Catherine Connolly
Galway West · Ireland
“We must zone in on the smaller businesses because that was the problem; the smaller companies and businesses could never avail of the research and development tax credit. This morning, I had the privilege of listening to the organisation, ALONE. It pointed out that older people living alone are €300 worse off compared to last year.”
“Those patients are human beings and they are being left on trolleys. There are some good things in this budget, which I welcome. I welcome the increase in social welfare, but when it is matched with the increase in the cost of living, it is worth absolutely nothing. I welcome that the money for artists has been extended.”
“Maybe the hint for what has happened with this budget is captured in the words of the Minister, Paschal Donohoe, who said, "Our schools, our hospitals and our public services are responsible for so much good in society." They certainly are, but that is not their function.”
“We have given a reduction in VAT down to 9% for developers with absolutely no evidence that this will help in any way and no context given. Today I attended a presentation in Buswells in relation to derelict properties all done on a voluntary basis.”
“There is 2% less funding at a time when we need balanced rural and regional development more than ever. I welcome the commitment to diversifying our economy. It should have happened years ago. Again, it is lacking in detail.”
“I preface my remarks by using a few seconds to talk about the four people who are outside here on the 18th day of their hunger strike. We have passed a budget in one of the richest economies in the world and we have four people who have been 18 days on hunger strike outside. They have survived the industrial schools.”
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“It is described by Women's Aid and other organisations on the ground that are expert in this as disempowering. Going through the process adds to the abuse. There are practical things Deputy O’Callaghan, as the new Minister, can do now that will make a difference.”
“I disagree. The Garda is doing a good job through the protective units but I disagree with the Minister that things have changed in terms of societal attitudes. The Minister could do certain things and act very quickly. He could act regarding the domestic violence register he promised. He has given me no timeline for that. Women’s Aid has consistently stated the strongest legislation will not make a difference, even if it is enforced, without a complete overhaul of our approach to violence - I am not going to use the word “domestic” - or to crime. There should be mandatory training for gardaí at every level. In the 21st century, we should not be talking about protective units that are good while the general body of gardaí do not have mandatory training in this area. Family law needs to be overhauled.”
“One of the top recommendations from the task force in 1996 was that we needed to have an intervention strategy in relation to the perpetrator. That has never happened and the figures have grown exponentially despite all the strategies and legislation.”
“I followed this up myself since I joined the Dáil in 2016. We had a task force in 1996 and Eithne FitzGerald was the Labour Party Minister of State at that stage. Ever since, we have been playing catch-up. I am not reassured that the Garda now has courses in place. It was acknowledged by the Garda when it was before us at the public accounts committee recently and further details will be sent to us on the improvements that would be made. Women's Aid tells us its own services are overstretched and underfunded. I am lost for words because I have spoken about it so often. The level of violence is horrific. We should drop the word "domestic". There are not even refuges in each county. In a sense, that is the wrong way to be going. We have to go that way but that removes the woman from the house as opposed to the offender.”
“The Minister is very familiar with the latest Women Aid's report. What will he do, given the significant increase in contacts with Women's Aid and that 44% of women said they were not satisfied with their initial engagement with An Garda Síochána? The response is inconsistent from the Garda in relation to the 65,000 contacts received. What steps is the Minister taking in relation to the zero-tolerance policy of the Government?”
“That is the type of narrative that makes me very angry and deals a terrible blow to our credibility as an independent sovereign state and a Republic with a duty to speak out. We have a duty to call out the abuse of power no matter where it is. At this stage, it is Israel and absolutely Israel.”
“I am looking at the Tánaiste's 23-page speech. I see the narrative continues from the Government. Despite the good steps that have been taken, the narrative utterly fails to condemn Israel for the genocidal state it is. We talk as if history started on 7 October; it certainly did not. We condemn without hesitation what happened but no context or history are given at all. I read what the Tánaiste said, and if this is what we are talking about, we have no credibility left at all. He referred to "the conflict between Iran and Israel", as if Iran was not attacked in an unprovoked fashion by a genocidal Israeli Government. Our Government calls that a mutual conflict whereby the countries attacked each other.”
“I have only two minutes so I hope I will pick my words effectively and usefully. Since dawn this morning, 43 Palestinian people have been killed by Israeli attacks. On Monday, 74 people were killed, 30 of them at a seaside café used by journalists, activists and local residents. More than 600 starving Palestinians have been killed like moving targets at a fairground. Some 4,186 were injured while waiting for food at the obscenely titled Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. We are offering our few words today. Doctors Without Borders has told us that the aid distribution sites are "slaughter masquerading as humanitarian aid". Before 7 October, there were 400 such sites across the Gaza Strip. That is down to four now. Under this abomination, Gaza has gone from 400 to four, with Philippe Lazzarini the Commissoner-General of UNRWA.”
“There were two speakers in that slot. One speaker indicated. With the consent of the House I will let that speaker come in later. We will preserve the seven and a half minutes that has not been used. Rachaidh mé ar ais arís go dtí Sinn Féin. Glaoim ar an Teachta Denise Mitchell.”
“I will finish on this. The Government should put light rail in the revised national planning framework. There will be a presentation on light rail in the audiovisual room at 3 p.m. I invite everyone to attend.”
“One of the easiest ways, the straightest way, to comply with those obligations is to roll out a public transport system with light rail and park-and-ride facilities. Park-and-ride was provided for in the city development plan in 2004, 21 years ago, and it still has not been rolled out. What we need from the Government is vision and boldness in the best sense of the word to give the thumbs up for light rail.”
“I welcome that the Government will prioritise transport in the revised plan. There is no sense of urgency when it comes to Galway city. Its growth has been hampered. It simply cannot develop. I do not have time to go into the lack of infrastructure when it comes to basic sewerage facilities. That is for another day and I have raised it before. I am sticking with just one issue today as one part of a sustainable solution. In 2018, 24,000 people signed a petition appealing to the Government to carry out a feasibility study. That took until last year. We cannot grow Galway. It is just a pretence and a mockery to say Galway can grow. It cannot. There is a lack of infrastructure. We then have obligations under our climate action plans.”
“Regarding the cost of not doing something, the Department of Transport very helpfully published a report titled "The Economic Cost of Congestion in the Regional Cities 2022-2040". It states that, at a minimum, on an annual basis, traffic congestion in Galway is costing €35 million. This figure will rise to an estimated €107 million and more in 2040. We are not talking about the cost of fines, lack of productivity, travelling and so on. That report clearly stated that we need a proactive deployment of sustainable transport for the growing traffic congestion in Galway. I am saying clearly on the record that a significant amount of work has been done on this project. A feasibility study has been published stating that it is eminently doable.”
“The provision of a light rail system perfectly aligns with the national policy objectives in the revised national planning framework. I refer to objectives 10 and 97 on the requirement for a transport-orientated development approach served by high-capacity public transport in the metropolitan areas of the five cities destined to grow, with Galway being one of them. Moreover, section 2.1 of the revised national planning framework clearly sets out that the four cities, including Galway, will require the potential of all four cities to be realised at an unprecedented rate to create viable alternatives to Dublin. We have any number of policies with which the provision of light rail complies but I will look at climate action and climate change where light rail will actively help to reduce our emissions.”
“Tá an deis á tapú agam anois córas iarnród éadrom do chathair na Gaillimhe a ardú. Tá an cheist seo thar a bheith tábhachtach. Is í an cheist i ndáiríre ná an bhfuil an dánacht agus an chrógacht san Aire ceannaireacht a thaispeáint agus glacadh leis an gcoincheap seo chun córas iarnród éadrom a sholáthar do chathair na Gaillimhe. I am seizing the opportunity today to raise this matter with the Minister as Minister for Public Expenditure, Infrastructure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation, although I would have dearly loved to have raised the issue of Gaza as well. The decision to roll out a light rail system in Galway requires courage, vision and leadership. Does the Minister have the courage to embrace this project and roll out a light rail system for Galway as part of the solution to the chronic traffic congestion in the city?”
“Go raibh maith agat. I thank the campaigners and Deputy Ó Snodaigh for bringing forward this Bill. It aims to provide for the disregarding of certain criminal convictions that arose from a selection of legislation all through the 19th century and, indeed, one Act going back to the 17th century, as well as the Common Law. It had nothing to do with justice or fairness. It was homophobia at its worst and a set of values that had nothing to do with love between two people. It is high time we got rid of it. We are not only recognising the injustice but actually setting up a process that will allow us to undo that injustice and to finally bring fairness.”
“We would get an opportunity to look at how terrorism arises, who the biggest culprits are and what money is going into it but we will do none of that while we go down a tunnel of looking at very vague terms like "glorifying" and "incentivising".”
“Today, the Minister is bringing to us a Bill that has not been subjected to pre-legislative scrutiny. That in itself is appalling because all the issues around this should have been teased out through pre-legislative scrutiny. There is no urgency to this Bill in the sense that we never had to comply with the directive. Pre-legislative scrutiny is there to tease out these issues. I am grateful and delighted to have six or seven minutes to speak on this, but this should be teased out at pre-legislative scrutiny. The committee waived this scrutiny but it should not haven. It is very important that we tease out this.”
“It is important to keep saying it because this and the previous Government, and the current Taoiseach, told us they were uncomfortable with the word "apartheid". We never discussed the report because the Government was uncomfortable with the word "apartheid" being used in relation to Israel. Then Israel designated six human rights organisations, two of which we fund directly, as terrorist organisations. I ask the Minister to stay with me for a minute. If we are allowing Israel to designate six human rights organisations as terrorists, does that not make a mockery of an open analysis as to what terrorism is? We allowed that to happen on our watch. The EU came back and said there was no evidence that they were operating as terrorist organisations and still that happened.”
“We do not define terrorism here; we look at terrorism in very general and expansive notions that should have no place in legislation, including "Public provocation to commit terrorist offence" and "that glorifies [..] a terrorist activity". I do not think I have ever seen the word "glorifies" in legislation. Perhaps it was taken straight from the 2005 Act. If so, we should not reuse it. If not, it has no place. Glorification is something I have seen in church prayers and in religion. To glorify is way too broad. I am taking Israel and Palestine and looking at what has happened there. We stood idly by when Amnesty International said that Israel was operating an apartheid state. I mentioned this many times.”
“The Government, and the Minister for Justice, do not seem to have any problem with a terrorist state taking action against all international law. Everything has to be done on the basis of trust. While at one level I am agreeing with the Minister that this is necessary, when we actually look at it, we see how problematic it is. Then we have the tunnel vision that will only look one way at terrorism but will not look at the real terrorist acts that have taken place. We are losing count of the number of dead people on the ground from bombs, destruction, starvation and from depriving them of water. We see Palestinian children and fathers and mothers being shot. I hate the picture but it is like going to a fair where there are moving targets. The army is shooting moving targets and killing. We are standing idly by.”
“I again thank the library staff for all their work on this. I do not have the time to go into the concerns raised but they are laid out in black and white, and we are absolutely ignoring them. I look at how terrorism is defined. Of course we all need legislation that deals with and prevents terrorism, but that terrorism must be analysed within a broader remit. If we in this Dáil cannot recognise that Israel is a terrorist state, then we are in serious trouble. We have not condemned Israel for attacking Iran without provocation. Israel went in and bombed nuclear sites with all the problems that entails on the basis that the Iranians had weapons or was almost ready to have weapons so Israel took pre-emptive strikes.”
“We seem to have ignored all of that, and the European Commission itself noted difficulties with proving legislative intent, and that some member states find it challenging to qualify violent extreme right-wing acts as acts of terrorism, which the Commission noted to be crucial to ensuring the directive is applied in a non-discriminatory manner. We have a directive that was brought in without complying with essential procedures at the time, a directive that is proving difficult itself, and yet we have the Commission going on and prosecuting or taking infringement proceedings against over 20 countries that have not implemented the directive that is extremely faulty. We are going on another level altogether, a bizarre level where we do not need to implement this directive but we are bringing in legislation that is seriously problematic.”
“I, too, have serious concerns about this. On first reading of the Bill, you would think it is fairly innocuous, in that we are going to punish the receipt of training for terrorism, and travelling and organising it. Then you look at it more clearly and you will see we are amending legislation from 20 years ago to make it stronger. We are doing it on the basis of a directive that we were not obliged to buy into but nevertheless we gave our word to it. We are adding in three new things, including what has already been referred to - the public provocation to commit a terrorist offence. We are doing this on the basis of a directive that itself is extremely problematic and has been highlighted by the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights and by a whole European network of national human rights institutions, which made a number of recommendations.”
“We will be looking at terrorism legislation again on Thursday without any context when the real terrorists, Israel and so on, which I will be mentioning when I am speaking on Thursday, are not mentioned. There is huge danger in going down a very narrow road regarding security and who the terrorists are without an overall scope.”
“The issue of the DPP making the decision rather than a judge is not addressed anywhere. There is then the use of belief or opinion evidence. This has gone in Northern Ireland but we are going to keep it down here. That has not been looked at or teased out as regards equality between Northern Ireland and here. We were promised a period of consultation with stakeholders following the Peart review in 2023. There is no mention of the status of that consultation. I have mentioned that human rights are not mentioned at all. Of course, the right to a jury is the gold standard. It is unacceptable for a Minister for justice with such experience not to reference that gold standard or tell us why we have to depart from it when a substantial number of the sections of the legislation have not been used at all. It is unacceptable.”
“The Minister of State might look at it. It is the UN special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism. There is a framework there. Yes, there is counter-terrorism, but with a framework. In the minute and a half I have left, I will ask a number of questions. The Irish Council for Civil Liberties kindly sent us information. When we go ahead and get rid of the Special Criminal Court, will it be done by ordinary legislation or by referendum? If it is to be done by ordinary legislation, how can that be done when we had to have a referendum to establish the Court of Appeal? With regard to placing the Special Criminal Court on a permanent footing, how can that be reconciled with the Constitution, under which the Special Criminal Court arises from emergency powers?”
“We have a Minister for justice, who has serious experience in law behind him, telling us we will be standing here again next year, if we are alive, to again pass a resolution saying the courts are inadequate without any evidence or any action on all of that criticism and without even an apology two years after the issuing of a minority and a majority report. That is unacceptable. It is also unacceptable that human rights and the balancing that must take place are mentioned absolutely nowhere. It is clear that we need to deal with terrorism and serious crime but there must be a balancing exercise. Of course, you will get a hint from the UN special rapporteur. Until last year, that was Professor Ní Aoláin from Galway, while the current rapporteur is Ben Saul. The rapporteur's full title is interesting.”
“I thank the Ceann Comhairle. I do not support these motions. The legislation to which they relate sets out to tell us that the ordinary courts are inadequate to secure the effective administration of justice. I did not hear that declaration anywhere in the detailed speech the Minister made and I do not see any evidence at all for it. The Special Criminal Court is based on emergency legislation. We have been told repeatedly that that is unacceptable. We were criticised on foot of it by the UN Human Rights Committee in 1993, 2000, 2008, 2013 and 2014. We had the Hederman report and then, in 2023, the majority and minority reports of the review group.”
“There should not be premium housing or any other type on public land. This is what the task force in Galway, which has now sat since 2019, should be ensuring.”
“After the crash, the Government, with all its accounting tricks and off-balance-sheet accounting, introduced the housing assistance payment. This has been an absolute disaster, costing over half a billion euro per year, or nearly a billion euro with the cost of the other schemes. The Housing Commission is saying we should put it back to what it should be, involving a short term arrangement, and build local authority housing. However, we cannot do that because of the blame game, with the local authority saying it does not have enough money and the Department saying it has loads of money. Despite what is said, we have a crisis. To me, part of the solution – perhaps I am too simple to see the solution but I have a lot of experience based on what I have watched – is to have nothing but public housing on public land.”
“Imagine that we needed a housing commission to tell us how essential a home is and to put the emphasis on a well-functioning society and the number of houses we need for that. The Housing Commission specifically asked us not to conflate this with market demand or construction capacity, and to consider housing in a completely different way. It also stated social housing and cost-rental housing should comprise at least 20% of the overall target set by the Government. Of course, that is not happening at all. The chair was in the city council, as was I. I was on the council for 17 years. Unfortunately, I watched the local authority being starved of funds and functions and forced into undesirable circumstances.”
“Instead, the trust went off in all sorts of different directions without any monitoring. It bought a hotel, which has been empty since 2022. There are many other problems besides. Let us consider what the Housing Commission stated. It stated we should assess housing need in Ireland on the basis of what is needed for a well-functioning society. That is the kernel for me. It has been continuously ignored by every Government, which puts an emphasis on the view that the market will provide, as if a home were not the most essential thing one could have for security of tenure and to allow people to raise families and participate in society. Every single week people are worrying about security of tenure and where they are going to end up. Having to move because of a lack of security means changes of school and of all one’s conditions.”
“Teachers in Dublin, some in my own family, state children are coming from different homelessness units to school and are expected to compete with, and be on the same level as, other children. All that is increasing is the number of homelessness organisations. We have gone from the Peter McVerry Trust to other organisations, each filling a void that the Government should be filling to prevent homelessness. On the matter of the Peter McVerry Trust, which is before the Committee of Public Accounts, that entity should never have been allowed to develop in the manner it did, with a lack of oversight. I am not casting any aspersions on the tremendous work done, but it should have been left for those who need a wraparound service and who are homeless for many reasons.”
“The commission specifically stated the Government should not run with one recommendation and that all must be taken on board for a radical reset, a completely different vision. There is one little hope for Galway. We are now learning that in the midst of an absolutely dreadful housing crisis there, 75% of the houses are being built directly. That 75% of projected delivery is through own builds is very positive. I agree with that. It is the one little piece of hope from the forum, which has been sitting for way too long without publishing a comprehensive report on the housing crisis in Galway. It has been mentioned already that the Ombudsman for Children, Dr. Niall Muldoon, has highlighted the catastrophic consequences of homelessness for children.”
“In Galway, I have fought for student accommodation repeatedly; however, it is completely developer led and popping up where developers decide it will make the best profit, leaving residents in various areas throughout the city in a most difficult position. Therefore, I will not support the self-serving narrative. If we used the number of words we use here in the Dáil, I am sure we could build quite an amount of housing. To stop all the talk, the Government commissioned a Housing Commission report. It reported last May, over a year ago, and had 83 recommendations. What jumped out for me was the statement that there has been systemic failure and that we need a radical reset and to change our policy completely. What the Government did was run with one aspect of that, in relation to rent pressure zones.”
“I want to speak in favour of this motion although I have concerns about parts of it. Overall, I agree with it and the focus it puts on the absence of infrastructure. I will not support the narrative on this side of the House to the effect that objections are causing the planning problems. That is a false, self-serving narrative. My office has just submitted a question to confirm the number of vacancies in the planning system. At any given time, I am told there are 500. I tried my best to elicit a response from the Department of housing lately but failed. However, it confirmed the number was around 500. We should not scapegoat objectors. I do not know any objectors; I know concerned residents and citizens who break their hearts to put in submissions because they are concerned.”
“There is no sign of it. A parliamentary question was recently asked by a Government TD. The reply stated that the international agreement on a Unified Patent Court had been signed and so on. It continued: "Government has committed that a local division of the Court will be established in Ireland if the State ratifies", but nothing is happening. There is no explanation other than the Government decided it was going to get another bashing. I agree with the Government it was important to change the referendum on this, but it did not do it. It sought to change the referendum on two other issues. That was completely wrong and disingenuous. Getting back to the motion, I ask the Government to deal with the steps that need to be taken following on from the fact that it is not opposing the motion. What is the Government going to do next?”
“We were told it was vital to change the Constitution to allow for that. Suddenly, it did not matter anymore. It is gone. The Leas-Cheann Comhairle might be able to help us find out where the importance attached to the Unified Patent Court referendum has gone. We were told we had to change the Constitution to allow for that but suddenly it was put off because the Government got a bashing in both referendums. When we go back to disinformation and distrust, it comes from governments. It is not coming from the people. The people are begging for an open honest approach. They want to trust politicians but trust is not created by the Government telling us one day that it is essential for trade, commerce and industry to change the Constitution in the context of the patent court, but the next day it is gone and does not matter anymore.”
“One of the basic ways of protecting carers is to recognise them fundamentally in the Constitution in a separate article and then to roll out the practical steps that should be taken and, separately, address the importance of the family. Whoever is in charge of the family, whether mother, father or parents, I have no problem with that, but the two should have been addressed separately. The Government did not do that. It misled the people. They were way ahead of the Government. They voted overwhelmingly against both referendums. Maybe the Government might learn from that to speak honestly and openly to people as to what it is doing and stop the deceit. Further, the Government decided there was to be a referendum on the Unified Patent Court. At the time, the Government told us that was vital. I sat and listened to the Government.”
“I think what happened with the last two referendums was that the Government was disingenuous with the electorate, who were far ahead of us. They saw that the Government was simply not telling the truth about carers or about removing the mother from the Constitution. If you want to remove that, put in parents, but that is not what happened with both of those referendums. I thought about them carefully and studied them. I found myself with bedfellows whom I would not normally be with but that did not deter me from making my decision that what the Government was doing was totally wrong in amending the Constitution under the guise of protecting carers, when it was doing exactly the opposite.”
“I would like to see this part of the motion go ahead because it is a much easier to progress it, and then we can look in more detail at what we mean. Quite a number of articles of the Constitution are involved, including Articles 12 and 16, one about the Presidency and one about the Dáil. We also have an interesting article, Article 9.3, under which Irish citizens have a fundamental political duty of fidelity to the nation. We need to tease out what the nation as opposed to the country is and how we protect that article. While I am open in theory to extending it to the diaspora, it needs to be teased out in a manner that is respectful. The Minister of State, Deputy Richmond, said that we must ensure this can be passed. Members of different parties said to look at the last referendum and said that we did not sell it right.”
“It goes against the principle of equality and it allows us to continue to speak out of both sides of our mouths about Northern Ireland. I have gone up there quite a number of times in the past on trips relating to the Irish language, including to Carn Tóchair in County Derry and to Belfast. I toured all the Irish facilities. The strongest emotional feeling I had crossing over was that we had literally cut off our right arm with Northern Ireland. It is time to have a realistic timescale for a united Ireland. This is the first immediate step that we can take. Regarding the broader issue of extending votes to the diaspora, while I agree in principle, there are huge practical problems which need to be teased out.”
“We had the Thirty-fourth Amendment of the Constitution (Presidential Voting) Bill 2014, which did not go anywhere. We have the Fifth Report of the Convention on the Constitution from 2013, which did not go anywhere. Now the Government is agreeing with the motion. I welcome that. Tell us what the Government is going to do for the next step. Is it a cross-party committee? What forum will there be to do it in? It is beyond ironic that we can elect somebody as President, as we all know and as has been said so many times, including former President Mary McAleese and indeed other candidates from Northern Ireland, including Martin McGuinness, who could not vote for themselves. It is unacceptable, given the Good Friday Agreement of 1998.”
“I thank Sinn Féin for tabling this motion. It is brief and to the point. I have no problem with implementing the recommendations of the Fifth Report of the Convention on the Constitution, which was quite some time ago now, for all Irish citizens on the island of Ireland. I have no difficulty with that. To follow on from my colleague, Deputy Stanley, it is not in the programme for Government, which is disappointing. It was in the 2020 programme for Government. While I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Richmond, telling us the Government is not going to oppose this motion, just like somebody said, that is often a recipe for doing nothing. Perhaps at the end, the Minister of State, Deputy Higgins, might tell us what the next step is, having accepted this motion. Where are we going with this? We have had many attempts before.”
“If we are to learn anything from this, rather than listing the scandals, perhaps we could have a change in policy from the Government.”
“Absolutely harrowing correspondence arises from Covid, including how many died in nursing homes and how they were treated. This is 2025 and people are still trying to get documents and appealing to us. Let us look at the percentages. Not even 20% are in public ownership. It is much less, as we know from the Public Accounts Committee. That 20% or less includes publicly owned nursing homes plus voluntary bodies. I think it is as low as 14% or 15%. I know Galway has an excellent reputation, with Merlin Park and the St. Francis home when it was there. I despair sometimes at the forcefulness of a lobby group and Governments that back up the market when all of the facts tell you otherwise, when we just pursue one avenue and keep reducing public ownership of nursing homes until it is nothing.”
“The private nursing homes get into trouble and then the public system has to send in staff in Oughterard in Galway and in Galway city, into private, for-profit companies which are unaccountable. We send in staff, which is ironic because there is a nursing home in Carraroe, which I have mentioned many times, that cannot get staff, and it has 13 beds, or somewhere between ten and 15 beds at any given time, i gcroílár na Gaeltachta, and the HSE says that there are no staff. Yet, when these private companies get into trouble, we seem to be able to send in staff no problem to take them over. I am not sure if we have learned anything or what the cost has been of looking after the private companies that got into trouble. We are all in receipt of the public accounts, which I will not read out.”
“Around that time, I travelled to Portlaoise too, where the HSE was closing a public nursing home in Deputy Fleming's constituency. I cannot remember what happened with that. We joined forces. That was back in 2010 and 2011, when we said the writing was on the wall with the closure of public nursing homes. That started earlier with Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats' philosophy, which I have repeatedly said knew the price of everything and the value of nothing, with the mantra that private is best. Every single Government policy went to ensuring that private was best, not for care but for profit-making, and that is what happened. I have asked a number of questions about how many private nursing homes have had to be taken over since 2020 alone. I have counted 11 in Wicklow, Kerry, Galway, Galway, Kerry, Cork and so on.”
“Here we go again about nursing homes. A scandal has given us cause to talk about nursing homes. All the details of that scandal have been outlined. I am not going to outline them again. It is bewildering that HIQA had a report on one of the homes, Beneavin, in November, and it was substantially compliant. That in itself is frightening. I looked to remember, because my memory is faulty, when we closed St. Francis Nursing Home in Galway. On the streets of Galway, in 2011, over a winter period, we gathered more than 20,000 signatures, begging the Health Service Executive not to close St. Francis Nursing Home. It ignored the people of Galway and the signatures, and it closed the nursing home. We managed to keep it open as a primary care centre. I am using that as an example.”