As a Deputy with Maynooth University in my constituency of north Kildare, I am very happy with what is being proposed here in this Private Members' Bill, PMB, from the USI. Maynooth University plays such a huge role in my local community and in providing educational life opportunities across the State. Students in the State have paid a big price in their educational life, not to mention their social life, during this coronavirus pandemic. They have also been unable to get part-time employment to help subsidise thei…

I welcome the White Paper on direct provision. Our State has a nasty history of institutionalisation of vulnerable people and successive governments have turned a blind eye to the suffering and trauma that direct provision has caused countless people. Sinn Féin is committed to an end to this for-profit system and this White Paper will bring some light at the end of a very dark and long tunnel which has brought distress to many and disgrace on us as a society. Children have spent years in these, for want of a better…

I welcome the Second Stage reading of this Bill. It is not exactly what we had hoped for and worked for during pre-legislative scrutiny. We had hoped for and anticipated we would now have a climate Bill that would set out clear and ambitious targets and make the Government accountable for delivering on them. Can the Government be accountable when the recent High Court ruling on the Climate and Low Carbon Development Act 2015 found the Government was not a relevant body? That is less of a loophole and more of a giga…

I welcome the opportunity to present my first Bill to the Dáil with my colleagues, Deputies O'Rourke and Kerrane. I welcome that it is to the benefit of people living with the dread of disconnection from gas and electricity. These are not the days of the glimmer man. This is 2021. We have a seat on the United Nations Security Council. Heat and light are basics of security for life in this modern State of ours. Every year, thousands of hard-working families and pensioners face disconnection in the middle of winter. …

I put down several questions to the Department about vaccinations for several people aged over 70 in north Kildare. One has diabetes and COPD, and her spouse is recovering from lymphoma. They have been to their excellent GP practice, which tells them it too is in the dark, and does not know when they will get the vaccine. Also in north Kildare, there are people with complex illnesses, like advanced emphysema, being sent to their GP by their consultant, who tells them to go back to their consultant. None of them see…

I want to raise with the Tánaiste the case of a constituent in Kildare North, who is a young healthcare worker in the HSE and one of the heroes on the front line. She recently discovered a lump and visited her doctor, who told her to have it investigated immediately. When she asked her employer, the HSE, for time off to do so, she was refused. How can it be that somebody who is working on the front line, giving her all in this battle against Covid, cannot be treated in a time of acute need? NPHET is advising people…

Our birth certificate is the fundamental document that testifies to our arrival into this world. Having automatic access to that fundamental document must be a fundamental and automatic right - a right that is both claimed and fulfilled without obstacle, qualification or hindrance. Quite simply, the days of adoptee apartheid in our civil and public life must be over. This morning I was contacted by a woman who was adopted in 1961. She is still looking for her birth certificate - imagine 60 years and no trace of it.…

During the Covid crisis, I hear from shattered women everyday. If they are working, it is likely that they are in receipt of the pandemic unemployment payment or on the front line. If they are caring for children with special needs, they are terrified. They feel imprisoned and are terrified of catching Covid. They worry who will mind their children if they die. If they have a problem with alcohol or food, it is magnified. If they are working from home, they are doing the times tables and spelling with their childre…

In Irish, a kite is called a préachán ceirteach. With the GDPR and the commission, the State has taken murders of paper crows and flown them sky high. The recordings, once lost, have been found. That is just amazing because the Government is still blind to how it must be accountable to survivors, the Dáil, the people, humanity and decency and what it means to have survived mother and baby homes. With its kite-flying in respect of the recordings and miracle finds, the only thing that separates the Government of the …

I am sharing time with Deputy Conway-Walsh. I had hoped to have a question-and-answer exchange with the Tánaiste but I am sure he will appreciate that I must raise the proposed lay-offs in the Kerry Group. It is a very worrying development for businesses in north Kildare. The Tánaiste will be aware that the company itself employs hundreds of my constituents in Naas. These are highly skilled workers with large financial commitments, many of them crippled with mortgages as is the norm in this State. The Kerry Group i…

I have many constituents in north Kildare who suffer from asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, COPD, who want to know what stage the clean air strategy is at that was promised in the programme for Government. We in Ireland have one of the highest rates of lung disease in the world. The Irish Thoracic Society warns of an unprecedented crisis in lung health due to insufficient specialists and respiratory consultants. This problem is now going to be exacerbated by Covid and long Covid. This week it was re…

Aggressive suppression was never the plan of the Government. We saw it welcome flights full of rugby fans from Italy's inferno and global guests for St. Patrick's Day and how there was not even a leaflet at the airport for people returning from Cheltenham. Last summer, fresh from telling billionaire tax exiles they were grand here and would not be outstaying their welcome, the Government sent inspectors to the airport not to check who was arriving but to check whether there was anyone on small State payments leavin…

It says a lot about where we are when in one breath we are discussing an €80,000 salary top-up for a public service worker, and in the next we are talking about other workers in places such as north Kildare who cannot afford to light their home, cook a meal or turn on the heating. We have swapped the metaphorical cold house of the mother and baby homes for the literal cold house where working families and the elderly wear their coats indoors, or go to bed early, simply to keep warm. Behind closed doors people are s…

I thank the Minister of State at the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Deputy English, for coming in to take this Topical Issue debate. I wish to raise the issue of non-essential work and the Government's lack of strict, clear and proper instructions to employers. Each day, I have people contacting me about being forced to work onsite in an office or warehouse although we are in a critical stage of the pandemic and their work cannot logically or practically be deemed essential. I looked at the traffic…

I thank the Minister of State for his reply. I am forced to disagree with him. I believe the instructions that have been given to employers are a bit lax. Employers seem more intent on finding loopholes, which the Government should be fixing. It is important that we keep our workers safe at this time because our economy just cannot work without our workers' safety. I heard Deputy Doherty ask what planet the Tánaiste, Deputy Varadkar, is living on. I think he is going around with a virtual reality headset on his hea…

The right to identity, to know who we are, is fundamental. Whether these babies were removed, gifted, trafficked, placed or sold, the survivors - our fellow citizens - are entitled to the same documentary right to their identity as the rest of us. They have so far been denied it, and it should be anathema for that to be considered acceptable in a functioning republic. I am proud of my Sinn Féin comrade, Deputy Funchion, who has been working hard on the Bill she brought forward yesterday to guarantee survivors uncon…

I am sharing time with Deputy Ó Murchú. I welcome the Covid-19 task force and I look forward to getting the vaccine jab when it is my turn. This time last year we could not have imagined what we would be facing, not alone the deaths but the change in life as we know it. This virus has reminded us how fragile and interdependent we are. Across the world, vaccines have changed lives, virtually eradicating diseases that devastated earlier generations. It is a medical fact that some people will not be able to get the va…

I too have concerns about housing needs, demand assessment and public participation in the context of this Bill. Instead of widening public participation in the planning and development process, this Bill narrows it through the curtailment of public meetings. The review of the Kildare county development plan started only this afternoon and this Bill could effectively lock out those who most need to access and participate in the process, such as the lovely elderly man in north Kildare in my constituency who is freez…

It is now two weeks until Christmas. While some people are wondering how they managed to survive the year of Covid-19, others are wondering how they survive every year within the confines of this Bill. I am anxious that the lending capacity of our credit unions be extended in our communities. They are bedrocks of opportunity and protection. I am equally anxious about the effective politicisation of the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council. I am not referring to its fine members but to the Minister's attempt to legislate f…

I thank Deputy Durkan for sharing this Topical Issue with the north Kildare Teachtaí Dála. We had a meeting on Monday evening with the principals and representatives from St. Raphael's Special School, Celbridge Community School and St. Patrick's National School. They have located a site. I am anxious to assist these schools, which go above and beyond every single day, but especially in the past six months with Covid. In the case of St. Raphael's, some of our most vulnerable and important citizens receive their educ…