I am pleased to speak to this motion because regional hospitals are vital in our communities, yet what the Government is talking about doing in Navan hospital amounts to taking a sledgehammer to a supporting wall. I commend Deputies Guirke and O’Rourke on highlighting the downgrading of Meath regional hospital because centralising expertise is worthy and all very well. Nevertheless, doing so implies the rest of the health service around it is working well, but in the Navan area and, indeed, throughout the health se…

The Coombe Hospital operated an antenatal clinic outside of Naas General Hospital before it closed at the start of Covid-19. This was a godsend for mothers-to-be from north Kildare and beyond. I have been in touch with the HSE, which says it might open it in the wider midlands area. It worked for people in Naas. The people in north Kildare believe, as I do, that if it ain't broke don't fix it. If we are to live with Covid, as the Tánaiste has said, it means making it up to our women who lost out hugely in previous …

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the annual transition statements and address the big picture of where we are. The cost-of-living crisis is bringing a new urgency and worry to the issue, not alone in terms of money and cost but by exposing the unsustainable way in which the global economic system encourages and depends on us to live. We were reminded of the sheer scale and folly of this by young people from across the State who came to speak to us at the climate committee in the Seanad last Friday week. They g…

I am pleased to speak to this motion on special educational needs. Children have the right not only to a school place but one that is fitting for their educational needs. In north Kildare, I work with the parents of these children in Naas, Sallins, Prosperous, and all the way across to Broadford. I work with them in every town and hinterland in my constituency. I see the parents' advocacy, frustration, worry, and their disbelief at how their bright young children are being failed by this State. Yesterday, some of t…

It is a timely opportunity to discuss transport, particularly given the biblical scenes we had in Dublin Airport over the weekend. I note the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, is not here and I hope he is reading the inside of his passport where it states: The Minister for Foreign Affairs of Ireland requests all whom it may concern to allow the bearer, a citizen of Ireland, to pass freely and without hindrance and to afford the bearer all necessary assistance and protection. I hope when the Minister has read that, he ha…

I want to raise with the Tánaiste the need for a culture of safety in our hospitals and, equally, for the right to know when a doctor has been struck off. There has been another allegation of sexual assault of a patient by a doctor in Naas General Hospital, which is in my constituency. It was featured on “RTÉ Investigates” this week and it dates back to 2011. This exposes how in 2017, when a similar allegation was made, the HSE did not disclose earlier cases. We need to know why and how this happened. This raises s…

It is alleged that he is working elsewhere.

The Israeli security forces shot journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in cold blood when she was out doing the most ordinary of things, namely, her job. It is another name and another atrocity in the face of international tolerance of extrajudicial killings, imprisonment, demolition, displacement, illegal settlements, the harassment of children, the destruction and desecration of sacred olive groves and the murder of young children for the crime of playing football on a beach. I could go on. One might ask what is the shoot…

I am happy to speak on this Stage and I commend an Teachta Ó Broin on this Bill. As a Deputy in north Kildare, where people are struggling to find a place to rent or to buy, I believe the boom in short-term lets exposes much of what is wrong with us in this State, politically and socially, because of a particular kind of political priority. This priority puts the desires and greed of the short-term market over the basic human needs of people, workers and families who are desperate to rent or buy a home. Both rentin…

In addressing just transition we need to mark where we are today in regard to climate change and its impact throughout the world. In our politics and public life there is still the sense that climate change and the just transition are still some time away and that we still have time to prepare for them. However, this week parts of India reached 49oC and parts of Pakistan reached 51oC. That scorching heat makes record-breaking heatwaves 100 times more likely. As some forecasters have put it, extreme heat events that…

What a desperate disappointment this cynical Government is for the women of this State and what a desperate disappointment it is for anyone who is interested in public healthcare. The ownership of this land for our new national maternity hospital was there within our grasp but this disappointing and cynical Government did not fight for it. Now we hear the chair of the St. Vincent's Healthcare Group is to be hauled in to correct the record after he said that the Government had no serious or meaningful discussions to…

On 9 May 1950, the French Foreign Minister, Robert Schuman, proposed that France and Germany pool their resources of steel and coal in an organisation that would be open to other European countries. Just five years after the Second World War, it was a remarkable moment, with old enemies seeing that they had more in common than what divided them. Eventually, they would build a new European Community through a Common Market which we ourselves joined on this very day in 1972, exactly 50 years ago. I did not have a vot…

It goes without saying that we welcome the people fleeing war and terror in Ukraine with open arms. Putin's army has invaded a sovereign land and is murdering and terrorising a sovereign people. There are increasing reports, as happens in so many conflicts, that Russia is using rape as a weapon of war. There are reports of the rape of women, children, girls and now also of men and boys. The savage cruelty and inhumanity of Putin's war makes our humanitarian response all the more important and urgent. Given their ex…

-----that is of this Government’s making while simultaneously welcoming-----

-----Ukrainians who desperately need safety and security. Or has the Government let the cat of the bag that it thrives on and is obsessed by optics, gestures and cheap PR that cost the taxpayer and the people with no homes a fortune? Is it more important for the Government to stand on the international stage and be seen to welcome Ukrainian refugees than to have housing and accommodation that they need? Instead of posing as international statesmen I would ask the members of the Government to be actual statesmen for…

I have also met Ukrainians in Naas and the local communities have been exceptional in their welcomes. There have been bring and buy sales and many people across my constituency have welcomed these people. I also know from my dealings with the Irish Red Cross that its staff are working their fingers to the bone. It is important that we get this right. If the Irish Red Cross needs extra help and resources, it is important that they are given to it. Vulnerable people coming here must be provided with a roof over their…

I am at a bit of a loss after listening to the Minister of State. This morning, I was contacted by a constituent in her 60s who told me she slept in her car last night. Every housing case coming into my constituency office in north Kildare is just getting worse, with every one more unbelievable than the last. Eviction notices are arriving thick and fast. I have had more people with notices to quit coming into my office in the last month than I have had since I got elected. I was not a bit surprised by the dramatic …

The Government needs to get a grip on the national retrofitting scheme given what the climate committee was told on Tuesday about gaps in the quality of materials, training and skills, and an apparent lack of oversight. The EU Court of Auditors gave Ireland a "must do better" report on our better energy, warmer homes scheme, and the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform report was not much better. There is no one in charge, and when nobody is in charge, there is nobody responsible and nobody can be held accou…

I too am happy to speak on this Bill. Like my party colleagues, I am happy to support it in general terms. Guardians ad litem have at times been a source of public interest and contention when the eye-watering fees paid to a number of them were published. For example, during 2018 guardians ad litem were paid €8.44 million in fees by Tusla. The legal fees they incurred amounted to a further €6.21 million that year. The guts of €15 million is a lot of money by any standards. In 2017 the Committee on Public Accounts h…

When we introduced this Bill, we could not have known that when it would reach this Stage, war would be raging in Europe and energy would be more political and precarious than ever before. At that time, my party had warned about the cost-of-living juggernaut heading our way, warnings which were duly ignored and now the results of that inaction are writ large for families and households across the State, including in my own constituency of Kildare North. In the past, people forced to live on social protection and th…