It is never too late to do the right thing. I very much welcome the review and the legislation that the Minister is proposing around this and I hope it will fix what has been broken for a long time, in particular on an individual level in terms of pushing PhD researchers into poverty. I have met so many PhD researchers over the last couple of years. They are the most modest, frugal people in probably the whole of the population. Given the valuable work they do on climate change, public health and so many other issu…

I was delighted to see the Minister in Mayo on Monday. As the Minister did, I commend and acknowledge all the work that has been done there by the project team, particularly by Michael Murphy and Tom Grady from Mayo, Sligo and Leitrim ETB. They have wanted this and worked on it for so many years and it is a long-term project. I was also delighted to see Paddy McGuinness there, who has done so much for further education in Mayo. In the original Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology and everything else, he was a real v…

He has.

On this point, I ask the Minister to look at the situation of part-time students and the support we do not give them. At 19%, we are below the OECD average of 22% for part-time students. In the review of SUSI, we saw that 47% of postgraduates and 25% of undergraduates said they would consider going back to study if they had the financial support to do that. This is a matter we must seriously evaluate in respect of what supports we provide, the free fees initiative and the SUSI eligibility rules for part-time studen…

The battle for the right to an education for children with special educational needs has been a very long one. The €2 billion which has been provided now is very welcome. This is why it is very difficult to accept that there are still some children who are not getting their education. I am thinking in particular of a 13-year-old boy in Mayo, about whom I have written to the Minister of State. He should now be halfway through the first year at this stage but he has had no education. The school is saying that it does…

I thank the Minister of State and will follow up with her.

I welcome the motion and thank the Independent Group for tabling it. The vision set out would serve the people of Galway and the west well. I welcome, as always, the inclusion of the western rail corridor. It is rightly one of the key demands of the motion. This is yet another motion from the Opposition calling on the Government to begin construction. It is a turn-key project and all the planning is in place. With political will, we could commence the work in a matter of months. The western rail corridor has the po…

Will the Taoiseach and the Minister for Health make the HPV vaccine available to women over the age of 25? We all welcomed the decision that women under the age of 25 could get it free of charge from May. Will the Taoiseach ask the national immunisation advisory committee, NIAC, to look at this? I am asking only for those women for whom it has been deemed necessary that they get the vaccine by their GPs or clinicians, that is, those who have been clinically approved to have it and for whom it is recommended. There …

Commissioner Vestager is very accustomed to problems in the Irish insurance market, having overseen the investigation into the motor insurance industry over recent years for operating a cartel. That investigation and political pressure from Sinn Féin and Deputy Pearse Doherty led the Government to set out the 66 actions on insurance reform. The Government recently published a report claiming most of the actions have been, or are in the process of being, implemented. However, the director of the Alliance for Insuran…

There are too many homes in the State paying dearly to heat the sky. It is clear that the Government's retrofitting plan is deeply unfair in its design. It prioritises those with greatest means over those with greatest need. A wealthy household can access €25,000 in publicly funded grants for the deep retrofit while many with far greater need cannot access basic measures such as attic or wall insulation. Places such as north Mayo have some of the highest concentration of energy poverty in the State but north Mayo w…

I wholeheartedly welcome the fact that the Government finally agreed to address the situation whereby gas sets the overall electricity prices, including renewable electricity. Capping renewables at €120 per MWh is welcome but when we consider that the average wholesale price of electricity in August was €388 - it has gone down to €137 per MWh for October - we see how artificially high prices have been for such a long time. The question is: why have people not seen the reduction reflected in their bills? I first rai…

Fáilte to all of the Hillery family. I will not attempt to name everybody. Professor Brian Hillery made a significant contribution to public life in Ireland. He did so not only in politics but also in the spheres of economics, business and academia. Following his passing in January 2021, President Higgins paid tribute to Professor Hillery saying, "those who served with him in the Oireachtas will remember Brian as always courteous, and as a warm and intelligent man." Indeed the common threads woven through Professor…

It is very disappointing to hear Deputies, and the Deputy who has just left the Chamber in particular, trying to score points by saying people would be worse off under Sinn Féin. He quoted a lot of nonsense figures but left out the fact that in Sinn Féin's alternative budget, those earning less than €70,000 would get cash payments and there would also be payments for those earning less than €30,000. Social welfare increases of €15, €17.50 and €20 would kick in immediately. It is totally wrong, when people are suffe…

The motion calls on the Government to declare a housing emergency, which extends to student accommodation. Students are being forced to defer courses or to live in wholly unacceptable arrangements. The last three budgets of this Government did nothing for student accommodation, despite there being projects that could deliver 3,000 student beds that were just sitting on the shelf, as the Minister knows. The attitude of the Government, which students and I despair about, is to take our time. There is no sense of emer…

I am glad of this opportunity to speak to the Minister of State. There are three things I want him to do. He needs to tell Irish Water to sort out the legacy debt and the leak credits for the group water schemes. We have been begging Irish Water to do that for months and years. In addition, the above-ground assets, such as reservoirs and pumping stations, also need to be transferred from the group water schemes to Irish Water. This is very simple and must be done immediately. Irish Water also needs to target the re…

Redundancies in the tech sector have been receiving much of the media and political attention in recent days. It is a serious situation for the people involved and, indeed, the wider economy. At the same time, I am concerned that we are facing a crisis in small businesses operating in local economies. Towns and villages in my county of Mayo and elsewhere in the State are in danger of seeing a wave of business closures. Businesses are hibernating for the winter with the intention of reopening in March or April becau…

Many struggled through the pandemic dealing with illness, loss, isolation and grief but for others, it was a lifeline. For the first time in years, we saw the numbers of homelessness actually decline. How bad does housing policy have to be that a pandemic improves a person's situation? That was the case for many individuals and families. The Government lifted the Covid eviction ban last April and everyone knew what would happen, that we would again have a situation where homelessness would rise month on month, back…

The Finance Bill includes an income tax package that is clearly designed to give more to higher income earners. When one strips back the temporary but absolutely necessary interventions in this Finance Bill, the stark reality is laid bare. It abysmally fails to address the growing inequality that is crippling our society. It is not only me and Sinn Féin saying that. Social Justice Ireland estimates that this Finance Bill will widen the gap between rich and poor by €199 next year. It has stated that Ireland's poores…

Sinn Féin will deliver affordable, reliable and safe public transport. The reason we will do so is that we understand the necessity of affordable and accessible public transport in addressing social exclusion and climate change and to facilitate economic growth, in particular in the regions. That was nowhere more evident than last Saturday when West on Track organised a conference for the delivery of the western rail corridor and the development of the Atlantic economic corridor as well. Sixty towns from throughout…

I want to thank the Social Democrats Members for tabling this motion. Unfortunately, they should not have had to do this. We are coming back here time and time again. My colleague Deputy Funchion tabled a motion some months ago quite similar to this. We keep coming back to the same issue, which is that this legislation is exclusionary. Even at this stage, we are excluding people. We have to stop and think about what we are doing. When some of these horrific things were done to these children and mothers, some peopl…