Brian Stanley
Laois · Independent · Ireland
“We are going through an epidemic of domestic abuse and violence. In 2025, the Garda had over 67,000 calls in relation to domestic abuse. Seven women were murdered last year, and in many of those cases, it was by a family member, a partner or somebody known closely to the victim.”
“Those fundamentals cannot be ignored. Are supporters of partition really saying that we can continue on this small island with 14 different departments in each jurisdiction working back to back, often in competition with each other? Are they saying that having Twenty-six Counties in the EU and Six Counties out of it makes economic sense?”
“Those who still argue for partition ignore the fact that in a reunified 32-county state, the pension liabilities of those workers in the Six Counties who accrued pension entitlements by paying into the British national insurance system and the British exchequer or employment pensions would receive that portion of their pension liability.”
“Unfortunately, I do not get any sense of urgency from the Minister of State that we are going to have laws introduced in September or October, and that is the crucial issue. Yes, we have rules now, and she listed them out in relation to the signs. However, they are being ignored.”
“The cost is €2.6 billion for the diplomatic mission alone. There is also MI6 and the massive military machine and capacity, including the army, the navy and the Royal Air Force. I saw a figure of €60.2 billion for 2025 and 2026. That amount is due to rise sharply to meet its increased military capabilities.”
“The issue I am raising with the Minister of State is the increase in the number of injuries, including those involving young children, relating to e-scooters and e-bikes. Ten have been killed.”
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“The Government and Department must provide a greater share of the cost of relets; €11,000 is not sufficient. We simply cannot have homes boarded up in the middle of a housing crisis. It is not on. This is no longer sustainable.”
“It works out at around €17,000 or €18,000 compared with the average across the State of more than €28,000. Relet grants from the Department are just €11,000. The Department only funded 40 of the 80 relets in Laois last year. That slows down reletting, along with the stop-start nature of the funding in how it is released by the Department. Boarded-up homes have a negative impact on local communities, not to mention the families desperately waiting for them. All local authorities should have a dedicated relet team made up of direct labour and use it where possible. It cannot be used all the time but it should be where possible. The Department and the Government cannot have a stop-start funding programme for relets. It has to be moving all the time.”
“I understand that contractors have to be used in certain cases, but when we are totally reliant on them, it causes delays and drives up costs. Laois County Council has started using direct labour. It set up a dedicated reletting team of internal tradesmen and general workers. It is a small county with a small budget but it has a team doing that. It is speeding up delivery of relets. Reletting times are now three months and less. It has also proven to be more cost-effective. Out of a stock of 2,500 homes, fewer than 30 are empty at any given time. It would be better if it was even fewer than that. Eighty homes were relet last year in the county but only half received money from the Department. The average cost of relets in Laois is less than the State average.”
“Having vacant homes in the middle of a housing crisis is a scandal, particularly when they are local authority houses. There are more than 2,700 vacant at the moment. A third have been vacant for more than a year. This is simply not on. Reletting times average more than eight months and are much more in many cases. The cost of preparing a home for reletting has increased in five years by almost €10,000 per unit. It is now more than €28,000. I want to give the Minister of State the message - if he looks around at vacant houses in Limerick, he will see it himself - that the longer a home is vacant, the more it deteriorates and it becomes subject to vandalism, and this causes problems. The quicker they are reletted, the cheaper it is to do it. One problem is over-reliance on private contractors.”
“They will owe so much in rent landlords will be able to get them out. Once they are free that is another group of houses and flats where rents can be increased. This is a recipe for chaos for families and workers.”
“Between 2016 and 2022 it went up by 45,000 and the evidence since, as I understand it, shows that as well. The commission report set out a need for reference rents, which the Government ignored. They would be based on location, family size – I raised it with commission members again today at the committee to clarify what they were saying – and the average rent in the area and it would be just index-linked increases. The energy rating would be counted as well. That at least was some kind of half-decent proposal. What we have instead is what has been set out by the Government today. What will happen is rents will be driven up way beyond what ordinary families can afford. There will not be no-fault evictions, but there will be so-called fault evictions because people will not be able to pay the rent.”
“When all those tenancies change over it is a free-for-all in terms of what landlords can do with the rents. The Daft report last year showed Laois had the fastest increase in rents outside Dublin. Those renting a house or apartment are being told by some there is a problem with profitability. Pull the other one. There is nobody who really believes that. The charging of rents of up to €3,000 within the Pale and over €2,000 outside the Pale means huge profits are being made. That is €36,000 per year in rent alone for a bog standard house. Families and workers who are on €400 to €700 per week simply cannot afford that. One week’s pay is completely wiped out. There is a myth as well that the number of units is decreasing, but it has increased.”
“There are a lot of things I could say about housing, but because of the announcement from Government I feel compelled to comment on the new rent proposals. The new restrictions, such as they are, or rather the changes, will mean there are no controls for new builds and no controls for new tenancies when tenants change. This is going to drive up already sky-high rents. This is really going to increase them further. They are going way beyond what ordinary people can afford. Most tenancies end voluntarily. People move on. They get housed by a local authority, purchase a house, move to new rental accommodation or they have to go to a larger house because of family size. The other side of that is people downsizing, and then some people are just emigrating because they are giving up.”
“Great credit is due to the family. I urge the Tánaiste to throw everything he can at North-South meetings and intergovernmental conferences. Will he confirm whether the Taoiseach has taken it up with Keir Starmer? We do have proper relations between Great Britain and Ireland with the new British Government, which is welcome. It is better than it was. A number of matters are now being dealt with that had not been dealt with for a number of years.”
“I am happy to hear about the Tánaiste's engagements on this issue. I mentioned that Sean Brown had a great reputation locally as a hard-working member of the local community and throughout the country with regard to the GAA. I commend the GAA on taking up this issue and the thousands of people who filled the roads and streets around Bellaghy in recent weeks. There was evidence of collusion. He was abducted and carried in a convoy that passed under cameras at Toomebridge RUC station. This fits in with the British counterinsurgency strategy that was set out by Frank Kitson 30 years earlier. It is sad to say that. It was the tail end of it. You were put up against the Good Friday Agreement. It was a clear strategy to lower the demands of the nationalist community. It would carry out these actions but keep them at arm's length.”
“What pressure has been put on the British Government regarding a public inquiry into the murder of Sean Brown, a GAA official, on 19 April 1997 at Drumanee Road in Bellaghy when he was closing the GAA club? This was a hard-working member of the local community who had done significant voluntary work on behalf of the GAA and in the community and was highly respected. I know from people living on Drumanee Road at the time that there was shock and horror in that area and the wider Bellaghy area at what happened.”
“Solicitors and barristers differ but, my God, the level of death and destruction is absolutely horrific. I think we are all agreed on that. I have never seen anything like it. Will the Tánaiste clarify what he said? I apologise but my hearing is not 100%.”
“My hearing is not 100%. I wanted to ask about the Tánaiste's conversation with Senator Black and the tail end of that. I am not trying to be awkward but would he mind repeating that again, please? I was not able to pick up correctly what he was saying. There are obviously different opinions out there and different legal opinion. This crisis puts a weight on us and many people are depending on us as a neutral company to act and show an example. The Palestinian ambassador will tell the Tánaiste this. People out in the street tell me this the whole time. People walking by Leinster House tell me. People on the streets down in County Laois tell me the whole time that we need to be doing more than we are. The old saying is that doctors differ and patients die.”
“The ICJ ruling is clear as far as I am concerned. There is an obligation on us. We must do everything we can. It may not have a huge effect because the amount of trade is limited but look at what happened when the Dunnes Stores workers stopped selling South African fruit. Look at what that snowballed into. It brought apartheid down, or helped to bring it down.”
“On a daily basis, we are seeing the latest version of the absolute horrors visited on Palestinians and the sheer loss of life. The estimates for those who are missing and crushed under buildings escalates every day. There is bombing of hospitals, schools, clinics and homes and the total destruction of Gaza and its infrastructure, roads, wastewater plants and everything else. It is clear what the Israeli game plan is here. It is the fragmentation and occupation of the West Bank. The news today was an escalation and expansion of that. It is clear that this is about wiping out not just the Palestinian state, but the Palestinian people. I appeal to the Tánaiste to have this Bill brought forward as quickly as possible and to include services in it. Services are estimated to account for 70% of trade.”
“The delays are causing risk of further flooding. People are terrified of further flooding and rising costs. Does the Minister of State remember Mountmellick being talked about? The figure for that was between €3 million and €4 million. We are now looking at €17 million as the current estimates are from €15 million to €17 million. Will the Minister of State clarify that the money will be provided for Mountmellick and Portarlington? It has been approved already for Clonaslee, which I welcome. As regards the issue of insurance, where a successful scheme is in place, there should be no barrier to getting insurance and there should not be escalating insurance costs. The Government needs to engage directly with the insurance companies on that.”
“- and the design is substantially completed, but it has other stages to go through. Costs are estimated to be in excess of €15 million. I am told, however, that that will take another seven years to go through planning and construction, so that will be 15 years from 2017 before it will be finished. That is just too long. The schemes are too slow. Thirteen or 15 years as a best-case scenario is just way too long. The one message I hear from local authority officials in a number of counties is that the Department needs to give more decision-making powers to the county councils. There are executive engineers and senior executive engineers. They are all qualified people. Having archaeological reports, hydrology reports and environmental and ecology reports all going to An Bord Pleanála slows the process.”
“That scheme is with the OPW seeking permission to go to planning and An Bord Pleanála. There are particular issues in the Derrycloney area. Residents are concerned about unintended consequences of water being moved from one place to another but the council is to come back there with an update, a report, to those residents within six weeks. The cost of the scheme is expected to be between €15 million and €17 million. Hundreds of houses will be protected when the scheme is in place but, again, it is just way too long. As regards the timeline there, again, you are talking about 15 years in that case before the scheme will be completed. In the case of Portarlington, there was flooding in 2017. The surveys are done, the council is progressing its work as quickly as it can - environmental studies, surveys, etc.”
“There are three flood relief schemes in Laois, in Clonaslee, Mountmellick and Portarlington. I welcome that they are progressing and I hope the Minister of State puts some fire under them, but the facts are that the schemes and the processes are too slow. I welcome that money was approved recently for the Clonaslee scheme. The council has approval to go to planning there with the OPW for that, and that is to be lodged with An Bord Pleanála very soon, but that could take a year and then a further three years to build. The area was flooded in 2017. That would mean 12 years, assuming everything goes right, to complete the scheme. It is just too long. As regards the Mountmellick scheme, the Minister of State saw the properties in Mountmellick that were flooded when he visited the area. Again, there was flooding in November 2017.”
“As for this thing in Irish law - an Irish solution - that you can join a trade union, it is very difficult to join a trade union in many places of employment or companies in the State. It is little use being in a union if you do not have a right to be represented by that union. In the private sector, we must change the dial that where there are more than ten workers in a company, they have a right to combine to be represented. Many good employers do that, and that is fine, but we need to look for that to be an absolute right in law in the State. I urge the Minister and the Department to go further with this.”
“Imagine telling members of IBEC, ISME or any of them that they had to come to us individually and we would not talk to their representatives. There would be a huge hullabaloo in this House and everywhere else over it, including across the media. I welcome the Bill and I broadly support it, but the issue of trade union membership, which is in the programme for Government this time round, needs to be advanced. Workers, particularly low-paid workers, are at the bottom rung of the ladder and the only protection they have is in combination. It is a basic right. We are lagging way behind the rest of Europe with this. We must give workers the right to be represented by a trade union.”
“We also have the promotion of a mé féin culture in society generally that we can all do these things on our own, but we cannot. They only strength that workers have is in combination. There is no legal right to collective bargaining and no legal right to join a trade union. Here is another example of it. While the Minister says in the scheme that a trade union can get involved on behalf of the workers, the majority of workers will not be represented by a trade union. I hope that changes, but imagine if hauliers, for example, were told that they could not combine and make their case collectively, which they do and I recognise is their right to do, or if chambers of commerce members were told that they could not combine into a chamber of commerce and make their case to the local authority or Government.”
“It is important that the pension scheme be advanced. The Minister mentioned that a trade union official could make the case on behalf of the workers but the majority of workers in the private sector are not represented by a trade union. The percentage of workers in the private sector that are represented by a trade union is at an all-time low compared to the 1970s and 1980s. We need to look at why this is the case. There are a number of reasons. The fact is that many employers, albeit not all of them, are making it difficult for workers to join a trade union. Workers are targeted when they try to join a trade union. Some of them wind up losing their jobs. They wind up being bullied out and targeted and all sorts of tricks are played on them to make life difficult for them.”
“The cost of living here is very high compared to other EU countries. Auto-enrolment in pension schemes is being delayed again. We have a large group of workers who are heading for pension age for whom the only pension entitlements will be the State pension. An increasing number of those workers will be in private rented accommodation. They will be in a real fix because private rented accommodation will be totally unaffordable for pensioners. I have already dealt with a couple of cases where pensioners were living in private rented accommodation and the State pension alone did not cover it. In one case I dealt with, the person had an employment pension and the State pension. That individual struggled, but managed to keep going until being housed by the local authority, but many employees and former employees will not have that.”
“The Debenhams case was a classic case where there were over 1,000 workers but there have been many lesser-known cases where people have lost their jobs. The employer did not formerly wind up the business and did not formally cease trading, and company loyalty - people having given decades of work and service to a company - seemed to count for nothing. In some cases, the employers magically spring up under another company name within a very short period of time and seem to be flying it again, which is always disappointing, whereas the workers, who have worked for maybe two, three or four decades with a company, are left high and dry. There is more work to be done in terms of workers' rights. We need to get to a living wage in this country. We have a minimum wage but we need to go further on that.”
“I welcome the closing of a gap in the scheme to ensure that employees of former sole traders in insolvency arrangements as defined in the Personal Insolvency Act 2012 will now be covered by the scheme; the amending of the Employment Equality Act 1998 to ensure that any court awards for gender discrimination are covered by the scheme as well; and the updating of how the salary limit is applied to all payments. I broadly welcome the Bill but there are some changes I will be looking for. It is important that we protect workers. Some progress has been made. I acknowledge any time there is progress made but we have had situations where many workers have lost out. It has typically been low-paid workers.”
“I welcome the new process for the applicants to have the employer deemed insolvent where the employer ceases trading without going through the formal wind-up. They can claim under the insolvency payments scheme. The Bill also provides a time-limited application window to cover the historical cases impacted by the Supreme Court judgment, covering the period from 1983 up to whenever we enact the Bill. However, the employees only have two years to make the application. I would ask for that to be extended given that some employees who are affected by this are advanced in years now. Some of them may have emigrated, as mentioned by Deputy Healy.”
“There is a request from the largest union in the State, SIPTU, that it be extended from two years to six years. I would support that. The Supreme Court ruled in 2018 that the relevant EU directive had not been transposed properly to provide for a situation where the employer ceased trading but had not formally ceased business, and where it had not been declared bankrupt or gone into liquidation, leaving workers in an awful position. There are many examples of that. On the timeline for moving this forward, the heads of the draft Bill were started in 2023. Last October, pre-legislative scrutiny was completed by the committee. I have read all of the information on the provisions of the Bill.”
“I welcome the opportunity to speak on this issue of workers' rights. Over the past 40 years, I have long been involved in campaigns, with workers and as a worker myself on many occasions, trying to get basic rights. I broadly welcome the Bill. It makes the necessary changes to the insolvency payments scheme but it is coming late. I welcome that it will cater for the situation at present regarding wages, sick pay, holiday pay, minimum notice entitlements and pension contributions. While they are in the insolvency payments scheme, workers lose out where the employer does not deem itself to have ceased trading. Thousands of workers have lost out over the past 41 years in that regard, so this legislation is coming a bit late. The time limit was mentioned.”
“Yesterday, we had a well-attended presentation from SMA Ireland in the AV room. Its priority is to secure access to the life-changing treatments and medicines for people with spinal muscular atrophy issues. We were told this is caused due to a loss of motor neuron nerve cells. It is an important issue. SMA can have life-limiting effects. It can cause difficulty for swallowing, breathing, walking, etc., and some of these people are confined to wheelchairs. The HSE approved three treatments a number of years ago, but it imposed an age limit. Those who were aged over 18 at the time were excluded. However, those aged 14, 15 or 16 at the time got the treatment. Some of them may be over 18 years of age now - they could be 20, 22 or 23 - and still be getting the treatment. Other EU countries do not have that restriction. England does not.”
“I commend the Labour Party on putting forward this motion, but we need to go much further. We need to: pass the occupied territories Bill and include services and goods in it; stop the use of Shannon Airport and stop overflights for the transportation of weapons to Israel; continue to press for the suspension of Israeli-EU trade agreements; and join with other states to call for an emergency session of the United Nations General Assembly at which Ireland would table a resolution, as set out in the motion, to call for collective measures to enable the development of a lasting ceasefire and a sustainable peace agreement, the putting in place of an international peacekeeping force to protect Palestinians and the commencement of negotiations for a two-state solution for the sovereign State of Palestine to be recognised. Please act.”
“I listened to lectures about terrorism for years. This is terrorism on a scale we have never seen before. This country is now the home for the selling of war bonds that assist Israel in carrying out the genocide. No assistance should be given to the terrorist State of Israel. It is inconceivable to assist Israel at a time when its forces are engaged in terrorism, genocide and ethnic cleansing in Palestine and when there is slaughter on a daily basis. The Israeli Government needs to sell its war bonds. It is a huge part of its expenditure that is then spent on bombs, rockets and funding illegal settlements. It is funding war and terror. It is blood money. Excuses about not being able to do it need to be pushed to one side. The Office of Parliamentary Legal Advisers has advised that this can be done.”
“Constituents and people across the 32 counties of Ireland are watching on in horror. They depend on us to take action with regard to what is happening in Gaza. There is merciless bombing of hospitals, clinics, homes and tents, with families, children and men being slaughtered. There is forced starvation and famine while convoys of food are a mile or two away. Men and women are being tortured. What the Israelis are doing in the prisons is absolutely shocking. Israel stoops to ever lower depths of cruelty and inhumanity on a daily basis. Israeli terrorists take potshots at kids, families and women, as well as at donkeys. They kill animals and other targets just for fun each day. All of those in the Israeli Government and the military command need to be designated as war criminals and terrorists.”
“The Government and Dáil have failed, including Opposition parties. Some Members of the Dáil may wish to amend parts of this Bill, as may the Government. I accept that. I am not saying this is the be all and end all, but there is a lot of detail in it and a lot of work went into it. I ask that the Bill get a fair chance. I appeal to the Government to allow it to go to Second Stage and I appeal to Members of the Dáil on all sides to do what we have failed to do for almost 20 years, since 2006, and put in place proper regulations and guidelines for this important industry, which we must have as part of our solution to our renewable energy needs.”
“Section 8 deals with compliance by developers and provides that penalties will be levied on those who do not comply. Section 9 provides that a sufficient bond has to be lodged with the local authority to repair any damage to local infrastructure such as roads, bridges, buildings, water services, etc. during the period of construction. Section 10 puts responsibility on wind farm owners to ensure proper decommissioning is done in an environmentally sustainable way. They will need to be decommissioned in 20 or 25 years. Section 11 provides an opportunity for local communities that live within 4 km of a wind farm to purchase up to a 10% stake in the wind farm, should they wish to do so. That provision is common in other countries. This Bill puts some order on an industry in which large corporations have held sway and held all the cards.”
“Section 4 sets out a number of conditions that wind farm developers must meet to ensure there is effective consultation with local communities. Section 5 stipulates that noise from wind farms must not exceed the limits set out by the World Health Organization Guidelines for Community Noise 1999. Importantly, they state that shadow flicker from the rotation of the blades must not pass over the windows of nearby dwellings. Sections 6 and 7 put in place a clear requirement that no wind turbine more than 30 m in height shall be located at less than the distance of 7.5 times the height of the turbine from any dwelling and deal with that requirement in good detail. That allows for the development of wind farms. It does not stop it. It just means a sensible measurement will be put in place.”
“Section 1 sets out the interpretation of the Bill and explains the references made in it. Section 2 deals with electricity supply to meet national needs across the Thirty-two Counties of Ireland, North and South. That is why we need the North-South interconnector. Some people disagree with that. That is up to them. The excess could be exported to our neighbours in Britain, France and so on. Section 3 restores some level of local democracy to councils in that large wind turbines can only be located in areas designated by county councillors in county development plans. The Leas-Cheann Comhairle is familiar with what is going on on the Kilkenny-Laois border at the moment. He is involved in it. There will be a meeting about it next Wednesday evening.”
“There has been a failure by the Government to put regulations in place, or even to update the 2006 guidelines put in place when wind turbines were less than one quarter of the height they are now. That is the key point. They are multiples of what they were in 2006. I brought forward legislation on this in 2014, 2016 and 2021. Four years ago, there was due to be a two-hour debate in the Dáil on the Bill I was bringing forward, but it was derailed at the time by the leader of the largest Opposition party, who had been taken in, probably, by the large companies and spooked by sections of the media. Therefore, here we are again, in an effort to ensure we have a proper planning framework that will protect local communities and at the same time allow for badly needed provision of green and renewable energy.”
“I move: That leave be granted to introduce a Bill entitled an Act to regulate wind turbines to provide limits on the exportation of product generated from wind turbines, to protect nearby dwellings from noise and shadow flicker by providing minimum set back distances, to allow access to public consultative processes; and to provide for related matters. I thank the Leas-Cheann Comhairle for the opportunity to introduce this important Bill. It provides for the regulation of large wind turbines and large wind farms. As someone who is in favour of developing wind energy and supports it, I believe we also need regulations on it. We need to do it in a practical, sensible and planned way. Wind energy has an important part to play among our renewable energy sources, along with biogas, solar and multiple other sources. They all have to be used.”
“Both the Tánaiste and the Taoiseach have agreed with me on the floor of the Dáil that we need to change this. A review has been carried out by the Department of Transport. That is now complete. The Government is now talking about an independent assessment according to a parliamentary question reply I received this week.”
“There is a difficulty as the positions are only part-time positions of three or four hours per day. It suits retired people who are on a State pension. It does not suit young people or men or women who have a family. The wages are not there for it because it is only part-time by its nature. Younger workers simply cannot take that on.”
“The issue I am again raising with the Tánaiste is the bar on over-70s being allowed to drive under the school bus scheme. Drivers should be able to continue working within the scheme until they are 75 provided they pass a strict medical test and a strict eyesight test annually. The situation whereby they are arbitrarily forced to retire at 70 is wrong. We already have a shortage of school bus drivers, and more will be forced out. We are losing drivers every week. More will be forced out between now and the end of August as they reach 70 years of age. Bus Éireann representatives were in the Oireachtas yesterday telling us they are trying to recruit drivers and are going to expand the scheme, but they will be able to do it. I do not mean that in any smart way; I am saying that it is not mission impossible.”
“The Palestinians have been hunted and hounded by Israel since 1947, a refugee population within their own country. What does it take for the so-called civilised world to act? I acknowledge that the Government has joined the South African case at the International Criminal Court. I accept that we have recognised the State of Palestine, that we are sending aid to Palestine and taking in injured children and that we want a cessation of all hostilities, but we must do a lot more. We have also been part of the call for the Israeli-EU trade agreement to end. This shows what a neutral state can do when we put our mind to it.”
“The level of death and destruction in Gaza demands us not just to talk but to act and to do everything possible. What is happening is genocide and war crimes. Gaza is not just a warzone; it is a horror zone. The State of Israel is a terrorist state. Its Government has stooped to a level of depravity never seen before. It is shameful, and that Government will never be forgiven lightly for what it is doing: 53,000 dead, thousands buried beneath the rubble, families missing, neighbourhoods missing, hundreds of thousands of people injured and maimed, and up to 2 million starving while truckloads of food stand at the border and are stopped from entering by terrorists from the IDF. They are called the IDF but I call them a bunch of terrorists.”
“We need to start training and recruiting people and we need to retain them. One area that has been mentioned in the past for some of those disciplines is apprenticeships. That may be appropriate. I know they are not appropriate for some other disciplines. The Government really needs to be imaginative about this and push it on. We need to fund the special needs services and provide this and provide appropriate school places. I know that work is being done on this, but there are still many children without places who will need them in September, and that work needs to be progressed quickly.”
“That is being offered in nearly all cases, from what I can find out, but there are no services for the child - none whatsoever. Laois Offaly Families for Autism and other voluntary groups are filling the gaps as best they can. They pay 50% of the cost of the therapies and the parents pay 50%. It is a stopgap solution. LOFFA tells me it spent €38,000 last year on matching funding to try to do this. This is not acceptable. I am trying to impress on the Minister of State as best I can the need for the Government to comply with its legal obligations, take emergency action, make the funding available and set specific target dates by which the Government can comply with its legal obligation and deliver long-term solutions. As the Minister of State knows as well as I do, that needs workforce planning.”
“I can tell the Minister of State that it is a battle in Laois because they hardly exist. I will quote to her the figures for the multidisciplinary teams in the CDNTs in Laois. The level of staffing for occupational therapy is at only 33%. These are HSE figures, not mine. Speech and language therapy is at 46%. Physiotherapy is at 50%. Therapy assistance is at zero. Dietetics is at zero. Behavioural therapists - this is incredible as this is one of the most important positions on the team - are at zero. They are not there. The service just does not exist. What is happening in County Laois, therefore, is that parents are being offered group sessions where parents are brought in. That is fine and dandy, and group sessions may have a role.”
“They are left in the dark. There are just no answers. Sandra is another parent I have dealt with. Her first daughter was on a waiting list for a year and a half before getting an assessment of need. Her other daughter was put on a waiting list on 12 August last year and Sandra has not received any information whatsoever since then as to when she may be called or whether she will be called. Assessment of need appointments, of course, are only the start of it. Once the assessment of need is done, the assessor has to do a report, they have to pass it on to a liaison officer, a service plan has to be drawn up and the liaison officer is then supposed to arrange the delivery of services. This is where it really gets difficult because next you have to do battle to try to get these sessions.”
“In Laois, the waiting times to get an assessment of need are absolutely shocking. Aileen, a mother, is just one of many people who have contacted me on this. She waited for years to get her son an assessment of need and then had to go private for it. They had to pay and they had to have the assessment of need and then a multidisciplinary assessment, which in total cost €2,000. This family are on a modest income. For the past six years, Aileen has been paying privately for therapies. Her son got just four short sessions in the six years. She paid for all the other sessions. Her second child, a daughter, has been on a waiting list since 19 September 2023 and has not yet been called for an assessment of need. Aileen cannot get a reply by either telephone or email as to when she may get one. This is part of what parents are up against.”
“I welcome the opportunity to speak on this important motion and commend the campaign team and Cara and Mark Darmody. They should not have to be here. This should have been sorted because people have been raising it for over two decades. The waiting times are scandalous. Under the Disability Act 2005, the waiting time is supposed to be a maximum of six months, so the law is clearly being broken here. A total of 15,296 children are overdue their assessments of special needs. Only 4,162 were carried out by the HSE in 2024, according to its figures. Only a measly 7% are being done within the legal timeframe of six months. This is clearly a failure on every count. The Government is failing in its legal obligations and, according to the Minister, the number waiting for these assessments of need could run to 25,000 by year end.”