Frankie is two. His parents, very worried, came into my office this week because a paediatrician and their own observation established that Frankie has very serious developmental delays, is non-verbal and is showing all the signs of severe autism. They got a letter stating he would be assessed within the legally required time, and then they got a phone call shortly afterwards from the disability network team stating it would be two years before Frankie would be assessed. That is a disgrace.

I certainly will refer it to the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte. I have also been talking to one of the barristers who is taking many of these cases and the situation is very bad. This story suggests the establishment of the disability network teams is not making any difference; it is just another layer. We have assessments of need, disability network teams, CAMHS and NEPS. It is all fragmented. In reality, while they might tick certain boxes, they are not actually doing the assessments or getting the services.…

A preliminary assessment is not an assessment of need. That is the point and that is what the judge ruled on. It was a way of appearing to tick the box of assessment without actually giving the assessment necessary or the diagnosis. I see the Minister shaking his head. Why do Frankie's parents get a letter stating they will get their assessment by May? This is a tick box the law requires of them. This was earlier this year. The box is ticked, but then they get a call from a human being in the disability network tea…

The ESRI report published today shows the utterly disastrous situation facing low-income households looking for and needing support to get affordable housing. It demonstrates that the Government's failure to provide the social housing necessary for low-income families and to have housing assistance payment, HAP, limits that are even close to the extortionate rents being charged out there, as well as its refusal to raise the income thresholds for more than a decade, mean that low-income families are either not getti…

It will not.

We desperately need more apprentices and to make apprenticeships and trades attractive to people in order to address the problems that our society is facing at the moment. Across the board, the lack of skills necessary to solve big social problems is enormous. Most obviously, there is a desperate need for qualified tradespeople, and that means apprentices, to build the houses we need and to refurbish vacant and derelict properties in order to solve the housing crisis. We also need them in the context of climate cha…

The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. That is a fact that is revealed yet again, as it is year after year, in the Oxfam report. It is not just a left-wing slogan; it is a fact. While the cost of living is crucifying and impoverishing tens of millions of people across the world, the world's billionaires and multimillionaires are getting richer by the day. The two things are directly related. It is not just a global picture but, as Oxfam reveals, it is also the Irish domestic picture. There has been a 55% incr…

The rich in this country pay more tax because they have vastly more wealth. It is not because it is a particularly progressive system but because there is a massive inequality in the distribution of wealth and income. The two things are related. There is a completely bogus argument or spin from officials that this proves we have a progressive tax system. It does not prove that at all. What it proves is that the rich have vast accumulations of income and wealth. At the very minimum, we should start to gather this in…

People Before Profit is extremely proud to present this motion in support of medical laboratory scientists. I commend them for taking the action they did not want to take, but felt compelled to take, in order to force the Government to listen to them and engage with them. The only reason we are here debating this is not because of People Before Profit or anybody else, it is because the medical laboratory scientists made the decision to strike after trying every other avenue available to them. They engaged with the …

That will be-----

Will the Government consider having some discussion on what it has been talking about doing in regard to a vacant property tax, of which we are very much in favour? There has been some discussion on this in the Oireachtas committee, which I understand will publish a report today on the whole issue. It is a matter of extreme urgency that we address the issue of vacant and derelict properties, which could be used to help us to deal with the housing crisis. Does the Government have any plans for some sort of discussio…

The Minister for Transport, Deputy Eamon Ryan, is not here but he should know that 5,300 taxi vehicle licences will expire next year because of the vehicle age limit. That represents a huge proportion of our taxi fleet. Let us remember that taxi drivers were hammered for two years. They essentially had no income for two years, so they are asking for a further vehicle life extension to allow them to raise the money to buy other vehicles. In many cases, they will be raising money to buy electric vehicles. I am told t…

On 14 March, Pierre Zakrzewski, an Irish-Ukrainian journalist, was murdered by Putin's murderous forces in his savage war on Ukraine. In the last week or so, we have seen Shireen Abu Akleh, the Palestinian journalist who spoke out fearlessly for 25 years to try to get across the truth of what is being done to the Palestinian people by the apartheid state of Israel, be murdered in a premeditated fashion. We have seen the utterly shameful scenes of Israeli forces attacking the pallbearers and mourners at her funeral …

I thank Deputy Ó Broin for bringing forward this Bill, which we support. When in Dublin there are 2,700 Airbnb short-term lets being advertised but only slightly over 400 long-term lets, we know the Government's policy is failing yet again. Despite some efforts being made to limit or regulate this area, they just have not worked. Those who are pursuing profit from property are simply ignoring the rules, and we do not have a regime to do anything about it. These measures will at least attempt to address that problem…

The biggest contributor to student poverty is the extortionate cost of accommodation, whether it is private student accommodation built by investors or on-campus accommodation. We are talking well in excess of €1,000 per month in UCD or an even higher amount for some of the newer accommodation. Given that the Minister is giving €144,000 to developers per apartment, is there any chance of a subsidy from the State to bring down the cost of student accommodation to make it affordable and to do something about student …

The key point is that education is a right, not a privilege. I will go further and say it is now a societal imperative. In other words, every doctor, psychologist, apprentice, arts worker, scientist and engineer we get qualified is making our society better. We have a shortage of all of those people, and many others I am not mentioning, right across the board. It is the State's obligation, in its own interests and in the interests of the students, to remove barriers to progressing in education to the highest possib…

Yes, but some of that purpose-built accommodation is completely unaffordable-----

-----and we have to do something about that. On the fees front, I will make a point about a graduate entry medicine course that I heard discussed earlier. It is one thing for the Bank of Ireland to remove the loan, but people who we need to qualify as doctors should not have to take out a loan in the amount of €15,000 per year at all. We desperately need the doctors in our health service. It is madness to force them to pay €60,000. The latter means that working class people can forget about trying to become doctors…

I do not know what school they are from but I was going to refer to the young people in the Visitors Gallery as well. I am not sure what year they are in but when they finish school, many of them will be looking to go to higher or further education or do apprenticeships. That would be good for them and also for our society because we need people in construction, medicine, the health service, in the arts and so on. However, we are putting barrier after barrier in the way of people actually getting in to third level …

The Minister knows our position. We think we should get rid of all fees and all financial barriers. Now is the time for bold moves. We are facing chronic shortages in a number of areas such as construction, education, medicine and almost every area one can imagine. I want to ask about one particular group, though. There is a chronic shortage of psychologists and the result is real suffering, particularly for children with special needs. They cannot get assessments or services. We are putting shocking barriers in th…