I am delighted to speak on statements on policing and community safety, but if we are to be serious about this the outcome has to be that people actually feel safe in their own local communities. Unfortunately, a lot of them do not. In 2007 John Fitzgerald produced a report that led to the Limerick regeneration programme. In that report he stated that we needed a minimum of 100 extra gardaí for the four regeneration areas. That never materialised and we have had problems since then. I put on record that the gardaí …

I raise the issue of vacant local authority homes, of which there are always thousands across the State. There are 200 of them in Limerick at the moment, and 200 is always the number of vacant houses there. These are local authority homes that, for whatever reason, are not in use. The process of local authorities applying for funding from central government needs to be changed and simplified, so these properties can be turned back into homes more quickly than they have been in the past. It is frustrating for people…

We need a commitment from the Government that the system will be changed whereby funding is given to local authorities to speed up the restoration of voids.

In a Dáil debate on 13 December 1977, the late Mick Lipper, a Deputy from Limerick, raised the issue of wandering horses in Limerick and asked what actions the then Minister for Justice would take regarding serious problems created by them. Here we are, 47 years later, talking about the same problems. At least 1,431 wandering or stray horses have been collected in Limerick city since 2015. Unfortunately, most seized before 2019 ended up being euthanised. Horses collected since then have been rehomed by horse welfar…

I thank the Minister of State for his response and understanding of the issue. He did not get to it in his speech, but I am glad he mentioned the ongoing project in Moyross, which does good work in that area. However, it is only a drop in the ocean in dealing with the issue. Wandering, unkept and uncared-for horses have been a plague on working-class areas of Limerick for decades, as I said. I mentioned the late former Deputy Mick Lipper, who raised this issue as far back as 1977. Regretfully, despite additional le…

That is not true.

It will come as no surprise to the Taoiseach that I wish to raise the ongoing crisis in University Hospital Limerick. As we sit here, 113 people are on trolleys there. These are people who were assessed as in need of a bed but no bed was available for them. The trolley crisis at University Hospital Limerick continues to impact patient safety and well-being, as the Minister is well aware. Already this year, we have had 3,392 people treated in this manner. It is totally unacceptable. It is not fair on them and their …

I wish the Minister of State the best in her new role. I hope she and the Government will treat mental health as a priority. I think all of us in this Chamber are agreed that a lot of work needs to be done. A person’s mental health is as important as their physical health. If a person is disabled in one aspect of their health, then it will have an impact on the other aspects unless the condition can be treated quickly. We all know that. I am sure all Deputies will agree that, too often, there are significant delays…

I thank the Labour Party for tabling this important Private Members' motion. Housing is the number one issue that we all deal with every day. Any of us who has a constituency office knows the stress, trauma and disaster that has been forced on the people of our country. It has been an absolute nightmare. When I was first elected in 2016, along with University Hospital Limerick, housing was the number one issue that was raised. People constantly raised the lack of affordable housing, the cost of housing, the cost of…

As this is my first time speaking in this new Dáil, I want to thank the people in Limerick who elected me for a third time. I thank my family and friends and those who campaigned and supported me in that, whether they gave me their first preference or a different preference. "Go raibh maith agat" to everybody for sending me back here for a third time. On health, the programme for Government is the same rehash of undelivered old commitments and contains no solutions for the daily crisis we encounter in University Ho…

Over the past number of months, there has been a growing number of violent fire bomb attacks and incidents in Limerick city, particularly in the Garryowen, Ballinacurra Weston and South Hill areas of the city. On Sunday night, a man was injured by a petrol bomb thrown at a house. On Sunday morning, the emergency services attended another fire bomb in the city; a woman was treated for injuries sustained in that incident. This followed the discovery of a suspected explosive device and the torching of cars previously.…

I thank the Office of Parliamentary Legal Advisers, OPLA, and the Bills Office for their assistance with the Bill, as well as Lee Daly in Deputy Daly's office and Tony Loughran in my office for their work on the Bill as well. The ability to repair a product is crucial to consumers, who are increasingly expected to replace products where a fault occurs. We have in many cases lost the ability to repair products, or have them repaired, by ourselves. Much of what we produce becomes redundant quickly and ends up in recy…

As the Minister knows, Simon Communities today released its quarterly report, Locked Out of the Market, on the experience of people on low incomes and those relying on HAP in accessing the housing market. We did not have to see this report to know that in Limerick city, where I live, no properties are available to rent under the HAP scheme. The report found that 12 of the 16 areas analysed had no properties to rent within either the standard or discretionary limits. That highlights an issue I raised in the Dáil las…

The issue of homelessness in Limerick has never been so bad. There is a complete absence of available emergency accommodation for those who desperately need it. Homeless service providers have spoken to me, as they do on a regular basis, to say there simply are not nearly enough beds available in the city. On any given evening, there can be up to 70 people sleeping rough. This part of Limerick has no emergency accommodation available for them. The monthly Department of housing figures, although an incomplete measur…

It clearly is not working.

It is not working.

It is not working.

So the Tánaiste will not-----

Unfairness was at the heart of this budget. Once-off gesture measures cannot mask that fact. The choice was made by the Government parties and is not the choice that we in Sinn Féin would have made. The Government opted, in this and previous budgets, to give significantly more benefit to higher earners than to those workers and families who have been most impacted by the ongoing cost-of-living crisis faced by so many of our people. Significant tax relief has been provided to high earners including further tax relie…

Then there are the bike shed, the security hut and €9 million for pouches, not to mention the children's hospital. The Government parties are serial wasters.