What about the occupied territories Bill?

No.

School communities and the organisers of the protest outside the Dáil tomorrow over the Government's threatened SNA cuts want the Taoiseach to know, and for it to be known, that those protests will be going ahead in many places across the country. Although it is clear that protests and the threatened escalation of those protests have forced the Government to do a U-turn on the planned cuts to SNAs, the principal of my former primary school, Johnstown national school where some of the most severe cuts were proposed,…

It is still well short of need.

Need is going up, not down.

If we are going to provide for children with special needs, for the mental health of young people and for mental health services generally, we need to rapidly recruit more people with the qualifications necessary to provide assessments and services. We are not doing it. Despite lip service being paid by the Government to the fact that it is, it is not actually doing it. I want to give the Taoiseach a dramatic example. I happen to know somebody who has a masters and a bachelor of arts, BA, in psychology and who appl…

Why are there not more places to allow the people who want to work in areas like psychology and allied health professions-----

-----to actually get qualified and provide the services we need in our health service?

There are not enough places.

We have witnessed a nationwide revolt against the cuts that were being implemented to SNAs and, as a result of that revolt and the threat that it will escalate, the Government has backed down. That is a great victory for the SNAs, parents, teachers and school communities who stood up, fought back and refused to accept these misguided and frankly cruel cuts. However, as the Minister has been told, the protests are going ahead tomorrow. The reason they are going ahead, from talking today to my former primary school c…

We need about 80,000 additional construction workers to meet our infrastructural needs and goals over the coming years. That means we have to make apprenticeships much more attractive for people to go into, so we have the tradespeople and the craftspeople to deliver on those infrastructural goals. We also have skills shortages in many other areas. There are many aspects to making it more attractive to take up apprenticeships but increasing the minimum payment, particularly in the first few years of apprenticeships,…

The average starter age for somebody taking up an apprenticeship is 21 to 22 years. While many of those are living at home, many are not, and some want to get out of home. If the Minister of State wants to make it attractive, a first-year wage of €7.67 per hour or €11.50 per hour in the second year is not exactly an attractive option. If they are living out of home or if they have children, it is completely unsustainable. There are then added things like equipment costs, which are very significant for many apprenti…

The number of people has increased, but it is still well short of what we need because, as we know, we have a housing emergency, we have water infrastructure that we have to develop and we have shortages in a whole number of areas, including a shortage of chefs. We have to make it more attractive. The further education committee is producing a report next week which goes into many aspects of this. I repeat that the wage for the first year is €7.67 per hour and for the second year is €11.50 per hour. If the average …

I move: That leave be granted to introduce a Bill entitled an Act to amend the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2009 to provide for universal access to social housing by abolishing income-related criteria. Why should we remove the income limits for social housing? I argue there are many good reasons to do it, and to do it urgently. Every week, every month and every year there is a constant and growing flow of households, which having waited sometimes in excess of ten years on housing lists, sometimes just bef…

I move: "That the Bill be taken in Private Members' time."

The very angry and shocked protests of my former primary school helped to highlight the severity of the impact of the SNA cuts that the Government was planning. The Minister of State may have seen the protest by Johnstown National School on Tuesday evening on RTÉ. Of course, it was just one of many schools that experienced these attacks. Fair play to the teachers, SNAs, and parents who came out and protested. In that school alone, the number of SNAs was going to drop from nine to fewer than four. I met with all of …

It is really not clear, but it seems as if the SNAs and, therefore, the children for whom they provide support and, consequently, all of the other children in their classes and all of the teachers, are still in the crosshairs. All we have is a pause because people expressed such outrage, anger and shock. I should mention another school in my area. All Saints, a small school in Blackrock, has lost its only SNA. There will be no SNA there at all now. That is absolutely unacceptable. The care needs of the children hav…

In August of last year, I was out ill at the time, but Deputy Murphy raised on my behalf and our area's behalf the issue of gorse fires in Cherrywood. As the Taoiseach knows, Cherrywood is the biggest residential development the country. I did not realise, to be honest, that gorse is very dangerous when it is burned. It is very toxic. These fires went on, basically, for several weeks. The residents are saying that, really, there was no proper planning or co-ordination between different State agencies in terms of re…

Among other things, the report deals with the issue of energy poverty. It might be of interest to the Taoiseach to know that disability groups, pensioner groups, trade unions and many others, as part of the recently established Affordable Ireland Campaign, will hold a major protest on 28 February. At the centre of that is a demand that this Government brings in an emergency winter payment, even at this late stage, and beyond that, cost-of-disability payments. Energy poverty is at the centre of it and how vulnerable…

No. Get them on tax.