Liam Quaide
Cork East · Social Democrats · Ireland
“The Department is not funding the teams. That is the main issue. There is a stark double standard here. In mainstream CAMHS, multidisciplinary staffing is treated as basic good practice.”
“I already established, earlier this year, that the staffing levels of CAMHS-ID teams across the country are abysmal. These are children and teenagers with very complex needs. They experience major challenges across all aspects of their daily lives, including with communication and learning.”
“I ask about CAMHS-ID services, which are specialist teams for children and adolescents with a moderate to profound intellectual disability and coexisting mental health difficulties. According to the HSE, and by its own admission, no CAMHS-ID team nationally is staffed to the level recommended in its own model of care.”
“This is a particularly vulnerable cohort of young people, and the lack of investment is particularly stark. The Minister of State should not look at me with an expression of incredulity because we have seen this across primary care and in child, adult and older adult mental health services. This is all out in the public domain.”
“Their needs are often more complex than those of young people attending standard CAMHS. I am asking the Minister of State for a clear commitment. When will the Government move beyond small, incremental additions year by year and fully fund CAMHS-ID teams in every region? When will that happen?”
“Worried, anxious, fearful, angry, afraid, powerless, terrified, scared, overwhelmed, abandoned, hopeless. Words like these came up again and again in a survey the Social Democrats conducted in the run-up to this motion.”
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“We should also consider citizens’ assemblies to afford us the most wide-ranging consultative forum possible on these matters that may be deeply consequential not just for us but for our children and their children.”
“While there are legitimate critiques of UN decision-making, there is also well-founded concern among broad sections of our population and civil society that removing this triple lock mechanism is part of a general trend of moving away from our neutrality by stealth and that our Government is abandoning long-held principles of defence, and safeguards, without proper public consultation or engagement. Deliberative democracy needs to be the framework for any major proposed defence policy changes. Any attempts to alter or weaken our military neutrality will be extremely divisive and will need to be put to the people through referendums. The pushing through of decisions that are so divisive and complex by simple majorities inflicts harm on our parliamentary democracy and alienates many people from politics.”
“A number of fast-emerging and deeply unsettling international trends demand we give much greater consideration to our defence resourcing, especially the war in Ukraine and the departure of the US from its traditional diplomatic and military alignment with Europe. We also must reckon in the longer term with what are likely to be the significant security impacts of the climate crisis. One of the most sobering predictions associated with the climate crisis is that of greater political instability in a world of catastrophic weather events and diminishing natural resources. Issues of national security will increasingly be tied to volatile, immensely destructive natural forces. Notwithstanding these threats, we need to proceed with extreme caution with any proposed changes to our defence policy.”
“Our neutrality has not just been a key military stance since the foundation of the State. It is in some ways a core part of our national identity and culture. It has been a foundation of our international diplomatic status and given generations of Irish people a sense of security from wars happening on an international stage. The subject of neutrality is one of the most vexed and divisive in our public discourse. A remarkable feature of this subject is we have yet to have in-depth debates on neutrality in any kind of systematic or considered format such as citizens’ assemblies or Oireachtas committees.”
“What specific measures for young carers will she introduce so that their specific educational, emotional and social needs are addressed?”
“As it stands, the means test leaves many carers struggling financially and below the established minimum essential standard of living. It excludes thousands of carers and leaves others with reduced or partial payments. It currently takes no account of the cost to families of their mortgage repayments, the cost associated with other children in a family, or medical costs for the person being cared for. In short, it does not reflect the reality of life faced by family carers. We need to consider more than just the phasing out of the means test if we are to really help these families. Will the Minister expand the ongoing work on reviewing the eligibility criteria with a view to allowing more people to qualify? Will she also consider making carer's allowance a qualifying payment for the fuel allowance?”
“According to The State of Caring 2024 report, which was also commissioned by Family Carers Ireland, 74% of carers felt that those they care for are not receiving sufficient formal support and family carers are left to fill the void left by the State. Stepping into the role of a family carer can often plunge a family into financial distress. According to The State of Caring report, 39% of carers have a total income of less than €30,000 and 29% have had to cut back on essentials such as food and heat as a result. In addition to the ongoing work on phasing out the means test for carer's allowance, does the Minister plan to increase the rate of carer's allowance to an appropriate level, one that reflects the social importance of the work?”
“Schools, colleges and universities need to work with young carers and young adult carer groups to ensure that they have appropriate policies and networks to meet the needs of those carers who are pupils or students. Young carers need access to respite and emotional support, advice from mentors and, where necessary, counselling services. They need time to be with friends, to participate in sport and other activities or interests and, in short, to live their life and develop their identity outside a caring role, which can be all-consuming. Looking more broadly at the picture for family carers, it is estimated that approximately 500,000 people in Ireland, or one in eight of the population, are family carers.”
“A 2023 study on young carers commissioned by Family Carers Ireland showed that 86% of participants felt stressed, 80% were at risk of clinical depression, 79% felt very lonely and 32% struggled to balance caring with school. Caring for somebody can be isolating, worrying and stressful. It can also negatively affect the person's experiences and outcomes in education and can have a lasting impact on life opportunities. We know that young carers are four times more likely to drop out of higher level education. Young carers, therefore, need a range of social, educational and psychological supports to address the burden of care they carry.”
“I also commend Deputy Mark Wall on organising that event and the other speakers who shared powerful testimony at that session. An NUIG study from 2018 showed that 13.3% of young people between the ages of ten and 17 report being in a caring role. Extrapolation to the national population suggests that at least 67,000 young people in that age group provide regular unpaid care to a family member. Across a range of indicators of emotional health and well-being, young carers reported poorer outcomes than their non-carer peers. Young carers are at greater risk than their peers of being bullied at school. One in four young carers said that they went to school or bed hungry because there was not enough food at home.”
“I know from my previous work as a psychologist that the role of a young carer can give a person strengths and qualities, including resilience, emotional attunement and resourcefulness, which serve them well throughout their lives. They sometimes go on to work in the caring professions, and are seen by friends as problem solvers with endless practical wisdom and emotional reserves. However, being a young carer can also have complex impacts on identity and mental health, and can place the young person in a role that is developmentally at odds with their actual age. I pay tribute to one of the young carers who spoke with raw honesty in the audiovisual room session today about the ambivalent feelings her caregiving has given rise to.”
“I also welcome the delegation that is here. I fully support this Labour Party motion. Family carers are a large group of people who have been tragically neglected by the State. They provide vital unpaid care, often under severe financial pressure and with huge personal sacrifice. In the case of young carers, this sacrifice can include losing out on parts of childhood and carrying unsustainable emotional burdens. Caring for a family member can be all-consuming. This often happens in a context where the person has been denied a range of supports that are essential to their well-being, their opportunities and their longer term outcomes.”
“Healthcare workers with severe long Covid should be provided with pay security by the State into the future to remove financial stress from the many other challenges they face.”
“On the temporary extensions of the special Covid leave with pay, these healthcare workers should not have to endure repeated last-minute cliff-edge moments regarding their financial security. They are being left in limbo for months on end while talks between trade unions, Departments and the HSE have remained at an impasse. They often do not know if they will be able to pay their mortgage in a matter of weeks. This is chronic stress heaped on so many other challenges. It is utterly heartless of the Departments of Health and Social Protection to put them through this. An occupational injuries scheme for healthcare workers afflicted with long Covid has been recommended by the EU strategic framework on health and safety at work.”
“This was at a time when many other workers were being protected by working from home. Some were not equipped with adequate PPE and many had not yet been called for vaccination at the time of infection. The State has a duty to look after them.”
“The long-term prognosis for these healthcare workers is very unclear. They often suffer from a range of symptoms which include debilitating fatigue and malaise after very modest levels of activity and there is no clear treatment pathway for them. In some cases, healthcare workers have been out of work for between four and five years. Many were infected in early January 2021 following the so-called meaningful Christmas in which restrictions on movement were crudely lifted by the Government against public health expert advice, resulting in spiralling infection rates. That is something the State really needs to take into account. Many healthcare workers now afflicted with long Covid were particularly exposed to infection at the most critical stages of the pandemic in the course of providing vital care to others.”
“I welcome the Minister and congratulate him on his appointment. A cohort of healthcare workers with severe long Covid who contracted the virus at the height of the pandemic in high-risk settings are suffering with chronic disabling symptoms and have not been able to return to work as a result. I know this because in my previous role as a psychologist I worked with many of these workers. Some have been out of work for four years and nearly up to five years. Will the Minister grant these workers who sacrificed so much on behalf of all of us, who are now paying an enormous price with their quality of life, the financial security of an occupational injury scheme?”
“I believe this risk is magnified by a culture in many of our nursing home settings that are detached from communities and often quite devoid of stimulation. This is a huge moral issue that we need to reckon with as a society. Nursing homes do not have to be socially desolate places offering solely functional care. A friend of mine who recently moved to Finland told me that their nursing home is located right in the centre of their town, and there is a remarkable level of integration with the residents in that community. There is no reason we cannot pursue a similar model of care here. We have a duty as a country, particularly one with so much economic prosperity, to ensure that we support our elders to live the fullest, most integrated, most creative and connected lives that they possibly can.”
“TILDA studies linked higher levels of loneliness with poor self-rated health, functional limitations and chronic health conditions. Loneliness was associated with a significantly poorer quality of life. More than three quarters of the loneliest one third of older adults had clinically significant depressive symptoms in the TILDA studies. A study from last year by TILDA showed that loneliness among older adults increased the risk of death ideation, in other words, the wish that one was dead. Conversely, strong social ties have been shown to protect individuals from emotional distress, cognitive decline and physical disability. While loneliness can be felt at any stage of life, as my colleague Deputy Rice said, older adults are particularly at risk.”
“I thank the Minister and Minister of State for listening to our concerns today. I will take up the theme of loneliness from my colleague because as a society it is crucial for us to reckon with it, in particular with regard to older adults. Large-scale studies by TILDA have presented us with stark findings regarding the impact of loneliness on a person's health, quality of life and emotional well-being. According to Professor Rose Anne Kenny, who is a consultant geriatrician and the principal investigator with TILDA, loneliness and social isolation are rising among older adults in Ireland, loneliness is detrimental to health as it accelerates biological ageing and disease, and addressing this problem is urgent.”
“As Ukraine is being discarded by the US Government and thrown to the wolves in the Kremlin, decency and compassion and sensible planning need to win out over populist reactivity in our policies towards their refugee population here. What is the Government’s plan for the Ukrainian refugee population here? Is there one? People need to plan their lives. They should not be at the mercy of a reactive, knee-jerk politics.”
“The eviction notice for the Ukrainian residents in Youghal has been paused and while this is welcome, they are now plunged into another type of constant stress and worry; a limbo in which they know that their current living circumstances are going to change outside of their control yet they have no sense of when that will happen or what exactly it will involve. When, as a Government, we invite people to seek refuge here and promote the idea if not always the practice of integration then the Government has a duty to not just suddenly uproot those families and sunder them from their connections at the point when they are actually integrated, and doing this purely because political fashions have changed.”
“In my constituency of Cork East, a large group of Ukrainian residents were served with an inhumane, emotionally detached eviction notice in January. The residents have become part of the local community in east Cork. They have children attending schools and are working locally. The families are contributing to the local community and economy. This crude eviction notice jarred fundamentally with the integrated, connected lives the families have created in east Cork. In a further cruel twist, they were told they could not bring pets to their new accommodation, and we have heard similar eviction stories around the country since January. There is clearly a calcifying of political attitudes towards Ukrainian refugees that is very worrying.”
“I would also like to welcome our Ukrainian dignitaries and friends this evening. Monday marked the third anniversary of Russia's brutal and illegal invasion of Ukraine. The Ukrainian people have shown heroic courage fighting off Russian aggression over the past three years. Eight years prior to that full-scale invasion, parts of eastern Ukraine were seized by Russia and the local population in these occupied regions have lived under a reign of terror since. The broader Ukrainian population is now facing an extension of that reign of terror within land that may be permanently occupied by Russia under a so-called peace deal forged by Putin and Trump. In 2022, we welcomed Ukrainian refugees to this country in large numbers. They are now, after integrating into our communities, being crudely uprooted as we enter new political headwinds.”
“As things stand both of those schools are very much oversubscribed so other options the family may have to consider would be as far away as Waterford city or Rochestown in Cork. The additional travel time would be a huge additional imposition of stress for this family. This stress would be avoidable for these families if the Government was to vindicate the right of their children to be educated locally. We all know that transitions from primary school to secondary school can be difficult in the best of circumstances. This proposed new special education class would bring peace of mind to many families in and around Youghal who are currently in a very distressing limbo with regard to their children's prospective secondary school placements. I ask again for the Government's support with this through a concrete funding commitment.”
“I thank the Minister of State. This week I spoke to a family that is campaigning for the proposed secondary school autism class in Youghal. Their current experience of primary education in Youghal is going very well for their son. However, the lead-up to being granted that school placement was a time of major trepidation as it was far from guaranteed due to the level of need out there. Looking ahead to secondary school options, the picture is far more uncertain and anxiety-provoking for this family and many other families in the area. The two nearest suitable placements would be either in Dungarvan or Carrigtwohill. Both involve significant travel time and disconnection of that boy from his local community.”
“The proposed class would help to address some of the educational gaps these students face while allowing them to attend school in their existing school community. The class would allow students to follow a differentiated curriculum and access additional supports, such as individualised education plans customised to meet each student's needs. The class would be integrated into the wider school community, ensuring social inclusion and helping to reduce the stigma that can often be associated with disabilities. I mention the efforts of my TD and councillor colleagues in east Cork, who are also committed to this campaign. I am glad to hear that Deputy O'Connor, who is working closely with families and other stakeholders, has invited the Minister of State to meet the stakeholders of this campaign in Youghal.”
“This is entirely at odds with their interests and their rights and is heaping another form of chronic stress upon the many other challenges these families contend with. A group of parents has come together to advocate for an additional autism class in Youghal. I ask for the Government's support to establish this special educational needs class in Youghal, which would be aimed at students known as "special educational needs betweeners", who are autistic children with mild learning disabilities. These students have educational needs that are too complex for mainstream classes but would not necessarily qualify for a special school placement. They are at risk of falling between the cracks of the mainstream and special school systems.”
“John's Special School in Dungarvan, overseen by a Garda superintendent, after which 20 children from Cork, south Tipperary and Waterford were left without a school place. This means families have to transport their children long distances daily for their basic schooling. In my constituency, it means families having to face travelling into Cork city or potentially Waterford city to access education for their children. The stress of long school commutes, some of which are spent in traffic congestion, can take an immense and cumulative psychological toll on these children and their families. Attending school so far from home also disconnects children from their communities at a particularly sensitive stage of their development.”
“I congratulate the Leas-Cheann Comhairle on his appointment. The lack of suitable school places for children with additional needs is critical for many families in my constituency of Cork East. There are 16 autism classes in five primary schools in or around the Youghal area. These are feeder schools for Youghal's only secondary school, Pobalscoil na Tríonóide, which has only three autism classes. This equates to 96 students in primary schools who will be seeking to avail of one of 18 secondary school places. Parents can be left in a deeply unsettling state of uncertainty in the lead up to a decision on their school placement applications for their children. I spoke earlier about the draw that took place recently in St.”
“Foetal alcohol spectrum disorders are estimated to affect up to 7.4% of the population and are associated with lasting physical, mental, educational, social and behavioural difficulties. They are a serious neurodevelopmental condition and there is a great deal of work to be done in prevention, diagnosis, treatment and supports. The former Minister of State, Deputy Anne Rabbitte, committed to supporting the aims of FASD Ireland and I hope the current Government will honour that.”
“They are sometimes linked with mental health teams that are ill-equipped to protect them from predatory behaviour. They should be able to avail of long-term specialised residential care in the community. They should be able to live somewhere they can call home, where they can feel safe, form healthy relationships and pursue meaningful goals. They should be fully supported to take part in their local community. If the UNCRPD is to mean anything, we need to see the kind of investment commitment that can put an end to this shameful situation. I will come back to the Minister on the following area in more detail at a later stage but I want to mention the importance of recognising foetal alcohol spectrum disorders as a disability and to progress with standard criteria for diagnosis and supports.”
“In the absence of tailored supports, they may be over-medicated as a means of managing their distress and unsettled behaviour. There can be an intensive concentration of staff supports during the psychiatric admissions. However, because the setting is unsuitable a lack of improvement or even a sharp deterioration in the person's psychological state occurs and nursing homes may become the only placement option. This is a psychological and social dead end for people who may be quite young with considerable potential for rehabilitation. People with an intellectual disability who are living in the community without family supports can be extremely vulnerable, at risk of sexual and financial exploitation and associated health consequences.”
“The organisation provides community living and rehabilitation for people with an acquired brain injury who would otherwise have ended up in nursing homes. It has transformed the lives of many service users throughout the country. Yet, so many people referred to ABI Ireland have to be told that their residential placements are massively oversubscribed and they have no prospect of being placed in one. Adults diagnosed with a mild intellectual disability who also experience mental health difficulties are further neglected within our system. Those who are most in need of intensive support and residential care often fall between services and can spend prolonged or even indefinite periods of time misplaced in psychiatric settings. In this context, their psychological state and behaviours can deteriorate.”
“When a community-based rehabilitation and residential placement becomes fragmented, underdeveloped or under-resourced, nursing home care may be the only option for some younger people with disabilities. It was clear from this study that several of the applicants would have preferred to return home. Others expressed a preference for living in more supportive accommodation or moving to an independent-living, community-based placement. Nursing homes were also being used for temporary care for people awaiting a placement in the National Rehabilitation Hospital. I had the good fortune of working with the Peter Bradley Foundation, now known as Acquired Brain Injury Ireland, in Glenageary in my 20s.”
“Deering has appealed to the new Government to include improved funding for the HSE to relocate these young people. He said he is "deeply unhappy" with the funding allocated in budget 2025, warning that a huge amount of work implementing the recommendations of the Wasted Lives report may now be in jeopardy. He noted that there needs to be a separate budget to help to relocate people who have been misplaced in nursing homes. The findings from a 2018 study by the Disability Federation of Ireland showed that some younger people with disabilities were being placed in nursing homes as a result of the breakdown in family care arrangements. This might, for instance, involve an ageing parent or the decline in the health of a family carer, rather than because of the disability itself.”
“I raise the human rights issue of adults under 65 with an intellectual disability or acquired brain injury who end up living in nursing homes or who find themselves stranded in psychiatric wards due to a lack of community-based supports. This is a desperately sad situation and another example of how much distance is opening up between our economic prosperity, on one hand, and the vindication of our disabled citizens' basic rights, on the other. In May last year, there were in excess of 1,200 with disabilities living in nursing homes. The Ombudsman, Ger Deering, has warned that Ireland will look back with regret at how it treated these citizens. His office has authored a report on their plight, poignantly titled Wasted Lives. Mr.”
“Children should not have to enter a draw to get an education; it is outrageous. Every child has a right to an education. This is the bare minimum. We have economic prosperity like never before. Will parents of children with additional needs have to endure the current stress of long commutes to school? How long will this go on?”
“Earlier this month, St. John's special school in Dungarvan, County Waterford, had to operate a draw overseen by a local Garda superintendent. The draw was not for a raffle to raise money; it was to allocate places in the school for children with additional needs. This is the kind of dystopian ritual that schools are being forced to undertake due to chronic under-resourcing of special education. There are now 20 children from west Waterford, Cork and south Tipperary who are on the waiting list for St. John's. One of them is Jay Meehan, who is four years old. Jay's mother, Rebecca, has said that the State is playing EuroMillions with her son's education. I want to be clear that I am not blaming the school; it was put in invidious position. The blame for this lies squarely on the shoulders of this Government and those that preceded it.”
“My colleagues in the Fermoy municipal district have been advocating very strongly on behalf of residents by striving to have the antiquated piping system replaced. Unfortunately, all of us have been coming up against a brick wall when it comes to Uisce Éireann. We have had nothing so far except short-term fixes, so I urge the Minister to rectify this and ensure that funding for a definitive resolution of Ballyhooly's water issues is provided for under a national programme.”
“I want to raise the long-standing issue of the water supply and water pressure in Ballyhooly, County Cork. Over the years, residents there have had to deal with extremely low water pressure and, at times, a non-existent supply of water, for prolonged periods. This has been affecting residents in nearly aspect of their daily lives. When water pressure is low, people cannot shower, bathe or cook or use dishwashers or washing machines. Toilets do not fill or flush and gas heating systems are affected. This means that people are at times left without heat and hot water. Families with young children, pensioners, people with chronic health conditions, local businesses, the farming community and schools are all massively impacted.”
“Those savings, in turn, are managed by a special State investment vehicle whose specific purpose is to finance infrastructure and social projects. The largest recipient of funding in France is the social housing sector. Households make a return on their savings and the social housing sector gains access to reliable capital at a reasonable rate. We also need to provide increased and early stage finance to approved housing bodies and local authorities. Doing so will greatly increase the supply of actually affordable homes for rent and purchase. I call on the Government to reconsider its "Reeling in the Years" nostalgia trip into the Celtic tiger era and take on board the substantive proposals brought forward by the Social Democrats this morning.”
“We are calling on the Government to move away from introducing more tax breaks for developers and vulture funds, and towards accessing currently underutilised funding sources at the EU level, such as InvestEU and the European Regional Development Fund. We should be emulating good practice in other EU countries, such as Austria, which has achieved a fairer and more sustainable housing system. One of the measures we are proposing is the leveraging of Irish household savings to invest in affordable housing, similar to the French Livret A model. Under this model, households can put their money into a special State-backed savings account which offers a more attractive interest rate than other savings accounts.”
“We are now entering a phase in Irish society where spiralling homelessness is in danger of becoming normalised and the social divisions that spring from extreme inequality are becoming entrenched. We are also facing the appalling vista of adverse developmental and mental health outcomes for many of the people, particularly children, who are caught up in prolonged homelessness. The Taoiseach is feeling emboldened by his majority in government to push ahead with policies that he would dare not mention in the lead-up to the general election. Once more, as with the occupied territories Bill, voters were misled. A strong Opposition pushback against this slide into gross inequality and corrosive social division is signalled by the Social Democrats' Private Members' motion today.”
“The Social Democrats are introducing this motion on addressing the housing disaster at a time when the Government is clearly at an ideological loss. Its policies of incentives for developers and investments for vulture funds, and their inflationary demand-side measures, have failed to move the dial on the housing disaster. More people are homeless today than ever before and the Government is falling significantly short of its own housing targets, delivering fewer homes in 2024 than in the previous year. The private sector is not able to meet the targets set out in the Government's own strategies. Now it seems that the Government is going to double down on this failure with measures that will deepen the crisis further.”
“The crisis in special educational needs and disability service provision is resolvable through reform that is driven by meaningful and sustained engagement with the families and the front-line staff who are at its epicentre. The issues also demand much greater financial investment in special school provision and clinical staff.”
“In the area of disability and special educational needs, the consequences of not getting the basics right can chain-react through a person's development and can be cumulatively devastating for families. The story of the family I have outlined is not an isolated case and, in fact, they consider themselves much more fortunate than some other parents of children with special needs. These families are at the mercy of a disjointed patchwork of a support system for young people with special needs. As immense as these problems are, we must not be given over to a counsel of despair which will lead to further fragmentation and privatisation of services.”
“The man I spoke to last night is part of a group of parents in Youghal who have started a campaign for the creation of more specialised second level autism classes in their locality. They are having to devote considerable energy to engaging with public representatives and navigating a complex bureaucratic system for a basic educational provision to meet their children's needs. For some of these parents, the window of time they have before their child requires a post-primary place will be short. As is the case in so many parts of our society and public services, we have economic prosperity like never before but we are not getting the basics right.”
“When parliamentary questions are piling in about these waiting lists, the stress of senior managers is being passed on to them and many are leaving services despite being passionate about their work. This crisis of morale within a broader disability service crisis requires urgent attention from HSE management. I really encourage the Minister of State, Deputy Moynihan, to engage with clinicians who are leaving CDNTs to get their perspective on the problems within services that have escalated since the roll-out of the progressing disability services programme. I also encourage him to engage on an ongoing basis with SNAs, teachers and principals as much as he engages with senior management of services.”
“They saw their son benefit from six sessions of occupational therapy within primary care services, only for his case to be referred into the abyss of the local children's disability network team waiting lists. They have had no therapies through the CDNT since that referral, which was exactly two years ago. It is really important to say at this point that any analysis of the failings in disability services needs to acknowledge that there are huge issues of burnout and low morale among staff and, consequently, poor retention of staff. They are often working in services that have been hollowed out in respect of staff provision and are dealing with unmanageable waiting lists.”