People in Ireland are tired of the dire state of the public services that they rely on. Since the days of austerity, funding has been whittled away, and in many areas we are left with hollowed-out services. Nowhere can this be seen more than in our health service. We are told of all the extra money that the Government is throwing at it, when really, we are standing still when it comes to services. Waiting lists continue to climb, overcrowding continues to worsen and the National Ambulance Service and emergency serv…

We saw how crack cocaine hollowed out inner cities in America. Unfortunately, we are starting to see it happening in Ireland. Crack cocaine has the potential to destroy individuals and their families but it also puts enormous pressure on communities. The Tallaght drugs and alcohol task force, which also covers Whitechurch, serves a catchment area containing twice as many people and it does so with less money than it had ten years ago. That is not acceptable. The levels of intimidation relating to drugs are up. Ther…

As my colleague said, what the Minister of State announced is clearly not enough. We explained to her that crack cocaine has been a game changer in our community. We are looking for help and support. As others have said, this is an intergenerational issue. We are still dealing with stuff from the late 1980s and the 1990s and now, in the 2020s, we have this latest problem. It is a major challenge. I do not know if it will shock the Minister of State, but I know of families where grandparents, parents and their child…

The debt of gratitude we owe our front-line healthcare workers is immeasurable. The sacrifices made were immense and the cost has been great. These are people who went into work at a time of great danger, not knowing what they might be exposed to or bring home to their families. This was all done against the backdrop of understaffing and underinvestment by successive Governments, leading to low morale in the health service. Almost 30,000 healthcare workers have contracted Covid-19 in their attempts to help those af…

The programme for Government rightly lauds the important work local drugs task forces do, but nowhere does it mention giving a pay rise to section 39 workers, who have not seen an increase in more than ten years, or address the cuts over that period. Does the Government intend to rectify this and stop the flood of fully qualified addiction counsellors and other personnel moving to the private sector? The issue is outstanding and this needs to be dealt with. They carry out really important work in our communities. W…

It has been ten years. It is unacceptable.

There is common agreement that our childcare system is not fit for purpose. Fees are too high and wages are too low. Childcare in my constituency costs, on average, €217 per week or €870 per month, but costs can be higher or lower in one part of the constituency as compared with another. As stated, childcare costs are equal to that of a mortgage. This motion is about giving families a break. Childcare fees for parents in this State are among the highest in the world. However, early years workers, who are highly qua…

Ireland is in an unenviable position of relying on Fianna Fáil to fix the housing crisis that many believe it created. Does anyone really believe the architects of the recession, who drove us off the cliff, will fix the housing crisis? Like every housing plan we have seen from Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, it is a developers' charter that will pour even more money into the pockets of developers and speculators. There are no plans to stop the few homes that will be built being hoovered up by vulture funds and cuckoo fu…

I listened to the Minister earlier and I think the biggest challenge he faces is that no one believes him. I am not talking about people on these benches; I think the people who are on the waiting lists do not believe him. We have a broken health system, and that is a big problem. We heard the numbers earlier: 900,000 of our citizens are on waiting lists. That is a staggering statistic. One in five people is on a waiting list for some form of healthcare. There are 36,000 people on the outpatient waiting list of Tal…

I come to this debate very frustrated but hopeful the issue can be progressed. I look forward to the rest of the debate, and no doubt I will hear stories from various Deputies. The misuse of quads and scrambler bikes in our public spaces is a problem stretching back years, as we heard from the previous speaker. From the dangers posed to both untrained users and pedestrians to the scars left on our parks and playing pitches, the difficulties presented by these noisy death traps are immense. Over the years, I, like o…

I was watching "Reeling in the Years" during the week. For some of us of a certain age it helps to jog our memory. The year in question was 1966, which was a momentous year. It was the 50th anniversary of the 1916 Rising. Nelson's Pillar was blown up. There was also a segment in the programme where a young Cathal O'Shannon spoke about the difficulties young couples were finding in buying affordable housing. They were talking in terms of thousands of pounds that people had to come up with at that time. The differenc…

Regarding independent living, we are all familiar with the delays in accessing essential housing adaptation grants and works for people with disabilities. A constituent contacted me recently who had applied for a mobility scooter, as it had become increasingly difficult for him to leave his home unaided. He was told there is a waiting time of at least eight months. This man is now worried that he will, in essence, be made a prisoner in his own home without any ability to leave it. He is on oxygen. Will the Taoiseac…

The Government intends to raise the pension age to 67 from next year. Forcing people to work for years longer when they were planning and expecting to retire is wrong. It is even more wrong because those of us in this Parliament who are making these decisions and forcing them on people are not being asked to do the same. In 2028, the Government intends to raise the pension age to 68. This has been met with widespread opposition from trade unions and the wider workforce. My union, SIPTU, launched its Stop67 campaign…

I was recently informed by the HSE that in CHO 7, which includes my constituency, Dublin South-West, the waiting time for speech and language therapy was at 38 months. Occupational therapy was at 27 months and a psychological assessment was 32 months. The Tánaiste will probably recall that I raised this issue in the previous Dáil and in this Dáil. We appear to have a broken system with regard to speech and language therapy in CHO 7. In the last Dáil, I was told that key personnel were missing and so on. Is the Tána…

The European Parliament agreed a position on the digital green certificate in April. The Oireachtas health committee asked for a technical briefing on how this legislation would impact on both domestic and foreign restrictions. We were told this week that we would not get a briefing. The committee had planned to meet on the week we are supposedly off. The cyberattack is obviously a problem that the Department of Health and the HSE will be dealing with for some weeks, but it has not stopped health legislation being …

Almost 50 years ago, the parachute regiment murdered 11 people in Ballymurphy estate in Belfast. For 50 years, the families of those murdered by British soldiers have fought for truth and justice. It has taken almost 50 years to prove that every one of the victims was an innocent civilian killed as an oppressive state's forces swept through the North, interning Catholic men of all ages without trial and without any cause bar where they lived. The truth has now been laid bare for all to see. It has been many years s…

For the first time in history, we fully understand the damage that human beings are doing to our planet. Our planet is burning and this is probably the last opportunity we will have to put things right. It is heating up. Sea ice and glaciers are melting, animal habitats are disappearing and time is running out. Human beings are responsible for the greatest level of extinction since the most recent ice age. We need to act now because once we tip the balance, we will not get a second chance. It is already too late fo…

Good on the Deputy.

Successive Governments and local authorities have appalling records of preserving our heritage. From Georgian Dublin to the cottages of the west, we are more than happy to allow developers to buy up whatever artefacts of our history they like and then tear them down with JCBs. We saw that most recently with the house of The O'Rahilly, which was pulled down to make way for a hotel. Will we see the same happen with the Markievicz cottage in Sandyford? Will that other link to 1916 be demolished and turned into a moder…

My constituents should be able to go to their local shop to buy a newspaper or a pint of milk without having to pass through a gang of drug dealers. They should be able to go to their local medical centre without having to witness drug dealers buying or selling drug prescriptions from patients leaving the doctor's surgery. They should be able to go to their local post office without having to witness the drug dealers handing out children's allowance books to mothers who supposedly have a drug debt. The mothers coll…