John McGuinness
Carlow-Kilkenny · Fianna Fáil · Ireland
“That concludes our business for this morning. I thank all the Members, the staff, the press and everyone involved in the House for their co-operation during the term. I want to acknowledge the fact that we had Cara Darmody in the Public Gallery this morning. I omitted to mention that. I wish her well in the campaign and in her efforts.”
“For the information of Members, the Poole family are in the Public Gallery. The Ceann Comhairle has already extended a welcome to the family, but I want to bring it to the attention of the Chamber, now that there are so many of us here, that they are here. They have achieved a lot. I acknowledge their presence.”
“Letting time pass to build up evidence for a case is having horrific impacts on women. I do not know when it began to escalate, but it is now the situation that the sexual, physical and financial abuse of women is out of control.”
“I join the Ceann Comhairle in extending the welcome to you. You have come through a harrowing journey to this day and you have exposed the State, as has been recorded by the Taoiseach, the Minister and others, in terms of the most awful failings, which have had terrible consequences on your lives and the lives of your families.”
“There are support services, but we need to fund them more extensively. The refuge centres serve a great purpose, but they need to connect more directly with local councils to ensure that whatever housing is needed is delivered.”
“I commend the Minister on bringing forward this stand-alone legislation. It is important that he continue his work reforming the various aspects of legislation that need to be examined and updated in the context of what society faces today.”
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“The Deputy has asked a number of questions of the Tánaiste, parts of which I believe are out of order. I ask the Tánaiste to reflect on that. If he can answer any of the other parts that might be relevant to him, the Government or the office, I ask him to do so.”
“I ask the Minister to resume his seat. If that continues, I am just going to move on to the next question. The Deputies are asking the questions. The Minister is attempting to answer and if that crossfire continues, I am not going to allow it. Show some respect for what is going on here. We will move onto the next question and I ask the Minister to not interrupt Deputy Ó Broin.”
“Do not hide behind procedures. Let us get the facts out there. In asking for the facts, the question I referred to, like many others, was a general question. How many are on the list for counties Carlow or Kilkenny? That is not a breach of any confidentiality. It is not breaching anyone's confidence, yet CHI would not give the figures. It would not give the details of how parents and children were treated when it was given specific information. We have to ask ourselves a question in this House: will we take back that power? Will we act as parliamentarians, with the appropriate powers and with the appropriate authority, to get to the truth and deliver justice wherever it is needed? If we do not do that, it will just become a cynical exercise in burying issues that have come before us for another few years.”
“Let us be fair, honest and truthful to the person carrying out the scoping exercise to allow that truth, story and experience to come out. I support the comments of Deputy Cullinane on that. On the statements on scoliosis, I have asked many questions of CHI and this is what shocked me about the replies is that CHI tells me that due to patient confidentiality, it will not respond. These questions come from the parents of the child in question. That is shocking. The parent comes and demands some answers. As their Member of this Parliament, I pose the question and we are told, "No, we are not telling you." That is what causes most of the problems in the House. It is the fact that the truth will not be told. If we stand for anything, we have to stand for truth and justice. That is why we were elected here. Do not hide behind any tribunals.”
“We need to apportion the blame in terms of people who were involved and who knew. They need to take on the responsibility and own up to what they turned a blind eye to. We need to ask the State why it has taken such an effort to get to here. If the scoping exercise does not answer all of those questions or allow those questions to be answered in the context of an inquiry, it will then be all for nothing. I have seen too many inquiries in this House run into the sand simply because there was some form of legal action against it. They never get a chance to really get to the truth. It does not look good for the State. It gives some credence to the claim that is often made that there is a cover-up happening here. Let us just stop the cover-up.”
“Deputy Butterly has set it all out very well. It raises the question as to why people within the system do not listen and why they turn a deaf ear to a lot of the information they get. Some of it is quite harrowing yet it is just kept quiet and then we are here today looking back years ago. It begs a question about the use of this House and the committee system to allow people to come forward under some form of protection to explain what has happened to them and receive the type of support that is needed in the context of having a wrongdoing dealt with or a wrongdoing exposed because unless the scoping exercise is absolutely clear and defined, parties on both sides of the argument will not be happy with tribunals and inquiries. As Deputy Cullinane said earlier, we need to know who, where and why.”
“Every chief executive should be made account for the number of vacant properties on their books and there should be a timeframe given for them to work on it. I support everything that is said about the tenant in situ scheme. For God's sake, fund it and make it happen.”
“Nobody wants to talk to you in the council unless you are doing it by email or by CBL, and that excludes an awful lot of people. It excludes older people and it is not treating them with respect. That has to be addressed. Single men and single women are probably the biggest number on the housing list in my constituency. I fight hard for each and every one of them because the last thing we want to see happen is that they would be trapped in private rented accommodation at the age of 60 and not be able to get accommodation. It is a downward spiral from there. Again, it is not understood properly by the local authorities and it is not being dealt with properly or funded properly by the Government. How many times have I heard, sitting in the Ceann Comhairle's chair, Members of this House tell the story about vacant properties?”
“More importantly, it is preventing the officials from understanding the real-life experiences of people as explained by a public representative. We are often treated with disdain. They do not want to communicate in a way that will expose the real problem and in a way that will give proper rights to the people we represent. These are all things that can be changed. The Minister should tell the council chief executives when they meet next that he wants a different or simpler form or that he wants to the word of a public representative to be taken when he or she makes representations on behalf of a client. Choice-based letting is a good thing. I see a lot of people on the housing list use it but it is another measure that is restricting those who are not IT-literate.”
“All of the schemes the Minister has to give people the opportunity to buy their own homes are failing in part because people cannot get through the hoops that are attached to every single scheme. There is no one there to assist them and to say that if they did things a particular way, they might qualify for one scheme or the other. That does not happen. They come back to public representatives like all of us in this House and guess what? They have to fill out a two-page permission under GDPR so that the council officials can speak to us when we are trying to speak on behalf of a constituent who has come to us in the first place. We ignore that here. We do not do anything about it. We should do something about it. It is preventing us from doing our work.”
“Is it not a case where someone from the council should go to mediate? I asked for mediation in the particular case I experienced in Kilkenny and the answer was no. The council said it had a court order and it was evicting the person and the family. Do councils not get what is happening in society right now? You have a case where the council wants to increase the rent. Should the parents take in the family that cannot afford to pay a rent in the private sector? They go back home and lo and behold the council is on to the family immediately to increase their rent. There has to be some forgiveness in circumstances like that. A space has to be created to allow that family to assist their family members, sometimes with young children, and not be told their rent is being jacked up for that purpose.”
“I have seen more refusals on the basis of no funding being available. The Minister needs to make every single council accountable to us in this House. The Minister has to insist they deliver on their numbers. Do not let the Opposition say now we are blaming the councils. I am not. I am simply saying they all have a role. They are all getting paid, so why should they not be accountable? That does not remove accountability from the Minister or the senior civil servants. I cannot understand either why a council that runs into a difficulty with a tenant - I have an example of it in my county of Kilkenny - turns to evict that person. Whatever the reasons are for that, is it right to evict a family of six and put them on the roadside, citing succession rights, rent arrears or whatever it might be?”
“The result is a family is left homeless, while one person living in a three-bedroom house who wants to move to a one-bedroom house cannot be accommodated. Council officials are often baffled and bewildered by the range of problems they are facing and the skill set is not there to reach out. Maybe the ambition of chief executives - I am not talking about any particular chief executive - is not there to work with the Ministers and civil servants to get this job done. There was reference to adaptation grants. Around budget time, I asked the Government to make sure the shortfalls in the grant in every local authority were addressed. I asked that local authorities be given even more money to ensure people remain in their houses and that houses would be made available to disabled persons, freeing up other houses. That does not happen.”
“I am told there is an issue with the cost of repairing and refurbishing these houses. That is a load of nonsense. There are many people on the housing list who are living in dire circumstances and would accept a house that might fall a bit short on some standards. They would do so in the hope that once they have a house, they will get it repaired in future. That does not happen, however, and nobody is accountable. At the end of the day, the Minister and his senior officials are accountable. Do we hear from them? No. Downsizing or resizing is another issue. I know cases where people want to downsize from a three-bedroom house to a one-bedroom or two-bedroom house but the council does not have the ambition to make that happen. It just will not let that happen.”
“It may be a low-paid job but they are working and cannot afford to get a house. They are often being refused by the council in a very inhumane way. They apply for a house and, with few if any reasons for refusal, the council sends them back all of their documentation in the post and says they do not qualify. Why can the council not do what most people in this House would do, and call them in to have a chat, rectify their application and approve them? I tell people that once they have been approved, there is no magic wand. They might be approved and get HAP but there are no houses to get. Look at the housing stock the councils have. I wonder why there is no real effort to turn around a house that has been vacated and put it back into active residential use.”
“That is how most people throughout the country got a head start in terms of their homes. The reason we cannot do that now is that we have loaded the system with bureaucracy and red tape, creating obstacles for everyone and anyone who wants to move forward. We are taking the future from our children by not ensuring that we deliver to meet the housing needs they are experiencing. In the main, I am talking about people who would qualify to receive council houses because that is where the relief needs to come. I have never seen anything like the homelessness we have. It is shocking. I would never have said we would have homelessness in Kilkenny city or Carlow town, and we have. It affects not only those who fall out of society or have difficulty with engaging with society, but people who are earning money and have a job.”
“I can always point to the children's hospital or to the issue we are discussing, for which there is lots of money, yet we still have a growing problem. There are many other examples of that and if the Government and the Departments do not recognise that, we will be in real trouble altogether. I am going to reflect what I hear in my clinics. I want to look back and recognise the record of local authorities. Back in the 1950s, when there was little or no money around they built wonderful housing estates. These estates were not made up of modular homes but if solid, well-built houses. I was reared in one such home on O'Loughlin Road. I look back on it with great memories because the people who were allocated those houses made up the community based on a meitheal concept.”
“Anything that we raise in this House in this Government term seems to be ignored because it is now more about spin and social media than about hard facts and delivery. That is my view. Often, Opposition Deputies will tell us we are in Government, but that does not mean that we do not have ideas or that we cannot reflect what the constituents we represent say to us in clinics. I certainly will not ignore what they say to me and if that is criticism of the Government, then so be it because we are here to represent those who elected us. The dysfunction at the heart of government has to be dealt with. I have never seen a time where there was so much money in the system, yet so little ability on the part of the State to deliver on most projects.”
“That is a terrible reflection on the Government. It is a weakening of democracy. As we discuss this issue today, we have the Minister of State here to answer. There should be representatives from the Department of housing in the Chamber because they need to hear directly from every single backbencher who will contribute today. I attach relevance to and place emphasis on backbenchers and what they say due to the clinics that we do. What we hear and see at the coalface is being reflected in this debate. There will not be one single reply to any of us here from the Department or the Minister to say "You know what, I listened to the debate" or "I was told about the debate and I think your idea is worth exploring".”
“We did not just arrive at these numbers overnight. This has been ongoing since 2011, I would say, and successive governments since then ignored all the signals that would tell them a problem was emerging in housing. Local councils even ignored it. They massaged the figures to make things look better and pretended there was no problem when, in fact, there was a massive and growing problem. I was often criticised during those years when I raised the issue of housing and the fact that it was not being delivered at a pace to meet the demand. When I look back now, I think I was right about it. A year into this new Government, there is a dysfunction at the heart of all of this, and that includes Ministers and civil servants. An attempt is being made to ensure the voices of backbench and Opposition Deputies are not being heard in this Dáil.”
“Tá Roghchoiste na Gaeilge, na Gaeltachta agus Phobal Labhartha na Gaeilge de chuid Dáil Éireann tar éis athbhreithniú a chríochnú ar na Meastacháin seo a leanas i gcomhair seirbhísí poiblí le haghaidh seirbhísí na bliana dár gcríoch an 31 Nollaig 2026: Vóta 42 - an Roinn Forbartha Tuaithe agus Pobail, agus Gaeltachta.”
“Before we move to Questions on Policy or Legislation, I wish to acknowledge the group of students in the Public Gallery. They sat patiently through all of the Leaders' Questions and other business of the House. I do not know where or what constituency they are from or what school they might be from, but I want to give them a bit of homework. They might write to the Ceann Comhairle to let us know what they thought of this morning's behaviour.”
“Can Members please respect the Chair? I will say again that I do not mind robust exchanges – they are fine – but the carry-on here on Thursday mornings is nothing short of shameful. I ask Members to acknowledge the Chair, acknowledge Standing Orders and please conduct the debate in an orderly fashion.”
“Will the Minister of State please intervene with Iarnród Éireann regarding Kilkenny railway station? The old buildings are in an absolutely shocking state. Iarnród Éireann has shown clear disrespect for Kilkenny in terms of the appearance of the station.”
“The M7 to Dublin from Carlow and Kilkenny is heavily congested. Drivers are frustrated by the traffic and the delays. The number of business vehicles using the route has increased substantially. I would like to see some action on it. I draw the Minister of State's attention to the need for huge investment in local routes in Kilkenny city. Places like the Lyrath Estate Hotel, the Abbott facility and housing estates and nursing homes dotted around the city are not served by bus routes. I ask that the reports being submitted and the constant lobbying that is going on be recognised and that we ensure that huge investment and input will deliver extended services to all of those places and bring in towns like Graiguenamanagh, Thomastown, Johnstown and Freshford, which are being neglected.”
“The Select Committee on Transport has completed its consideration of the following Revised Estimate for Public Services for the service of the year ending on 31 December 2026: Vote 31 - Transport. The Select Committee on Social Protection, Rural and Community Development has completed its consideration of the following Revised Estimate for Public Services for the service of the year ending on 31 December 2026: Vote 37 - Social Protection and Vote 42 - Rural and Community Development. The Select Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage has completed its consideration of the following Revised Estimate for Public Services for the service of the year ending on 31 December 2026: Vote 16 - Tailte Éireann; Vote 23 - An Coimisiún Toghcháin; Vote 34 - Housing, Local Government and Heritage; and Vote 39 - Uisce Éireann.”
“Before calling on the Taoiseach, I welcome to the Distinguished Visitors Gallery today Mary Dunlevy Greene, Mary Donovan, Maurice O’Connell and Miriam Moriarty Owens, all of whom are survivors of institutional abuse. I also welcome their friends, family and supporters who, alongside Patricia Carey, the Government-appointed special advocate for survivors, have joined us in the Public Gallery. They are all very welcome.”
“The Select Committee on Disability Matters has completed its consideration of the following Revised Estimate for public services for the service of the year ending on 31 December 2026: Vote 40 - Children, Disability and Equality.”
“The senior Minister had to leave earlier because she is attending a meeting with the Taoiseach regarding the next business, which is a State apology. She referred to that as she left the Chamber. I would like that to be noted.”
“Earlier the Taoiseach stated again that every child is constitutionally entitled to an education. What happens when the main contractors to the State for school bus transport fails to bring children from their local village or town to the school to get that education? That is this case in a number of places in Kilkenny, including Mullinavat and Ballyhale and in particular Gowran where 50 families are affected. The Minister sanctioned the bus service through Bus Éireann in 2024. To date, there has been a stop-start approach to the provision of that service. I ask the Minister to directly intervene to ask why the contact is not being operated. Why has it failed the children of Gowran? Will he insist that the contract be fulfilled? Will he put the overall scheme to tender?”
“I ask that in each and every scheme, for those who are in the system and those waiting to go into it, the Minister of State insists that Government pull out all of the stops and address all of the obstacles preventing the schemes from getting to the point of construction. I have heard the arguments about nature and so on but, when the scheme in Kilkenny city was being finished before 2005, I saw the trucks drive up and down the riverbed. I saw that scheme finished. It is an excellent scheme and one that is worth looking at.”
“After all, it is a business that runs on a small margin. They need the money quickly to replace the stock and get back into business. I went through the houses in Inistioge yesterday. I was shocked when I drove through Inistioge during the flood prior to the most recent one. The water was literally running over the crossbar on the GAA pitch. After that, I saw the devastation in the homes. I do not know how they tolerated it. I listened to the cases of the people living right beside the waterfront in Graiguenamanagh. Older people were desperately trying to get the money to get their homes back in order.”
“I acknowledge the very serious flood issues in Carlow. I visited a number of the businesses and households there. Of course, it is the same everywhere else that is affected by flooding. There is devastation after the flood. There is the attempt on more than one occasion to rebuild a life and a home. They are fed up of waiting for the schemes that have been talked about by us in here for years and years. In Carlow, for example, when some of the businesses and residents applied for support, it was too slow in being delivered. Regarding farmers losing livestock, one man lost 14 sheep in the flood. He is having difficulty being included. He is not included in the Red Cross or the business fund. I have made a case to the Minister. He and anyone else who lost their stock should be looked after.”
“The Select Committee on Children and Equality has completed its consideration of the following Revised Estimates for Public Services for the service of the year ending on 31 December 2026: Vote 25 - Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission and Vote 40 - Children, Disability and Equality.”
“I want to return to the case of Seamus Culleton, whose family hail from Glenmore in County Kilkenny. He has spent 20 years in Boston in the United States. I spoke to his wife, Tiffany, and his sister Caroline yesterday. They are deeply concerned about the length of time for which he has been detained and about the substandard conditions in the detention centre in El Paso. Why was he moved from New York to there? There are emerging financial difficulties because he is not working. Will the Taoiseach and the Minister for foreign affairs intervene immediately at the highest political level in order to get this man released? In November 2025, he was coming up on the last of his green card interviews. Obviously, he could not attend because he was being detained.”
“I appeal to Members around the House to please observe a bit of decorum and respect. Make your point, by all means, and be as robust as you wish, but recognise the time that has been given and that people are listening and suffering because of the floods, so they need to get information as well.”
“Before I go to the next question, I welcome those in the Public Gallery, particularly the guests of Deputy Newsome Drennan. I do not know if the Deputies have noticed but over the past few minutes they have been jumping up and down frantically waving to try to attract their attention. They are all very welcome and I hope they enjoy their day with the Deputy.”
“We have dealt with Questions Nos. 1 to 22, inclusive. We are due to finish at 4.38 p.m. It is now 4.35 p.m. We will not conclude Questions Nos. 23 to 39. We will suspend while we are waiting for the Minister.”
“For the information of the House, Deputy Brian Brennan has been appointed to the Committee on Parliamentary Privileges and Oversight and the Committee on Standing Orders and Dáil Reform, to replace the Minister of State, Deputy Frank Feighan, on both committees.”
“It has not been extended, as it should be, to places like Hebron Park and hotels and businesses on the outskirts of the city. On the Bennettsbridge roundabout, TII moved in, did an adjustment and caused havoc with traffic. We cannot get it to see common sense and go back and do what needs to be done. When will we see common sense?”
“The flood-relief schemes in Graiguenamanagh, Callan and Inistioge need to be pushed through the bureaucratic process so that the lives of families are not impacted any more by virtue of the floods that we are experiencing. The 2006 regulations for wind farms have not been corrected yet. We have not got an up-to-date version of them. It is an unfair playing field in that regard and it is destroying rural Ireland. Where are these regulations? When will they be presented? When will we have some certainty around them? The school bus system has never been reformed. Every single year there is an issue with school buses. Whether it is in Gowran, Ballyhale or in any other county in the country, it is a huge issue. There is no desire to reform. We have a city bus system in Kilkenny.”
“We are at this point in our development as a country because we had no regard for reform or for strategy in the last 20 years. We are now talking about the investment that we are going to make but I want to know what is going to happen to the projects that require the funding and need to be taken out of the bureaucratic mess they are in. The completion of the ring road in Kilkenny is absolutely essential to the perfect development of the city but it is not happening. The N24 and N25 along with the N80 in Carlow need funding and need to be moved on in the process. The railway station in Kilkenny is blighted by the fact that Iarnród Éireann will not respond on upgrading the goods shed in that area and, as a result, the city is impacted.”
“The Select Committee on Defence and National Security has completed its consideration of the following Revised Estimate for Public Services for the service of the year ending on 31 December 2026: Vote 35.”
“No, that is not the remark the Deputy made. I will not get into an argument with him about it because I know it will just drag on. It was in relation to accusing a member of Government of deliberately misleading the House.”
“Deputy Hearne has made his point, the Minister has responded and the Deputy brought up what was said previously. I want to bring Deputy Hearne's attention to the Standing Order that states it is not in order to accuse a member of Government of deliberately misleading the House. If an allegation of this nature is to be made against any Member, it should be made by way of a substantive motion. I have to ask the Member to unreservedly withdraw the remark he has made. That is the Standing Order.”
“That is all I ask you to do. You can make your point as robustly as you like. You know the rules of the House in relation to the comments that were made. I cannot enforce those rules. It is up to the Deputies to decide whether you are going to withdraw the remarks or whatever the Minister is requesting-----”
“Before the Minister responds, I have a message relating to distinguished guests in the Distinguished Guests Gallery. I welcome H.E Betty Escorcia Baquero, the Colombian ambassador; the deputy dead of mission, Carlos Padrón; third secretary, Sergio Ramírez; and economic officer, Carlos Jiménez. They are all very welcome and I hope they enjoy their morning at our debate. I thank them for visiting this House.”
“There is not an understanding from Irish Water about local issues, either. In Inistioge, they were not aware of the fact that very close to the outflow pipe from a treatment system was an area where people got into the water and swam. They did not see it. We have lost a lot of local knowledge as we move towards the bigger entity of Irish Water. That could be said about the HSE as well. We need to debate it much more here in the Chamber so we get to the point where we are creating the policy and driving it to deliver for the people we represent. Irish Water needs to do much more in the small villages throughout County Kilkenny and indeed Carlow to make it effective in terms of allowing local populations to grow and people to live and work in their own communities.”
“We cannot have a system that randomly picks one place over another. Huge investment must be made through Irish Water and directed towards villages and towns that want to develop, that have areas to develop and where people want to live. I will say another thing about Irish Water. The Greenfields housing estate in Kilkenny is serviced by an antiquated system that is just completely broken down. Irish Water will not provide the turn-off valves that are necessary to control the water should there be a burst pipe. Very recently, there was a burst pipe. A house gets flooded and who do the people turn to? Their local public representative or TD. What we get from Irish Water is just static. There is no sense of urgency about delivering the corrective measures that are necessary to make sure those households do not flood any more.”
“I will make a point about services in this country and the general bureaucracy that holds up every single development that is undertaken. I should not say "every single development" but it is an issue for some major developments. We do not seem to be capable of empowering local authorities or Government agencies to deliver efficiently and well. If that was done, we would not have the same number of TDs, councillors and Senators making representations. When a service does not function, the general public has nowhere to turn other than to us. I attended a public meeting in Inistioge about the development of the village and a neighbouring area called The Rower. At one stage, this area was second on the list to have facilities provided by the council or Irish Water. Now, it is fifth on the list and no one can explain why.”