That was well said by my colleague on the Committee on the Environment and Climate Action. I cannot speak about our forestry strategy without addressing the issue of Coillte and what my comrade Deputy Carthy raised here on Tuesday. It is not often that I am speechless but I was glad I had a couple of days before I got to speak on this issue. The proposal by Coillte to sell 12,000 hectares of land to Gresham House, which is a foreign private investment firm, is inexplicable, cheap and trashy. I believe the revulsion…

Before I come to the issue in question, which is the report on the child and adolescent mental health services, CAMHS, if we are having a debate about hyperemesis gravidarum, I could take part in that as well, having suffered it myself and having been hospitalised with it. To get back to this issue, we are a small State that pays its department heads and health managers handsomely, so the very idea that CAMHS is in the state it is in is a damning indictment of that management and the Ministers. The very idea that i…

As the Minister of State knows, Ireland has one of the highest rates of respiratory illness and disease in Europe. We have the highest rate of hospitalisation in the OECD for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, COPD. Mould triggers and exacerbates respiratory conditions and also causes death, as in the case in England to which my colleague referred earlier. I am sure the Minister of State has heard about that case. The coroner in England made the defining judgment that the death of Awaab Ishak was due to chronic…

I appreciate the Minister of State's reply, particularly when he went off-script from the script the Department gave him. Sometimes people are told it is a ventilation matter. They are told to make sure their vents are not blocked. In many cases they are not blocked. That is not the cause of the mould. Earlier I spoke of a tenant who reported her leaks 16 months ago to Kildare County Council. The contractor came out and told her the roof needed to be replaced. The council went out a year later, which was a couple o…

I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time." I was delighted when I saw that our Bill had been chosen in the Bills lottery before Christmas and to get the opportunity to bring this Bill to the House on Second Stage. As I discussed at some of the committees, this Bill is designed to give parents who are employees the legal right to parental bereavement leave when their child has died. Every person here and every parent listening I am sure hopes that this devastation will never visit them. However, for a few, i…

I have also listened to the Minister's contribution. I have several questions because I am wondering what his amendment has to do with our Bill. Pregnancy loss and domestic violence leave are very important. I note the Minister said five days. I am sure he knows it was ten days in the report that our committee published, but none of that has anything to do with our Bill. I am afraid none of what he said really holds. I cannot help but think that the Minister has again been sent out deliberately to delay legislation…

There are so many people in north Kildare in agony with their teeth. Anyone depending on the medical card scheme is back to Dickensian times. For a supposedly modern state to leave somebody in this situation is degrading and perverse. With dental health affecting heart and brain health, we are storing up problems for the future for our young schoolchildren and others who are facing delays in the dental health crisis. It is impossible for anybody with a medical card to find a dentist in north Kildare. It is worse th…

I am pleased to have an opportunity to speak on the climate action plan. As a Sinn Féin member of the Joint Committee on Environment and Climate Action, I am acutely aware we are no longer working to prevent climate change. What we are trying to do now is mitigate the impact and keep temperatures as low as possible and any increase as slow as possible. Here in the EU we have had heatwaves, droughts, fire storms, landslides and flooding. Even the temperature anomalies we experienced over Christmas showed that climat…

I am also glad to get the opportunity to speak on this Bill, given how critical energy is now and will be in future and the actions we must take as a State and globally on renewable fuels, including for transport. I spoke to the Minister earlier about public transport. I talked about the climate action plan. It is a no-brainer for the Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications. I am sure Deputy Eamon Ryan is the envy of other Ministers for climate change across Europe when he has the portfolio and all…

It must be about a year since I saw an exasperated hospital consultant refer to trolley conditions in his emergency department as the warehousing of patients. In the time since, the situation has got even worse. I think I saw him again over Christmas saying the exact same thing. Before I go any further, I want to thank the hard-working staff at Naas General Hospital who continue to work in overcrowded conditions that are too frequently appalling. They know better than anyone that the dysfunction in the health servi…

I am glad to co-present the Cost of Renewables Taskforce Bill 2022 alongside my comrade, an Teachta Darren O’Rourke, especially at a time when many of our citizens are worried about keeping warm and about the cost of heating, as are businesses across the island. Our people need the hope that comes from good, practical action, like the action we are proposing in this Bill. Renewable energy is vital as we work now to protect humanity on this planet, which is our only home. Unfortunately, in Ireland, the cost of produ…

For our health service to work, the professionals who work in it should be able to live in a decent home and make a decent living out of decent wages. Right now, that is not happening, as swathes of our most talented and committed healthcare workers are being forced to emigrate because they know they cannot afford to buy or even rent a decent home. The rents they are paying for shared shoeboxes are crippling them. No matter how hard they work, the wages they are earning are just not enough to have a comfortable lif…

The CervicalCheck scandal is a scandal in which many people become seriously ill and die. We very much welcome this legislation and the opportunity to speak on it. We have no issue with what is in the Bill, as such, or with the amendments but we have a serious issue with the absence of the duty of candour in the Bill. We need open disclosure. We must have an obligation on the clinician to inform the patient when something arises and is found. The onus cannot be on the patient. We need a system whereby the patients …

I listened to the Minister's response. I appreciate what the Minister stated about anonymising the audits and the difficulty in identifying slides. I wonder if there is any possibility of redesigning that system and looking at it again. I appreciate that the Minister is willing to look at another amendment. This stands out for me as well because Emma Mhic Mhathúna, who was from Leixlip and was one of the women affected by the CervicalCheck scandal, is buried in Laraghbryan graveyard in Maynooth. We lined the road w…

I am glad to speak on this Bill, which gives maternity leave and maternity benefit to elected councillors in line with the Maternity Protection Act 1994. I thank the Minister of State and his Department for their work in getting the legislation to this point. I am glad that the Bill provides for the co-option of temporary substitutes for women when they are absent as a result of giving birth, illness or for other good-faith reasons. Sinn Féin would like to go further. In the case where a councillor chooses not to h…

I would like to be associated with the remarks of an Teachta O'Rourke regarding the contribution of the Minister at COP27, as well as that of the Taoiseach. I am glad to speak about COP27. It feeds into the claims of climate deniers to say that COP has created so much hot air, it would make its own contribution to global warming. It is important to put climate in the media and public spotlight. This is somewhere climate definitely needs to be because, like it or not, climate change is not something that is happenin…

With breaking news this afternoon on their deferral, it seems the bells have tolled on the toll increases, at least for now. On behalf of my constituents in Leixlip, Celbridge, Maynooth, Kilcock, Donadea, Broadford and out along the M4, I would like to thank an Teachta O'Rourke for the political pressure this motion has brought to bear. It is no harm to remind the public what this was all about. Just last week the Government was pretending that the toll increases were a surprise to them but we found out subsequentl…

I approach the debate with the desire and need to tread carefully and sensitively. The debate is about abuse at certain institutions but all Members present should be aware that if the number of people who have been sexually abused is one in four, then there are at least 40 survivors in this Dáil, 15 in the Seanad and at least 200 among the Oireachtas staff and media who work in Leinster House. Child sexual abuse is a disgusting and abhorrent thing but is not a rare thing by any measure. My heart goes out to all of…

I am glad to speak to the Bill and I commend na Teachtaí Tóibín, Grealish and Canney, all of whom had some part in getting it to this stage. It was nice to hear the Minister's remarks. I always think the Thursday debates are a bit more easygoing and it was good to hear her put her dogs' names on the record, so I will do likewise. I had no dog to welcome me home last night because my little Slaney is dead. While she had a great life with us, it is a dog's life for many hundreds of dogs that are bred again and again …

I am glad to speak on the Social Welfare Bill. Given that the cost of living is rocketing for many people, I will make my contribution all about the money. In my constituency, Kildare North, people are feeling the pinch. The terms "social protection" and "social welfare" are important, good, positive, inclusive and caring. They form the basis of care for people in our society who need protection in the short term because of job loss or illness or in the longer term because of disability and caring. For those forced…