On page 2 of those guidelines, it is stated that it is the responsibility of the Accounting Officer of a Department to ensure that the guidelines are adopted. As the Minister has said, we may not see the changes until next year. With regard to the procedure for delivering capital projects, what flexibilities do Departments have under the new infrastructure guidelines? For instance, can the Minister for housing streamline the four-stage approval process in housing? In housing, layers of dysfunctional bureaucracy are…

Do local authorities have to continue to put forward business cases as to why they need to build, for example, social and affordable housing? The infrastructure guidelines state, "Where programmes of investment are composed of a high number of similar" schemes, as in the case of housing, a strategic assessment can be done all at once. Can local authorities such as Mayo County Council do a single preliminary assessment or business case for all the projects being brought forward in a single year? If so, when will we …

I thank the Minister for his reply to Question No. 57. I am very interested to see whether what he outlined can be done. We have to do everything we possibly can to increase the number of houses being built and to meet even the low targets that are already there. I raised the underspend on capital investments since 2021 up to this year. I will now focus on the projected underspend over the next two years. This year, the Minister outlined plans to increase funding by €2.25 billion over three years. What will that me…

That is concerning. It comes back to the levels of inflation we have seen. The Minister is saying the Government will continue its capital expenditure, but the answer indicates that will fall short of the level of ambition outlined in the national development plan in 2021. Even with the increase of €2.25 billion over three years that has finally been announced, the underspend will reach approximately €11 billion by the end of 2026. The stability programme update, SPU, was published today, so that figure might have …

The concern I have, which I referred to, is that projects throughout the State are either being delayed or quietly shelved. Communities that have campaigned and waited for years are being left in the dark wondering why projects they thought were agreed and progressing are now not progressing. The only possible conclusion they can come to is that we have not accounted for inflation. People involved in numerous projects across County Mayo, for example, Castlebar Educate Together, Ballinrobe school and several other s…

In September 2022, the Minister for Education visited the Educate Together school in Castlebar. Amid much fanfare and photographs, a promise was made to the children, parents and teachers that they would be provided with a new school. At the time, the Minister asked them to provide a shortlist of suitable sites, which the school did immediately afterwards. Some 18 months later and the response we have is that the sites are still being considered. That is not acceptable. Last week, hundreds of children and parents g…

One of the biggest economic and social scandals this country has seen is the defective blocks scandal. Last night, hundreds of homeowners in Mayo gathered at the Great National Hotel in Ballina to tell us how the defective blocks scheme is not working for them. The anguish of trying to access this scheme that is clearly not fit for purpose was palpable. The buck now stops with the Taoiseach. They are looking to the Taoiseach, as Head of Government, to end the nightmare because the Minister and his Department offici…

First, I want to acknowledge the brilliant work of the world-class surgeons, clinicians, consultants, oncology nurses and palliative care staff we have across this island. The cancer expertise we have on this island is absolutely remarkable. I also want to commend the work of the All-Island Cancer Research Institute and wish its representatives well in the high-level joint Euro-American forum coming up at the end of this month. The fact of the matter is that the demand for cancer services is not being met in a time…

Let me be clear, Sinn Féin supports the setting up of a sovereign wealth fund. Long-term strategic planning of our public finances across the island is at the core of our vision for a new and united Ireland. There is widespread agreement that windfall corporation tax should not be spent on current expenditure. The unreliable nature of corporation tax means that is the prudent thing to do. However, investing in desperately needed capital projects makes more sense than investing in financial assets. We believe there …

An example of how the health services in County Mayo are getting worse and worse is a call I got from a mother today who has been waiting three years for her child to get a diagnosis. Finally, she said she could not stick another night of this and had to take the child to the hospital. I would say she is probably in the accident and emergency department in Castlebar hospital right now. This is because the health services in County Mayo are under severe pressure and this has continued to grow for the last decade. Th…

It is now more than 900 days since Ireland's plan for the allocation of the EU's recovery fund was signed off. Mr. Chris MacManus, MEP, has been raising this issue continually since then. The EU informs us that €225 billion has been allocated so far. Yet, Ireland is one of only three countries not to have received a disbursement. This is a damning indictment of the Government failing to draw down what is our allocation. Why is there such a delay in applying? Is the Government confident at this stage that Ireland wi…

I am happy to have the opportunity to speak again about the families that have been impacted by valproate. As the Minister knows, Epilim continued to be prescribed to pregnant women, even though there was growing evidence that children of those mothers were being born with fatal valproate spectrum, FVS, disorder. This was a man-made rare disease. It was a preventable disease. Several international reports have noted the devastating birth defects relating to sodium valproate. The guide to rare diseases in Ireland st…

Today, we are marking International Women's Day and at the forefront of our thoughts are the many women living through conflict. Some 600 million women and girls lived in countries affected by conflict in 2022. That represented a 50% increase since 2017. Affected countries ranged from Congo to Ukraine to Palestine. Women suffer the harshest realities of war. In Palestine alone, Israel Defense Forces have murdered 8,400 women and 6,000 girls. That brutality continues every day for women, men and children in Gaza. Mo…

At the outset, I thank my colleague, Deputy Pauline Tully, for bringing forward this motion. We certainly need a more humane approach for people with disabilities and carers. We need to work to make a real and lasting difference in people's lives. I know there will be lots of carers and people with disabilities looking in tonight, and as often happens, the picture that is painted is so different from the picture on the ground. The Minister and Minister of State know that because the same things cross their own desk…

Where does the responsibility lie for people who are in long-term nursing care and have to access vital hospital services or orthodontic services. I have a case of a person who has been given a bill of almost €2,500 to get the necessary services. The person does not have an income, is on the fair deal scheme, topped up by his disability payment and his family does not have any means either. Who is responsible in that case?

Much more clarity needs to be brought as to where the responsibility lies so that we can avoid a situation where invoices are being sent to the home of someone who is non-verbal, aged in their 40s and does not have the means. Parents become distraught in thinking they have to somehow find this money they do not have. I commend Local Link because it is a key to this issue but it does not have the resources. The Minister of State said it has a small amount of resources. Much greater resources must be given by the HSE…

I appreciate that because this is a good example of how we can change things for others. We are not talking about people who can hop on a bus and get to where they need to go. Transport is such an integral part of people being able to keep appointments and get the services they need, and there are not any funds to help people. I am happy to work with the Minister of State to try to solve the problems, not only in this case, but in many other cases. What has happened is that services have been centralised. In some c…

The Government has repeatedly denied since the budget that there is a recruitment embargo in the health service but this does not tally with the reality on the ground. I have spoken to multiple people affected by the freeze and one said to me that in Mayo we have nurses, healthcare workers, psychologists and desperately-needed front-line workers who cannot be placed in permanent positions because of the recruitment freeze. They are left languishing on panels while patients are left languishing on trolleys and ever-…

Bringing RTÉ under the Comptroller and Auditor General is long overdue. Today, Deputy Ó Snodaigh, Eoghan Finn in his office and the Sinn Féin members on the Committee of Public Accounts have presented legislation that the Government should have introduced years ago. I have been calling since last July for RTÉ's exemption from the State audit to be removed to allow the Comptroller and Auditor General to carry out audits, as it currently does with TG4. It has been a continuous line of mixed messages and flip-flopping…

I will follow on from that because it is a very serious issue. One of the impacts of what happened in Kerry during that scandal is that CAMHS started to push children and young people out of the system and back to their GPs. That is the absolute fact of what has happened in the west. The Minister of State should know that and if she does not, she needs to investigate it properly. We have seen a sixfold increase in the number of children on mental health waiting lists in the west, which means six times as many child…