Ged Nash
Louth · Labour Party · Ireland
“However, it is a rich country that has a problem understanding that it is now sustainably rich. Those of us in opposition will, of course, say that this country needs to do better, and it can.”
“On the one hand, it is legitimate for an Opposition party to critique the economic model day in, day out. I do it myself all of the time, and we all know that Ireland can do better. However, at the same time, is that kind of critique helping to persuade those whom we need to persuade into a new Ireland? I am not so sure that it is.”
“There will be fiscal and financial implications for this State in that transition. There is an obligation on us, insofar as we can, to properly interrogate and consider those implications and to be upfront about them.”
“No, it did not, but let us not exaggerate its impact on the Irish economy. It is good and it had an impact, but was there a causal relationship? I am not so sure. The jury is out on that. However, is the Good Friday Agreement a good thing and good for our economy? Of course, it is. Did the guns fall silent in the North?”
“We are not good at describing what those accommodations will be or what that relationship with the UK will be, whether economically, socially, politically, culturally or otherwise. It is a relationship that will have to be maintained. It will look very different as we approach a new Ireland.”
“That was a very different prospect when the vast majority, if not all, of East German citizens wanted to become part of a united German polity. As we know, that is not the case on this island. We need to be careful about how we approach that.”
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“The Government left them at a loss with less money in their pockets. They are now getting bills for €300, €400 or €500 at a time. That decision is now coming back to haunt the Tánaiste and his colleagues. The Iran war will nearly double inflation this year. Construction and food prices will rise further, making a complete mockery of the Government’s VAT-cut misadventure. Grocery prices were already increasing at over 6% and electricity prices will rise even more, adding €150 to average bills which were already sky-high. Before Easter, the Tánaiste and other members of the Government were talking about tax cuts for the richest in our society on inheritance and for special investment accounts. Quite frankly, that was tone deaf. That consideration once again ignored the needs of many who are struggling to pay their bills.”
“Hundreds of thousands of working families have been left asking why they have been left behind by this Government. They are left wondering what it will take for the Government to act to help them. Which piece of road or which port should they blockade before the Government takes notice? Over the past six months, Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Independents made deliberate decisions which left those workers behind and worse off. It decided on plain silly VAT cuts for fast food firms, paid for by PAYE workers, because it chose not to index income tax bands and credits. Only now does Fianna Fáil appear to have a problem with that stroke. The Government made a decision to withdraw critical, once-off payments and energy credits. For three years families relied on a couple of hundred euro to ease the burden of Europe’s highest electricity prices.”
“It would be relatively easy to come to some kind of a conclusion - at least on a desktop basis - as to what the implications would be if we were to introduce a very simple straightforward model like the Swedish one. The Tánaiste seems to be moving away from the UK ISA-type model. Could he put his thinking on that, and what is informing it, on the record? In the available time, could he also indicate what engagement he has had on this with the Central Bank and if it has been helpful in assisting the Department?”
“I understand that people are risk averse because people have been burnt before. There are always risks to investing. Any model or scheme that is developed has to be very clear on that. I understand why the Tánaiste might want to dip his toe in the water in a tentative fashion in the first instance, and then maybe move from there. The Tánaiste has been quoted as favouring the Swedish model. It is one that people will be familiar with. On the basis that he has an understanding of the Swedish model and his officials may be going in that direction, has any assessment been done at this point on the tax implications for the Exchequer on the tax expenditure side in terms of tax forgone?”
“Mention has been made by ourselves in the Labour Party, and by the other parties, of the need to develop some products that might enable Irish people to invest some of their hard-earned savings in, for example, housing development in Ireland and in assisting high-potential start-ups, and so on. Is that the kind of area that the Tánaiste expects people to be able to invest in at a reasonable rate?”
“I welcome the debate on this. I accept that we need reform in this area. I have no difficulty with that. There has been a lot of focus on the deemed disposal rule. There is no doubt that how it operates is an anachronism and reform is needed. That should not sideline us from the need to develop alternative routes to allow people to plan for their future. I am glad the Tánaiste referred to the context of what people are experiencing at the moment. Investment is very much a minority sport. Most people are concerned with surviving and not how they are going to invest relatively substantial amounts that they have on deposit on schemes and accounts that may deliver more for them. I accept that this does need to be part of the solution in terms of preparing people for the future.”
“I ask the Minister to update the House on his plans for a new savings and investment scheme for retail investors and if he could enlighten the House as to what he anticipates the estimated cost to the Exchequer in terms of tax forgone in the first five years of the scheme might be, and if there is, in fact, an assessment already done on that basis.”
“What seems to be proposed here is something that involves a risk that could deny citizens their rights to access justice under binding international agreements like the Aarhus Convention. That is something we need to be extremely mindful of.”
“It is not a measure that was recommended in the Accelerating Infrastructure report. In fact, that report speaks glowingly of our commitment to climate targets, as it should. We should not allow ourselves to fall into the trap of thinking we can prioritise either climate action or infrastructure delivery. We can do both. I have been critical before of the way this Government is thinking about its infrastructure agenda. We are repeatedly seeing this type of binary thinking that pits climate against delivery and that should not be the case. I have said it in the House to the Minister and others that there appeared to be in the Accelerating Infrastructure report a fixation on judicial review and clouding of the picture. There was intense media interest in the judicial review aspects of the report as well.”
“Taken with the backsliding we have seen today, for example on the collection of carbon duties, this Government's commitment on climate action is very much in doubt. We could see the State's biggest and most significant infrastructure projects being exempted from climate considerations altogether, despite what the Minister said in his remarks and his claims to the contrary with regard to other sections of the legislation. In effect, this legislation would undermine the letter, spirit and tone of the 2015 Act itself. It is not clear to me where this proposal has come from. Maybe if pre-legislative scrutiny had not been waived, we could have got to the bottom of this. I can only conclude there was a fear that if pre-legislative scrutiny got under way, this aspect of the legislation would be exposed and brought to further public attention.”
“I looked very carefully at some of the countervailing measures and legislation in terms of publishing orders and bringing all those orders to the House, effectively putting them in the Oireachtas Library, and procedurally trying to make sure that the Minister follows a particular process to try, insofar as he can, to make this legislation bulletproof. I suspect, however, that it is not possible to do that in this legislation and I think there are flaws here. This is a step beyond simply instructing public bodies to prioritise and co-ordinate the fast-tracking of projects. It seems that what the Government is proposing here is to give the Executive the power to disapply the public body duty under the climate action Acts to perform public functions consistent with achieving the State's climate goals.”
“They might also ask whether, if this Bill had been passed five years ago or ten years ago, we would have an open and fully functioning national children's hospital by now. Would we be able to step outside Leinster House and get onto a metro to the airport, or would the systemic issues hampering and delaying these projects and so many others have remained in spite of this legislation? I will turn now to a serious point that my colleague Deputy Sheehan will elaborate on later. Buried in this Bill are potentially significant constitutional issues that may arise, and in our view will arise, which risk leaving this legislation exposed to challenge. I am talking about section 7, which disapplies section 15 of the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act from designated projects and programmes, as the Minister outlined earlier.”
“They would certainly be entitled to wonder whether it really requires primary legislation for the Government to be able to tell public bodies - the public bodies that are our accountable to this House and accountable to the Minister and funded by the taxpayer - to prioritise a certain project. What we have seen today is actually a failure of politics, a failure of leadership, a failure of governance and a failure of management. People will be entitled to ask if this is the answer to the problems and whether this is really the Government's solution to one of the most pressing challenges we face as a country by making a law to allow itself to ask or request public bodies to hurry up a bit. If this is the extent of the ambition on infrastructure we will see over the next three years, then many citizens are entitled to be worried.”
“As a party that cares about this country and is genuinely patriotic, we know that if this works and if the Government manages to deliver the housing, the health services, the critical infrastructure and the renewable energy we need, our country will do better and the Government will be judged on delivery. That brings us to today's Bill. The idea proposed here is a simple one, that the Government should be able to point to a certain project and say, "This project is very important for all of our society", and therefore direct its various agencies and Departments to prioritise and work together to get a particular project over the line. On the face of it this simple idea seems like a sensible one. A citizen watching us today spending several hours debating this Bill might very well ask, "Well, why is this not happening already?".”
“We are entitled to expect better in this rich country but we do not have it. It has been encouraging in the last few months to see a Government that is finally engaging on this issue and getting serious about infrastructure. It is long overdue but the analysis of the problem and the solutions proposed in the accelerating infrastructure report did show a Government that is getting serious about tackling this problem. As the Minister will know, that initiative was welcomed by the Labour Party. It would be easy for those of us in opposition to decry every Government report and every Government initiative and use the routine response that not enough is being done and so on. That initiative was evidence that there was a renewed interest in developing infrastructure and taking a new approach.”
“The infrastructure gap and its implications are something that every citizen of this country sees and experiences every day, such as the hospital wings that have been promised but not delivered, the bridges that are never built, the renewable energy resources that were promised and have yet to materialise, and the houses that will not be completed because the necessary water systems are not there. An infrastructure deficit is, more than anything else, what holds people back from living the best lives they can. I say it time and again that this is what makes Ireland a rich country that at the same time feels so poor. This is the Irish contradiction and the Irish dilemma: a rich country that feels so poor. We are very poor when it comes to the infrastructure that we have available.”
“I said before the last election, and it was not a pithy throwaway remark, that based on our experience the biggest threat to the Irish economic model was not the return of Donald Trump to the White House but the re-election of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil. I am pleased to see, however, that there is at least a new impetus and a new focus on the delivery of the infrastructure we require in this country. We have managed to waste a boom over the last decade. A lot of the social and economic problems we are experiencing now, and the challenges that households and businesses are facing, are a direct result of that. We are sitting on record tax receipts but we have allowed our infrastructure gap to widen and widen. This is not an abstract point or an abstract debate.”
“Successive Governments over the last ten years have, frankly, been crippled by their own conservatism and they have shown a risk aversion to engaging in the kinds of developments we require to move our economy along, to address our climate challenge and to improve our society. Nobody here needs a history lesson. We know that we have had at least ten years of real problems where, due to the economic collapse, we simply did not have the resources to provide the infrastructure this country requires, but we have had the resources since 2016 and few efforts were made to address that deficit and the gap. Those chickens are coming home to roost.”
“I welcome the opportunity to speak on this important Bill. I will be sharing time with my colleagues Deputies Conor Sheehan and George Lawlor. It is a short Bill at just ten pages and comprising ten section, but it is of real and critical significance to our economy and our society. The infrastructure deficit in our country is perhaps the biggest single economic challenge we have. As the Minister recounted earlier, the IMF has estimated that Ireland is looking at an infrastructure deficit, or physical infrastructure gap, of about 32% relative to the economies that we compare ourselves against. The quality gap is 27%. To make a political point, that is the legacy of underinvestment from successive Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil Governments and it has left us lagging behind.”
“Any change we in the Labour Party propose on remote work or paid sick leave is shot down and dismissed simply as a cost to business. The working public sees this. Sunday's package was a sectoral carve out. Working people are getting more militant and so will the trade union movement. Stand over and promote good deals that give people back their dignity, or people who have seen what happened last week could end up taking their own legitimate grievances about their own standards of living in an altogether different direction, and nobody wants to see that. This House and the Government need to respond.”
“Most working people I know and represent are no political allies of the extremist elements that set about the blockades last week but they are so worried about making ends meet, and so broken and despairing at the end of the week or the month, that they, against their better judgment and instincts, gave them a hearing. This is a challenge to the Government and it is a challenge to the Opposition also. Doing little for working people in the last budget has had political consequences. Workers saw the package on Sunday and they quickly concluded there was nothing in it for them. No tax indexation in the last budget means lower take-home pay this year than last year for anybody who might receive a pay increase of 2% to 3%. The Government turned its back on a modest statutory sick pay scheme. It has delayed the delivery of a real living wage.”
“On balance, we will support the reductions to excise but other options were available and would have been preferable rather than undermining the principle of carbon taxes and what they are ultimately trying to achieve. For far too many of the people I represent there is a permanence about this cost-of-living crisis. If the Government and everyone else in the House are serious about democracy and value the democratic culture and the State that my party and others helped to found and cultivate, they will not want to see ever again the kind of scenes we saw last week on our streets.”
“It is really a technical matter related to the VAT directives. We have seen in the past that the EU has moved to reduce VAT or have a zero VAT rate on a range of products over the years. At a time of crisis the EU simply cannot be allowed to tie itself up in bureaucratic knots while people are struggling. For the sake of the credibility of the EU, in the middle of a crisis facing every citizen, business and household in the European Union, it needs to act fast. It needs to show pragmatism and it needs to show flexibility. This is what the idea of a social Europe should be all about. There were other options available to the Government that should have been explored outside of reducing the carbon tax. Reducing the VAT rate on fuels on a temporary basis must be on the table if this crisis continues to escalate.”
“The Government is also setting a dangerous precedent by delaying carbon duties used to fund measures to decarbonise our economy and support those who need help the most to decarbonise with their fuel needs. Other interventions like reducing the applicable VAT rate should have been considered instead. Four weeks ago when we were debating the first round of measures in the House, I asked the Tánaiste to speak to the European Commission on the prospect of reducing the VAT rate on home heating oil, for example, from 13.5% to 9%. In the meantime, over those four weeks, our socialist colleague in Spain, Pedro Sanchez, cut VAT on fuels from 21% to 10% and Poland cut VAT on fuels from 23% to 8%. The EU has expressed concern about these VAT cuts but the Commissioner has also advised governments to reduce excise instead.”
“It is not news to the Tánaiste that I am saying this; I said it that day and the evidence is there. Instead, the Government committed to spending nearly €500 million this year and over €1 billion next year on VAT cuts for construction and an economically illiterate VAT cut for a hospitality sector that is adding jobs by the day. Any savings on the newbuilds the Tánaiste says he wishes to support in terms of the construction VAT cut are now gone with the increase in construction inflation. It will make no difference to the price of meals for the public in the context of the hospitality VAT cut or the wages of low-paid workers in a sector that is addicted to low pay. In the coming weeks, there may be a situation where the supply of fuels will be disrupted and further measures may be needed.”
“They are targeted energy credits for people earning under €80,000. We have been arguing for that for several years. Where is the right to remote work? It would greatly help to reduce the cost of the commute. Where is the plan to reduce grocery prices or introduce more transparency in a system dominated by international players? Where is the plan to cut the cost of public transport? The budget last year did next to nothing for working people other than keep the show on the road for the country. A point was made earlier by somebody else in this Chamber that you have managed to develop a budget with €9 billion of additional spending but the position of working people, people on low and middle incomes, is materially deteriorating. There was a budget last year that did nothing for working people.”
“The Government has managed to provide sectoral support in the shape of a €100 million package for the agrifood sector and even more for the haulage sector but until now - the Tánaiste put some details on the record - there have been few public details announced on the enhanced transport support scheme and how it will work but at a cost of €40 million a month, on top of the previous diesel rebate scheme and excise and levy cuts on fuel that will be absorbed almost immediately by price increases. All of this being said, it is PAYE workers across the country who are left wondering what is in this for them, when their discrete package of cost-of-living measures and supports will arrive. Where are the targeted energy credits we sought to design along with colleagues in the Social Democrats, whose party policy it also is?”
“Five months into his tenure as Minister for Finance, the Tánaiste, is bringing forward a second batch of emergency financial resolutions just four weeks on from the initial €250 million package. On balance, we in the Labour Party support the decision to reduce excise duties on petrol and diesel but the Government is quickly running out of road on further reductions when the price shock from the disruption to oil supply is yet to fully hit. We know there are dangerous and volatile times on the way; this is far from over. All in, this Government has pledged nearly €800 million mostly in tax cuts and fuel subsidies. The only social spending measure to date is four extra weeks of fuel allowance. This is indicative of the priorities.”
“The current operational policing model, as colleagues have said, needs an urgent review. Where it is found to be undermining the principle of community policing instead of enhancing it, its implementation must be halted. The Labour Party, not today or yesterday, has long argued for an increase in the Garda training allowance. That must be delivered to aid recruitment. We recommend the allowance more or less matches the Garda starting salary. That is the kind of extent to which we need to go. For existing gardaí, we want to see a review of pay scales and pensions. Every Garda district in the country needs a clear timeline for increasing numbers to address community safety concerns and tackle the blight of insidious antisocial behaviour we are seeing across the country.”
“Current trainee intake is far too low to achieve that aim. Only 619 recruits came out of Templemore in 2025 and almost half of Garda districts around the country have lost gardaí or stood still during 2025. A locally embedded, well-resourced and modern policing service is of crucial importance in enabling communities to flourish. That model is under threat, as Deputy Kelly and others have said, like never before. It requires urgent action on behalf of the Government. There is no point outsourcing this to the Garda Commissioner or senior Garda staff. Leadership needs to be shown at governmental and ministerial level. In order to address recruitment shortfalls, improve morale and strengthen policing in our communities, we need a real plan to deliver at least 1,000 new Garda recruits every year.”
“Fine Gael is as much the party of law and order as it is of fiscal responsibility. It is interesting the stories that parties tell themselves. The Government is falling short of its own commitments on this issue and has to do better if the link based on the principle of consent between our communities and the gardaí who police them is to be restored. The numbers are clear and are laid out in this motion. It is an objective fact that there are fewer serving members of An Garda Síochána today than there were six years ago. In the same period, the population of the country has increased. The Government is now running to stand still when it comes to Garda numbers. The programme for Government, if the Minister needs to be reminded, committed to recruiting at least 5,000 new Garda recruits and staff by 2030.”
“Policing by consent is a hallmark of how An Garda Síochána has operated in this State. That model is breaking down as visibility of gardaí on the ground thins out, resulting in a dangerous chasm between gardaí and the communities they are pledged to protect. On-the-ground policing builds trust and relationships and safer communities. Every Member of this House will testify that the number of cases crossing our desks every day reporting antisocial behaviour in communities across the country is on the rise. I suggest that to describe it as "antisocial behaviour" minimises it. It is mostly insidious criminal behaviour. Like many public services under the watch of the governing parties, Garda numbers and resources have failed to keep pace with our growth in population and need to catch up.”
“We saw the spike in energy prices, the impact of this on residents and businesses, the strain it put on the resources we have and what we needed to do as an Oireachtas to target supports to people who needed them most. We cannot continue to do that. How many warnings do we need? We need that pivot to decarbonisation and energy security. That means focusing more on offshore and onshore wind energy, making that happen and realising the moonshot moment famously mentioned a number of years ago by former Taoiseach Leo Varadkar. We have not reached that moonshot moment. We need to. We need to focus on that and we need to deliver energy security and independence. That is the way to deliver cheaper fuel for the people of Ireland and make sure we are less reliant on the Irans and Russias of this world.”
“Further consideration needs to be given at EU level to reducing the VAT rate on home heating oil. Why can we not have a tax credit for working people to assist with energy costs? This is something proposed by the Labour Party in successive alternative budgets and by colleagues in the Social Democrats as well. This would be a smart way of targeting several hundred euro each year at working families who do not qualify for the working family payment and need that support. The volatility we are experiencing in the world at the moment is not going to go away. As the Tánaiste said, this is a very unpredictable set of circumstances. My word, we are performing poorly when it comes to energy security. We got a warning in 2022 after Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine.”
“The Government and the famed energy task force have proposed nothing to deal with the hundreds of thousands of people who are in long-term energy arrears. They literally cannot sleep at night because they cannot pay their electricity bills and are focusing on that instead of other things they need to do for their families. We need to look again at the prospect of reducing the VAT rate on home heating oil from 13.5% to 9%. I have seen the strained arguments in replies to parliamentary questions recently as to why that cannot happen. Earlier, the Tánaiste mentioned the European Council initiative at the weekend telling EU member state governments to reduce taxes and levies on energy prices to help people and businesses through. That is one way of doing that. We know about the lower VAT rate of 9% on gas and electricity.”
“We were being briefed that we would have a two-week extension to the fuel allowance. Now it is a four-week extension and that needs to be kept under review. For the record, the Labour Party is happy to support the cut in excise that has been proposed. This is necessary. As the Tánaiste said at the outset, it is important that the value of this is seen at the pumps quick smart. There can be no justification for that not happening. We need to see a price below the €2 psychological threshold reached in the coming days. That is a psychological figure. It is not only psychological but very meaningful for people and we need to see it reached and maintained as prices come down. We also support the intervention on the fuel allowance but outside of the excise cut, there is very little here for working people.”
“People are in an even less favourable position in 2026 than they were in 2025 to absorb any energy spike that may be encountered and - my word - people are encountering it today and over the past few weeks. It was less than two years ago that the Government decided to take the bazooka out and spend billions of euro supporting untargeted, unwarranted and economically illiterate propositions to buy its way to election success. That is what it did. What is the difference between then and now? The difference is that we are three and a half years away from an election. That is the difference. I am intrigued by the justification for some of these measures. I accept that some of them are targeted in the way we would like, for example, the fuel allowance. This is a very good idea and I am glad the Government accepted the Labour Party's argument.”
“I always make the point that if you want to understand my politics and my philosophy, you should look at my budget and look at what my priorities are. It is worth reflecting on that. We know from last year's budget that burger barons and big builders were favoured over the interests of working people. Why do I say that? It is because an expected indexation of PAYE tax rates and bands for workers did not come. Instead workers now pay for a VAT cut for the hospitality sector that will be introduced on 1 July in the teeth of an energy crisis where people across this country are really suffering. The net effect is that after the budget, people who would have hoped to experience a pay increase have seen that pay increase taken away from them because of the absence of indexation and given to the Revenue Commissioners.”
“The people of Ireland have waited for an intervention from the Government to deal with this energy spike for weeks now. To say that today's intervention - this package of measures - is underwhelming is an understatement. In fact, it is a classic understatement. I said earlier today that these proposals are timid and anaemic. I stand over that. The evidence that is presented to us here this evening is the very definition of half measures when people expected the Government based on its previous track record to go the whole hog and to go the full way. There is not any real comprehension at the Government level of the day-to-day problems that people across this country are experiencing in their daily lives. Quite frankly, this was evident in last year's insipid budget where choices were made by this Government.”
“It has been trailed through the media for days that hauliers are going to get a rebate. That is fine. We will consider that. It does not mean anybody opposes it. Everybody accepts that hauliers require support. That is not the point. The Government knew earlier today that this was going to happen. It could have provided the Opposition with the information in a constructive fashion, and we could have worked on a collegial basis to get this business done. People are watching. They are worried about their livelihoods and businesses. Why can we not do this properly? It is sharp practice.”
“I want to put on record my serious concerns about the way in which business has been conducted today. At the end of the Order of Business and the Chief Whip's short contribution earlier today, she mentioned that there may be other resolutions this evening. We were in the dark about this. We want to be a constructive and responsible Opposition. There are people watching in who are concerned about their everyday livelihoods and the challenges they face, and now this is being sprung on us with a limited amount of time to prepare. This is no way to do business. We expressed our concerns about that earlier today through our own Whip, Deputy Duncan Smith. This is just a repeat of that. It is completely unacceptable. There is a better way to do business and this is not it.”
“There is a meeting with the lawyer for Dignity4Patients next week and that Lorcan Staines SC has been appointed as the facilitator along with Phil Scraton and Maeve Lewis who have been engaged to work with the group throughout this process. I look forward to the outcome of that. I want to place on record my gratitude to the Minister on behalf of the people I represent, including my peers and my contemporaries, who have had to deal with this for more years than any of us care to mention, and for the commitment of our newly elected colleague in Louth, Deputy Paula Butterly, who has very much focused on this issue with Dignity4Patients and the victims and survivors over the recent period. That is welcome, it is recognised, it is understood and we are all hopeful of a positive outcome.”
“These men are my peers and my contemporaries and their lives have been extremely adversely affected because of the abuse and sexual violence perpetrated against them by a doctor working in our health service over many decades who behaved so many ways in a untrammelled fashion, unchallenged by anyone else bar a few who worked alongside him and those who decided to blow the whistle, who were inevitably targeted for the actions they undertook to expose this scandal, and it is a scandal. Michael Shine, as the Minister knows, has served only a short time behind bars and a criminal conviction and prison sentence do not of themselves justice make. Real accountability will start to be delivered from today. There are high hopes for the scoping inquiry.”
“As the Minister knows, hundreds of men in my community, specifically in Drogheda but also in the wider Louth and Meath areas, have made formal complaints to An Garda Síochána over many years about the disgraceful actions of Michael Shine over many decades. We are of the view that thousands of men across my community may very well have been affected but have chosen for their own reasons not to come forward.”
“I thank the Minister for her personal interest since her appointment in working with Dignity4Patients and the victims and survivors of disgraced paedophile and former doctor Michael Shine. It is to be recognised and noted that we are at a point now that we were not at a few months ago. The first contribution I made in this Chamber on my election 15 years ago was in relation to the actions of Michael Shine, who is probably one of Ireland's most prolific paedophiles. I spoke that day of the need for supports for the Dignity4Patients group and they, with the Minister, have delivered. She has worked collaboratively with Dignity4Patients, the victims and survivors and members of that wonderful group over the past few months to get to the point we are at.”
“The shambles the Government has made for itself is demonstrated by the fact that it is simply refusing to do something it is obliged to do, namely send to me information already on the public record by way of replies to parliamentary questions. The Minister is obliged to answer and must confirm that she will.”
“They did this because the NCSE was forced to introduce arbitrary cuts with no policy rationale whatsoever other than to help with budgetary overruns in the Department of education. That is the nub of it. The trust is broken between SNAs and the Government, and a pause will not cut it. There needs to be a new plan and, ultimately, SNAs themselves, families and young people need to be involved in framing that new plan. The Minister is suppressing replies to parliamentary questions. She refused to release to me the names of schools in Louth that received NCSE letters prior to the first pause. These letters exist and they are a matter of public record.”
“It was shameful for and unbecoming of someone who delights in telling us he is a former education Minister. It would serve him and the rest of the Government better, and would restore some trust in politics, if he, the Minister and the Minister of State just admitted that they all got this horribly wrong. Instead, they apologised for how things were communicated. It was absolutely shambolic. They did not apologise at all for the policy itself. That is telling. I am aware that there are SENOs across this country whose very first job over the past two weeks was to go into schools, based on the letters received, and tell them they were going to experience cuts to their SNA complement.”
“The announcement rushed out on Monday night was designed to do two things: quell the Dáil on Tuesday and silence SNAs and families on Wednesday. It has not succeeded. SNAs are not stupid. As Deputy Bacik said yesterday during Leaders' Questions, they know a pause is not a plan. The Taoiseach's performance yesterday during Leaders' Questions was incredible. It showed signs of a Government in absolute panic mode. It was a shambles. It was the leader of a country throwing civil servants in the Department of education and the NCSE under the school bus.”
“Those kinds of schemes need to be put on a permanent, statutory basis so that they can effectively be taken off the shelf and introduced in short order to address the needs of businesses. I acknowledge increases have been made in the financial schemes available but they need to be put on statutory basis because, back to the earlier point I made, these events are becoming more frequent and permanent. It is a permanent feature of the system. We need permanent statutory responses on the Statute Book in primary legislation to ensure the response is quicker and more effective.”