear that they were. Another report in 2003 by the Human Rights Commission said the same thing. There was another report in 2010 by the Ombudsman, entitled Who Cares?, while the …

Did the Tánaiste read this report in 2001? It made very clear that successive Governments, including the one he was part of, knew that the basis on which these charges were being levied had no legal basis. He has gone on to repeat what the Taoiseach said earlier this week about the State still not conceding that people who were in private nursing homes but had medical cards had the right to have the fees paid. The Ombudsman report I am referring to noted in 2001, when the Tánaiste was the Minister for Health: "The …

All those pensioners were taxpayers too.

There was €64 billion for the banks but not for the pensioners.

I welcome President Metsola to Dublin and Ireland. I welcome her commitment to supporting continued peace on this island and to preventing any return to a hard border in this country. I also welcome her comments about the need to address the cost-of-living and housing crises that are gripping Europe and significantly impacting this country. I have to say, however, that it is long past time the European institutions acknowledged the role they played, particularly in response to the economic crisis after 2008 and the…

I thank Deputy Joan Collins and the Independent Group for tabling this important motion. It is a welcome opportunity to discuss the impact of development on our communities across the country and the degree to which these communities are actually benefiting from the development that is occurring. We all understand that, as a matter of urgency, there has to be a significant development of housing. One thing that this motion points to is that the development that is happening is being driven by the profit hunger of p…

Across the UK today, more than 2 million workers are on strike, including teachers, rail workers, higher-education workers, people who work on border checks in the North, and University and College Union, UCU, members. This follows a series of strikes by health workers. Some of the key issues driving this huge revolt of working people are issues they have in common with many workers in Ireland, namely pay increases that are, in effect, pay cuts because of the spiralling cost of living. When one considers the recent…

I heard the Taoiseach's responses earlier on the nursing home charges scandal. He defended the strategy that has been pursued by successive governments not to give people what they should be entitled to in respect of the huge outlays they have for nursing home charges. He defended that position and said the Government has never conceded the obligation to pay these charges. If that was the case, why did the Government need a legal strategy at all? Why did it have to settle with people? Why was there a memo stating t…

I noted that those in the Dáil for Leaders' Questions stood for a pause for peace. It is a very good thing that people would stand up and call for world peace. When we look at the horrific conflict that is taking place not only in Ukraine but also in Yemen, Syria, where we have seen the horrors, and many other parts of the world, I do not really understand how we can stand for peace and call for a pause for peace, on the one hand, but there is no sign from the Government of what is supposed to be a neutral country …

I am not being blasé. It is death or glory though.

The Davos gathering of billionaires, political elites and multinational corporations that are staggeringly wealthy to discuss the future of the world is sort of nauseating in and of itself but at least it provides the opportunity for groups like Oxfam to highlight gross inequality and wealth and put forward proposals. As I mentioned earlier, and as we have done ever since I have been in this Dáil, we are putting forward proposals for a modest wealth tax on those very highest of earners. Oxfam has proposed a modest …