I welcome the opportunity to speak on this important subject that is close to my heart. I thank the Labour Party for bringing forward the Bill. Last October, the Regional Group reintroduced a Bill that had been brought through the Seanad by former Senator James Reilly. It was parked to allow the Government time to put in place the necessary measures. Autism is not a health issue; it is a human rights issue. It is very important that we look at it in that way. The whole issue of autism is being treated on a haphazar…

We have heard talk this morning about the housing crisis and what the President said about it. I ask the Government to consider the introduction of a VAT refund scheme for first-time buyers of new or second-hand houses. More than half the cost of building a house is indirect and much of it goes back to the State. It includes 13.5% VAT along with all the other stamp duties, fees, planning and development levies and all of that. I ask that this be introduced in addition to the help-to-buy scheme, which I hope will be…

I welcome the opportunity to contribute on this important issue. Security of energy has been brought into focus generally by the fact that we have seen over the past number of months how fragile a nation we are when it comes to our energy supply. This has been reflected in a lack of investment over a number of years. It is important that we examine what we are doing now and how we address this problem so that we do not have to face it again. The legislation needs to ensure that the consumer does not pay for this an…

I compliment the staff of the Passport Office and of the Minister's office, but I would argue that it is high time we located a public-facing passport service office in the west of Ireland in order to serve the people of that region. There is a communications issue. People have difficulties with speaking to someone in the Passport Office, with submitting documents and with finding out what is going on with their applications when they are under pressure. I ask the Minister to consider opening an office in the west …

The Minister said he is not ruling out increasing the footprint across the country, but let us take the example of somebody living in Clifden who needs an emergency passport. He or she travels through the county and arrives in Ballinasloe, halfway to Dublin but not having left the county. If a child needs an emergency passport, both parents have to take time off work to get it. Their options are to go to Dublin or to Cork. People are asking me why we cannot have a passport office in the west of Ireland to serve are…

I accept that. I reiterate my admiration for the staff of the Passport Office and those of the Minister's office. The phone line for Oireachtas Members is fantastic, but it is creating 160 little passport offices around the country. People are contacting several Deputies on particular issues to try to get traction. We are there to help. The Minister has said he will explore the matter. I understand he is trying to move the service online. He stated that people can communicate with the Passport Office from their hom…

I welcome the opportunity to speak about insurance reform. We could talk about many aspects of insurance but I want to home in on a few matters. In my area, voluntary groups have rural social schemes and community employment schemes which do work in the community. However, they are not able to do work on the roads or in public areas without having public liability insurance. Those groups are doing the work of the local authority and that work should be covered by the local authority as part of its overall insurance…

I raise the issue of public works contracts, which have been in place since 2007. I acknowledge the Minister's efforts in introducing a variation to the contracts for the unreal price increases that have happened. However, I fear that if the contracts are not overhauled, we will have serious issues in trying to get contractors to do work for us. Are there any plans to reform them or introduce proper contracts?

The Minister of State said a lot there. I will give him some facts. Right now, the construction industry is in free fall. Contractors are not going to price public works contracts as they stand at the moment. It is a particular risk in the engineering contracting. The Minister of State, Deputy O'Donovan, is here. This also affects flood relief schemes, where there is an enormous risk in taking on one of these projects. Civil engineering contractors will not take them on because they cannot price the risk and the ri…

I accept that, but when we think about how to have a collaborative industry in which contractors and the contracting authorities will work together, we need to look at what has been established in other jurisdictions such as the UK, where there is the new engineering contract, NEC. In that case, there is risk-sharing and more is got out of the contract. The Minister of State referred to building information modelling, BIM. That is for the large contractors, but what about the small contractors that build one-off ho…

I would like the Minister’s overview on how we will deal with public sector pay in light of the exceptional increased costs of living and also how we will deal with the overall pay structure to make sure work pays in order that people who go to work get the benefit of an income into their pockets rather than being the victims who must pay for everything.

The Minister is right; we are at critical stage. However, I believe that people who go out to work want to see the benefit of that work. It is not all always about the pay scale. It is actually about what will happen in terms of tax credits, especially for the lower and medium income earners. If they get an increase in wages, what often happens is that it puts them over a threshold for student grants or medical cards or whatever. I also think the transition from a 20% to 40% tax rate is too much. There has to be a …

Returning to the question about the overall tax position and the idea of having people working and making sure they get their due reward, it is important that all the social welfare thresholds are also increased in line to ensure people do not lose entitlements whereby they have gone over a threshold due to a pay increase, are taxed on that and end up being a lot worse off. A great deal of synchronisation has to happen between Departments to make sure that if there is a pay rise, the effect of that is in the pocket…

Regarding public sector pensioners and the cost of living, are there plans to examine their fixed pensions with a view to increasing them in line with the prevailing cost-of-living issues?

I welcome the fact that pensions will be pegged to increases as they happen. When I talk to pensioners they say they feel they are forgotten because they took cuts under the austerity measures that were taken after the bust. These are people who worked for this State all of their lives and contributed enormously to it through taxation, building our economy and getting the State to where we are today as a good place to live and work in. It is important that we recognise that contribution and ensure that if people ar…

I welcome what the Minister is saying and I know every effort is being made to help pensioners who worked in public service. I refer, however, to semi-State bodies like the ESB and others whose pensioners are really caught in a bind. It is important that we look at that and assist these people. The Minister says it is left to each line Department or entity to deal with the issue but there is a case for the Government to consider it and see what it can do. Coming up to the budget, I know there will be hundreds of de…

I support the amendment we have tabled. The motion from the Rural Independent Group is born out of frustration with where we are now and what is going on. It gives us an opportunity to highlight some deficiencies. For example, the national retrofitting scheme has been announced but it is not happening. The national broadband plan is in place but it is not going at the speed it should if we want to keep people in their own localities, working locally, saving on cars on the road and on energy. We should enact the win…

I thank the Minister for taking on board the amendment that Deputy Tóibín and I tabled. The only issue I have is that some people who are first cousins of the babies are trying to trace their relations. They have been on a journey for a long time. Their concern is that if they want to give their DNA, if there are improvements in forensic science in a number of years to such an extent that identification could be possible, we should not exclude anybody who may have a desire to find out whether their cousin is buried…

I also thank the Minister for including this amendment. Accountability and the timelines are very important for all this work. It is important, and I thank the Minister for taking it on board.

I welcome the opportunity to contribute on this very important issue. As the previous speaker said, we should not be here talking about it because we should have had solutions in place many years ago so the resources would be there. I acknowledge the role of the Department and the Minister of State, Deputy Madigan, in the past two and a half years. I acknowledge the amount of investment that has been announced and the amount of work that is being done to try to improve services. In my own town of Tuam, we opened a …