Jennifer Whitmore
Wicklow · Social Democrats · Ireland
“The Minister for justice recently brought in reforms for the criminal justice legal aid system. While we all recognise that there is a need for reform within the system, the reforms that the Minister has brought in are ill-considered, not backed up by data or evidence and have led to absolute chaos in the courts system.”
“Hundreds of jurors were recently told that their services were no longer required. Many vulnerable people in the legal system are falling through gaps.”
“A hosepipe ban will come into force in a number of counties on the east coast from tomorrow. I completely understand that because we are seeing record temperatures and are in the middle of dealing with the climate crisis and climate change.”
“In 2024, 1,000 incidents of antisocial behaviour were recorded on Dublin Bus. That was nearly double the figure recorded just a few years earlier. Unfortunately, this is not just limited to Dublin. We are also seeing instances of this in my constituency, Wicklow, on Go-Ahead services.”
“More than 1,000 people died in Spain due to heat-related causes in June of this year alone. By early July, Spain had 14 major forest fires and 50,000 ha of land had been burned. Across Europe, more than 10,000 excess deaths associated with the recent heatwave were recorded in a single week. These warnings have to be taken seriously.”
“As a family member, you wonder if the person is getting care, whether they are being fed properly and whether they are being looked after. There is no visibility. There is a dementia care home in Shankill that a lot of people from my constituency use, St. Joseph's. It is incredible. I visited it recently.”
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“It seems like the Department of Education is continually chasing its tail in providing sufficient educational spaces. Again, I am talking about Wicklow. At the moment, I am dealing with five children who have no place for secondary school this September. That could be seen as a blip, an unfortunate instance where the Department will hopefully step in and resolve that, but last year was the same and previous year and the year before that. Every year the exact same thing happens. We do not have enough primary school or secondary school places. You can see the problems moving from Greystones to Newtownmountkennedy to Wicklow town and in Blessington where we have infrastructure and where kids are in modular buildings. It takes years to get the proper permanent building in place.”
“Once you force children to a different county, or indeed country, you are breaking up that family network and the core fundamentals of community. You are taking away families' opportunities to engage with their grandchildren and taking away childminders in many instances, and when there are elderly parents you are taking away adult children’s ability to care for their parents as they age and that fundamental promise of community is gone. The document talks about schools, public transport, healthcare facilities, primary care centres and Garda stations – all the things we need, should have and should be investing in but that we have not been investing in. We talk about education and the need to have sufficient educational facilities and infrastructure but we just do not have it.”
“To date, we have not seen the development of communities. I only have a few minutes, so I will use this opportunity to talk about my constituency in Wicklow. Wicklow neighbours Dublin. We have seen considerable population growth over recent years and compared with other parts of the country we have seen quite a bit of housing go in. However, the housing is not affordable. We are talking €800,000 for a four-bed and €650,000 for a three-bed. That is a pretty standard price. For many who were born and raised in Wicklow, the reality is they will not be able to afford to remain in Wicklow. Many parents with adult children in Wicklow are really conscious of that and are incredibly worried about their children.”
“I looked through the document. When you read it, it all sounds very worthy as did the document before it and many other documents this Government and previous governments have produced. These are all nice, shiny, glossy documents that have very good sounding objectives and visions in place. Take, for example, national policy objective 12. It reads: “Ensure the creation of attractive, liveable, well designed, high quality urban places that are home to diverse and integrated communities that enjoy a high quality of life and well-being.” That is absolutely fantastic. How could we argue against that? However, the reality is we have seen many of these documents with many similar objectives. The issue for us as a country is not writing these documents but rather implementing them and seeing them delivered.”
“If there was one thing the Government could get a handle on, it should be making sure that when Uisce Éireann is tasked with a job and funded to do a job, it does that job and it does it properly.”
“In Shannonvale, residents continue to deal with a daily nightmare of a sewage tank overflowing into the village green space. It is just incredible that in this day and age, we have a sewage tank that is overflowing in a locality like that. In Ballydehob, the wastewater treatment plant, which is little more than a basic septic tank, is not fit for purpose. This has been going on for ten years and has caused massive ongoing pollution in Ballydehob Bay, emitting effluent into a special area of conservation protected under the EU habitats directive. The EPA issued an order recently to Uisce Éireann on this but it had issued similar orders in 2009 and 2014 and here we are in 2025 with the same problem still. There is a clear lack of accountability with Uisce Éireann.”
“I want to raise a number of issues on behalf of my colleague Deputy Holly Cairns. Deputy Cairns raised these issues, specific to her locality, over the previous term on a consistent basis but, unfortunately, they are still issues down there. One of the issues she wanted me to raise concerned housing developments in Clonakilty, Dunmanway, Kinsale and the Beara Peninsula. There is a stalling of these developments because of a lack of infrastructure. I know there are complications because there are freshwater pearl mussels there that are protected but there has to be a way of both protecting that species and making sure we have enough water so that the communities down there can grow and sustain the people in those areas.”
“These are simple things that should be resolved but they go on for years and years and there does not seem to be any indication that Uisce Éireann is getting on top of this. It is not all negative and I will give credit where credit is due, as did Deputy Malcolm Byrne. Arklow is not in my constituency anymore but it was for a long time. The project in that town was stalled and was really in limbo land, and that went on for many years. I ask the Minister of State to pass on that the communication between the team and the locals during the entire construction period was excellent. I want that passed on because it is not all negative. There are elements, for sure, that can work, but there are many areas where the system is not working properly. I ask that the Minister of State look into this.”
“Almost half of these were caused by equipment breakdowns and issues with the operation and maintenance of treatment plants. This is stuff it should have down pat. It should be doing it. It gets enough money to do so. It does not entail large-scale infrastructure. Even if Uisce Éireann were to get that part of its remit right, it would certainly take us a long way. Locally, in Bray, we had an incident over the Christmas period that meant people could not swim for five days. The annual charity swim was cancelled. Again, it was because of a simple thing. We have major problems with the odour emanating from wastewater treatment plants in Wicklow, including in Greystones and the Murrough.”
“It is often a case of small things, such as an alarm not going off or nobody being notified if a pump stops or a generator fails. If you google "Irish Water and water quality", you will see report after report on where there have been failings. Raw sewage flowed into a town in Cavan for a week after Uisce Éireann failed to spot a pump failure. That should have been easily avoidable. It is just a matter of an alarm system. It does not require major, complex infrastructure; rather, it requires an alarm. Many of the problems we see concerning Uisce Éireann are because of very basic things. That absolutely should be a focus of the work it is doing. The EPA report states Uisce Éireann reported 1,141 short-duration or once-off environmental incidents during 2023.”
“The EPA report from last year highlights that, as it does every year. The EPA consistently rings alarm bells about this. Last year, its report on wastewater indicated that 50% of urban wastewater treatment plants in Ireland were failing to meet EU standards on effluent quality and that raw sewage from the equivalent of 40,000 people was entering our rivers and estuaries every day. Clearly, therefore, there are problems. The EPA makes various recommendations, which it does every year, but unfortunately many of the recommendations are not acted upon. When I looked through the report – I have read various analyses – I found it really interesting to note that often when it comes to problems with water pollution and Uisce Éireann, it is not big infrastructural problems that are the issue. It is not that they require major investment.”
“Many Members have spoken about Irish Water in respect of the need for housing. Absolutely, there are huge challenges, and the lack of investment in certain areas is stalling the growth of communities. I will go into that in a little more detail later. I want to talk about the issues from an environmental perspective because we often forget about the environmental impacts of Uisce Éireann not meeting its statutory requirements or indeed its EU requirements when it comes to water management and treatment. All the time, we hear about the problems when it comes to agriculture and the impact of agriculture on our water systems. There are major problems in this regard but we also have very many problems because Irish Water is not doing what it needs to be doing when it comes to treating water.”
“It has actually created an additional bureaucratic layer such that when you contact the Oireachtas line, you are just put on hold. Usually, you hear nothing, or you do not hear anything for weeks or months, by which time the problem you are calling about may be resolved or the people will have become so frustrated because their local TD could not even get a simple answer out of Irish Water, the entity established to provide solutions to their problems with water supply and treatment, that they give up and stop making contact. If the Minister of State is to take anything from these statements today, it is that Uisce Éireann has to be accountable. It gets an awful lot of money from the public purse to do a job, and if there is no basic accountability, we are going to be in a very difficult position. We have been in a difficult position.”
“The Minister's printed statement was not circulated earlier. We seem to be getting into the habit of this. Printed statements are very useful if we cannot be in the Chamber at the start of a debate. Therefore, I ask that they be made available in future. Listening to the debate, it has been interesting to note that many of the issues talked about are very small local ones – individual constituents’ cases in some instances. When Uisce Éireann was set up it, there was a huge investment in it. There was a huge amount of political will to get it up and running. That Uisce Éireann has not even been able to provide information and deal with the specific issues is quite illustrative of how it is dealing with matters. As with many of my colleagues, I find it impossible to get answers from Uisce Éireann.”
“We need to make sure that the content providers are held accountable for it and they need to turn off the algorithm. Does the Minister agree that those algorithms need to be switched off?”
“I agree there is a role for everybody in this. Parents are playing their part. Schools are playing their part. I know incredible teachers who are doing everything they can to address this issue. We need the Government to play its part. I acknowledge the work the Minister did on Coco's Law. She spoke about making sure it is illegal to share graphic or toxic content. We are allowing the social media companies not only to share that content but also to promote it. Not only are they promoting it, they are making billions from feeding this to our children and creating this really toxic environment in which our children are growing up. No matter what we do as parents or what the schools do, if children are continually seeing this content for hours every day, it will seep into them. We need to stop this at the social media level.”
“Initially, Coimisiún na Meán had included measures to address these poisonous algorithms in the online safety code. This was really welcomed at the time but for some reason those proposals were removed. According to the Children's Rights Alliance, this was a big mistake and their removal reduces safety for children online. Does the Minister agree that these algorithms should be turned off? Does she think it was a mistake for Coimisiún na Meán to remove this regulation from the online safety code?”
“The content was misogynistic, violent, extremist and racist. Within two hours and 32 minutes of setting up that account, nearly 80% of the content being recommended was harmful. The dangerous content is endless and relentless and is being deliberately funnelled into children's accounts on a doom loop. Social media companies are making billions from feeding our children this toxic material and we as legislators are standing by and allowing it to happen. A new report from the Children's Rights Alliance has warned about a lack of regulation online. I want to deal with one aspect of that report, namely, the lack of regulation of recommender algorithms. These are the algorithms that continually feed this toxic material to children in this dangerous online bubble. There is no escape from this endless scrolling of harmful and toxic content.”
“In my constituency in Wicklow, the It Takes a Village initiative was a huge success. As part of that, all eight local primary schools introduced a voluntary no smartphone code. Under the scheme, parents signed up to not giving their children a smartphone until they went to secondary school. I know other schools around the country are doing similar. Mobile phone bans in both primary and secondary schools are now pretty widespread. I do not know of any school that is not throwing everything at this problem because schools know how serious it is. The difficulty is that toxic content is still there when children go outside the school gate and turn their phones on. That is where we need to protect them. One study has found it took just two minutes from setting up an account for teenage boys to be fed harmful content.”
“Parents are trying to protect their children from an online world and becoming increasingly overwhelmed and anxious about it because their children are carrying around in their pockets probably the biggest threat they will face for many years, and that is just their phones. The Netflix show "Adolescence" brought this danger into stark relief. It showed an extreme case of the tragic consequences of toxic online content. For parents, what the show demonstrated perfectly was the helplessness they often feel. I do not know if the Minister watched "Adolescence" but it was a very tough show to watch, as a parent. We think our children are safe when they are at home with us but the reality is we often have no idea what they are looking at online. Parents are doing their best and so are schools.”
“When the High Court directed An Bord Pleanála to reconsider that LNG planning permission it said the policy documents were not strong enough. Is there going to be a very solid indication from Government we will not facilitate any commercial LNG or any commercial LNG operator and at the same time perhaps looking at this temporary measure that is to be State-owned?”
“-----so we are essentially just replacing the majority of the gas we are using at the moment with this system even though we are calling it temporary and saying it will only be used in case of disruption. To compare it to the oil reserve is incorrect because that does not have to be used every two months. We do not have to get rid of it out of the system and ensure everyone uses it as it just sits there. That is where the complication comes in as well. We sort of have two processes here. We have the potential for State-led LNG, which will come down to that analysis and there is discussion about whether we need it or not. There is also how the Government has not ensured that, under planning law, An Bord Pleanála cannot grant any commercial LNG facilities. These are two very separate things.”
“This is not the best language to use because it paints a very different picture of this reserve than what would happen in reality.”
“It was quite noisy. My understanding, and this has been reported in the media, is the CEPA report offers an alternative view to the previous analysis done on energy security. It really is important because I understand the CEPA report says that by the time we get any emergency or transition measure in place, it will be very costly, but also there will not be a need for it at that stage. We could spend ten years and I believe €300 million putting in place infrastructure that will not be needed by then from a security perspective but which will lock us into a fossil fuel future none of us wants and which, from a statutory perspective, we must avoid at all costs. It is interesting when the Minister talks about this "emergency" infrastructure.”
“I welcome the students as well. It is always very interesting to visit here. I came into Leinster House when I was maybe eight or nine with Brendan Howlin and it was fascinating and has stuck with me. It looks like LNG is the topic of the day. My question is about the release of that report. I welcome the fact that the Minister has said it will be released within a matter of weeks, but will he also refer to the GNI report? What is really important is that when we are having these discussions we all have the facts available to us. Any decision needs to be based on science and the facts.”
“When the High Court directed An Bord Pleanála to reconsider that LNG planning permission it said the policy documents were not strong enough. Is there going to be a very solid indication from Government that we will not facilitate any commercial LNG or any commercial LNG operator and at the same time perhaps looking at this temporary measure that is to be State-owned?”
“-----so we are essentially just replacing the majority of the gas we are using at the moment with this system even though we are calling it temporary and saying it will only be used in case of disruption. To compare it to the oil reserve is incorrect because that does not have to be used every two months. We do not have to get rid of it out of the system and ensure everyone uses it as it just sits there. That is where the complication comes in as well. We sort of have two processes here. We have the potential for State-led LNG, which will come down to that analysis and there is discussion about whether we need it or not. There is also how the Government has not ensured that, under planning law, An Bord Pleanála cannot grant any commercial LNG facilities. These are two very separate things.”
“This is not the best language to use because it paints a very different picture of this reserve than what would happen in reality.”
“It was quite noisy. My understanding, and this has been reported in the media, is the CEPA report offers an alternative view to the previous analysis done on energy security. It really is important because I understand the CEPA report says that by the time we get any emergency or transition measure in place, it will be very costly, but also there will not be a need for it at that stage. We could spend ten years and I believe €300 million putting in place infrastructure that will not be needed by then from a security perspective but which will lock us into a fossil fuel future none of us wants and which, from a statutory perspective, we must avoid at all costs. It is interesting when the Minister talks about this "emergency" infrastructure.”
“That could mean the difference between getting a course and not getting a course. There is a way to do this. Predictive grades students could be weighted in the CAO applications for this year. This can be done in some way. There is a way of dealing with this fairly. It really cannot be the case that the students of 2025 are going to be so disadvantaged by this.”
“Some 61,000 children will sit their leaving certificate in a couple of months’ time. While this is always a stressful time for students, this year, when those students are doing their leaving certificate and are getting ready to compete for higher education courses, not only are they competing against the 61,000 within their cohort, but they are also competing against 15,000 students who were given predictive grades over the Covid-19 period. Those students are hugely advantaged by the predictive grades given during Covid-19. While I know the Minister is currently trying to phase that out – and it needs to be phased out - it needs to be done fairly. The students of 2025 will be down potentially 15 to 20 points in comparison with students who did their leaving certificate last year.”
“An Bord Pleanála has just approved planning permission for Shannon LNG's new power plant in Tarbert. While it is not yet clear exactly how that will be fuelled, it looks likely that it will be LNG. What is very clear is the Taoiseach's Government's U-turn on the use of LNG and fracked gas. Decision after decision of the Government is locking us into a fossil-fuelled future. That is the reality of it. It looks like the Government has very firmly opened the door to US LNG and fracked gas. Did the Taoiseach have any discussions with Donald Trump about LNG and its importation from the US?”
“We have seen far too many instances in which women have literally been fighting from their deathbeds for the girls and women who come after them so they do not have to fight the same fight when it comes to proper healthcare for women. Women have had to do it all and quite frankly it is exhausting. Women are just asking for some help. We just want to live normal lives and not have to be superheroes all the time. This International Women's Day, I call on the Government to take action to support women; no more empty statements or promises. The Government has a responsibility to women in Ireland and a job to do. Please step up and do it.”
“Here is to strong women. May we know them, be them and raise them. Actually - you know what - let us not. Let us stop placing enormous expectations and burdens on women. Let us stop expecting women to be strong all the time, to be superheroes and to fill every single gap left by a failure of policy, politicians and successive governments to provide the supports and services women need. For generations in Ireland, women have had to do it all. Women are primarily responsible for caring for children and elderly parents. Women are generally responsible for caring for family members with disabilities and for fighting for school places, assessments of needs or disability supports. Women are far too often responsible for fighting for justice when the system fails victims of gender-based violence and for fighting for healthcare.”
“A lot of the time, they are taken off their community garda role when other issues arise and they are needed in other parts of the Garda system. A constituent of mine who contacted me this week is a mature applicant to the Garda recruitment process. He has passed the recruitment stage and has been awaiting vetting for months. It was 2024 when he applied, although he raised the issue that some people have been waiting for up to a year to be vetted. Obviously, when we do not have enough gardaí, that is a key aspect. The Minister might look into the vetting process, and it would be great if he would examine that particular case.”
“There are gardaí who are working very hard in the stations, but there just are not enough of them and that message has been put consistently to the Minister during this debate. The area of community gardaí is one where a reduction in numbers is really impacting on the ability of gardaí to form those relationships with community members and young, vulnerable and older people. Where gardaí know the names, circumstances and stories of people within the communities, they can act as a preventative force and not just deal with issues as they arise. That is one area on which I would love to see a greater focus. Throughout County Wicklow, there are only nine community gardaí. For 156,000 people, that is one community garda per 17,000 people. I know many of those community gardaí and they do incredible work, but there are not enough of them.”
“They were so honoured and proud to do it but when I speak to those same gardaí now, they are really beaten down and they just cannot wait to get out. That is a very difficult place not only for them individually but, as a State, it is something we need to recognise. The culture and the pressures put on gardaí at the moment make it very difficult for them and I hope that over the course of this term, the Minister will be able to address some of those issues. When I speak to my people in my constituency about the Garda, they recognise that the relationship with the Garda has always been very good, but it is said to me all the time that people just do not see gardaí anymore. It does not matter whether that is in Blessington, Bray or Wicklow town. Everyone will say they never see a garda on the streets.”
“I congratulate the Minister on his appointment to this role and wish him the best for the future. When I think about policing in Ireland, it strikes me that to date we have been very lucky in that as a nation, we have always held our gardaí in such a high degree of respect. The relationship between the gardaí and our communities has always been very strong. When one looks at other countries where they have not got that right, one can really see what a difficult situation that creates in towns across those countries. It leads to a very divisive type of policing. That is something we need to recognise here. However, in recent years under-resourcing of An Garda Síochána has made life very difficult for gardaí. When I was in school, many of my friends were so excited to get into the Garda. They tried and tried and eventually they got in.”
“Will he tell me whether he is going to update the climate action plan 2025 so that it will meet our 51% in reductions target? What will he do immediately to make sure that happens?”
“It is time for the Taoiseach to take his head out of the sand when it comes to climate change and climate action. This Government and the previous Government did not do enough in regard to climate action. There are more warnings today from the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council and the Climate Change Advisory Council regarding this, that we could face between €8 billion and €26 billion in fines if we do not meet our targets. Yet, the climate action plan will only result in an emissions reduction of 29% if every single element of it is implemented. That does not meet the 51% reduction we have to see. The Taoiseach is engaging in a form of climate denial because, in the face of all of the evidence to the contrary, he still seems to believe we will meet our targets.”
“Is the Government considering commercial LNG at the moment, which would be a clear move away from previous policy? Will it publish the report from CEPA, of which we have not yet seen anything?”
“Recent reports indicate the Government is now considering a commercial liquefied natural gas, LNG, facility and that this is being seen as a bargaining chip with the Trump Administration. President Trump is a very transactional person and this is seen as something we can give him in our negotiations. That would be contrary to previous Government commitments and policies in favour of a State-led emergency non-commercial facility. Obviously, any decision that is made on energy security needs to be based on evidence. A report was commissioned last year by the previous Minister, charging Cambridge Economic Policy Associates, CEPA, to produce an analysis of our energy security needs and where LNG would fit into them. I have two questions.”
“That would make the RSA put in place a system that is workable and that meets the needs of communities across the country.”
“While it is not a statutory ten-week limit, there is a service level agreement. If, in contractual terms, the RSA does not meet that service agreement with the Department, what is the penalty? Is there any penalty? If possible, will the Minister of State provide a response in this regard? In regard to the NCT, there are problems with waiting lists. If the company involved does not meet the relevant timeframe requirement, it should provide tests for free. If there was such a financial penalty for the RSA, we would see it focus and make sure it had enough staff to conduct essential work. Will the Minister of State look at the possibility whereby if the ten- or 12-week waiting time is exceeded and the RSA does not provide an applicant with a driving test, that applicant should be allowed to sit the test free of charge?”
“When the RSA is putting the first tranche of recruited testers in place, it should focus on counties such as Wicklow that only have one tester. Clearly if that person gets sick or takes leave, it shuts the whole system down. That one tester - or even if there are two or three testers in a centre - must be under enormous stress knowing they are responsible for doing the test for every person coming into that test centre. I do not believe it is healthy or good for those workers to be put in that position. Will the Minister of State look at that? It is important to have sanctions and accountability in respect of the RSA, particularly as there have been problems for years. Solutions were provided but they have not worked. The RSA needs to face some level of accountability.”
“The 70 positions that were sanctioned have not made any difference as of yet. I want to specifically talk about my county of Wicklow. While the country averages 22 weeks, in Wicklow it is 26, which is incredibly high. It is an awfully long time to expect people to wait for their driving test. I went digging for information on this and the CSO website is a font of information when it comes to the waiting lists. There are 999 people in Wicklow who are waiting for driving tests and there is, according to the website, one tester in the county. There are about three or four counties that have one tester and Wicklow is one of them. When we compare that with five testers in Wexford, we can see why there is a 26-week waiting list. It is clear that there are major problems particularly in some centres.”
“The places that need to be prioritised are those that need the testers and that have the largest waiting lists. That is not just Dublin and Cork. I will return to this matter later. It is really important that the Minister of State bring the RSA in and get it to answer questions as to how it can take so long for it to undertake a recruitment process and get people trained into these roles. The waiting lists are not acceptable and there has been no improvement. When the 70 positions were sanctioned in September, there were 155 testers across the country. Currently, there are 151. This means that the number has dropped. That can also be seen in the waiting lists which have gone up by 10,000 people in those same months. The waiting time has gone from an average of 18 weeks to 22 weeks, so things are going backwards.”
“In September, the Government promised that the sanctioning of an additional 70 permanent posts would solve the problem and that the ten-week limit would be in as soon as possible. I welcome the 70 posts and that they were permanent which was really important. However, at this stage the Minister needs to call the RSA in to ask it what has happened to those 70 posts sanctioned at the start of September. My understanding is that the recruitment process closed in October, but the relevant staff are still not in place. I was told today by the RSA that the first tranche of those recruited will begin training in March. Therefore, it will still be many more months before they are in place and can start working to bring that waiting time down. I was also told that they will be prioritising Dublin and Cork in the first tranche.”
“I will be sharing time with my two colleagues. I thank Deputy Daly and Sinn Féin for bringing forward this very important motion, which will have an impact on many lives, particularly those of young people. We often make things particularly difficult for young people. This is one instance of our doing so. I acknowledge that both Ministers are new to their roles and that the Government is not going to oppose the motion. However, we need to see action because while the Minister of State is new to the role, his party has held the position he now holds for a number of years. In March 2024, the Department of Transport promised that the waiting times would be down to the ten-week maximum allowable under the service level agreement with the RSA. This was repeated in April by the Minister, Deputy Chambers, but clearly that did not happen.”
“There are reasons those countries are banning it and those reasons apply in Ireland. It is not just an international issue. I ask the Minister to look at that. It is time that we stop propping this industry up with taxpayers' money while also turning a blind eye to what happens in it.”