I welcome the opportunity to speak on this very important issue. I completely support Sinn Féin’s motion for an expansion of the mother and baby homes redress scheme to all former residents of mother and baby homes regardless of how long or short their stay. I thank Deputy Funchion for bringing this motion to the House. I echo the words of the survivors' group, who I listened to and met outside the gates of Leinster House today and who described the mother and baby homes redress scheme as a travesty of justice. It …

This question is on a specific submission that was made by Donegal ETB to the Department to try to address a unique set of circumstances around children living in mica-affected homes in Donegal and the needs identified by their schools. There is no doubt that these children are living under severe pressure. Their homes are at risk of collapsing, they are going into schools and the schools need to be able to deal with that and respond to the needs of those people.

The Minister gave a comprehensive outline of the measures that are in place in schools to deal with the existing mental health problems and difficulties they have and that exist in every school all over the country. We are talking about a serious crisis that is happening in part of Donegal. The ETB's submission to the Department recognises that it is only in that specific part of the county that these resources are needed. Additional resources are needed as this is an additional crisis and the Minister has to recog…

That is the most relevant thing the Minister has said tonight. It is vitally important that officials from the Department would meet Donegal ETB to discuss this issue with it. Donegal ETB even made a specific point in its briefing to Deputies outlining what it is doing and on what it made a submission to the Department of Education. That is how worried it is about the matter. Everything the Minister has outlined is welcome. She mentioned hours being allocated to Donegal ETB under the CLASS but that has been rolled …

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak on the Labour Party's carbon labelling Bill. In general, I support introducing carbon labelling on products as a way of educating citizens on the carbon footprint of each product. Ms Mary Robinson's prediction that anyone under 60 is likely to face a less liveable world and that anyone under 30 is sure to live in that world is incredibly concerning. It is clear that we need to start shifting our focus more directly to the climate crisis to try to reverse the damage done an…

I welcome the Minister back to the House, as other Deputies have done, and wish her and her family well in the years to come. This is an important and urgent Bill and I support it in its intention to remove the current statutory deadline of 30 November 2021 by which to register easements without the need to go to court. The potential impact of not extending this deadline is very worrying and could see those who currently have rights over State land being deprived of those rights or at least having no means of regis…

I am sharing time with Deputy Connolly. Coming from a coastal community, I recognise the importance of the Coast Guard and know of the sheer devastation felt by a coastal community when an accident such as the R116 air accident occurs. I take this opportunity to extend my sympathies to the families of Paul Ormsby, Mark Duffy, Dara Fitzpatrick and Ciarán Smith and to their communities which are, no doubt, feeling the impact of this tragedy. The report of the air accident investigation unit makes for sobering reading…

Over recent months, I have been speaking to those in car dealerships in Donegal about problems they are facing. Because of the severe difficulties they are confronting with Brexit and the microchip shortage, car sales are in a perfect storm with lack of supply. Based on international reports, it is likely that the microchip shortage will last for the next year and possibly into 2023, which will lead to the very real risk of job losses over the next six months if no action is taken. It will mean substantial job loss…

Every dealership in the country is losing jobs.

Covid-19 has highlighted not only the importance of our ambulance services but the severe stress we put them under due to the complete failure of this Government to provide the necessary funding and investment that these services need. I was in this House in 2014 when we called on the Government to address the lack of staff and resources being reported by ambulance services. I stand here again more than seven years later and very little has changed. The incompetence of this Government, as well as previous Fine Gael…

The budget, perhaps.

The case of Grace involves shocking and horrific treatment of a severely disabled citizen for whom we, as a State, are responsible. What was done to Grace was done in our name. That is a difficult thing to say but it is true. When we give Tusla and the HSE the duty of care for an individual, they assume that duty in our name. We, as citizens of Ireland, allow them to care for individuals. We hope they will do that responsibly and with the care needs of those individuals uppermost, but we do not want to face up to i…

There is no doubt that we are in the grip of a severe energy crisis. What is more terrifying is the fact that the Government is knowingly and purposely leading us down a dangerous path. Energy import dependency is said to be one of the simplest and most widely-used indicators of a country's energy security. Ireland is very heavily dependent on imported fossil fuels and, given this, our energy security is at very high risk. This is something that requires action beyond the empty words spoken at COP26. It is extremel…

In June, I made a suggestion to the Tánaiste in relation to addressing an anomaly in the Student Universal Support Ireland, SUSI, application process around the linking of sibling applications. This would have avoided an avalanche of appeals. I was promised a response and as usual I did not hear anything. I raise SUSI again today in the context of the Finance Bill before the Dáil. Students from families on low incomes are being denied the special rate award, even though they are under the miserly income threshold o…

I have long been highlighting the importance of community banking and I have previously called for the Government to expand the remit and the authority of our credit unions. I take this opportunity to welcome the Credit Union (Amendment) Bill introduced by my colleague, Deputy Harkin. I thank Deputy Harkin for bringing forward this very important Bill. I would like to comment on something the Minister of State stated. I do not think there is any danger of the Government raising expectations within the credit union …

Gabhaim buíochas leis an gCeann Comhairle. I am always very interested to read the Finance Bill every year to see the additional taxes and tax reliefs, which were not popular or trendy enough to make it into the Department’s big flashy budget announcement, but which are then quietly introduced much later via the Finance Bill. This year is no different as we see the introduction of more unnecessary tax breaks and extensions to tax reliefs for 2022. We see in section 5 of the Bill that the help-to-buy scheme will be …

I want to raise a very serious case of abuse and neglect by the HSE at Ard Gréine Court in Ballybofey, and the delay in publishing the Brandon report, which outlines what was not done to protect the residents there. The report highlights catastrophic failures of the most vulnerable people by our health services. There is a catalogue of abuse and neglect. The report identifies limited reports of abuse and inappropriate sexual behaviour from 1991 and concentrates on the period between 2003 and 2016. In 2011, manageme…

I thank the Tánaiste for his response. I pay tribute to the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, for the work she has done on this and on trying to get the HSE to own up and publish the report. That is vital because how can we be certain that the HSE is implementing changes that could prevent this happening somewhere else? Also, how can we be certain that it has not already happened somewhere else? At this stage, unfortunately, I have no faith in the HSE to deal with this issue. If I had not raised this with the pre…

This question is similar to a number of other questions on the Question Paper today. It relates to the number of gardaí assigned to the County Donegal division in the years from 2016 to 2020. I would like to see the figures.

I thank the Minister of State for his response. I listened to the figures for Garda numbers in Donegal and compared them with the answers to similar questions, for example, on Garda numbers in Longford. It is interesting that Donegal has three times the population of Longford and is probably five times its size but has proportionally fewer gardaí available to it. This is very worrying, particularly for my area in the south-west of the county where Killybegs, Glenties and Ardara are the larger towns. There are basic…