Colm Burke
Cork North-Central · Fine Gael · Ireland
“That is not the Department's fault but the FAI was not asked any questions about bringing this land back into use for sporting activities in Glanmire. There are 30 acres lying idle. Not a sod has been turned and no planning application has been made. We are now getting mixed messages about what is actually going on.”
“The Department is still giving out money to the FAI and not calling it to account for getting the land from a Government agency, the local authority, and leaving it to sit idle, while clubs are now refusing to take in new members because they do not have capacity for them. It is time for the Department to step in.”
“It is ten years later and not a sod has been turned. I got then Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, to come to Glanmire in 2023 where we met 18 of the sports clubs. As a result of that meeting, the FAI started negotiations again with the county council.”
“The Department of Culture, Communications and Sport provides funding to the FAI on an annual basis. I understand it is more than €6 million. Can the Minister of State ascertain why 30 acres of land in Glanmire, Cork, which was leased to the FAI by Cork County Council in 2017, has remained idle?”
“I am absolutely astonished at that reply. The county council told councillors that it was leasing 12.5 acres to Riverstown FC rather than the full site. What the FAI is telling the Minister is totally different.”
“There has been a substantial delay in issuing Irish residency permit, IRP, cards. Quite a number of my constituents have been let go from employment because they did not get their cards within the 12-week period.”
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“As the Minister of State outlined, there are more than 290 properties, which cannot be sold at the moment and where people cannot borrow money to redevelop them. As a result, no development has occurred in that area over the past 13 or 14 years.”
“I thank the Minister for his reply but I am getting no answer to the question I raised. I asked when the Minister of State expected to have the environmental impact study back. When will we have a public consultation? When can we move on with this project? It is 12 years on and we have not made one single step forward on this project. I am frustrated. The fact is the OPW submitted the design to the Department of public expenditure in 2018. It took until 2021 for a decision to be made. There was then a judicial review. An environmental impact study was submitted in 2022. By the time the Department dealt with it in 2023, that environmental impact study was then out of date as a result of the report sitting on someone's desk for 12 months. I do not want that to happen again.”
“This question is related to Questions Nos. 102 and 103. I wish the Minister of State well in his new role in the Department of public expenditure. My question relates to the Blackpool flood relief scheme, which was initiated in 2013. In the past 12 years, little or no progress has been made on the matter. Has the Department received the up-to-date environmental impact study in respect of the Blackpool flood relief scheme? What is the timeframe for when the public consultation will occur?”
“It is important to highlight this issue, as I said, with the farming organisations but also to work with other groups in rural areas. There was a time when if you were, say, a dairy farmer, you went to the creamery and you met others at IFA meetings, Macra meetings or ICMSA meetings. However, a lot of meetings now are held on Zoom so there is not the same social contact. That is why it is important that we work together to try to provide support, making sure that people do not feel alone, that if they do have challenges, there is someone there to give them help and support. We need to do a lot of work on this over the next few months, in particular because of the price reduction in a number of areas. It is important that this support be given.”
“We need to make sure we get the information out there but also work for farmers, working in particular with the farming organisations - the IFA, Macra na Feirme, the ICMSA and all the others - on getting information out there. The big issue with people being at risk in farming is that they work alone for quite considerable periods.”
“A recent study - and there have been a number of them - by agri-mental health group Farming Minds in UCD found that 23.4% of farmers are considered at risk of suicide, 50% of farmers are currently experiencing moderate to extremely severe depression and almost 40% of farmers are experiencing moderate to extremely severe anxiety and stress. That report and other reports have been produced over recent years and highlight this, but other health areas need to be highlighted as well. I came across someone recently in their early 30s who suffered a severe stroke, so this is about not just mental health but also other health issues.”
“What efforts are being made by the Minister's Department to prioritise improvements in farmers' mental health and well-being supports, in particular supports for rural mental health programmes, recognising the unique challenges faced by those in the sector, and will the Minister make a statement on the matter?”
“There is also a need for funding of more than €20 million between UCC and Trinity College Dublin to increase the number of places. I ask that the matter be dealt with before September 2025.”
“I raise the number of dental training places that are available in the universities in Ireland. It has not increased in the past 25 years, yet the population has increased by 1.5 million. The number of dentists taking part in the dental treatment services scheme has reduced from 1,492 to 810, which means 682 fewer dentists are available under the scheme. There is an urgent need to increase the number of training places in universities for dental students, which is quite easy to do. A total of 44% of current students attending Irish universities are from overseas. Why can we not use those places for training Irish students? It is about funding, and the reason they are bringing people from overseas is the funding. It is an easy matter to deal with.”
“We must not see a repeat of what happened last week. The matter of speaking rights has been subject to 20 hours of debate at the Dáil reform committee. It is now time to move on and deal with the setting up of committees, particularly the Committee of Public Accounts but also the health committee, the committee on agriculture and a range of other committees we need to have up and running. This also gives the Opposition an opportunity to scrutinise what is happening in Departments and have Ministers before them. None of that is happening at present. It is therefore a priority that we now move on. We have major challenges and it is important that these are dealt with by all of us working together in the Oireachtas to make sure we deliver for the people who elected us.”
“I support the motion of confidence in the Ceann Comhairle. She retains my full confidence. As the democratically elected Chair of this House, she deserves the respect of all its Members. She was democratically elected. As a former colleague of hers on the Committee of Public Accounts, I know of her work rate and her commitment to fairness, due procedure and full accountability. I know she will implement that as Ceann Comhairle. Regardless of whether you support the Government or the Opposition, there are very great challenges facing our country and, indeed, the entire world. There is the threat of tariffs on goods, issues of global security and armed conflicts that affect this country indirectly. Both the Government and the Opposition must move on with the business of tackling these issues.”
“What efforts are being made by the Department to engage with GPs to make sure we can have that scheme put in place for all residents in all public and private nursing homes?”
“<b>:</b> There are 26,700 residents in private nursing homes and 5,600 residents in public nursing homes. The enhanced community care programme and the chronic disease management programme were agreements between GPs, the HSE and the Department, but GPs are not paid under these programmes for dealing with residents in public and private nursing homes. As a result, private nursing homes face a significant problem in getting GPs to provide care in these nursing homes. As a result, some of these nursing homes are physically paying GPs to provide care for medical card patients. This is about keeping people in nursing homes and out of hospitals. The only way to do this is by having a comprehensive medical card programme provided by GPs in each of these nursing homes for the residents there who are entitled to it.”
“Regarding disadvantaged areas, while there are some in my constituency of Cork North-Central on the northside of the city, in fairness to all of the sporting organisations and the local authorities, they have been very proactive about grants. However, I did come across difficulties in Dublin. For instance, one of projects in which I was involved was the opening of Merchant's Quay supervised injection facility, and in that whole area of Dublin there are no facilities of any description for young people. There is a primary school in the area attended by a lot of young people but they have no facilities of any description. That is the kind of thing I am talking about, where we need to open up to those areas that have not received any kind of funding over the past 15 or 20 years. It is something the Department needs to consider.”
“It is extremely important to ensure in the next round of grant applications that support mechanisms are put in place to help those disadvantaged areas.”
“I have a query about the timescale. It is about sports organisations' planning. In the Minister of State's reply, he said the next round will start in 2026. When in 2026 will it be? Is it going to be in the first or second quarter? This is about organisations preparing plans and making sure they have gone through the whole planning process. It is about target dates. The Minister of State also raised the issue of disadvantaged areas but I am not clear that we are putting enough effort in to giving funding to disadvantaged areas. We have a problem in that we do not have the expertise in some areas to fill out applications and we do not have any scheme in place to assist organisations in those areas with making those applications.”
“We need to roll that out across the entire country so that every nursing home has access to a hospital team rather than having people admitted. In one case in Dublin more than 300 people were assessed and only 20 had to be admitted to hospital. We need to work with both public and private nursing homes on that. In relation to the roll-out of services within the HSE, one community hospital, namely, the Millstreet community unit, has been finished for some time with an additional ten beds. My understanding is that those ten beds are still not occupied. The building work has been completed but it has not received HIQA approval. HIQA approval was only applied for in January. It could have been applied for a lifetime ago. I ask the Minister to look at those issues.”
“If an elderly patient is discharged home, someone is needed to keep in contact with that patient but there is no support out there for medical support. The only way to follow up is for the person to come back into the hospital. We need to look at developing either a six- or seven-day primary care system. In regard the issue of transferring people out of nursing homes into hospitals, some of the hospitals in Cork and Dublin have teams that can go to a nursing home and assess the patient in order that instead of the patient being transferred into hospital, the team prescribes the course of treatment for that patient in the nursing home. The nursing home is now covered. There are no concerns that the family might be unhappy with the level of care. They know that they have the support of the medical team from the hospital.”
“Even if they are going to a step-down facility, in many cases such facilities do not take in new patients or new residents at weekends. We need to look at that area to make the health service more efficient. It needs to have a full seven-day turnaround. I agree with the Minister about consultants being available at weekends. However, other personnel also need to be available so that if the consultant decides to discharge someone, there is backup support and a mechanism for moving the patient into a step-down facility. The other issue relates to primary care. Primary care is very much a five-day-week operation. We need to look long term about how we can develop it into at least a six-day operation.”
“We should change the whole thinking in regard to healthcare about five-day operation in many areas. All the hospitals are open seven days a week. They provide care seven days a week but many services are not available during some of those seven days. I spoke to Professor Rónán Collins today who had an interesting article in thejournal.ie about the issue of lack of access to services at weekends such as MRI scans and in certain cases, X-rays are not available. It is not possible to get professional diagnostics and social care people are not available at weekends. If one wishes to discharge an elderly patient on a Friday evening or a Saturday there is nobody there to put in place the back-up supports they need if they are being sent home.”
“In 1996 the Danish system started the patient card, which has all a person's medical information on one file, no matter what hospital the person is admitted to. I was speaking to a junior doctor recently who advised me that he spends 50% of his time each day chasing records, X-rays and MRI scans because they are not put on the file. He has to get them from the relevant department to make sure they are put on the file. This goes to show the huge waste of trained professionals' time within the healthcare sector. They are not able to provide the necessary support to patients but are instead chasing records. It is important we do as much as we can over the next three to four years to computerise the entire healthcare sector. An interesting point on healthcare is how it has been put into a five-day-week operation.”
“I thank the Minister and wish her well in her role in the Department of Health. It is appropriate that I thank the former Minister, Stephen Donnelly, who I served for a brief period of time in the Department. I liked working with him. He achieved a great deal in the time in which he was in the Department. Tonight, it is important to welcome the roll-out of the health app. It is hugely important. There is a need for the computerisation of the healthcare sector. In 2009 I was in Gaza and within half an hour of using my bank card, I got a call from AIB saying that it appeared someone had stolen my card. To think in Ireland we can go from one hospital to another in the same city or the same area and there is no connection as regards the transfer of records. There is a lot of catching up to do.”
“On 29 November 2022, the Cabinet decided that Sarsfieldscourt would be the site of the new elective hospital in County Cork. More than two years have passed and we have still not seen the design plan for hospital. In addition, the planning application has not been submitted. The former Minister, Stephen Donnelly, was very much in favour of the development of elective hospitals, not just in Cork but also in other parts of the country. When are we going to see the plans for this elective hospital? When will a planning application will be submitted in order that we can go ahead with this project at Sarsfieldscourt?”
“In the Cork-Kerry region, 2,619 people are waiting for the audiology service appointments and it takes 117 weeks from referral by a GP or health specialist until someone gets an appointment. I am very concerned that there are only 14.2 audiologists working in the region. It is no longer adequate. There is also a strong link between hearing loss and the early onset of dementia. What action will be taken to deal with this waiting list? Someone who is aged 82 will be 85 by the time they get an appointment. That is the type of problem we face. I ask that immediate action be taken on the matter.”
“Recommendation 4 is that, "Detailed, accurate, and timely information regarding the circumstances of SIDS deaths is required to make further improvements in the prevention of these deaths." There are four clear recommendations. When is the Department going to implement those recommendations in full? Are we talking about 12 months, two years or three years? There are clear recommendations that were set out by a very expert group. It is a matter for the HSE and the Department of Health to get together and implement the terms of these recommendations.”
“I thank the Minister of State for her reply. The recommendations are quite clear. Recommendation 1 is "The National Office of Clinical Audit (NOCA) must urgently progress the implementation of an electronic data collection system in order to allow for the timely submission of CYP mortality data to the NPMR". It is a clear recommendation. Recommendation 2 is that there would be a "detailed analysis of infection-related deaths". Recommendation 3 is that "NOCA should contribute to the evidence base required to inform policy around suicide prevention by reviewing data relating to the circumstances of potential suicide deaths".”
“The report is a comprehensive one of more than 150 pages. It deals with all of the aspects relating to infant deaths and child deaths. The Department now needs to take on board the recommendations in the report and the need for a centralised system. I ask that this request would be taken on board at the earliest possible date.”
“This is especially the case in the age group from 15 to 18. In the case of sudden infant death syndrome, SIDS, there is a need for accurate and timely information regarding the circumstances of those deaths. There is another interesting issue. My understanding is that when a post mortem is requested in the case of the death of a child receiving treatment in a hospital, the post mortem report goes to the coroner, but there is no direct feedback to the doctors who were treating the child, and if feedback is given, it happens at a considerably later stage. It can take anything up to two years for an inquest to be held, and therefore the post mortem report is not made available. The doctors concerned in treating that child may have moved on to another hospital or indeed to another jurisdiction. That is something that must also be reviewed.”
“In the age group of those aged ten to 14 there has been no decrease. In the age group of those aged 15 to 18, however, there has been an increase. This is the concern that the report shows. It is interesting to see the figures in that the number of deaths recorded for those aged under one year of age was 363. For those aged one to 14, the figure was 145, while for those aged 15 to 18, it was 104. The major aspect of this report shows that there is no centralised system of any description for reporting. There also seems to be quite a delay in the reporting of the deaths. As a result, the analysis is not occurring. The report clearly indicated a need for a proper data collection system, for an analysis of infection-related deaths, that is, in children, and for a review of data relating to circumstances of potential suicide.”
“I am raising this issue because of a report published in the last week, namely, the National Paediatric Mortality Register Annual Report 2025. It sets out the concerns about the lack of a centralised, universalised reporting system for reporting and analysing child deaths. This is hindering progress in addressing the root causes. What steps is the Minister of State taking to address this issue? The report covers the audit from 1 January 2019 to 31 December 2023. It shows that deaths of children are higher in some areas, aspects and age groups in Ireland compared to other European countries. For instance, there has been no significant decline in mortality in the age groups of those aged from ten to 14 and 15 to 18. In fact, rates in Ireland from 2007 to 2023 in the age groups one to four and five to nine show there has been no decrease.”
“Cork North-Central is where more than €35 billion is coming from Apple into the Exchequer. I raise the issue of the north ring road, which is north of the city. In the past two years, not one brown cent has been made available for the development of the strategic plan for the northside of Cork city. Funding has been provided for the distributor road, which is also important. The Tánaiste mentioned the capital programme. I ask that the north ring road is not excluded in view of the fact that not one cent has been provided for it in two years. That was at a time when three senior Cabinet people were based in Cork. I ask for the north ring road be included in the capital programme, that the money for the distributor road also be prioritised, and that the project be allowed to go ahead in the fastest possible timeframe.”