Is that agreed? Agreed.

In light of what happened last year with school transport, is the Minister satisfied the necessary and adequate arrangements are in place and the necessary number of school buses are procured to make sure that the school bus service this year will be able to carry as many students as possible to school for the school opening time?

I thank the Minister. I acknowledge it is a major operational issue every year. As for the media campaign, we as Oireachtas Members were informed all the way along by Bus Éireann as to what was happening and given reminders about the closing date. Because the closing date has been earlier, the question at this stage is whether the number of applications is up, especially with the concessionary tickets, with which there were problems last year, so that parents will know as early as possible, maybe even in July, whet…

I recognise the Minister's interest in this. I merely want to know when people who are eligible for tickets will be getting their tickets and when applicants for concessionary tickets will know they will get tickets. Are there timelines set by which these will be communicated to people? When there is such a large volume and there are anomalies in the application process, it is important it is done right. Many parents are worried they will end up, come 1 September or the end of August, not knowing whether they have …

I wish to ask about the residential zoned land tax. On 9 May 2023, the Taoiseach told me that he had spoken to the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, and the Minister for Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform, Deputy Donohoe, about anomalies that had arisen in the context of the Finance Act whereby people in R2 zoned land would be taxed even though the land could not be built on. It also emerged that functional farmers who wanted to continue to f…

I welcome the Minister back to the Chamber and thank her for bringing forward this very important motion. I have listened to a lot of the speakers today. There are lots of things going on and lots of things being discussed but at the end of the day we are talking about law and order in our country. The first point I would make is that we needed this emergency legislation during the Troubles in the North which spilled over into the South. As the Minister said in her opening remarks, that has not all gone away. There…

Next are Deputies Martin Kenny, Martin Browne, Buckley and Ellis, who are sharing time.

I commend Sinn Féin on bringing forward this motion. I welcome to the Public Gallery the representatives of nursing homes, including Brian McNamara from Greenpark Nursing Home in Tuam. This really and truly is an issue about patient care and making sure older people are taken care of properly. We have a divided service at the moment in that big business is getting involved and it is investing in and creating critical mass for itself. I put it to the Minister of State, Deputy Butler, that if we are not careful, we w…

When will the new criteria for the primary medical certificate be published, in view of the fact that the existing scheme is unworkable? The appeals board resigned en bloc almost 18 months ago on the basis that it could not deal with appeals because the criteria were so strict. It is time that we looked at this and got it sorted for the people who really need it.

I thank the Minister for his reply. As Deputy McNamara stated, there has been a lot of talk, engagement, discussion and public opinions put out by the Government but the Ombudsman, who has responsibility for complaints relating to people with disabilities, has stated that this has been ongoing for far too long. We need to get a scheme that is fit for purpose in place as quickly as possible. My concern is that people with disabilities are still grounded in their homes without transport supports. That is particularly…

I welcome the Minister's statement that he will try to bring it forward as quickly as possible but time is up on this, and has been for a long time. It is important that a deadline is set within Government to ensure a scheme is put in place. An Indecon report commissioned by the Government on the additional cost of living with a disability stated the additional cost is €9,000 per annum, on average. That is before one considers the rate of inflation for the past year or 18 months. That report has not been acted upon…

I commend my colleagues in the Regional Group on tabling this important motion. I compliment and thank Cáit Nic Amhlaoibh, who prepared the content of it for us. The most important thing is that we are throwing a light on something that all present know is wrong. The system of home care is not working. Home care hours are being allocated to people who have been medically assessed and deemed to be in need of home care but unfortunately, the hours are not being fulfilled. As a result, there is greater pressure on fam…

I attended a meeting in Abbeyknockmoy, County Galway on Monday night where more than 40 parents represented their children. Twenty-six of their children did not get school bus tickets last year because they were pushed out of the system by a late, ill-thought-out measure that was brought in to try to deal with the cost-of-living crisis by allocating free school bus tickets. Effectively, these families had to rent a private bus, costing them €850 per child for the year. There was no saving for them in the measure. T…

Yes, we need clarity as soon as possible. The review on the school bus service that is ongoing was raised at the previous meeting. It has been going on since 2019. Covid intervened, but I do not think Covid is with us any longer, so we need to get that review brought to a conclusion so that we can see what changes we can make. I acknowledge the fact that the school transport system works to a certain extent, but I think every Deputy in the House knows and has experience of queries last August, September, October, N…

We move to Sinn Féin. I call Deputy Conway-Walsh.

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this matter. I listened to the Minister's opening address. One of the biggest problems with this subject matter is probably the communication of what actually is or is not happening and how to decipher it. The Minister said this morning that the CAP fund will not be raided to support rewetting and that there will be a nature restoration fund of some description. We must find out more about that. Another important matter is that there are targets that will be binding in the prop…

I thank Sinn Féin for tabling this motion. Every politician has experience of what is happening in his or her constituency and what is going wrong. We can all keep talking about what is wrong but it is a question of how to find solutions. The Government will tell us money is not the problem; however, if it is not the problem, how come section 38 and section 39 workers are on different pay scales and not treated the same as HSE workers doing the same job? What we are doing is playing one against the other. The HSE i…

I am asking this question on behalf of Deputy Lowry. I ask the Minister to outline the total number of children on waiting lists for assessment of need in CHO 5, south Tipperary, and CHO 3, north Tipperary. This should include the number of children waiting on historical waiting lists, the number of new applications and the number of children or families still awaiting assessment following a preliminary investigation. I want an overview of the criteria being used for these waiting lists. Are they just figures?

The question that has been raised here, and it is a national issue really, is about the fact we do the preliminary assessment and then the patient or child comes off the waiting list. What is the waiting list used for? I read an interesting thing in the FUSS report from a member of staff regarding when they are asked to produce numbers. They said there was an "Apparent lack of awareness or insight into how bad things actually are on the ground, e.g constantly seeking figures and KPIs - for what? What is happening w…

The question that arises all the time is what good these waiting lists are and what action is being taken to sort them out. For instance, I know of a case of a therapist who is going on maternity leave. The children she was seeing have been told they have to go back on the waiting list because she will not be replaced until she returns from maternity leave. She is probably going to take ten months. The kernel of the problem here is that we have waiting lists, and we can manipulate figures or whatever, but the peopl…