David Cullinane
Waterford · Sinn Féin · Ireland
“I met many of those patients and people with the illness yesterday. Many of them were here in Leinster House. They told me, as they have in the past, they cannot walk and they cannot swallow and, as the Taoiseach acknowledged, it is also very difficult for their families who have to watch as their condition worsens and the disease progres…”
“In fact, in the programme for Government the Government committed to reviewing that process because it was accepted it does not always work. The technical review group obviously now needs to be convened and needs to meet urgently. Emily cannot afford more delays.”
“Yesterday, as the Taoiseach knows, the HSE drugs group met to consider reimbursement of Skyclarys, the first approved treatment that can slow the progression of Friedreich's ataxia. Patients hoped for a positive decision. This process has been ongoing for years.”
“They were left desperately making phone calls, checking for updates, asking journalists and asking politicians if they had heard anything. They were treated appallingly. Then, when the news did eventually filter though, they were left devastated.”
“Richard Walsh, consultant neurologist and co-director of the National Ataxia Clinic, has described this drug as a ground-breaking development. He has said that he would prescribe it if it were available in Ireland and that it may reduce the rate of disease progression.”
“"We are not going to regain any of the abilities we've lost, but Skyclarys will give us time. Time when you're dealing with our progressive relentless disease is everything. We all deserve time with our loved ones." Those are the words of Emily Felix, a 28-year-old trainee solicitor from Kilkenny who is living with Friedreich's ataxia.”
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“Some 72,000 learner drivers are languishing on waiting lists, of whom 10,000 have come on to the waiting lists in the last three months alone. I do not think we can blame anybody but the Government for that one. The Minister said the maximum ten-week waiting time is not a statutory target; maybe it should be. There is a possibility that the Opposition will bring forward a Bill to rectify that. If so, I hope the Minister will support it. The Minister talked about solutions. This is not rocket science. It is fairly easy to identify what the problem is and what the solution is. We do not have enough driving instructors. We have a lot of temporary instructors, but there are many areas in which we know there are gaps and we do not have enough driving instructors. What is the solution? We hire more driving instructors.”
“Like many others, they have not even had initial contact from Jodie's children's disability network team for speech and language or occupational therapy. Becky says that she is “at a loss as to what steps to take next”. She says Jodie is a lovely and happy child attending a mainstream class but an SNA is not a viable option. His autism report strongly recommends a special class. There are numerous reports of children regressing if they are not placed in the appropriate setting. As Members know, we moved a motion on this issue last week which the Government rejected.”
“His mother submitted applications to every school in the Tramore, Waterford city and Kilmeaden area - ten schools in total. They received their final rejection letter last week. Jodie's mother Becky said: To say that I am heartbroken would be an understatement. This should be a joyous time for our family as we prepare for Jodie's transition into junior infants. Instead, we are devasted and heartbroken that our son has no place for September, which is his constitutional right. This situation is taking a significant emotional toll on me in particular, and the entire family. Jodie is thriving due to the support his parents have provided, with little help, they say, from the State. They are paying privately for his therapies. This places a considerable financial strain on the family.”
“The family are already facing significant stress and they are being asked to fork out thousands of euro for a health service that should be available from the HSE or leave their little boy in pain for months if not years. This situation highlights just one of the many challenges that families of children with autism face when it comes to securing timely basic urgent healthcare. I am appealing to the Minister; I wrote directly to the head of the HSE and the Minister for Health for Tiernan's case to be prioritised. More than that, a proper solution needs to be put in place for the children so they can get access to timely care without upfront costs. Today I received an email from the parent of a child called Jodie who will turn five in September. He was diagnosed with autism a few months ago.”
“I want to raise with Minister two cases of two autistic boys from Waterford, one is six years of age and one is five years of age. Tiernan Power Murphy is a six-year-old boy from Waterford who urgently needs dental surgery. Tiernan is autistic, has been experiencing severe pain and needs three teeth removed. Given Tiernan's specific needs, the procedure must be carried out under general anaesthetic which, as the Minister knows, is not unusual for autistic children. Tiernan's parents have been told that the waiting list is approximately ten years. The family's only alternative is to find private treatment, which could cost them €2,500. This is unacceptable for any family not least a family with an autistic child.”
“Darren O'Rourke, who is our education spokesperson, met the families. We have given them a commitment. We are not going to leave one child behind.”
“What really sickens me is that last week in this Dáil, the first act of this Government was not to ensure that these children are looked after, or to ensure that children with scoliosis get the treatment they deserve, but to bring in a Bill for more Ministers and allowances for Ministers, following on from the grubby, dirty deal that you guys did with the Michael Lowry group of Independents. That, to me, sets the tone for this Government. Its first act should have been to say to those parents in the Public Gallery and all those across this State that we are going to move heaven and earth to make sure that their children have the appropriate education they deserve, not to have more Ministers, more allowances and more jobs for the boys and girls, which we got from the Government last week. The Government has to get its priorities right.”
“They have linked in with the local SENO. They contacted school after school. In fact, one parent told me of 16 different schools where she got a refusal. How heartbreaking is that for that family? This is replicated across many families. There is no proper registry of how many children are actually in need. We know from last year in Waterford that many children are left behind. I gave a commitment to each and every one of those parents, some of whom are not here, that I am not going to leave any of those children behind. Deputy Conor McGuinness will of course work with the Government but also hold the Government to account to ensure that each and every one of those children get the education that they deserve.”
“I firstly welcome to the Public Gallery many of the parents from County Waterford who have travelled and who are doing everything possible to ensure their children will get the appropriate education they deserve. The facts are that they should not have to lobby, travel or protest because they have enough to do to look after their children. We met many of them and they talked about the strains that all of this is putting on their relationships. Some of them have left their jobs. It has upended their whole life. The least the State could do is to ensure that appropriate places are there for their children come September, yet for many, that is not the case. Up to 40 or 50 parents across Waterford city and county do not know whether their children will have a place. They tell me that they do everything by the book.”
“In her constituency, which is the same as mine, two child and adolescent mental health teams cover Waterford, with two consultant psychiatrists. However, one of those posts is vacant and has been for some time. When will that post be filled? On the waiting times and the number of children who are waiting for CAMHS, 261 children in the Minister of State's constituency of Waterford are waiting for an appointment with CAMHS. It is simply not good enough. The fact of the matter is that all these plans are great, but they are only good and will only work if they are properly resourced. It can be seen that both the dual diagnosis teams and CAMHS are not getting the resources they need. We do not have the staff, which means that people are not getting the care they need.”
“I put down a parliamentary question and the response I got back was that there is one adult team in the former CHO 3 area but that it will not be fully resourced until the end of 2025. It is the same for the former CHO 4 area, in Cork. Again, it will not be fully resourced until 2025. Questions have to be asked. Where are the remaining teams? When will we see those teams rolled out? When will we see all those teams resourced? There is no point in having a vision and a strategy, and telling people we will put 12 teams in place, when only two teams are actually up and running and these are not fully resourced at all. I will raise an issue in respect of CAMHS because the Minister of State mentioned it a number of times.”
“It includes addiction, primary care, community mental health and specialist mental health services for all involved. The problem is that these services are very significantly under-resourced, understaffed and, at times, at cross-purposes. The model of care recommended 12 teams for adult services and four hubs for young adults and adolescents. I have been working with researchers for the Claire Byrne programme on RTÉ. The Minister of State might have heard some of the programmes they have done on this issue. They have been working with a charity that provides some of these services. To date, only two of those adult teams are in play. They are not even fully operational. There are also two adolescent teams.”
“I will talk to the Minister of State about dual diagnosis and dual-diagnosis teams. As she will know, this is where a person has a mental health condition and an addiction. As has often been said in this Chamber, A Vision for Change and Sharing the Vision were very good on vision and on setting out what needs to be done. However, the implementation of both plans has unfortunately not been as good. A Vision for Change recommended general community mental health teams, which would have included addiction counsellors. Sharing the Vision expanded specialist mental health services to include people with an addiction who required shared case management. We now have the model of care for dual diagnosis, which is heavily linked to overall mental health services.”
“I pay tribute to the committee of the Ballymacarbry road action group, which was established on the foot of a meeting last October. There were real road safety issues in Ballymacarbry village, in particular a need for traffic calming measures to be implemented at Ballymacarbry National School. The group has since engaged with Waterford City and County Council. My understanding is that it is making an application for traffic calming measures on the R671 to the Minister of State's Department. I ask that this would be treated favourably. It is an important issue for the parents and young pupils attending that school. As others have pointed out, these are local examples of what we can do as legislators or what Departments can do to improve road safety.”
“If phases 3 and 4 are not funded, that will stall the project and will call into question whether it will even be done in the lifetime of this Government. Everybody accepts that road improvements and projects of that scale take time but we have to get through all the various processes. Can the Minister of State ensure the requests of the local authorities involved and the Oireachtas Members in the south east regarding the N24 road? The N25, Waterford to Cork road, is also important and needs to be improved. These are two important projects for the south east and for Waterford. I also want to raise another issue regarding Ballymacarbry, County Waterford. It is really important that we give respect to people in communities who come together to set up action groups in the best interest of the people who live there.”
“I thank the Ceann Comhairle. Personal responsibility is important when it comes to road safety but it is important for us as Oireachtas Members to feed back local projects we are being lobbied on by constituents, officials from local authorities and campaign groups who believe that investments are necessary in road safety improvements. I want to pick up on one of the issues mentioned by Deputy Cleere which is the N24 Waterford to Cahir bypass. We have all been lobbied very heavily, and rightly so, by the chief executives of the local authorities in counties Waterford, Kilkenny and Tipperary. Phase 2 of that project, as I understand it, has been funded but funding is also necessary for phases 3 and 4. This will allow for design, the statutory process and to commence the environmental impact assessments. All that needs to be done.”
“They contact the schools that are on the lists. I gave the Minister of State examples of parents contacting 16 or 17 different schools. They go through the list contacting every school, suffering heartbreak after heartbreak and being told, "I am sorry but there are no places." The Minister of State needs to wake up and smell the coffee in this regard. There is a real crisis of capacity. Unless the capacity is put in you cannot say to all children that their places will be there for them in September.”
“I have to take issue with some of what the Minister of State has said in his response because it is insulting to the parents of those children. He stated, "As schools begin to enrol students and as places become available, the NCSE will advise and support parents to ensure all children have a suitable placement for September." That is not happening and there will not be places for all children because they do not exist. That is the problem. They do not exist. The NCSE accepts that. The SENOs who work in the area accept that. The schools will tell the Minister of State themselves that this is the reality. The Minister of State then said that it is important for planning purposes that parents engage with the NCSE. They are engaging with the NCSE. They have been given lists. The lists are updated all of the time.”
“What is the Government going to do about it? Why is it such a problem in Waterford? What initiatives will the Minister of State take to deal with what is a very real crisis for those children and their families?”
“In some instances, in particular in County Waterford, but also, arguably, in Waterford city, there may be a need for a new special school. While that is something that is needed for the medium to long term, it is unacceptable we have such a volume of young children who deserve to enjoy the same education rights as anybody else, whose parents are doing everything possible - trying to move heaven and earth - to get their children the education they need, but it seems the Department and the Government cannot deliver. I met with the National Council for Special Education, NCSE, and the local special educational needs organiser, SENO. They tell me they have engaged with schools as well but that funding is required to provide the space, the modular units or the teachers that are needed to provide the extra classes.”
“I raise a very serious issue, one I would call a crisis, in regard to special educational needs for primary school children in Waterford city and county. Somewhere between 40 and 50 children are still unsure whether they will have a place come September. I have engaged on this, as has Deputy McGuinness, with dozens of parents of children with disabilities who cannot access a place for their child. Some of them have contacted between 15 and 17 schools and got refusal after refusal. It is heartbreaking for the parents. I have written to and met as many primary school principals as I possibly could in recent weeks. Surprisingly for me, many of them told me they want to provide and can provide classes but that there is either no space, they do not have the modular units or they do not have the staff to provide the classes.”
“We will not see the trolley crisis dealt with. People are waiting far too long to access healthcare. They are waiting longer than ever to access a GP. Some people, particularly medical card holders, cannot even access a dentist because they have left the scheme due to inadequacies and failures on the Government's part. Children with disabilities and older people cannot get access to care in their home. All of these are real challenges that impact on the people we collectively represent. Unfortunately, the programme for Government has more of the same and more failure instead of what we in Sinn Féin produced, which is a plan that would tackle these problems.”
“The best the Government could come up with was to train more doctors and nurses. In reality, if we are being serious, the new Minister for Health and whoever was negotiating for Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael did not write the programme for Government. It was written primarily by civil servants in the Department of Health and the head of the HSE. It is so embarrassing in lacking ambition and detail that in reality what it displays is that the Government has no plan. It has no vision or idea. It depended on civil servants to give it something to put in the programme for Government when, in fact, it had no ideas or vision of its own. This is no surprise to me given the election manifestos the two parties produced on health, which were threadbare when it came to new ideas. We will not see a change in healthcare.”
“What we do know, and we can judge the Government on its record, is that it put in place an embargo and a pay and numbers strategy that has now resulted in the potential for industrial action by healthcare trade unions due to the mess the Government has made of it. The programme for Government references training more healthcare professionals. This is the Government's big workforce plan. There is one line on training more healthcare professionals. We produced very detailed proposals on a 50% increase in training places in some areas and a 100% increase in others where it is necessary, additional measures to support GPs and directly hiring GPs. We provided the numbers, the funding and the detail, again because we take our job seriously and we want to fix the problems in healthcare.”
“There is one line, "Open the National Children’s Hospital". There is no sense of detail, timescale, urgency or recognition of all of the challenges. It just states "Open the National Children’s Hospital". There is a long list of measures which I found laughable as somebody who takes my responsibility as health spokesperson very seriously. I set out in detail what needs to be done. For example, on workforce planning we said we would hire 40,000 additional health staff over five years. What was in the programme for Government? There is one line on hiring more doctors, nurses and healthcare specialists. If I produced, that I would be laughed out of the room by the Government and those in the media. "Hire" could mean one, 50 or 100.”
“The Government can dismiss our plans all it wants but they were based on what is practical, realistic, deliverable and necessary to transform healthcare, to take patients off trolleys and put them into beds, to make sure people can have timely access to a GP, to make sure children with disabilities get access to the services they need, to make sure children with scoliosis get the care they need in a timely fashion, and to make sure people do not have their procedures cancelled and are not waiting for years on end for basic care. Community waiting lists have increased, as have mental health waiting lists. Acute hospital waiting lists have remained static. The national children's hospital has still not been built. All there is in the programme for Government on the national children's hospital is laughable.”
“You would imagine, given all of these well-rehearsed crises and all of the debates we have had in the House on health, housing, the cost of living and many of these issues, that the Government would come forward with real plans with ambition and detail in its programme for Government. Of course, we were all bitterly disappointed. Never have I seen a document so vague when it comes to healthcare. We produced a very comprehensive plan.”
“The number of patients on hospital trolleys in the month of January alone was 13,972. This is quite phenomenal and broke all records. It seems the only thing the Government is good at when it comes to health, housing and other areas is breaking records for all the wrong reasons. All of the people left on hospital trolleys, and others sitting in chairs and corridors in emergency departments, are people who are not being treated with dignity and not being treated with respect. It is the same for the staff, who are working in very difficult circumstances. Some of those circumstances have often been described as war zones because of how chaotic they are. I have been in touch with many nurses in December, January and now into February, and they say there has been no let up.”
“Several times over the last number of years I have raised with the Tánaiste the need to fund the runway extension at Waterford Airport. As the Tánaiste knows, there is a reference in the programme for Government to making sure that this happens but the problem is that there is no certainty in relation to the funding and there are no specifics with regard to the timeframe. The people of Waterford, and particularly those who are in management positions in the airport, want the Government to be very clear and unequivocal that the funding that is needed will be made available, that there will be no more delays - we have had far too many of them - and that we will give the airport a fighting chance to be able to get commercial activity into the airport at long last. I ask the Tánaiste to give that commitment.”
“I put it to him earlier that the Housing Commission, the Government's own Housing Commission that is independent of all of us, clearly set out the failures and what needs to be done. He ignored it as he has ignored Sinn Féin's plans. I ask him again to at least concede he misled the public. Will he agree to a radical reset on housing policy?”
“With respect, what actually collapsed is the figure the Tánaiste gave to the public of 40,000, which was instead 29,000. In fact, what has collapsed is the credibility of the Tánaiste and Taoiseach when it comes to housing matters. Their record speaks for itself. Every single month, we see house prices, rents and homelessness rising on their watch. Worse than that and to top it all off, they misled the public deliberately and consciously in the run-up to a general election, when even Government-funded organisations were telling them they were wrong. It was stroke politics by the Tánaiste and Taoiseach. They are not interested in real solutions. The Tánaiste says he is and claims that I am playing politics. I am holding him to account for, in my view, misleading the public.”
“The Tánaiste and Taoiseach, Deputy Martin, set out to mislead the public to win votes. The aim was to make sure that the public heard that the figure of 40,000 new homes as many times as possible, regardless of whether it was true. The spin, sloganeering and failure on housing has a very real impact on people's everyday lives. Both of them misled because neither could face their record of dismal failure. They misled in respect of the housing figures during the election campaign, but also on the occupied territories Bill and even the future of a united Ireland, all promises which now seem to be in the bin. Will the Tánaiste accept that he misled the public on his housing record? Will he finally commit, as set out by the Housing Commission, Sinn Féin and others in opposition, to a radical reset of housing policy?”
“It seems to me that all of the experts know what needs to be done, but it is the Tánaiste and Government who have their heads in the sand. The sorry fact of the matter is also that their threadbare programme for Government does not even mention the Housing Commission or any of its recommendations. It seems the Government is oblivious to it and that it does not matter. Creating false narratives and misleading the public is more important to the Tánaiste and Government than listening to the housing experts and dealing with the housing crisis. The Tánaiste is up to his neck in this. The misleading claims of 40,000 new homes last year was hardwired into the Government's election messaging. The Tánaiste knew that was inaccurate and misleading. The facts did not matter.”
“Simon Coveney misled on housing delivery. Eoghan Murphy misled on the number of people becoming homeless. The Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, misled on the number of housing completions. It was more stroke polities of the highest order. It is time to stop misleading the public and accept that the Government's housing plan is clearly not working. We need a completely new approach to housing. No doubt, as the Government has done in the past, it will dismiss Sinn Féin's detailed plan on housing, and it will do so to its cost and the cost of people who desperately need housing and real change. The Government cannot so easily dismiss its own Housing Commission's report, which called for a radical reset of policy.”
“The Tánaiste and Taoiseach chose to ignore and dismiss us in opposition, the CSO, the Central Bank and the ESRI in a deliberate attempt to mislead the public in advance of a general election. They did all of this because they wanted to create a narrative that their housing policies were working when clearly they were not. What is their real record? It is runaway housing prices, sky-high rents, missing all of the social and affordable housing targets and a homelessness crisis that should make the Tánaiste and all in government hang their heads in shame. Yet, despite all of that, the Tánaiste decided to consciously, knowingly and deliberately use inaccurate numbers to mislead the public on what is its greatest failure in housing. The problem is that this tactic has been a hallmark of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil in government.”
“Yesterday, the Taoiseach accepted that 40,000 homes were not delivered last year. The truth is that the two most senior politicians in the Government, namely, the Taoiseach and Tánaiste, were running around the country claiming they would deliver 40,000 homes last year, a claim they knew not to be true. At the same time, data from the ESRI and Central Bank clearly showed that the Government was on course for failure. Even worse, in October, in the lead in to the general election, the CSO published the actual completion data for quarter three, which made it clear than ever that the Government had a snowball's chance in hell of delivering 40,000 homes last year. That report in October was damning and nobody in industry, housing policy or across the Opposition believed anything close to 40,000 homes would be delivered.”