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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“Indeed, the document is disingenuous because it refers to how there has been a 7% reduction in emissions, but that 7% reduction was not derived from Government policy. The majority of it came from the fact we had imported 12 times more electricity from the UK and, therefore, our emissions were not counted in our budgets but in those of the UK. It is just an accounting exercise. Using the figure of 7% in this document is disingenuous. Nature recently showed us exactly what she thinks of how we have been operating and living. What happened was a clear wake-up call, not only regarding how we need to double down on actions to mitigate climate change but also about how important climate change adaptation is for us.”
“All our independent agencies and organisations when it comes to climate issues are saying the plans the Government has in place are not sufficient to meet the 51% reduction the Government is legally required to meet under the climate Act. The current climate action plan will result in emissions reductions of only 29%, which is far off what we need. One of the key red lines for the Social Democrats going into the election was that if we were to go into government, there would have to be a climate action plan that set out all the actions needed to meet the 51%. Unfortunately, even though the programme for Government states that the Government will set out those actions, the programme's other aspects do not give that indication at all.”
“Despite the Taoiseach repeatedly stating that climate change is the existential crisis of our time, anyone who reads the programme for Government would not get the sense there is urgency on the part of or a grasp by the Government of the scale of the problem we face and how difficult it is going to be to implement changes. The Government seems intent on continuing with business as usual, bringing forward the measures that were outlined by the previous Government and continuing on the same trajectory. It is clear, however, that this approach was not working. The evidence is there that the measures the Government had in place were not working and were not sufficient. It is not just me saying that but the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, the Climate Change Advisory Council and the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, SEAI.”
“Last year, in advance of the election, Fianna Fáil made a huge play on prioritising women's health. That included free hormone replacement therapy, which was due to come in in January. This was very welcome at the time but, unfortunately, January came and went, and there is still no free HRT for women. There appears to be no plan for putting it in place. Will the Tánaiste let me know what the Government will do to make sure that commitment and promise is kept? When will women see that promise being kept?”
“The horticulture sector is one that has been hit particularly badly by these storms. It is a sector that creates 7,000 jobs, which brings a huge amount of value to our economy, but it is also a sector that sort of lives on the margins. It is not one of the big earners when it comes to farming. People in this sector are going to find it very difficult to get over the damage and the costs they have accrued over the course of this storm. I ask that the Minister of State reach out and perhaps talk to the Minister and ask for a support scheme for those people to make sure they actually get to continue to produce beyond this storm event.”
“I was worried about the people who were not able to get to their emergency hubs to charge their phones to make calls to the radio stations. Who was looking after the people who did not have a bus to bring them to the centres and who had no one looking out for them? The Government needs to step in to ensure the most vulnerable will be supported. I also refer to agriculture because what we have seen over recent weeks really demonstrates how vulnerable the sector is to climate change and these kinds of climate events. We need to have a much greater focus on helping our farmers to transition to be able to deal with these events. However, I also want to call on the Minister of State because, unfortunately, we did not have the Minister for agriculture in the Chamber today.”
“Obviously it was, but we did not see support from or heavy lifting being done by the likes of the HSE in reaching out to GPs and health centres to ensure the latter had generators. Schools were without power for weeks and there was no remote learning for children. All sorts of measures were required so there should have been a whole-of-government response. We did not see that. I was most concerned about our most vulnerable. We heard people on the radio a lot saying they felt they had been left behind. That was their experience. They referred to the difficulties they faced in getting water, keeping warm and cooking food. I refer to people with disabilities and the elderly. The one thing on which they were all consistent was the lack of contact from the Government. Let me refer to other thing that really struck me.”
“For some reason, we do not have an emergency response plan for storms despite having had Storm Ophelia and a multitude of other very serious storms over the years. This is a huge oversight and it needs to be rectified immediately. I had a briefing from the ESB yesterday and the Government TDs probably had also. What was clear from it was that the logistics the ESB had to apply were incredible. Thousands upon thousands of staff, whether on the ground or in call centres, were reaching out to vulnerable people, organising accommodation and doing all that kind of work. It really felt to me, however, that the ESB was left to do the heavy lifting on this and that the problem was seen as one of electricity supply.”
“We are not going to be able to prevent these storms. We do not know when they are going to happen. A one in a hundred years storm could happen next week or in a hundred years – we do not know – but science and technology enable us to be much better at predicting them. As a State, we are, or should be, in a much better place to prepare for them. That is where the gap was this week. There was no plan, and that could be seen in the response of the Government, especially in the most rural and local communities. This is not just rhetoric saying the Government has no plan because it actually had no plan. There is an emergency response framework for flooding and there are plans for nuclear, rail and maritime disasters.”
“The Government has used the phrase that the storm was "without precedent". That is absolutely true in that we have never seen anything like it in recent history. However, it should not have been unexpected and we should have been preparing for it. There has been warning after warning about the fact we would see more intense storms. Our climate is changing. When the Minister and I sat together on the climate committee, we would have had these discussions. The storm should not have come as a surprise to anybody. Our climate is changing and has changed. What we have not really considered in the Dáil and in this country is the issue of adaptation. We rightly tend to spend a lot of time on the mitigation side of climate action, but the adaptation side needs equal focus. That was clearly illustrated over the past couple of weeks.”
“It was particularly difficult for Opposition and, I would imagine, Government back bench TDs when constituents were raising issues directly impacting them and their homes and asking specific questions, with no opportunity for those TDs to raise the questions with the Minister on the floor of the Dáil. That is something the Government should learn from. Many people in the country were living through a crisis and the Dáil was not sitting. We need to contrast the Government’s activity with that of the likes of the ESB, Uisce Éireann, local authorities and many community organisations throughout the country and their sacrifice and work to ensure the impacts of the storm were mitigated as quickly as possible. I acknowledge their efforts and, indeed, those of the workers who came from overseas to help us when we needed them.”
“It is 13 days since Storm Éowyn ripped through the country, including many homes, businesses and farms, causing devastation for so many, especially in the west and north west. It has been a very difficult period for people. When they saw there was no Dáil sitting last week, they really were asking where their politicians and leaders were. I agree with them. Unfortunately, the Government seemed to disappear when the storm happened. It kept the head down and only popped it up in the past few days with some solutions to the problems being raised.”
“We will have statements on the matter today but what we need are questions and answers with the Minister to find out where the Government was. Where were the Ministers? What were the Departments doing? How were they actually connecting? The one thing that has consistently come across from all the people who were caught up in this awful storm was they were being left absolutely on their own. We will have statements on the matter but we want a questions-and-answers session. We need to have an opportunity to ask questions and for the Minister to tell us where the gaps were and what the Government is going to do to ensure people will be not left in that situation again. It has been completely unacceptable. The Taoiseach's own Ministers have said the Government was not prepared and was too slow with its response.”
“I concur with the previous speakers. The Taoiseach has repeatedly said Storm Éowyn was a storm without precedent, and he is absolutely correct. What is also without precedent is his Government's lack of response. There was no plan. The Government left the ESB to do the heavy lifting.”