I welcome the announcement of the second vaping Bill, in particular the piece around prohibiting the sale of nicotine-consumption products such as pouches to under-18s and the piece around advertising. It is targeted at children. The bubblegum flavours and advertising target children in an aggressive way. I support limiting the flavours as well. As I said earlier, I was talking to some teenagers and they spoke of the use of vapes among fourth, fifth and sixth class students in primary schools. In a secondary school…

I move: That Dáil Éireann: recognises that: — access to timely General Practitioner (GP) care is a fundamental pillar of a safe, effective and equitable health service; — GPs play a vital role in our health service, managing the majority of people's medical care needs, and acting as the first point of medical contact for most patients; — GPs provide a core leadership role in delivering care outside of the hospital setting, and are central to the provision of Sláintecare's new model of integrated, multidisciplinary …

I thank Deputies from across the House for their support for the motion. GP services need more than a quick fix; they need an overhaul. This morning's debate makes that clear. I also thank those we engaged with on this motion: Deep End Ireland, the IMO, the Irish General Practice Nurses Educational Association and Doctors for Universal Healthcare, all of whom we met to discuss these proposals. I also thank the Rural, Island and Dispensing Doctors and the Irish College of GPs, whose research has informed the plan we…

Successive Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael Governments have been talking about reforming GP services for years but have failed to deliver. The Government's strategic review of GP services, first promised in 2019, still has not been completed. During that time GP fees have risen to as high as €90 in some areas, and that is just to get in the door. Price, however, is not the only barrier. An increasing number of GP practices are oversubscribed and understaffed. We know there are no quick fixes. That is why the Social Democ…

To under-eights.

Last night's "RTÉ Investigates" made for harrowing viewing. We saw people with severe and enduring mental health difficulties being subjected to degrading treatment and even dying in custody. Such was the tragic case of Ivan Rosney. These vulnerable people require care and compassion, not cold prison cells. Last October, I visited Cork Prison. As a result of what I saw, I started asking questions. At the end of January, figures provided to me showed that 38 people are being held in prison waiting to be transferred …

Fifty beds.

This weekend the Social Democrats will hold our party conference in Cork, which is a city starved of Government investment. The people of Cork have been long promised light rail but not a single penny has been provided under the new transport plan. However, that is not the only broken promise. We have no BusConnects; no new dental school; no business school; no safe injection facility; no new homeless hub; and no new library. The most notorious example is the failure to build the Cork events centre. Ten years ago, …

It was not used.

This week the Minister for education announced extra time will be granted to secondary school students with dyslexia and other and other visual and physical disabilities in their junior and leaving certificate exams but it comes with a catch - it is only ten minutes per exam. I accept ten minutes is better than nothing but it falls far short of what these students require and deserve. It is nowhere near what third level students get. The minimum dyslexic third level students get is an extra ten minutes per hour whi…

It is deeply disappointing that the Government is opposing this motion and I think there are people with disabilities across the country who are going to be very disappointed as well. Our contributions are not alarmist; they are grounded in evidence and research. We know that the annual cost of living with disability is estimated at between €10,000 and €15,000. According to the ESRI, there is a weekly cost of between €488 and €555. A household with a disabled member needs an income that is 52% to 59% greater after …

Around the world, LGBT+ people remain under continuous attack. In December alone, Kazakhstan's senate approved a ban on so-called gay propaganda, which basically amounts to blocking any information on the LGBT community. In Türkiye, a court shut down an LGBT youth organisation for supposedly encouraging people to be lesbian, gay or bisexual, while in Budapest the police have recommended pressing charges against the mayor for simply organising a Pride parade. These incidents cannot be viewed in isolation. They are p…

I move: That Dáil Éireann shall take note of the Report of the Joint Committee on Health entitled "Report on Pre-Legislative Scrutiny of the Health (Assisted Human Reproduction) (Amendment) Bill", copies of which were laid before Dáil Éireann on 9th October, 2025. Tonight we are debating a report published by the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Health. This was a report we worked on last summer across the committee as a pre-legislative scrutiny report on the forthcoming Health (Assisted Human Reproduction) (Amendment…

I thank the Ceann Comhairle and the Minister of State. I really welcome the remark that many of the recommendations will be included and reflected in the legislation when it is finally published. That is very welcome. I will be glad to report back to the rest of the committee on that. That is great to see. What is missing, and I think the Minister of State would agree, is clarity on the timeline here. When we engaged with the Minister over the summer there was pressure for us to progress our engagement on this issu…

I said "nearly". It has been quite a low output-----

How many Bills were passed?

Absolutely, and we had an argument about that because we thought it should have been dealt with at the health committee and that it did not need the floor of the Dáil to do it. All of the legislation could have been progressed. I had a look back over the historical span of the number of Bills passed. In some years in this Oireachtas we had 45, 50, or 60 Bills passed.

There is a low level of legislative output and it is frustrating that we have not seen this Bill passed, and other areas. Law reform is needed in lots of other areas. We were talking yesterday about vapes and other areas. There is a need for law reform and we would like to see some of that progressed, including this Bill. As I said, it is crucially important. As Deputy Sherlock said, there is a diversity of families who are affected but there is an area of work already done around LGBT families. We passed the marri…

The special leave with pay scheme for healthcare workers with long Covid is going to end in two weeks' time unless the Taoiseach intervenes. This scheme is in place for a small group of healthcare workers - the majority being women - many of whom got badly infected while at work at the height of the Covid pandemic, when the rest of us were at home and long before PPE and vaccines. These workers got very sick with long Covid as a result and many are physically unable to return to work. Today, the health committee I …

The Social Democrats welcome this long-overdue legislation to ban single-use vapes. However, I do have some outstanding concerns about the Government's plans. The first relates to the Minister's piecemeal approach to regulating vapes. We are still waiting for legislation on packaging, advertising, flavours and other products such as nicotine pouches. Second, I have real concerns about the strength of the legislation. From my reading of the Bill, it may be outdated before it even gets onto the Statute Book. In Octob…