The Minister met with families of the Owenacurra health facility in Midleton, County Cork, and he is aware of that situation. The needs of some 400 people have not been met in the past two years because of two short-term respite beds. The Committee on Health and the Sub-Committee on Mental Health have called for the reversal of the HSE's decision to close the centre. I ask the Minister to go back to the Ministers to tell the HSE to reverse that situation. Last Saturday night, a woman who was refused services slept …

It is very simple. Just ask them to reverse it and provide the services the HSE has failed to provide.

I thank the Minister of State for his ten minutes this morning. This is black and white. What I want to raise probably goes back to late June of last year with the closure of the Owenacurra health centre in Midleton and the short-term and long-term respite beds. I want to raise the fact that even when that centre was open pre-Covid and we had the short-term beds, on average, approximately 208 people per year used those two separate beds. That obviously closed with Covid-19. Since we have come out of the pandemic, h…

The Minister of State is correct. My question related to respite.

I thank the Minister of State. As I said, this matter was not intended as a trick question but rather was intended to highlight the lack of respite care and the difficulties for all sectors in east Cork. I welcome the fact the Minister of State mentioned the Cope Foundation and the services it provides, which are only down the road from me. In some ways, it is like the council waiting lists for housing, whereby someone might have been approved for a four-bedroom house and be excited and delighted but there may not …

I raise the lack of secondary school places, especially in Midleton. I acknowledge the Carrigtohill campus is going ahead but I was made aware the Minister for Education had turned to asking the additional schools to open additional classes last year. I ask the Taoiseach if there are any plans to build another secondary school in Midleton.

I thank the Minister of State for her reply. I have listened to all the previous speakers. In CHO 4, 5,472 are waiting for speech and language therapy, occupational therapy and physiotherapy. That does not make for good reading. The Minister of State asked for more ideas. I have experience of cases involving young families who spent four or five years in the courts trying to get proper care. I call on the State and the HSE to stop using State solicitors and public money to fight families in appeal cases. That pract…

I thank the Independent Group for bringing the motion forward today. It is nice to have a commonsense approach. It is the Irish way here to try to fix something that is not broken. It beggars belief that we could have a private company doing this because 99% of the time privatisation equals profit; it is not about providing proper service. As previous speakers have mentioned, there are 950 post offices in the country. It beggars belief that we are in here talking about this and trying to reverse something that coul…

I thank the Minister for his opening remarks. This is a fairly in-depth Bill. I thank everyone who was involved in this process. I have spoken in the Chamber many times. Sometimes we can work together and achieve great things. We are going in the right direction but, unfortunately, what happened in the past has brought us to where we are now. Nearly 30 years ago, I worked with my dad. We worked on headstones, dug graves and whatever else. I remember exhuming 92 people from a convent graveyard a number of years ago.…

I wish to flag an issue that has arisen since we came out of the pandemic. Many elderly people's medical cards have expired. These are full medical cards but when those people go through the process of getting them reissued, they are being issued with GP visit cards only. Those people were eligible for full medical cards before the arrival of Covid-19 but now they have expired, the Department is putting savage stress and anxiety on these people because all they are getting now are GP visit cards. Why is that happen…

I have a number of examples. I will go to the Department with them.

I thank the Minister for taking the time this morning to take these questions. It is a Cork thing this morning, for some reason. In 2019 there was a chemical explosion in a factory in Cork. It is well documented. It was documented by the Irish Examiner . A protected disclosure was lodged. Obviously there is a health and safety procedure and it went to the Health and Safety Authority, HSA. It was the first time I worked on a protected disclosure where it went all the way up to the top and came back down to say the i…

I thank the Minister very much for his response. It is not too often we get excited in here. We usually get heated rather than excited. However, as Deputy Mairéad Farrell has said, we can work together to make the Protected Disclosures (Amendment) Bill 2022 the gold standard. It is about protecting people. I welcome the fact that the Minister has said he is looking at existing cases because we do not want them to get lost and not be looked after. The reversal of the burden of proof is a game changer because most of…

I listened to the Minister of State's statement in which she spoke about root and branch change. Certainly, that must happen. When I was listening to the other speakers the question of the definition of disability and how we describe it came into my head. It is quite a pertinent question. We have mentioned many other issues people have that do not fall under its remit at present. It is very worrying. It also requires the involvement of all stakeholders. That goes back to my opening remark about root and branch chan…

I thank Deputy Mairéad Farrell for her opening remarks. I also thank Minister for his opening remarks because while we will not always agree, we can agree to disagree. I welcome the establishment of a new office but it needs teeth and adequate resources. Obviously, that can be chiselled out. There are some problematic sections including the exemption for smaller companies with fewer than 50 employees, which has already been mentioned. That will have to be teased out on Committee Stage. The problem at the moment is …

There could be a lucky dip.

We are back again. I am delighted to speak on this and thank Deputies Ward and Daly for bringing this motion forward. It was said already there are 71,000 children waiting for life-changing treatment, including 19,000 who are waiting for more than 12 months for occupational therapy, psychotherapy, speech and language therapy and many more mental health services. I do not know when the Government is actually going to get it into its head that everybody within the mental health services must be supported. That includ…

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this topic. The report on the look-back review into CAMHS services in south Kerry is a damning one on a disgraceful situation. I commend the whistleblower on coming forward and on what that has done. We would not do what was done here to animals, and that is being honest. I also bring another situation in the youth mental health services to the attention of the Minister of State. If children have autism and mental health issues, there is nothing in this country to help them. Th…

I welcome the opportunity to speak. I thank the Minister for being here at this ungodly hour. She is well aware of the issue with the Carrigtohill Community College campus. I will always give credit where credit is due. The issues were not the fault of the Department. There were many issues with the planning and mistakes were made. I also want to acknowledge that a temporary campus was set up in Fota Park. In early December, children from Carrigtohill village were trying to walk and cycle to the temporary campus. S…

I welcome the Minister's reply. That this is the largest single school building project ever undertaken by the Department shows that the population of east Cork is absolutely ballooning and is also set to balloon in the next ten years. I wanted to raise the matter because we are at maximum capacity in other areas. In Midleton, St. Mary's High School has major capacity issues. There is a necessity for all of this. As I said at the outset, this is about getting clarity. I welcome the urgency on this. Despite the hicc…