I do not want to hurt the Taoiseach's sensitive feelings about who used the word "emergency" first. When it comes to housing, we are at it. Our Uachtaráin, a man who is never at a loss for finding the right word, called it a "disaster" when he visited my constituency of Kildare North a few months ago. A decent home is normally an indication of a decent society, but it has become a privilege under Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, while they stand over the cruel status quo they have created over the past 100 years. The Gre…

The HSE and the Department of Health management has eye-watering salaries and the perpetual luxury of learning lessons. In the week of Vicky Phelan's death we learned there has been no retrospective review of cervical slides for the past four years, despite recommendations to do so. This morning we learned that Tusla has spent €400,000 - nearly half a million - without tender, on a company managing information that is being withheld from the people it is about. The lessons supposedly being comfortably learned are b…

There are people in my constituency of Kildare North who cannot move into their homes because of water supply issues. That is not a problem just for people in my colleague's area. I make my contribution as a member of the climate committee in the week of COP27 and the growing public awareness on this island and globally that water, and access to it, is something we can no longer take for granted. I attended a public meeting in Maynooth last night. My constituents across north Kildare are in no doubt that we face a …

People can live for a few weeks without food but we can only live for a few days without water. We reject the idea that it would be privatised and profitised. Sinn Féin will oppose every measure to move water out of public ownership.

We are here to speak on the awful tragedy at Creeslough. It was one of those moments where the island was united in shock and in grief. It was one of those moments when we look at our own lives and the people in them and take the time and opportunity to tell them how much we value and love them and how unbearable it would be to imagine life without them. This is exactly the present and future for the families of those who lost their lives in Creeslough. I am of the generation who did not go around saying "I love yo…

I want to raise public transport. My constituents have been stranded on the side of the road because buses were late, did not turn up or rolled past because they are full. Students at Maynooth University have been unable to get to their lectures in time. Young people appeared before the climate committee last Friday from all across the country. All spoke about public transport in their area. I asked them if they intended to get a car and all said they did not but would need the public transport system to run. What …

Accessible, reliable, affordable and safe travel is what commuters want and need in north Kildare. Instead, we have workers from Prosperous and Clane receiving late warnings from work, with one constituent receiving a final late warning. Parents must take time off work to get their children to Maynooth University for lectures or laboratory work. Mothers - it is always mothers - in Straffan and Celbridge - say they are worried that they will have to give up work because there is no place on the school bus. Even afte…

I also thank the Social Democrats for tabling this important motion. However, it has come to the stage where I kind of dread getting up here and talking about mother and baby homes because so many of the people who were excluded from our society back in the dark old days of the State are still being excluded by the Government’s proposals. At the time of their first exclusion, their behaviour was perhaps too high a price for our prim and proper society and our respectability - we had our own morality police stalking…

I also want to talk about the Go-Ahead bus service, in my case the 120 service in north Kildare. It is the bane of workers’ lives in north Kildare. Workers are out in the cold at the crack of dawn, waiting for a bus that does not turn up, that just disappears, that is late or that is too full and will not let them on. I know of several workers in north Kildare who are on late warnings from their employer and one on a final late warning because of the 120 bus and the absolutely appalling Go-Ahead service. In particu…

It was an unsatisfactory reply. I cannot go to constituents in Prosperous, Clane, Straffan and Celbridge with it. There is no way that the Go-Ahead contract should be renewed. The Minister of State mentioned in an earlier reply that Go-Ahead would have the full complement of drivers by the end of December, but the time to have the full complement was before it applied for the contract so that it knew it could fulfil that contract. This shows that we cannot depend on the private sector to deliver public transport.

Hear, hear.

In March, the HSE was found to have broken the law on assessment of need. The Department's arrogance continues extending even to its own Minister, who like myself is meeting heartbroken parents day in and day out. The new figures on assessments of need released to Sinn Féin are shocking even by the usual appalling standards. Where are the annual section 13 reports that have been missing since 2014? If you do not report on assessments of need, how are you meant to improve on them for next year? This week, a constitu…

When does the Minister of State hope to have it cleared?

I am happy to co-introduce this Bill with my comrades, Deputies Daly and Paul Donnelly. The purpose of the Bill is to keep the practice of vetting as effective as possible while making the process as efficient as possible for the community, the gardaí and, through them, wider society. It applies to people who have no criminal record or criminal issues outstanding. While Garda vetting is essential it can be burdensome, especially for volunteers. I have met them and been the person who has to go through it several ti…

I am happy to speak to this Bill on Second Stage. We all agree it is a very technical and lengthy piece of legislation. I believe there is also agreement on the need to modernise the work permit system on which so many of our services depend, be it agrifood, IT, hygiene or caring. The Covid-19 pandemic, which is still ongoing, exposed how dependent we are on so many of these workers and how they rose to the challenges and demands made of them in extraordinary difficult and, indeed, risky circumstances. While some p…

Covid-19 did not come bearing any gifts but it did bring us a new awareness of how we are living both for better and for worse. Many people have made major changes to how they work and live. I know there are many more who would do so if they had the proper opportunity. We also know that during lockdown, many fathers welcomed the opportunity to spend more time with their children and realised what both had been missing out on. This Bill transposes an EU directive on the issue of work-life balance. It is both timely …

I am glad to have the opportunity to speak on this Bill and, perhaps, to try to improve it. My Sinn Féin colleague, Deputy O'Rourke, has proposed several amendments that would improve the Bill and make it more socially inclusive. These would include a liaison with MABS and provision that those who do not need this energy credit could ask their provider to direct that money to agencies dealing with people who are most risk of energy poverty. The financially vulnerable are an ever-increasing cohort of people because …

I raise the decision by Maynooth University not to proceed with the student centre, for which a levy was put on students in recent years. This morning, students in the university staged a walkout in protest, as part of its Where’s my Levy campaign. I have had so much contact from students and parents who paid into the levy and from the wider academic community as well who live around Maynooth. They tell me that what the university is suggesting is just not sufficient. I have written to the Minister for Further and …

Will the Tánaiste respond to the question?

I am happy to speak on this stage of the Bill and thank everybody who has worked on it so far. As the House will be aware, my party works all the time to support and strengthen the rights of citizens with regard to institutional, corporate or Government bodies where the balance of power and, therefore, the balance of financial and professional resources are automatically not in their favour. One of the reasons we have continually advocated for the powers of PIAB to be strengthened is that, in doing so, it will redu…