Data from the EPA makes for frightening reading in terms of the quality of our water and the need for proper wastewater and water treatment plants. Avoca, in my local area, is one of 15 locations in Ireland where raw sewage is still being discharged every day, as identified by the EPA. Avoca must be prioritised as a village for upgrading. We were also promised progress with the long-awaited new state-of-the-art treatment plant in Arklow, yet it has now emerged that part of Arklow Harbour is not connected to this ne…

While AI has many benefits for convenience, it is not a force for good, and therefore must be regulated, as Grok's widespread generation of sexually explicit images of children has proven. Grok is run by the platform of X and the European headquarters of X is just a 20-minute walk from this Chamber, so there is no excuse for the Government not to act immediately. While AI is a form of high-tech plagiarism, and certainly makes life easier in a range of areas, convenience generally comes at a price. It is a kind of T…

As the Minister of State knows well, County Wexford is experiencing a mental health crisis due to the lack of an acute mental health facility since the closure of St. Senan's psychiatric hospital in 2013. This facility served as the primary mental health institution in the region for over 150 years. There has been no replacement, meaning there is no acute mental health unit in Wexford. This is shocking in the context of the escalating mental health crisis we are witnessing nationwide. It is deeply troubling and lea…

I acknowledge what the local teams are doing. They are doing brilliant work at Tara House, Arden House and lots of other places. I am glad to hear that the Minister of State accepts that there are no acute beds in County Wexford and that she will look at that this year. I am just reflecting what every politician in Wexford is saying and what the people coming to me are saying. They are saying that the facility in Waterford is not appropriate. I am not disparaging the work that they are doing. They are doing brillia…

On a similar note, ba mhaith liom uasdátú ar Ghaelscoil an Inbhir Mhóir agus Gaelcholáiste na Mara. I would like an update on the commencement date for Gaelcholáiste na Mara and Ghaelscoil an Inbhir Mhóir. When will there be shovels in the ground for their new campus at Kilbride? I appreciate the Taoiseach might not have the answers now but I ask that he get them for me. Pupils in the schools have been 27 years in prefabs. I visited the school two years ago. I met sixth-year pupils who had been at the sod-turning c…

The single-use, flashy and flavoured disposable vapes that are targeting our children definitely need to be banned. However, the Government Bill only targets products which are being phased out anyway. Sinn Féin has been raising this issue for years. Ireland is years behind the curve in comparison with many countries. Vapes and nicotine pouches in particular pose a very serious health risk to children. My son is 13 years old and one in ten 13-year-olds has vaped. Their brains are still developing. We need to change…

The Government is very much out of step with the farmers in my constituency, Wicklow-Wexford, who marched in Athlone on Saturday. The Government could have stopped Mercosur but never made any effort to block it over the 25 years it was in the making. There was no real effort to reach out to other countries to form a blocking minority. Just before Christmas, Sinn Féin had a Private Members' Bill in the Chamber. Ministers refused to state then whether they were opposed to it. The eleventh-hour vote against the rotten…

The EU has failed Ireland's fishing industry repeatedly and we are once more paying the price for the chronic overfishing of shared stocks by big boats from third countries. The recent EU fisheries deal from Brussels is a betrayal of the fishing industry and has been described as catastrophic. We are talking about 2,300 community jobs in coastal communities, including in Arklow and Courtown, being in immediate danger. The Seafood Ireland Alliance has estimated a loss of €94 million to our fishing industry, with wid…

The CETA agreement is dangerous for Ireland and may even be worse than Mercosur. I do not believe it is in the interests of the Irish people. I urge the Government not to ratify it and, if necessary, to put it to the people to decide in a referendum. It undermines our sovereignty and, basically, our right to decide our own destiny. It risks entrenching the corporate power of billionaires over Irish democratic decision-making. I believe we must protect our people, not expose them to lawsuits from multinational billi…

This time last year I was still teaching special education, something I have done for many of my 34 years working as a primary school teacher. I have never seen the crisis of assessment of need as bad as it is at present, so much so that the inspirational 15-year-old Cara Darmody has felt forced to sleep outside the gates of this House once again on such a horrible winter's evening. In County Wicklow, which is in the CHO 6 area, we have been faced with massive numbers of children waiting for over a year to have the…

The Courtown-Arklow Coast Guard unit does incredible work on the Wicklow-Wexford coast and put their lives at risk to protect others. The least they deserve is proper and safe working conditions in a modern workplace in the form of a new Coast Guard station. A total of 23 men and woman had been working out of a 10 ft by 20 ft room in Courtown using the same sink for making tea and coffee as they do to wash up after an incident. They had no toilets, which is unbelievable. Thankfully, they have now been allowed to us…

Irish agriculture, public health and the environment cannot be sacrificed for the sake of Ursula von der Leyen selling more German cars in South America. The time has come for Government TDs from Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Independents to stand with farmers instead of speaking out of both sides of their mouths, running with the hare and pulling with the hound. We have a large farming community in south Wicklow and north Wexford the members of which know that this deal is not good for them. The negotiations have…

People in rural Ireland, such as in my own area of Wicklow-Wexford, need to use a car. They are particularly impacted by the rising cost of motoring. They are getting fleeced with fuel costs, rip-off insurance, which was just mentioned, parking charges and maintenance for service repairs including NCT, especially for those using rural back roads, which are in dire condition where I live. There are financing charges if they have a car loan, and then there is depreciation, with a car losing 15% to 35% of its value in…

I want to raise the 16-year-long injustice that has been inflicted on the Arklow fisherman, CJ Gaffney, and his family. They have lost everything. It is has been described as a life sentence. They have been 16 years campaigning for justice, compensation and improved safety standards for fishing vessels but mainly compensation. They have taken their battle to the Netherlands, Germany and Brussels, as the Tánaiste knows well. The EU has stated that there is a fund in place to compensate the family. I know the Tánaist…

The Government's policy to date in the area of IPAS processing and enforcement has been reckless, farcical and absurd. The State simply could not be bothered applying its own rules. The structures of Tusla have been a sham, which was something I highlighted at an Oireachtas committee meeting just weeks ago. Sadly, just a few days after that, we saw the end result of this reckless policy when a ten-year-old girl was raped or sexually assaulted by someone not even entitled to be here and for whom there was a deportat…

The Government caused the problem. The people need to direct their anger at that Government.

There is certainly a crisis in men's health and it is great that we are having this discussion today. It is quite an historic occasion. A recent report for the South East Technological University, SETU, revealed that 40% of male deaths that occurred before the age of 75 were premature and many were preventable. County Wexford ranks second in this State in terms of premature male mortality rates per county. This could affect someone's husband, brother, father, grandfather, uncle or nephew and, of course, me or anybo…

I wish to raise the issue of school funding, specifically regarding schools that have gained a new teaching post this year. Could the Tánaiste look into the specific case of Tinahely National School? I know he knows the area. Such schools were targeted for the new mainstream teacher grant of €9,200. The new school principal, Pádraig O'Connor, has been in regular contact with the Department but he cannot get an update on when the money will come through for furniture and ICT. I would really appreciate it if the Tána…

As the Minister and Ministers of State know, farmers are in intense crisis at the moment following two absolutely terrible years. Will the Government introduce a proper area-based payment tillage incentive scheme? Currently, the Government is giving €40 per acre whereas it needs to be at least €100 per acre or €250 per ha, as requested by the farming organisations that I have met with on a number of occasions. That needs to be done as a matter of urgency. Farmers are being fleeced. There are rising input costs, mac…

I received a lot of budget feedback in the Wicklow-Wexford constituency over the weekend. The general feeling was that ordinary working people had been left behind once again. They spoke of the proverbial squeezed middle or the new working poor. A common line from people was along the lines of how they had thought before the election that the Government would look after the working people but, sadly, they would now be better off not working. That is a shocking assessment. They spoke of how there was no increase in …