Conor Sheehan
Limerick City · Labour Party · Ireland
“If a student does not have access to one of these devices or access to one at home, there is often no alternative and that could leave them excluded. Many families are forced to pay hundreds and thousands, particularly with the rising cost of microchips, for these devices.”
“I thank the Minister for her considered response. We need to get rid of voluntary contributions and move to generic school uniforms. This is something that has been done in the UK.”
“This digital divide is resulting in a severe and growing level of inequality where so many communities, students and families are unable to purchase the devices they desperately need for their children's education.”
“I raise the issue of the community access support team, CAST, in Limerick, which has prevented 133 detentions under section 12 of the Mental Health Act and reduced the number emergency department presentations. It has responded to over 1,000 incidents.”
“Do not worry. We need to have a debate this week before the House rises about the imminent report on Aughinish Alumina. There are up to 2,000 direct and indirect jobs at stake in Limerick. We cannot have a situation where the State is inadvertently complicit in the export of alumina to Russia. Where there is a will, there is a way.”
“It is absolutely reprehensible that planning permission has been granted for apartments on the site of the former mother and baby home at Bessborough. We have 19 mothers and 859 infants associated with Bessborough still missing. Now 140 apartments are going to be built on a mass grave. We need statements on this next week.”
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“As we all know, councils are legally obligated to fit them out to a certain standard under the standard for rented housing regulations, which were established in 2019, so it is a bit more complicated than just giving them a lick of paint as the Taoiseach tried to misrepresent a couple of weeks ago. It takes over a year to refurbish and re-let these homes in Limerick. It is important to note that our local authority has been very proactive in funding some of the cost of the refurbishment of these homes. As we both know, in 2015, Limerick City and County Council approved a loan to Limerick 2030 to purchase and develop the old Dell factory site into a film studio. Following the sale of the studio, when Limerick 2030 repaid the loan to the council, the council repurposed this to fund the refurbishment of vacant council homes.”
“In Limerick, we are literally operating on what is effectively a one-in one-out model. It makes no sense. The Minister of State knows that. I was very dismayed when, in response to my party leader during Leaders' Questions a few weeks ago, the Taoiseach said there is a culture of dependency in local authorities. This is ridiculous. He was either being disingenuous or he is out of touch. There are council homes in parts of Limerick that have been vacant for up to three or four years. A total of 3,500 local authority homes become vacant every year.”
“I am asking the Minister of State both as a line Minister in the Department and a fellow TD for Limerick city to try to engage practically with the local authority to plug this gap. I know he is a practical person who is well able to get things done. All of us can work together to see whether, at the very least, we can plug some of that deficit and get some movement on this. Vacant homes are an eyesore. They are often a magnet for antisocial behaviour, draw vermin and rubbish and are desperately unfair to other residents living in a community. The mechanism by which the voids scheme operates is flawed, with local authorities required to bundle vacant homes together, which often takes months, causing them to be welded up at considerable cost to the taxpayer and left to rot for months and years until they are refurbished.”
“I wrote to the Minister last week to support a detailed and costed business case put forward by Limerick City and County Council for additional voids funding following a special meeting of the council and signed by all councillors, including those from Fine Gael. There are 113 homes awaiting minor refurbishment, which cannot be done for €11,000. There are 115 units assigned to the housing maintenance team of the council awaiting minor repairs. Of these, 87 are eligible for €11,000 in voids funding and 28 are being funded entirely through the council's revenue budget. The current funding deficit stands at €1.4 million. There is a forecast deficit of €5 million to refurbish 105 units, which leaves a total deficit of €6.5 million.”
“Ar dtús báire, ba mhaith liom mo bhuíochas a ghabháil le Sinn Féin as ucht an rúin seo a thabhairt faoi bhráid na Dála anocht. The Labour Party has long campaigned against the scourge of vacancy and dereliction in our communities. Vacant local authority homes are the low-hanging fruit of the housing crisis and constitute State-sponsored dereliction. The undisputed fact is that local authorities do not receive adequate funding from the Department to deal with this. They get on average €11,000 per unit when it costs on average €48,000 to bring a vacant council home back into use. Construction inflation has increased by 114% since 2014. In Limerick, a city represented by the Minister of State and me, there are always more than 200 vacant local authority homes.”
“The bundle 3 project board, which includes Dublin City Council, was informed by officials from the Department of housing last Wednesday that the Minister would not be sanctioning approval for the national social housing bundle 3 projects to proceed to contract award due to concerns with costs. These projects were scheduled to commence construction this month. The board was also told, even more worryingly, that future PPP bundles will also need to be reviewed. How does the Government intend to deliver bundle 3? Will bundle 4 and subsequent bundles be going ahead? If the Government is discontinuing the PPP schemes, that is understandable and fine but I do not understand why it is doing it mid-stream. It should see the bundles that are already in the pipeline through and then, if it feels the need to pull the plug, pull the plug.”
“Given that a lot of these projects are so close to having builders on site, it is unfathomable that with the stroke of a pen, the plug has been pulled. What is going on in the Department? How will the hundreds of homes that are supposed to be delivered in PPP bundle 3 now be delivered? Can the Minister offer certainty over the future delivery of bundles 4 and 5? What action is the Government going to take to ensure that procurement processes that have concluded will not end up subject to lengthy legal battles because the Minister decided to do this out of the blue last week? Six housing projects are included in PPP bundle 3.”
“In Dublin City Council, not only is bundle 3 up in the air, but subsequent bundles 4 and 5, which could deliver thousands more social homes, are now also facing an uncertain future. Last year, before the election, the Government promised to oversee the building of 40,000 homes in 2024, only to miss that target by a whole third. Now it seems the Government is going to fail to meet its targets again this year. Indeed, the Government has never met its targets for social and affordable housing. I understand the concerns that people have about value for money - I have them myself - but where was this concern when PPP was introduced? The Government was warned about this. Local authorities and the Opposition warned the Government.”
“Last Wednesday, a bombshell was dropped on local authorities, with the Minister and the Government deciding to halt bundle 3 of the Dublin City Council-led PPP project, which has ramifications well beyond just Dublin. My Labour Party colleagues from right across the country have raised the very real possibility of hundreds of shovel-ready homes being stopped in their local communities. This is especially true for my Kildare South colleague, Deputy Mark Wall. In the midst of a deepening housing crisis and record levels of homelessness, this is shocking. If the Government is going to go down the PPP route, at the very least it should see the existing bundles through.”
“To make such a fundamental change to the regulation of renting without, at the very least, doing it in tandem with the Government's new housing plan is reckless. Tweaking planning exemptions for attic conversions and granny flats does not make a suite of measures. The failure to include critical infrastructure, such as water infrastructure, in the Government's changes to planning exemptions represents a missed opportunity. An announcement was made in recent days on public-private partnerships, PPPs. The PPP model was championed by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael as recently as 2021. The Government's Housing for All plan recommitted to the PPP delivery model and despite misgivings, local authorities across the country were incentivised and did use PPP to deliver social homes.”
“The proposals as they stand will invariably lead to an increase in homelessness and they should be done in tandem with a successor plan to Housing for All. The proposal to cap the rent of new-build apartments at the rate of inflation creates more uncertainty for renters, given that inflation increased to 7.8% as recently as 2022, not to mention the added unpredictability posed by the Trump Administration and the proposed tariffs. It is clear that we need more supply but this must come with the condition of affordability. We have some of the highest rents in Europe and it is very clear, with what the Government is proposing, that it is baking in upward-only rent increases. The Minister, Deputy Browne, spoke to the media today about a tranche of key decisions to come.”
“If the Government were serious about protecting renters without caveat, it would pass our renters' rights Bill, which includes measures such as a complete ban on no-fault evictions without exception and a register of rents so that tenants can have transparency on the rent that was previously paid on a property. Thousands of renters leave tenancies every year, particularly students, many of whom are packing up at the moment or have packed up by this time. They are already anxious thinking about where they are going to live next year. By allowing landlords to reset rents in between tenancies, the Government is throwing these people, and eventually all renters, under the bus. I cannot understand why the Government is doing this as a stand-alone measure and not in conjunction with its new housing plan.”
“Instead, it has cobbled together a halfway house that seeks to satisfy competing interests but in reality will satiate neither. There is a clear need to implement a better way of regulating rents and its own expert-led Housing Commission report, which the Government continually ignores when it suits it, has stated the need to do this. A system of reference rents merits serious consideration and is something that we in the Labour Party proposed as far back as 2016 in our social and affordable housing Bill. I will seek to introduce legislation on this in the coming weeks.”
“For nine years, we in Labour have called for the entire country to be made into a rent pressure zone, a measure we have long believed to be necessary as long as the system of regulating rents by these means remains. This is something both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have continually refused to do. They even went as far as describing the measure as unconstitutional back in 2017. This raises the question as to why the sudden volte-face. The only answer I can see is that the Government is scrambling and is fudging this as it goes along. There is a poverty of ideas in this Government. It is too timid to implement a nationwide freeze on rents or, on the other hand, to remove rent controls entirely as the vulture funds have been lobbying it to do.”
“While the Government says today that the measures announced aim to improve the circumstances of renters, in reality it will make life more difficult for many renters across the country who are not covered by the provisions, such as renters who voluntarily leave tenancies, renters who are near the end of the six-year expiry date or will come to that in 2032, students and those who will rent new-build apartments. This announcement aims to do two competing things, neither of which it will achieve properly, namely, protect renters and incentivise private investors. Investors do need certainty and they have had anything but from Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, which have chopped and changed their housing policy at least eight times, particularly regarding the private rental market over the past decade.”
“Has this been conveyed to the CEO, Ms Boudreaux, in the United States by the Irish Government and Minister for enterprise? I assume that if this closure goes ahead as indicated, Revenue will take affirmative action, if necessary.”
“I raise the disappointing news of 300 job losses in Limerick with the closure of Carelon. It is extremely disappointing given that the company was established less than four years ago. It is clearly profitable. It made profits of approximately €400 million over two years. What level of engagement has the Government had with the parent company and, in particular, the CEO, Ms Gail Boudreaux, given this development was flagged over two months ago? I am concerned that there could be negative implications for the parent company in terms of IDA grant repayment, redundancy, difficulty recruiting quality staff elsewhere and, most significantly, possible capital gains implications arising from intellectual property made here in Ireland.”
“This is a defining moment; a moment that will sear our very souls. What sort of a society are we if we gloss over and scroll past the hollowed out faces and lifeless eyes of the Palestinian children? If this really is, as the Tánaiste says "evil beyond words", we need to do more.”
“This is something we can control. We need a solid, transparent and consistent inspection method to be implemented immediately. The fact is that the Government is doing nothing about this. It is not checking so therefore it is not finding. This is completely unacceptable. We cannot stay silent about Shannon Airport when our country and our State's strategic assets are being used to facilitate this. This goes against everything we have ever stood for. That is why we must act. Act to stop the illegal use of Shannon Airport and act to seek a UN peacekeeping force to act as a literal barrier between the Palestinian people and their annihilation and extermination because this is a moment in history like Darfur, like Rwanda and like what the international community has been much better at calling out in Ukraine.”
“Ireland has been very strong on this issue but strong words must be supported by strong, consistent actions and we must control what we can control and we can control who uses our airspace and lands in our airports. Planes have landed in Shannon Airport that frankly should not have. A new inspection regime was meant to have been introduced to deal with this. Why is the Department of Transport still examining this legislation? For example, it was reported in The Ditch that a cargo plane that regularly brings tonnes to weapons to Israel touched down in Shannon Airport as recently as March of this year when on its way to Tel Aviv. The same outlet also reported that the same airline, Silk Way Airlines, illegally transported munitions to Israel through Irish territory. This is illegal. We need transparency and accountability here.”
“I wish to talk in particular about the issue of military flights using Shannon Airport and flying over our airspace. It is something I and others are very concerned about because successive Irish Governments have long claimed the defence of plausible deniability in relation to this. To say we did not know because we did not ask is no longer acceptable. We have already had the Irish Government facilitating the landing of US military flights on Irish soil and some of these military flights have been facilitating the destruction of Gaza and the elimination of the Palestinian people. By allowing military planes to land in Shannon Airport on their way to aid the atrocities in Gaza we are complicit and we are profiting from war crimes.”
“I utterly condemn the actions of Hamas and Hezbollah. However, yesterday a member of the rap group Kneecap was charged with terrorism offences in the UK. They were charged under legislation that the British Government has been rather selective in its application of. The British Government has sent over 14 shipments of arms to Gaza. Last year it sent £127 million in military equipment to the Middle East. These charges are political. They are designed to censor and silence those who are calling out this genocide. It amounts to a carnival of distraction. Will the Tánaiste commit to raising this with his counterpart the UK Foreign Secretary and with the UK Prime Minister?”
“It is an illegal occupation and a resulting genocide. Israel deserves to be a global pariah, and not today or yesterday. The fact of the matter is that to protect Israel's colonial enterprise in Palestine the world became complicit in the forced displacement of Palestinian refugees. Wherever Israel decided to forcibly displace Palestinians, the international community by and large funded, facilitated, armed and welcomed it.”
“The British Prime Minister, a Labour prime minister, turned around and said it was acceptable in 2023 to suspend food, water and electricity to Gaza. I am ashamed of that as a Labour TD and I am ashamed as well to be European because of the response of the European Commission and the President of the Commission, Ursula von der Leyen. I acknowledge the work which the Tánaiste and the Government have done but we in Labour implore them to do more. This is the largest orphan crisis in history. More than 15,000 children have been murdered. Finally, the use of propaganda by the Israeli regime no longer washes. This is the greatest crime of our time and we are seeing it on Instagram, on TikTok and on our television screens. However, this was foretold from the start. Israel said it would do this. This is not just a humanitarian crisis.”
“This starts and ends with Benjamin Netanyahu. For many years, Netanyahu and his regime propped up Hamas at the expense of Abbas and the Palestinian Authority in order to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state and nobody has done more to undermine the State of Israel than Benjamin Netanyahu. Finally, we are seeing a shift - belatedly - in the position of the international community, with the exception of Ireland. Judgment is coming and not just for the perpetrators but for the enablers of this too. I am ashamed of the response of the West, with a few notable exceptions, on this. Germany, led at the time by a supposed centre left Chancellor, was responsible for 30% of the arms that were imported into Israel between 2019 and 2023.”
“I urge the Department to look at this issue in the context of the enactment of the new Planning and Development Act to see whether there might be capacity, in a small number of circumstances, to deliver a time-limited extension to ensure a development can be built. The housing delivery oversight executive, when it is delivered, must have legislative power, as recommended by the Housing Commission. I see the value in having such an executive but it must be established in the vein recommended by the commission, with real power that will enable it to unblock the things that need to be unblocked.”
“I implore the Minister and Minister of State to use whatever influence they have in the Department to push on this development of 250 units. If funding is sanctioned, a contractor can be appointed almost immediately. Approximately 1,000 homes were built in Limerick last year. According to the Housing Commission report and work done by Limerick Chamber, we need to get that number to well over 2,500. I highlight an issue regarding the new Planning and Development Act. Developers in Limerick have contacted me to say they have financing in place on sites in the city, with capacity to deliver 150 units, but the planning will expire on those units 16 to 24 months from now. This is something about which their lenders have a lot of concern.”
“That application was withdrawn because of there being no water infrastructure. There is also no capacity in the water infrastructure in towns like Croom and Hospital in County Limerick, all of which are being held back by that totally inadequate infrastructure. I refer to a specific issue with a site in Mungret, County Limerick, whereby the LDA is shovel-ready on a development of 250 badly needed homes. The main source of infrastructure funding for this site has been the local infrastructure housing activation fund, LIHAF. As a result of a funding shortfall of €5 million, the project has, in effect, been suspended. A request to unlock this money has gone in to the Department from Limerick City and County Council and the LDA in order to fund the necessary road and public realm infrastructure.”
“Gabhaim buíochas le Sinn Féin as ucht an rún seo a chur faoi bhráid na Dála. Water and the adequate funding of water infrastructure are issues we have failed to address properly in this country over many years. We all know there are huge issues all over the country, many of which have been outlined this evening with regard to our water infrastructure. Our infrastructure spend is actually 25% lower than the average for comparable European countries. We need a serious multi-year plan to properly address the housing crisis. We have a situation in this country where a national utility company, Uisce Éireann, has to compete for funding on a multi-annual basis with Departments. In my constituency, a planning application went in for 30 badly needed one- and two-bedroom apartments on the site of the old Olympic Ballroom in Newcastle West.”
“It is not about being anti-Dublin or anti-Dublin Airport. It is about giving us more options outside of Dublin, both in the mid-west and Cork, to avoid having to travel up the motorway to fly to key European destinations. I welcome the fact the Minister said he will examine the regional airports programme. While Government cannot force airlines to fly from a particular airport, it can create policy levers and incentives to make it more attractive for airlines to fly out of the likes of Shannon, Kerry and Knock airports. That really needs to be examined.”
“At the moment, there are 16 flights per week from Dublin Airport to Amsterdam Airport Schiphol. We could do with two flights per week from Shannon to Schiphol.”
“I thank the Minister and tentatively welcome his reply. I am from the west of Ireland, as is the Minister of State sitting beside the Minister, and Shannon Airport is critically important to us in the mid-west. It is not something I agree with, but we know that the Government is going to try to lift the passenger cap. It is a fact of life. We need to gain some additionality for regional airports. Will the Minister look at expanding the regional airports programme to allow access to airports such as Shannon Airport? It is a matter the CEO of the Shannon Airport Group, Ms Mary Considine, has raised and will raise again when she meets the Minister. We need to wean the country off Dublin Airport, although not in terms of the key point-to-point connectivity.”
“I raise the issue of aviation policy. Will the Government consider reviewing aviation policy in light of the fact that aviation policy has not been reviewed since 2015? I raise the matter in particular as a member of the cross-party Shannon Airport Oireachtas group. Shannon Airport is one of the most underused pieces of infrastructure in the State and we need to make much better use of it.”
“Today, trolley numbers in University Hospital Limerick have again exceeded 100, exceeding ten hospitals on the east coast of the country. With the recent announcement by the Government of a new accident and emergency department for Beaumont Hospital in Dublin, I am hopeful that we will soon see movement towards a second accident and emergency department in Limerick. When does the Government expect to receive final advice from HIQA on emergency care capacity in the mid-west? Will the Government commit to facilitating a Dáil debate on this as soon as those findings come in? UHL, as we all know well, is the only model 4 hospital not supported by a model 3. I welcome the work the Government has done on consultants and weekend rostering to deal with delayed discharge.”
“I would like to agree with and be associated with Deputy Mac Lochlainn's remarks. The Minister for housing needs to come in to the Dáil this week to answer questions relating to both the current and future funding of Uisce Éireann, the role of the so-called "housing tsar" and the strategic housing activation office. The principle of a strategic body to unblock the issues around housing development is an idea that definitely has merit and deserves consideration provided it is underpinned by legislation, as was set out by the Housing Commission.”
“A bit like the Obamas, there is apparently a rift at the heart of this marriage of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, with Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil Ministers barely being seen together this week. The Tánaiste said earlier that process matters. Can he confirm, with regard to the Government's so-called housing tsar, that Mr. Brendan McDonagh is the Government's preferred candidate, as the Minister, Deputy Browne, said on the radio? Will Mr. McDonagh's appointment go through an appropriate public appointment process? Does the Tánaiste stand over this, and does he think this is an appropriate way to run Government? Will the salary amount to the purported €430,000? I think this amounts to a gouging of the taxpayer. I thought Fine Gael, in particular, was supposed to be a prudent guardian of the public purse.”
“Where does this leave the OPR in terms of its credibility and independence if councils reopen their development plans and zone more land? While we welcome the fact that we finally have the revised document, the consultation process was far too slow over the summer. We believe that this is a weak document and that there are a number of key flaws in it. This should have come before the Oireachtas for scrutiny. It should have come before the committee and we should have had the opportunity to go through it in granular detail, which is what my colleagues in the Labour Party and I believe is necessary. That is why, at this stage, we cannot support this document.”
“The concern is that this will lead to more land being speculated on and hoarded by a few developers and the lessons of the planning tribunals being forgotten. What we know for sure is that the revised NPF will lead to an increased supply of zoned development land but the Government itself does not know at the moment how much land is already zoned for residential development. There is also a concern, as others have outlined, about the housing targets. Many county development plans were done relatively recently and there was an awful lot of back and forth with the OPR. The OPR came back to many local authorities, my own included, and told them that they were attempting to zone too much land. Those local authorities are now required to reopen their county development plans and re-examine them.”
“A lot of my colleagues are waiting on these figures, as are local authorities, because they will need to re-examine their county development plans and progress the development of towns and villages in their local authority areas. My colleague, Councillor Thomas Phelan, in Dungarvan contacted me. He is concerned about what the revised NPF will mean for towns such as Dungarvan that have not yet done their local area plans due to the NTA insisting on local transport plans. They need to know these figures in case they have to rezone land or reopen a county or town development plan. These towns and villages are losing businesses and essential services. Vacancy and dereliction in a lot of these areas is on the rise. To go back to more urban areas, there is also concern about a lack of evidence-based planning.”
“We cannot see the situation at the moment, particularly in rural Ireland, where homes receive permission without the proper basic infrastructure in place such as transport, schools and other necessary infrastructure. They must be front-loaded. I welcome that the Minister referenced rural Ireland. Too many of our rural communities are in trouble because of constraints on current county development plans. Many rural locations have the necessary infrastructure such as schools, sporting facilities and shops to sustain a greater population than they currently have. Will the Minister confirm when each local authority will receive the exact population and growth patterns the NPF mentions?”
“The shortage of housing in Gaeltacht areas is being made worse by the problem of holiday homes and short-terms lets. Senator Cosgrove yesterday spoke in the Seanad about the role of Sligo as a regional city. Sligo does not receive the correct level of support to grow and develop in a sustainable manner. My colleague, Deputy Wall, has told me Kildare County Council does not yet have exact figures on the population targets under the revised NPF broken down by county. There is no doubt that strategic plan-led development is needed regarding population growth. The plan must identify locations that have or are about to have the correct infrastructure to support population increases.”
“The target to cut greenhouse emissions by 51% by 2030 will be very difficult to achieve as is, with the SEAI report telling us that nearly 86% of our energy still comes from fossil fuels. We have five years to get this down to 51%. This will become completely impossible if the development of LNG infrastructure is allowed. This flies in the face of all three pillars of the national energy policy. I have other concerns that need to be addressed. Colleagues from rural constituencies have contacted me about their concerns regarding the impact of the NPF on rural Ireland. There is no acknowledgement in the framework of the ongoing disaster of the defective blocks scandal in Donegal. Planning is required to restore the homes of thousands of people. It is not just in Donegal; there are people in my constituency.”
“From talking to my colleagues down there, there is a strong feeling that Waterford was treated differently when the NPF was first done. The Labour Party believes the national planning framework must better reflect our climate goals and the need to reduce emissions from fossil fuels by 51% by 2030. I am concerned about the aspects of the NPF that pertain to energy, particularly LNG, after the recent policy reversal by the Government. My colleague, Senator Cosgrove, tabled an amendment yesterday concerning the national energy policy referred to on page 132 of the framework, which insists that all energy policy relating to planning should be built on the pillars of sustainability, security of supply and competitiveness. We support these goals and want to work with the Government to achieve a just transition.”
“Alternative targets are needed, such as densification targets for urban areas, including mature suburbs. The NPF also needs to be stronger on the role of regional airports, in particular Shannon Airport, the biggest and most underutilised infrastructure in the State. It has the longest runway in Ireland and the capacity to take double the number of passengers it currently takes. At a time when Dublin Airport takes nearly 91% of air traffic into the State, the role of Shannon Airport and the Shannon campus in balancing national economic growth must be better recognised and reflected in this plan. I call for the boundary of Waterford map to be expanded to include Waterford Airport, as Deputy Conor D. McGuinness referenced, and Tramore. Similar has been done in Cork and Limerick.”
“Limerick has potential for growth in excess of 60%, with existing third level institutions, road and rail infrastructure and access to a deep-sea port and international airport. The stated aimed of Project Ireland 2040 is to develop regional towns and cities as viable urban centres of scale that can act as alternatives and a counterbalance to the continued growth of Dublin and its surrounding region. Project Ireland 2040 envisages that the population of Limerick city and its suburbs will grow by between 50% and 60% by 2040. Limerick has huge potential to develop as a regional city of scale and become a counterpull to a sprawling Dublin metropolis. This potential cannot be realised unless growth targets in the plan are revised upwards for cities outside of Dublin. We need stronger and more ambitious targets for compact growth.”
“Limerick and Waterford are ripe for transit-oriented development. Investment in the rail network is the most efficient, effective and climate-resilient way to move masses of people. The spine of our rail network should underpin the NPF, particularly in Limerick. This would allow us to maximise the benefits of increased compact growth, which is vital in solving the housing crisis and meeting our transport goals. Regional cities outside of Dublin cannot continue to suffer as Dublin expands at an unsustainable pace, with infrastructure in the Dublin region in particular unable to cope. Cities outside of Dublin must be allowed more ambitious growth targets to achieve their potential to become regional cities of scale, particularly my city of Limerick.”
“The national planning framework is a critical piece of work that underpins everything in regional planning, development plans and local area plans. It is vital we get this right, as this document goes to the very essence of how we do planning, development and infrastructure in this country. This plan should be an opportunity to set out and better reflect the need for a more balanced distribution of economic activity and population growth to close the gap between Dublin and the regional cities. The NPF should also set out a baseline for our ambition and not act as a ceiling on future development. We need more compact, low-carbon and balanced regional development. The NPF refers to transport-orientated development. It must be clearer in the document that this refers primarily to rail-oriented development.”
“The school must return these results for second, fourth and sixth class but because it is an infant school, these classes do not exist. These are being used as part of the criteria to support the school's special education hours. As this is an infant school, the results from adjacent schools are being used but the children in Ms Tobin's school do not necessarily continue to these schools. There is also an issue with number of children who have been diagnosed with ASD. A special class was recommended but the school was too late to apply as the closing date had passed. These children are in mainstream and require and deserve the highest level of support. The school does not have the space for them in the special class.”
“It is a DEIS band 1 school and it needs the highest level of support. This very successful infant school has fewer SET hours now than it had five years ago when it had half the number of children. As an infant school, many of the children are Covid children and may not have had developmental checks. They are on waiting lists for assessments of need. The school has many Ukrainian and international protection pupils, who, as we all know, can arrive on a rolling basis throughout the year. The enrolment number on 30 September, at the cut-off date, is often lower than the number at the end of the year. The Department uses the number on 30 September for the school's SET allocation. Ms Tobin also very concerned that results from standardised testing are being used as one of the criteria.”
“Regarding the provision of in-school therapists, a number of principals in Limerick have told me they are concerned about the number of in-school therapists proposed. I note there is a pilot coming for Limerick and Tipperary this year. One principal told me he is slightly worried they could be too sparsely spread and there is a concern they may see the in-school therapist maybe one day a week over three weeks. That is what principals have told me. In the time remaining to me, I will talk about the principal of St. Michael’s Infant School in Limerick, Tracie Tobin, and the fact that her SET hours were cut by 12.5 this year. This school, one of only five schools in the country whose SET hours have been cut, is in one of the most deprived areas in the entire country. Ms Tobin has 127 children on her books.”