There is an absolute chronic shortage of home care workers. We have a complete crisis in the delivery of home care. When the Taoiseach says that there are 20.4 million hours – a 17% increase – it means nothing to the man in his 90s who has been approved for two home help visits a day but cannot get them. He has been unable to leave hospital since 25 September. Another man in his 80s has been unable to leave hospital since August. Is there ever an evaluation done of the policies? This was a Fianna Fáil policy, as th…

Energy will again be at the top of the agenda when the European Council meets. We have the power to act independently of the EU to decouple the price of gas, implement a windfall tax and cap electricity prices over the winter. Gas prices have been at historically high levels for over a year and the Government failed to protect people last winter. Artificially high electricity prices have meant the transfer of hundred of millions of euro from ordinary people to the coffers of companies. For over a year the Governmen…

This legislation aims to improve the accountability - perhaps I should say it will "introduce" accountability - of senior executives in the banking, insurance and wider financial sector and should ultimately protect customers and even the wider economy, which can suffer when the financial sector is left unregulated. This legislation, as has been said, is sorely needed and well overdue. An individual accountability regime was introduced in Britain in 2016 in the form of the senior managers and certification regime a…

I thank Deputy O'Rourke for bringing this motion before the House. Unless this Government is completely disconnected, it knows the fear and anxiety that people have in their homes this winter about just trying to keep the lights and electricity on. The low take-up of the hardship funds needs to be investigated because there is a complete mismatch between the anxiety and the stress that people are undergoing and take-up of those funds. Is it that people are not aware of them? Many people who find themselves in the s…

Last Tuesday the Tánaiste said he hoped the Government could extend the renter's tax rebate to parents who help their children with rent while they are studying. He added the Minister for Finance was examining ways this could be done. I ask the Minister to provide us with an update on the Government's work on this area.

I welcome that move, which was absolutely necessary. We should never have put students in the situation of being excluded in the first place. Will the Minister clarify the situation of PhD renters and whether they have been included? PhD students and researchers need action like everybody else. My follow-up question is whether there is any cohort of students paying out money for rent that will be excluded from this, or is everybody included?

I ask that the Minister look at the situation of PhD researchers. He knows the inequity that is already built in by virtue of their not getting the stipend they should be getting or indeed not being treated as workers, which they should be. It highlights why they might be excluded in this situation. I hope a way will be found to include them. Of course, it is just €500 and in the context of rural-proofing our policies and students from rural areas having to find and pay for accommodation it is just a tiny bit of wh…

Will the Minister explain the reduction in expenditure on the National Training Fund from €752 million in 2022 to €682 million in 2023? Will he outline the estimated reserve by the end of 2023? Why are we reducing our expenditure when the reserve continues to grow so rapidly?

This year the money collected from the National Training Fund, NTF, is estimated, as the Minister said, to pass €1 billion for the first time. However, he is only proposing to spend about two thirds of that. Some €340 million will go unspent. On top of that, the Minister said there is more than €1 billion sitting in reserve from unspent funds from the past few years. That means that by the end of 2023 there will be €1.5 billion sitting in this reserve, accumulating no interest. This money was collected through the …

I was cut off there when I wanted to talk about the severe problems we have in workforce planning. Today at the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Education, Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science when we were talking about mental health and the need for resources on mental health within schools, the point was made about advertising vacancies when there are so many vacant places. We do not have the workers coming through in the high-demand courses that we need in regard to health. We are not only…

I welcome the expansion of apprenticeships. I ask the Minister for an update on the waiting lists for accessing the class-based training for each of the stages and when that backlog is going to be cleared.

What steps is the Minister taking to address the inequity experienced by PhD researchers, specifically those who are excluded from the €500 once-off payment, and if the PhD researchers excluded are on the average or the lower stipends? Has the Minister's approach excluded PhD researchers most in need? I say that given all PhD researchers are in a very difficult situation, but specifically these ones.

The problem is in terms of announcing different things and saying there are different amounts of money available in the budget. Rents have increased 82% since the Government came into office, which compares with an average of 17% across the rest of the EU. That is an 82% increase in rents and wages have gone nowhere near keeping up with that, never mind the SUSI grants or PhD stipends. In that context, it is easy to see how students would be so discontented. The budget stated that 4,000 PhD researchers would benefi…

I welcome that. We should look at the apprenticeship model because apprentices have worker status and employment contracts, and they get paid more each year as the balance between the learning and the work shifts. I think that is important for us to look at. If there is a model already there that works in terms of respecting PhD researchers, we need to examine that. We need to deal with this situation once and for all. We desperately need these PhD researchers. I am very concerned that they are going to be put off …

Can the Minister tell me if there is any reason students from the technological universities would be told the amount that could be allocated to the student assistance fund will be halved this year? I ask the Minister to look into this matter and give me some information regarding how the distribution of the student assistance fund is undertaken so we can ensure there is fairness in this regard.

Homeowners across Mayo are concerned about their energy bills. Can the Minister of State imagine what it is like for homeowners trying to heat homes where cracks are coming down the walls and the wind is blowing through them? People have astronomical bills, on top of what they already have to deal with, yet many are locked out of the scheme because they cannot afford to go onto the next stages. I spoke to a woman in Westport last week. On top of having paid for a test to be in the first stage, an engineer is now de…

The Minister needs to come to Mayo. He needs to talk to these homeowners. They are absolutely sick and tired of the scheme being presented as if somehow it is being gifted to them by the Government. What is forgotten in all of this is that these people have been failed time and again. They have been failed in the very beginning by the light regulation and in how they have been exposed to the injustices they have suffered under this scheme. It needs to be fixed once and for all. These people never wanted to access t…

I listened to the Minister's reply earlier to Deputy Kerrane. I thank the community welfare officers and acknowledge the work done by them. The ones I know are certainly going above and beyond in trying to meet the needs of people who are in a very desperate situation. I welcome the measures that the Minister has outlined but I wish to know how long the recruitment process will be because I am concerned that might take weeks or even months. What are the target times? Will we be in a situation by Christmas in which …

I thank the Minister for her response and I hope that things will be speeded up. The message that needs to go out today is that people should not wait until the very last moment before contacting the community welfare officer. They should also know that there will be some length of time to wait. What I have been finding an awful lot, even before the most immediate pressures, is that people cannot afford to get to hospital appointments. If one is in Mayo and one has to try to get transport to one's hospital appointm…

Today, third level students throughout the State are staging a walkout from lectures. I send solidarity and support to these students and their families. I wish to acknowledge the work done by the Union of Students in Ireland, USI, and all of the student unions. Students are weary and they are at their wits' end. This is not a decision they have taken lightly. They have been forced into it by the Government's abject failure to stand up for students. Students are very much under pressure. Too many are sleeping in ca…