Cathal Crowe
Clare · Fianna Fáil · Ireland
“The Oireachtas education and youth committee, which I chair, recently compiled a report on school meals. It is a fantastic scheme led out by our colleague, the Minister, Deputy Calleary, and was hugely supported by the Minister, Deputy Foley, when she was at the Department of education.”
“If I can illustrate what imbalanced regional development looks like in the aviation realm, tomorrow, starting early in the morning and right up to about 9.30 p.m., 13 direct flights will depart from Dublin Airport heading to Amsterdam Schiphol, which is recognised as one of the principal and most important European airport hubs.”
“Although it is not in the spine of this legislation, I think there need to be addendums and a new national aviation strategy brought in in the autumn, because the current one is outdated and deals with a time, pre-pandemic, when aviation was going well. It has floundered since and recovered since.”
“There have been some major events in Irish aviation over the past four or five months while this legislation was evolving. I believe there was scope for those to be added in by way of miscellaneous provisions. Perhaps the Minister might bright other legislation before the House in due course.”
“We now need to get to a point where Shannon Airport's and other airports' primary radar and secondary radar are protected by insisting that all wind energy zonings within a five- to eight-kilometre radius must be removed. It is not safe. It has been deemed that by the aviation regulator and by AirNav Ireland.”
“In nearly every Government decision, whether it is on the provision of healthcare, housing, water or sanitary services, there is usually a reference to balanced regional development and other hubs outside of the capital. There is not in this legislation.”
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“There is currently no intervention pathway for those. Anyone who has done a coaching course, be it for GAA or rugby or soccer, will know that one of the fundamental things you will deal with is the fundamental movements of physical literacy. As a country that has a very deep educational policy on physical education and good resourcing of it, it is a point we are a little mute on. I would love to see it embodied into how we fund things. Irish dancing would be a great inclusion in the next round of funding.”
“As someone who taught physical education for years, I know it is well and good overhauling the curriculum but there are strands in that 1999 curriculum I taught, such as aquatics, outdoor adventures, athletics and all these kinds of things, for which there is no toolset to teach them. When I was teaching and a child was struggling with spelling or reading, we would have certain pathways of intervention. Equally, if they had mathematical problems, we would suspect dyscalculia and intervene, but as a nation we need to start talking about physical literacy. If a child is not able to benchmark certain activities like throwing, the gate of their movement, catching, squatting - basic things - they can come back and cause difficulty later in life, such as joint pain and all sorts of movement issues.”
“In the last round of funding, clubs like Broadford GAA, Shannon Town United, Cratloe GAA Club and, in my home parish, Parkfield FC and Parteen-Meelick GAA club all benefited. My children cross over the border once a week into Limerick to play for Shannon rugby and the joy that gives them is great. I will make a couple of quick points. I would like to see dance included in this funding. When I was a primary school teacher, we used to get the children to do an annual fitness test. The children in our classes who danced had an incredible level of fitness. We have classified scouting as a sporting activity and we have brought golf courses in. I think Irish dancing should be brought in and considered to be in the realm of sport fitness and wellness.”
“Miriam Lord once described sport as the greatest of all Ministries because you get to tour every parish in the country and see best practice. In the last two rounds of sports capital funding, certainly in my own county - I think it is probably the same around the country - every group that had a decent application put together properly got funding of some sort or the other. It is transformative. As other speakers have said, from grassroots level and tiny tots up to people who play sports to an elite level and represent county and country, if you invest in sport, you invest in people's welfare and also their joy. I thank the Minister of State's predecessors, Deputy Chambers and Deputy Byrne, and I am sure he will do an equally great job.”
“I will not name the countries; they all know who they are. Week on week, they are stifling the very actions and sanctions that need to happen. The same sanctions that were able to happen overnight against Vladimir Putin are simply not happening against the Israeli Government. The Irish Government has a lot done. We need to protect our citizens on the flotilla but the European community needs to speak better and with one voice.”
“One of the conditions of peace was that if they agreed to it aid, medicine and food would flow. How horrendous and disgusting is that that we will withhold and weaponise the very things that give life to people until they sign on the dotted line and sign away everything their country aspires to. On the Sumud flotilla, like others in the House, I have constituents and people I know on those boats. They are to be admired. It is an act of heroism. They are putting themselves at risk. The international community needs to come together. I have some words of criticism before I finish. Far too many European countries have rightful hang-ups about their history, which they should have, but these hang-ups should not determine how they govern in the year 2025. They should not tie their hands when they have to act and do the right thing.”
“At a meeting of the United Nations in 2009 Netanyahu, referring to an Iranian threat to his country stated, "We cannot allow evil to prepare the mass death of innocents." Yet, following the 7 October Hamas attacks, a campaign of revenge against a few people became overnight a war on humanity, an assault on innocence and a destruction of many. It is now a full-blown genocide. I commend the efforts of this Government, acting in the international community in terms of recognising the legitimising of the Palestinian State while equally condemning Hamas and calling at international level for peace and the flow of aid for the people who so desperately need it. The peace deal on offer this week has very much cornered the Palestinian people. I cannot see how it can work.”
“Nearly every Jew in this world can, unfortunately, trace family back to the Holocaust years. The murder of loved ones in concentration camps and in ghettos still hangs as a dark cloud of shame over all humanity. Therefore how is it that any person whose ancestors had endured such destruction, barbarism, cruelty and murder could allow history to again repeat itself? How, in any moral conscience, can any of the aforementioned Israeli cabinet ministers wage a genocidal war against innocent men, women and particularly children in Gaza? Where is the moral compass of the Israeli Parliament and Government at this time?”
“The American poet Maya Angelou famously coined the phrase, "You can't really know where you are going until you know where you have been". The Israeli cabinet either does not know or reflect on their collective history. There is certainly a sense of some selective amnesia. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s father-in-law was the sole survivor of his family following the Holocaust. Both parents of the Israeli minister for agriculture Avi Dichter were Polish Jews and survivors of the Holocaust. Avi Dichter's grandfather, after whom he is named, was murdered by Nazis, in his local ghetto. Both parents of Israel Katz, the Israeli minister for defence, were Holocaust survivors from Romania. I could go on and on because the history of people of the Jewish faith is a very sorrowful, often brutal one.”
“We are geographically peripheral. For more than half of our population, there is no golden hour; they live well beyond in it. Friends of Ennis Hospital, led by Angela Coll, its chairperson, had made the case repeatedly and vociferously, and I thank the Minister, Deputy Carroll MacNeill, and Stephen Donnelly before her, for listening to them many times over. The case is there in abundance. There are many sites that are accessible to all of the mid-west, they are in County Clare, and I ask that the failures of 2009 be put right once and for all.”
“My question is to the Taoiseach and the Minister, Jennifer Carroll MacNeill. Last year, here in the Dáil Chamber and at the Oireachtas health committee, I led calls for an independent review into the access to emergency care in the mid-west region. That review, led by HIQA, has concluded. A whole host of recommendations are before the Government now. One of the key ones is that there is a need for short-term beds to be accelerated and increased, but in the long term people need access to a better hospital system. I make the case in the strongest possible terms for option C, which is before the Government. Option C is to have a new model 3 hospital and it should be based in County Clare. The evidence is there in abundance that of all counties in Ireland, of all regions, ours is the most health-disadvantaged in the country.”
“An Garda Síochána made the point that somebody in the presence of a person who is smoking cannabis will be passively inhaling that all evening and that it has come across instances where people have then failed the oral fluids test and must be brought to a Garda station for a blood test, which goes to the Medical Bureau of Road Safety for laboratory analysis, so there is a bit of a legal lacuna here. If someone is in a room where he or she is a passive smoker - I do not know if that is the correct term to use anymore but certainly he or she could be sitting 10 yd or 12 yd away from someone smoking cannabis all night - the following morning, he or she could find himself or herself being stopped by gardaí, checked and ultimately going through our judicial system so we need to look at that.”
“From a health point of view, it is not as bad as nicotine but from the point of view of being nauseated, I find it far worse. My next point is on a slight tangent but it is relevant to the debate we are having today. I sit on the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Transport and attend its meetings religiously. Last year before the general election, we did a body of work on drivers who might be under the influence of alcohol or drugs, something that is an issue that is increasing. There is a lacuna in the legislation. If I am sitting at a bar and someone across from me is drinking pints all evening, I will not passively become drunk by any stretch of the imagination. If someone is smoking, I might get a chesty cough and the odour of smoke on my clothes but that is it.”
“He said that in the worst of days when there were clouds of smoke billowing across the bar and the lounge, he would go home with his jacket smelling and he might have had to hang out it out to refresh it but he certainly never found himself overwhelmed by smoke. He said that when he sings in a bar where someone is vaping, he goes home feeling rotten. He knows from his vocal chords that he has been subjected to it all evening. I very much think that this needs to be dealt with. We need to get to a point where there is prohibition in public spaces. I often bring my young children to a playground or go some place that is nice for them but the moment can be ruined very quickly when that cloud of fruity vapour billows across you. It just consumes you. It is probably worse.”
“There is no structure of rules regarding this. I know there are certain guidelines and a policy direction being taken by the Department but if one goes into restaurants, bars and other places, one will see that it is hit and miss. It requires national regulation. Some bars do not allow it while others do. Some barmen take an easier approach and some are a bit lax. The Joe Duffy show - I think we have to call it "Liveline" these days to give it its official name - featured a singer a week or two ago whose name I did not get. I do not think he is particularly famous but he is someone who has done the pub circuit in Dublin over many years singing ballads and sitting on a stool in the corner keeping people entertained.”
“This is a very important debate. Like other speakers, it needs to be acknowledged on the record of the Dáil that it was Fianna Fáil in government that brought in the world's first ever national ban on smoking in the workplace. It was ahead of its time and many other countries have followed suit since. This debate is very timely. I wrote to the Department of Health recently. Like many Deputies, I get emails about many issues. I received an email from a man in County Clare two weeks ago. His wife has profound asthma. He cited an evening where they were in a restaurant. The meal was ruined anyway because of a cloud of horrible fruity vapour being blown their way all the time but she had an asthmatic episode afterwards and ended up in hospital, which she attributed to the fact that vaping had happened alongside them.”
“If we were to look at it through one lens, we could say this offered a pathway to pension, but I would contend, as someone who spent 16 years as a school teacher and as the staff liaison person between secretaries, caretakers and the school body, this is not the way to solve their grievance. They are very worthy of a proper pension befitting the work they have carried out for years and will carry out for many years to come. This should not be the magic wand for that. Their ask is very specific. It is before the WRC and we cannot prejudice what is there but they ask that they be treated as civil servants. That is the campaign I support and this issue needs to be kept separate and outside the net of what auto-enrolment is.”
“We have to deal with that in budget 2026. I have read all the detailed notes on auto-enrolment, but I have not seen sufficient clarity on where apprentices will stand in all of this. I thing of the many 20- and 21-year-olds who are slogging it out doing difficult work, particularly in the wet trades. They are certainly not earning €20,000 per annum. Auto-enrolment will be optional for them. Everything is quite uncertain for them. They are treated as tradesmen and tradeswomen. They are expected to go out and work as hard as everyone else, but they do not get the benefits of doing so. I fear that some of this could be used as a bit of a carrot in the context of the school secretaries and caretakers dispute. This is not the way to deal with that.”
“I have heard that during my six years as a TD but I probably hear it now more than every because of the multiple costs involved. TDs on both sides of the House are nodding because we are all hearing this at constituency level. There was an inevitability about auto-enrolment happening. It has to happen. In budget 2026, which is only a couple of weeks away, we have to include certain measures that loosen the collar for businesses and allow them to breathe again and flourish. In my home village, the shop and pub are gone. There is nothing to replace them. I see businesses closing on the high streets of Ennis, Shannon and Limerick city. There are too many vape and kebab shops. The type of businesses that were the stock of town centre streets seem to be either going out of business or are really struggling.”
“I thank the Minister of State for taking this debate. The auto-enrolment scheme is very important. It will mean that Ireland will not longer be a laggard in the European Union. As Deputy Ó Cearúil said, many other countries have brought this in, some as far back as a decade ago. We are catching up. The introduction of this in the new year will see hundreds of thousands of people who are not on pension plans now being able to avail of something when they reach pensionable age. That is quite important. I do, however, have something of a contrarian view on some aspects of what is proposed. There is not a week that goes by that the owner of some local small business comes to one of my clinics and talks about how difficult it is to do business.”
“I would love to hear when we will get certainty on the regional airports forum because airports need to procure, plan and build for the future. It cannot just be about Dublin's future story; we need to look at Ireland's other airports. I do not know how spurious or accurate this is, but Ryanair had plans to have a large jet-engine maintenance facility in Shannon. Michael O'Leary is putting the blame on the Government. I would like to know if there are any plans to reactivate that, because we could certainly do with that kind of activity in the mid-west.”
“The Taoiseach knows that Shannon Airport is a huge political issue in the mid-west, not just in County Clare. I am chair of the Oireachtas Shannon Airport group, which has 22 members from Dáil Éireann and Seanad Éireann from the rank of Minister, Opposition Member and Senator across all parties. We meet quite regularly to focus on policies that will strengthen the airport because we recognise that when the Ryder Cup comes in 2027 and when Doonbeg hosts the Irish Open next year, we will need top quality infrastructure. Dublin Airport Authority last year alone paid a €99 million dividend to the State. It would be worth looking at, not only for Shannon Airport, but for Cork Airport in the Taoiseach's county and Knock airport in Mayo, ring-fencing that dividend to be disbursed across Ireland's other airports.”
“At the moment it gives a one dimensional consideration, whether it approves or disapproves. There should be an additional clause to look at the other airports in Ireland to sweat out those other national assets. We also need to know with some certainty what will happen with the regional airports forum. This is a vital fund for Shannon, Cork and Knock airports. As we prepare to host the Ryder Cup in 2027 in the mid-west, we will need every red cent we can get on our hands on. I get how the aviation sector works. I know that passengers in nearly all instances want to land in the capital city, but we cannot take our eyes off Ireland's other airports. They are national assets. They need to be sweated more and used more before we look at the Dublin solution.”
“To illustrate this problem, there are nine direct flights each day from Dublin Airport to Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, but not a single one from Shannon Airport. This is one example alone. There are many more I can think of. This illustrates how balanced regional development simply does not exist in Irish aviation at this time. The Government has published many documents that speak to balanced regional development such as Project Ireland 2040 and the national planning framework, across many metrics, with regional development being balanced in terms of housing, education, healthcare provision, and many other realms. It is high time the national policy on aviation along with the Irish Aviation Authority introduce a new regional development clause when applications are submitted by airlines to operate new routes.”
“I fully appreciate the difficulty the passenger cap has put on Dublin Airport and it is important that there is a need to deal with the here-and-now problem that the airport faces along with planning for the future. As an island nation, we need to be internationally connected at all times. I do, however, have concerns for Ireland's other airports. Dublin holds a dominant position in Irish aviation, accounting for 84% of all inbound and outbound flights. More needs to be done to support Shannon Airport, Cork Airport and Ireland West Airport, Knock. The proposed lifting of the cap at Dublin Airport presents the opportunity to make some positive changes insofar as those airports are concerned. Shannon Airport, in my own constituency of Clare, needs European hub connectivity.”
“I thank the Ceann Comhairle. I join with the Taoiseach and other speakers in congratulating Deputies Cairns and Higgins. It is good to be back here again. With the population continuing to grow and the pressure on all forms of public transport increasing, it should be no surprise to anyone that the 2007 planning condition imposed on the Dublin Airport Authority that it could only cater for 32 million passengers per annum would be exceeded at some point. During last November's general election campaign, all leaders - those now in government and in opposition - pledged they would lift the Dublin Airport passenger cap if they were in power. It was inevitable that at some point in the lifetime of this Government that legislation to do just that would be introduced.”
“I echo the points made by Deputy McGrath. The EU procurement rules are rather outdated. A lot of the regulation that is stifling what this country is able to do is not domestic but comes from an EU treaty. The time has come for us to be able to procure beyond the EU 27 bloc for very large projects, such as hospitals, large road projects and rail. It has repeatedly happened that projects we pitch a certain amount of money for have cost twice as much by the time they have gone through all the gateways. We need to procure beyond the European Union. I hope the Minister will be able to raise that at the Council of Ministers in due course.”
“We need to have this fully nailed down by the OPW and the Government so that if there are flood defences or an area has not flooded, the principle of risk equalisation is applied and families are given insurance cover. A lot of property sales are falling through because once the conveyancing is done, banks will not lend capital if they see that the applicant cannot get flood insurance cover. The Government needs to take that practice to task.”
“Before the Minister of State was appointed, his name was synonymous with communities fighting back against flooding. He has done stellar work in and out of politics on that. For many people in these areas, insurance is still impossible to get. The term "risk equalisation" is used when applying for health insurance. It means that all people of all ages pay a little bit of a premium so that risk is balanced across older and younger people. The same principle is now being applied by the insurance industry to homes. Between 12,000 and 13,000 homes in the south Clare area cannot get flood insurance cover. Not a week goes by in my office that we do not have to write letters of comfort, which is ludicrous. What does a letter of comfort from a TD really mean?”
“I ask the Minister of State to consider recategorising that river. Surely in this day and age, with climate change and everything that has caused, the 1945 legislation needs to be revised.”
“I thank the Minister of State. There is a lot of positive stuff happening in the county. I will bring the Minister of State back a bit to the Arterial Drainage Act 1945. Neither of us was around at that time but some guru decided that different watercourses would be divvied up between the Board of Works, now the OPW, and local authorities. The River Inagh in north Clare comes under the jurisdiction of Clare County Council. Its budget for managing that watercourse and river is minuscule. It does not have the diggers or the heavy machinery, such as the long-reach diggers the Minister of State and I are very familiar with, that can clear out all the silt. It has none of that. The OPW gets approximately 90% of the budget with 10% going to local authorities, yet the latter are expected to manage rivers like the River Inagh with few resources.”
“I echo what others have said here. In Ennis and Clarecastle in County Clare, even though the sewage treatment system is modern and new, it is already close to capacity. If we want to reach these housing targets, the first thing that needs to be done is to upgrade all of that network underground. The public will not see it and we might not get great praise or thanks for it, but it is crucial and is the key enabler. I call on Uisce Éireann to look at the situation in Ennis and Clarecastle. It is unforgivable that a few years after that system was designed and built, it is already near capacity.”
“Counselling supports are very important because with the young people I have met in Clare Youth Service and other youth groups in the constituency, there is mental anguish for people at times and anxiety. Sometimes the eventual coming out is not as big a deal as they thought it was going to be, but they need a lot of support during that time. More needs to be done to protect and support our sportspeople. Sport is wonderful. As a nation, we love our sports but too often there is slagging and jeering from the sidelines about all sorts of issues and personal issues on the pitch. Homophobic chants can be part of that, so, as a Government and as a society, we could do more to support gay people who are involved in sport at a very high level.”
“If anyone still carries homophobic thoughts, it says a lot about who they are as a person and their character flaws that they have to project their hatred onto someone who has nothing to do with them. “Live and let live” was an old adage when we were growing up, and there is a lot to be said for that. Many people have come out in recent years, but it is really refreshing when you hear people who never had to come out because they grew up in a family home or circle of friends who embraced this from the get-go. It was not a thing. They could just date who they wanted and marry who they wanted. That is ideally where we want things to be at, but there are still people who have to come out.”
“I do not know who first came up with the term "Pride", but it is very appropriate because people should be proud of who they are, including their sexual orientation, their religion, their skin colour or whatever. We can be very proud of our country becoming more inclusive over the past ten to 15 years. Other speakers referred to Hungary. I had occasion to visit Hungary last year and found it to be a very open and liberal country, yet that does not reflect the government that was voted in. Shame on Viktor Orbán and his government for how they have tried to curtail the rights and freedoms of their LGBTQ+ community in Hungary. I was only there for a matter of days, but it was a point of discussion. I do not think that is how the general population there feel. In this day and age, there has been a great deal of enlightenment.”
“It was good that as a nation with those tough schoolyards in the 1980s and 1990s, we grew up a bit in 2015 and passed that all-important referendum. I agree wholly with the point made by Deputy O'Gorman that we cannot rest on our laurels. A few years ago, we saw our Olympic hero Jack Woolley badly beaten up in a homophobic attack in the heart of Dublin city. It is the most disgusting thing to hate someone for who they are. When those attacks happen, and we have had other high-profile attacks over the years, it is very important, when the moment is right, that they come out afterwards and we call it for what it is. Sometimes these attacks are just called assaults on the street but a homophobic attack is very specific. It is an act of hatred towards someone for who they are.”
“I welcome the opportunity to speak in this debate. Fianna Fáil is very supportive of the LGBTQ+ community. Back in 1993, it was then Minister for Justice, Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, who led the decriminalisation of homosexuality. It is hard to believe that at that time, it was still illegal. I was someone born in 1982 and throughout my secondary school years, the standard insult in primary and secondary schoolyard was to call someone gay or insult people about their sexuality. It was not until years later, in 2015, when I was out campaigning with others to have the marriage equality referendum passed that I encountered someone I had been in school with. For most people, those insults were brushed and you would tell them to go take a hike in stronger language but for some people, those words hurt hugely and well into adulthood.”
“We cannot train up the best and brightest people to become nurses and doctors and accept that they will spend their first six or seven years after qualifying in a sunny part of southern Australia. We have to have them here. Maybe after fulfilling five or six years of public contracts, they can break away and leave the country but they owe it to this country. It is not popular to say it but we will need that to fix our problems. I thank the Minister and offer her my continued best wishes.”
“An Garda Síochána recently bemoaned the appearance of billboards outside some Garda stations. It happened at Limerick Garda station on Henry Street about six months ago. Melbourne police department is now recruiting, and it parked up a truck and trailer trying to lure gardaí to the land down under. When the Minister, her colleagues in government, the Ceann Comhairle and others with political leadership roles in this country are overseas, they should spread the message that Ireland is open to recruitment in the health sphere. There are a lot of jobs that we cannot fill with our own graduates. We need to look at attracting our nurses back home. I mentioned the point in the Chamber some months ago and the INMO did not like it. There has to be some carrot and stick, albeit more carrot than stick.”
“The ESRI has reported this, HIQA has reported that and unfortunately many people have lost their lives in hospital too, which is a body of evidence in its own right. That needs to be the guiding principle and the beacon that I hope will lead the Minister to make the decision in the autumn to improve access to public healthcare in the region. She has been down to see it. I have every faith she will do the right thing but I ask her to please, take the political decision. She may well be the Taoiseach when the ribbon is cut, because these things do not happen quickly. Regardless of that, however, the political decision to do this now has to happen this autumn. I trust the Minister will make it. Like others, I pay tribute to the many people who work in our healthcare system.”
“When my mother started out nursing in the region in the 1980s there was accident and emergency care in Ennis, Nenagh, St. John’s Hospital, Barrington’s Hospital and the regional hospital in Limerick. There were five accident and emergency departments for a population of 300,000. There is now one to a population of 500,000. Something has gone fundamentally wrong here. It has happened over many years and it has to be fixed. Regardless of who makes the decision, and I hope it will be the Minister, we should be under no illusions. That hospital will not be built in 12 or 24 months' time. Public infrastructure in this country takes a huge amount of time to build, but it has to start with a political decision. It has to start with someone in a leadership role saying “Enough”.”
“He told those present, some of them guffawed and others laughed, that he would get men on the moon by the end of that decade. That happened in 1969. When he made that speech, he did not really have a full vision of how that was to happen. It was a policy aim, and he told his officials and everyone else to make it happen. Someone in the Department of Health is going to have a moon-landing moment. They will have to have it sooner rather than later because if we keep kicking the can down the road when it comes to public healthcare in the mid-west, what is needed will never happen. During her time in the Department of Health - and I hope she has a very long and fulfilled political career - will the Minister make a moon-landing decision in September and apply it public healthcare in the mid-west region?”
“Sorry, it is not on the Minister’s desk yet. I apologise. The report to the Minister is imminent and the Cabinet will have to consider it. The report is on emergency healthcare access in the mid-west region. From replies to parliamentary questions that I and others have tabled, I know that initially HIQA was supposed to report to the Minister and then to Cabinet. Now, however, she has rightly asked it to factor in the recent ESRI report into its report. The report from the ESRI suggests that we need 40% more acute beds in this country by 2040. It is right that those two reports should be considered together in order that we might view public healthcare in the overall context. In 1962, President John F Kennedy spoke at Rice University in Texas.”
“I saw her at the University Hospital Limerick a few months ago. The gloves were off and the sleeves rolled up and she was down those corridors to see how it was functioning for better or for worse. I have every faith in her in the months ahead. HIQA has reported to the Minister. There is something on her desk we would all love to see. I refer to the HIQA report on the future of healthcare in the mid-west region. It was being withheld until the arrival of the ESRI's report. It is due out in September, I think.”
“It is not just the Department of Health; it is also the Department of Transport. If we table parliamentary questions to that Department, they are forwarded to the National Transport Authority or Transport Infrastructure Ireland. A large number of agencies have been set up over many decades. The all-important stuff we try to do as TDs gets siphoned off in different directions, and it can sometimes take months to receive replies. I had a reply to a parliamentary question come back recently in respect of someone who has since passed on. Luckily, I was able to intercept the reply in my office and tell my staff not to send it out. It would have been the grossest insult to the family involved if the reply had gone out. The Minister is a very good person. She is a good person to be leading the Department.”
“When parliamentary questions relating to health are diverted to the HSE for reply or when we are told to email reps@hse.ie , the same legal framework and lead-in period of four days if it is an oral parliamentary question or three days if it is a written question should apply, where possible. I understand that people may be on holiday, and we do not want to burden healthcare officials with filling out reams of paperwork in order to reply to questions from those within the body politic. I am not suggesting that. On basic matters, however, there needs to be a better turnaround. This is not the Minister’s fault, but she might be able to take action to address it.”
“The Minister for Health is also a constituency TD, as are the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste. Everyone here is accountable to their constituents. This is nothing against the Minister; it just reflects the systematic set-up of Governments over many years. If I ask a parliamentary question of the Minister for Health, it will probably be passed to the HSE. That is fine; I accept that. However, the HSE will not reply in the three or four days within which standard parliamentary questions are answered. If I asked a parliamentary question about a driving test or something that is not massively consequential for someone’s well-being, I will get a reply in three or four days. If I ask a parliamentary question about someone’s acute healthcare, however, I may not get a reply for three or four months.”
“I also wish to speak in support of this Bill. I will take up from where Deputy Roche left off. We all acknowledge the huge efforts of our front-line workers in every part of the country, and the Deputy is right to pay tribute to them. They work damn hard. Conditions for them all are not great. I have been in hospital myself in the past as a patient and visiting people. One would often see nurses having their lunch at the end of a trolley or a counter and running down the corridor to deal with patients. We need to keep an eye on their workplace welfare. They work so hard and go beyond the call of duty every time they report to work. The Bill is about governance and improving accountability in the HSE. I have a particular bugbear, which I am sure is the same for everyone else here.”
“The Taoiseach is a big advocate for SNA support in schools and supporting all children equally in the school environment, but it is daunting for the school that it faces a new school year without an additional SNA allocation. I ask for the Taoiseach’s intervention on this matter.”
“I thank the Taoiseach for taking this question. In the last few days of the school year, Gareth Heagney, the principal of Sixmilebridge national school in County Clare sent a letter out to parents. The school has around 400 pupils, so is quite a large school, and for the last few years it has only had three SNAs even though the children in the school have needs that far exceed that allocation. Indeed, children who will enrol in junior infants in September will also have additional needs. The school applied for an exceptional review to the NCSE. It was going to have that review on 16 June but it was cancelled. It now faces the prospect of starting the new school year, going back on 28 August, without having additional SNAs. The school is quite worried about that.”