I thank the Minister for his comments. This is a case of us chasing something very fast without having the research and knowledge base built up concerning how we will measure what farmers sequester through their daily practices and with hedgerows, etc. There have been many pilot schemes and a lot of research has been done but, as the Minister said, we do not yet have the science to show farmers will be rewarded for the good work they already do. The problem is that we have put the cart way before the horse in that …

I want to raise a very important issue that has arisen in the past year in Loughrea, County Galway, where we have a purpose-built community nursing home with a day case centre as part of it. When Covid came, the day care centre, Seven Springs, was closed. To date, there has been much confusion as to what is happening there. The service in the centre has been resumed one day a week and on the other three days it has been transferred to a local hotel. There is great concern. I was at a meeting last Monday night that …

HIQA has no remit over day care centres. Why has somebody decided that the existing Seven Springs site is suitable one day a week? If it is suitable on Wednesday, why is it not suitable on Tuesday, Monday or Thursday? What is the logic in this? As I understand it, there are capacity issues in the nursing home and the people who are using the day service have been moved out to facilitate that. Administrative staff are now using the day centre and that is not good enough. The HSE is talking about providing an alterna…

Something is missing here. If HIQA has a role in day care services, did it approve the current location? I have seen a citation from the grandson of one of the service users. On her first day at the new location, she rang him at 11 p.m., crying and asking to be brought home. There is something fundamentally wrong here. This day service was purpose-built as a day centre; it was not amalgamated with a nursing home. It has been open for only about ten years. It is a modern building and it had all the services that wer…

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this very important issue and I compliment Deputy Cairns and the Social Democrats for introducing this motion. As a Deputy living and based in Tuam, the Tuam mother and baby home has been a focus of attention over a number of years. The discovery of 796 babies buried in a mass grave is something that shocked the world. This watershed moment came when the very diligent work of Catherine Corless, a researcher, revealed what was happening in the site and what had happened in the p…

For clarification, I have just come from the meeting of the Committee on Disability Matters, where we discussed mental health reform and advocacy on behalf of people with disabilities and mental health. One of the issues which came from that meeting and continues to come from many of the meetings we have in this committee is that people talk about doing something into the future, or that there is a pipeline of things to be done. As somebody said this morning, that pipeline seems to get diverted and it seems to go i…

A good example is the need to ensure transport supports are there for people with disabilities and to deal with the mayhem around the primary medical certificate. Effectively, the appeals board dealing with the primary medical certificate resigned. The criteria by which the board members would judge somebody to be entitled to a primary medical certificate were deemed to be unfit for purpose and they resigned as they could not work with them. That happened a year ago but we still do not have an appeals mechanism and…

I listened to the opening remarks of the Minister, Deputy Stephen Donnelly, and one thing missing was that at this stage people working in the community services do not need more platitudes. They need to be treated with respect and parity. We know what they do. We know what section 39 workers do in Ability West and the Irish Wheelchair Association, IWA, in the constituency I share with the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte. People there were out protesting the week before last to try to highlight the issue they ar…

I will raise a very important issue. Last Monday night, along with other public representatives, I met with some GPs in Ballinasloe to discuss grave concerns about the out-of-hours GP service for a large part of south-east Galway, including Eyrecourt, Lawrencetown, Kiltormer, Kilconnell, parts of Ballinasloe, Portumna and Loughrea. The service serves approximately 15,000 patients and is currently providing full 24-hour cover, including 53 straight hours of cover at the weekend, without a driver, nursing administrat…

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this Bill. When I worked in the private sector, I had experience of trying to get permits for people coming into this country who were specialised at the time. That is going back a number of years ago. It was an arduous process to get the people we needed to work for us and who were specialised. Every year they had to reapply and we had to prove that they were specialists. It cost much money and involved very uncertain terms and conditions for people because they were only bein…

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this important Bill. Its importance has been brought to the attention of all of us in our constituencies, with people telling us they find it harder to live because of the cost of energy, fuel and all the other things necessary for living. It is important that people are supported but I am not sure about supporting them by giving them energy credits. In my opinion, that might only fuel inflation. The energy crisis affects every facet of our lives. It affects home life, public b…

I thank Deputy Tully for tabling this motion. It is important to state that the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Disability Matters has worked hard on many issues over the last two and a half years. Hopefully, we will bring forward some supports for people with disabilities, in conjunction with the Government, which is what it is all about. When I meet parents in my constituency who have been told that their child has a disability, they end up trying to cope with that fact first of all, and then they try to come to te…

I am delighted to be able to speak on the Bill, and to bring to the attention of the Minister of State some of the issues that are affecting us nationally. First I will deal with the telephone system and the billing situation at the moment. Eir has issued letters to all of its fixed-line customers to say that, in future, they will have to pay €7.50 for the privilege of getting their bill sent out in the post. I think that is wrong. Most of the people affected by this issue are those who perhaps do not have access t…

The school bus service has been decimated and thrown around the place in recent months. It is a thundering disgrace. Transport services for people with disabilities in the context of schools have been cast into disarray. Parents have been all over the place trying to get their children, including those with special needs, to school, and this is an ongoing problem. Further announcements that additional money will be forthcoming to take care of previous concessionary ticket holders are not washing because there is no…

I am delighted to see Deputy Calleary here in his brief as Minister of State. I wish him well and I am delighted he is present to deal with such an important Bill for the country. I look forward to working with him on it and wish him the best of luck in his role. When I was in the private sector, I engaged a lot with insurance and the construction industry. I saw claims come in and go out, and dealt with claims in the courts. The one thing I learned was that the day you went to court with a claim was the day you we…

This levy will be on concrete blocks and other concrete products and it will be paid for by the taxpayer, be it through public works contracts that will increase in price, by farmers who are trying to upgrade their slurry facilities to meet environmental demands or, most importantly, by anybody trying to buy or build a house. The SCSI have put €4,000 of a price tag on the additional cost for a house. That has been ridiculed by Government, yet the same Government has used the SCSI to help it formulate the costs for …

Yesterday, the budget announcement regarding the defective concrete blocks levy smacked of an ill-timed, ill-judged decision. It is expected this levy will raise €80 million annually. It will commence on 3 April 2023. The levy will result in a 10% increase in the cost of concrete, concrete materials, sills, lintels, hollow-core floor slabs and concrete blocks. At a time when thriving inflation within the construction industry is creating havoc for young people who are trying to build their own houses and for local …

The Taoiseach mentioned mica, pyrite and apartment defects. The core problem here is that we do not have effective building control. Until we bring in a system of proper building control, we will continue to put billions of euro into the rectification of problems with innocent people's properties. I do not believe the cure for this problem is to put a levy on young people who are trying to build houses. Ironically, the public purse will be used to pay the additional costs on public sector contracts arising from thi…

There was very little in the budget that we had not picked up over recent days, weeks and months, given the flying of kites to see what might be acceptable. From that point of view, little in the budget is new and we will see what is really in it when we get the detail. I welcome the fact the Government has taken measures to help people with the cost of living but I am concerned that many working people will not be very excited about what they heard today. People in my constituency have to travel to work by car eve…

What progress is being made on the introduction of a new scheme for disabled drivers and passengers, which would be workable and relevant to their particular circumstances, taking into account that the mobility allowance and motorised transport grants for new applicants were suspended in 2013, with the promise that a new scheme would be put in place? The only remaining support available for those living with a disability is the disabled drivers and disabled passengers scheme which is operated by the Revenue Commiss…