Marie Sherlock
Dublin Central · Labour Party · Ireland
“That is why I want to see our local authorities moving from being just bystanders that license waste collection companies to actually controlling how the service is delivered.”
“That is why I want to pay tribute to all the people who are here today, including Stoneybatter Pride of Place, Phibsboro Village Tidy Towns and all the people working within their communities to keep them clean.”
“Panda’s parent company, Beauparc, sold for €1.3 billion in 2021 to an Australian investment firm. It is also co-owned by a US private equity firm. They are not in Ireland for the good of their health. They are here because they know they can make serious money. We know Greyhound’s parent company is registered on the Isle of Man.”
“The other important thing to say is that we did not hear any new ideas today, and I say that with the greatest respect to the Minister of State. We did not hear any ideas with regard to the profound challenges we have regarding our plateauing recycling rates and all the other issues that are there. That is disappointing.”
“I pay tribute to a lot of the work that many officials and workers in Dublin City Council do because, in some ways, their hands are tied behind their back. They recognise the issue with regard to landlord responsibility. I am very disappointed to hear the Minister of State's comments about landlord responsibility.”
“Dublin City Council was able to negotiate for the installation of ten-tonne compactors in the commercial areas, yet when it came to the residential areas, I understand the council tried to negotiate with the bin collectors on the roll-out of shared collection systems, but to no avail. That pretty much sums up our dysfunctional system.”
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“Homelessness, the lack of affordable housing and, in some cases I know very well, the lack of access to disability services, particularly for children, can have a devastating impact on the mental health of parents, children and families. It should harrow us all to know one in ten adults in Ireland has at some point attempted suicide. The Minister of State referenced the significant challenges for adolescents since the pandemic. We know from research by the RCSI that one quarter of adolescents have described their mental health as bad or very bad and one in ten reported attempting suicide following the pandemic. The critical point is that our mental health services were very much in the dark ages. There has been some improvement but there is a long road to travel.”
“I also want to acknowledge the presence of Deputy Roche, who has spoken so powerfully about his own family. When people speak out, particularly public representatives or others in positions of influence, that can be a wake-up call to services and as to the reality of mental health in this country. We know from research that 42% of all adults in this country have experienced a mental health illness. Just under half of the population will experience a mental health crisis or illness at some point in their lives. That is enormous. The Minister of State spoke of the structural factors and it is important to speak of those here.”
“I welcome the opportunity to speak on World Mental Health Day. Enormous work is being done across the country by many groups, both informal and formal. Progress has been made on breaking the stigma in our communities in recent years. However, it is important to say that stigma is alive and well in workplaces and in the medical profession when people present with a long history of mental health conditions and then seek assistance for physical health conditions but are effectively not afforded the seriousness and consideration they should be. There has been progress but, by God, we still have a long road to travel. I acknowledge the Minister of State's commitment to her role in recent years. We sharply differ on some issues but there is no doubting her commitment.”
“We have seen heat pumps with a take-up of only 30% of the targets, with only 47% of a take-up in local authorities. If we want clean, cheap energy for the many, not the few, and we want to see a permanent reduction in the cost of living and with regard to energy in particular, then we have to do things differently.”
“-----the basic income for artists scheme, which we very much welcome, but cut supports to all other parts of the arts sector? I have to ask: is this the vengeance of the Minister, Deputy Patrick O'Donovan, for the Arts Council and what happened earlier this year? There are very serious questions that have to be asked of the Minister today. Mar fhocal scoir, climate action appears to have fallen off the political agenda for this Government. Already we see a massive underspend in the Department and today we see a miserly €89 million going to the energy upgrade scheme. The reality is the schemes are not working. We have seen only a 70% take-up of the schemes over the last number of years.”
“I want to read back a piece of the speech made by the Minister, Deputy Chambers, today because I found it fascinating he would go to the trouble of saying: For a small country, Ireland offers an extraordinary wealth of talent and entertainment. Our artists, writers and athletes are now leading the way on the world stage... He says all that and then cuts the budget to the arts and culture.”
“There are those watching on today with a disability who believe they have been betrayed by this Government, betrayed because over the past three budgets there has been a recognition of the cost of disability, there has been a disability support payment and there have been one-off payments to recognise the situation they are in, but the plug has been pulled on them today. Shame on this Government.”
“The promise for this year was 160 beds and yet, we know that less than half that number, just 68, will come on stream. Today, we have a commitment of 280 beds and we welcome that but I have no confidence in this wide earthly world that this Government will deliver on that. Earlier this year, the Government came out and promised us we would have more public nursing home beds following the crisis in Emeis Ireland. It is not clear from today's budget that we are going to see any progress on that. Those commitments made in the spring of this year are all beginning to ring a bit hollow now.”
“Far fewer than that have been delivered and today's announcement is even lower than what was committed to last year. Last year, we were told we would get 335 beds this year. Only 286 have been delivered. We know we need to have 453 beds per annum, according to the ESRI analysis, if we are to meet demand by 2040 and yet, today's announcement is less than half of that. The impact on the ground for patients is that more people will not be able to access hospital care and those within hospital care will not be able to access step-down and other appropriate beds. The situation in community nursing home care is even more acute. There are fewer long- and short-stay beds available in 2025 than there were five years ago. The national development plan promised 4,500 long-term and short-term community nursing home beds by 2027.”
“There is, however, a reality that this project of productivity cannot be completed without electronic health records and without more beds. We did not see a peep out of the Government today about this massive project of electronic health records. We have to ask the question: where is the money for it? In last year's budget Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael were falling over themselves promising the electorate more hospital beds. Even though in 2024 the Department of Health identified a need of 3,378 extra beds by 2031, Fine Gael went out at election time and said it would deliver 5,000 if it was re-elected. Fianna Fáil was, uncharacteristically, more timid and went for 4,000 more beds. Then the programme for Government solemnly committed to 4,500 over the next five years. Of course, what has been happening?”
“With regard to mental health and the demand for care in the community, time and again we see a rising need and yet the staffing per thousand of population is falling behind. At the end of last year, the number of staff for child and adolescent mental health services, CAMHS, was lower than a year earlier. There are now fewer public health nurses across the country than five years ago. This Government can talk all it wants about preventing hospitalisation or about keeping people in their homes but demand is rising, staff numbers in certain sectors are barely moving and we have a serious capacity issue. The Government put a lot of store this year on increasing productivity in hospitals and with regard to rostering, which we in the Labour Party very much support.”
“This Government can say all it wants about record investment into the sector and the need for productivity, which we in the Labour Party very much support, but we all know and we can see that the funding to the health sector is not keeping up with population growth and the rising intensity of demand. There has been a 12% increase per thousand of population in presentations to accident and emergency departments over the past six years. Crucial to this is not only the population increase but also the rising need for healthcare among our population. This is not accounting for the people in the mid-west who are too afraid to go to the accident and emergency department in Limerick nor indeed to other emergency departments across the country.”
“Some 750,000 people are waiting on outpatient waiting lists. Time and again children are being failed because of the huge shortage of therapies and supports to those with additional needs in this country. It is not clear to me that the health budget of €1.5 billion announced today is in any way sufficient to cover existing services, growing demand, a rising population and higher prices. The reality is that we have a health sector that is running to try to stand still. We have been here before with regard to works of fiction and then supplementary Votes were required. There is a presumption here that the €1.5 billion announced today, which is less than two thirds of last year's injection, will be enough. To me the sums do not add up.”
“There is the prospect of rooms being built and funded by the State but lying empty. It is an absolute insult to those who are desperately searching for a childcare place and to the providers who want to expand. The mark of a country is the dignity with which our most vulnerable are treated within our health system. Right now there are far too many people languishing for hours on end on trolleys.”
“Last year parents across this country were told that more places were coming. In fact, they were told that €25 million was being put in place under the building blocks scheme to grow the numbers from just short of 40,000 to 60,000 by 2028. What has happened since then? Not a single extra place has been delivered through the scheme. Applications closed in January, feedback was due in March and funding was to be spent in total by this December. Instead, the contracts only arrived last week, last Wednesday to be precise, and between all of the paperwork to be processed and the tendering not a sod will be turned this side of Christmas. To make matters worse, providers will not be able to access core funding for a whole 12 months if those works are not completed by August of next year.”
“All Members in this Chamber are aware of parents who are telling us that they have to delay going back to work and that women, in particular, have to cut back their hours because of the lack of available childcare. It is 12 months on and there is barely a peep out of the Government now. This Government has reneged on its election promises to parents and to providers and all the while the problems are getting worse and not better. Aside from the tiny increase for the access and inclusion model, AIM, support, the Government has nothing new in this budget for parents and providers with regard to childcare. The Minister, Deputy Chambers, made an announcement of 2,300 additional childcare places but let us be clear that this is a mirage. No parent listening to this today should get their hopes up of more childcare places.”
“Not only would a second-tier child benefit payment lift hundreds of thousands of children out of poverty but it would also ensure that the State supports can go efficiently to low-income households without any wrinkles or disincentives to work. Efficiency is supposed to be the buzzword of this Government but it is in short supply when we see the detail. A critical part of supporting families out of poverty, into work and into a decent standard of living is the availability of affordable and accessible childcare. During the election last year one could not open a newspaper without seeing Government parties in a bidding war for families, saying they would lower fees and provide more places.”
“There is nothing on expanding free public transport to younger people, nothing on the drug payment scheme, and nothing on prescription charges. There was a mention of DEIS plus, but what good is it if we do not see any figures alongside it? A €500 increase in third level fees is an extraordinary indictment of the failings of this Government. It has abjectly failed to integrate the social welfare system and the Revenue Commissioners' system so we could have a second-tier targeted payment for families with young children in this country. We have some of the biggest tech firms in the world and still the Government cannot get its act together on this.”
“The Labour Party in government would have made this first and foremost a children and young persons' budget by putting in place measures to support families who work, families who want to work and families that cannot, by supporting family income and the introduction of a second-tier child benefit payment, by supporting families' ability to work through the provision of affordable and available childcare, by supporting families' ability to deal with the cost of living by extending free GP care, by expanding free public transport travel and by a permanent cut to third level fees. Instead, what did we get today? There is no extension to free GP care even though this was a Fianna Fáil and a Fine Gael commitment in the programme for Government.”
“That is the reality of the tax cuts we see today for developers and for the small number of business owners in the hospitality sector. A serious cut to commercial rates or other targeted supports to cafés and restaurants would have been a better bet to secure business and jobs but this Government took the other option and has handed a very serious tax cut to a small number of business owners.”
“We are a wealthy country and there are hundreds of thousands of people out there who feel they are going backwards rather than forwards even though our public finances are surging ahead. They will wonder where are the bold, tangible commitments to climate action - the existential crisis of our time - so that clean and cheap energy can be for the many and not for the few and so that everybody's fuel bills can be permanently lowered? It is shameful that today this Government has barely said anything about climate. I put it to the Ministers who are in the Chamber that the question that hangs over the budget and the financial management by their Government of the public finances is not what has been spent but how it is being spent and on whom. We have to go back a long time in Irish politics to see so much being spent on so few people.”
“They will ask how is it that a country that can boast of having the healthiest set of public finances in the EU, the highest rate of economic growth, the highest rate of domestic demand and a general government budget that is in surplus has a Government that has so much but manages to do so little for working people. They will ask how is it that well over half a million children, over 600,000 children, are either in poverty, at risk of poverty, or living in real deprivation. How is it that those families are living through an appalling paradox of plenty in a housing and cost-of-living crisis and a Government that has a target for children in poverty? No Government should ever have a target for children in poverty. No child should ever grow up in poverty.”
“Beidh daoine ag féachaint ar an mbuiséad seo inniu agus á gceistiú féin cá bhfuil na gealltanais ó thoghchán 2024. Cá bhfuil an laghdú do theaghlaigh ar chúram leanaí nó na cúirteanna saor in aisce chuig an GP? Cá bhfuil na leabaí ospidéil bhreise agus na gealltanais eile? Beidh daoine ag rá leo féin conas gur féidir buiséad a fhoilsiú agus méid chomh beag sin a chur ar fháil do na daoine atá i mbun oibre sa tír seo. People are looking at this budget today and are asking where are the promises from election 2024, where are the childcare fee cuts, where is the free GP care, and where are the 4,000 extra hospital beds. They will wonder how a Government that has so much manages to do so little for working people.”
“However, it needs to be to a much lesser extent and it a much more even and balanced way. Right now, the State is effectively being forced to hand over money for units in circumstances where it has very little insight into or oversight of the true cost involved in developing those units.”
“The Land Development Agency has been underutilised. We have approximately 33 acres across Dublin Central on which, potentially, approximately 4,500 homes could be built. However, we are seeing very little progress in that space. It needs political will, and we are not seeing that from Government. When the Minister of State's party leader responds to us in respect of housing, we hear little from him with regard to how the how the Land Development Agency and local authorities are being pushed to progress work on sites. This is a very welcome Bill. It is obviously just one of the many actions required to ensure that the State is much more informed when it comes to engaging with developers. We are very clear that developers are part of the landscape of how housing is developed in this country.”
“Yet, we on these benches all know that is not the case because of the way that supply is drip fed into the market, because of the way in which units are developed and because of the lack of transparency in developers' dealings with a State that is desperate to try to provide more housing. The other key issue here is that the croí cónaithe scheme has failed. When you look at the Government plan to try to develop units to date, what has been an effective handout to developers via croí cónaithe has not worked. Only one fifth of what was promised in 2022 has been delivered. There has to be a rethink about how housing is delivered. Of course, those of us on these benches are clear that we need a State-led approach to housing as opposed to being in the thrall of developers and having developer-led housing.”
“When we look at the significant number of planning permissions in Dublin and across the country that have not been commenced, we can see that there is a real issue. In the first quarter of this year in the Dublin City Council area, of the 25,905 units for which planning permission had been obtained, work on 14,701 had not been commenced. The Planning and Development Act gives developers the opportunity to get their act together and extend planning permissions for up to three additional years provided an environmental impact assessment is not required. The reality is, however, that sufficient force has not been used by the Government to deal with those who are hoarding land in our city and forcing prices up. The Government's mantra has been that if there is more supply, prices are going to go down.”
“At a time when we talk so much about efficiency and value for money in respect of the public finances and of trying to battle waste, there is a large amount of waste in the context of what the State is spending. We are caught in a bind whereby we have to hand this money over in order to provide homes and put a roof over people's heads. That comes at a king's ransom to the State. The other key part is that progress on the development of parts of our city has been hugely held up as a result of land hoarding by developers over the past decade. That is partly because of a collapse in international finance coming in to developers in this country; it is also partly because of greed and the massive return on investment for doing no work in the context of purchasing a site, sitting on it and being able to sell it on at a later date.”
“With regards to housing specifically, I mentioned the various ways in which the State has to deal with developers week in, week out. I see it in my constituency of Dublin Central. I welcome that it seems as if the housing units at O'Devaney Gardens may all be social, affordable or cost rental but, of course, the State is paying an absolute fortune for that. Part of the cost in this regard is passed on in terms of the prices those who will be going through the affordable purchase scheme will pay. On Part V, the city councils are routinely paying well in excess of €500,000 of houses. In one instance, €717,000 was paid by Dublin City Council for a two-bedroom unit under Part V. There is a fundamental problem in that the State effectively has no choice in desperate circumstances but to hand over the money.”
“I would like to see this Bill form part of a wider framework of ensuring a commitment to decent working standards and a lack of gouging on the part of those who deal with the State in terms of procurement and how it spends it money. We do not have good transparency in certain sectors of the State. That is the reality. For many years, my party has talked about the problem of unlimited liability. The Company Law Review Group looked at this matter many years ago. People are selling goods and services to the State but we have no idea of who really we are dealing with or their profit margins. We also do not have a level playing field when it comes to negotiating on cost because we cannot see what kind of money those to whom I refer are making. That needs to change.”
“I very much welcome the Bill and thank our colleagues in the Social Democrats for bringing forward an interesting approach to ensuring transparency. It is an understatement to say it is a real pity that the Government is opposing the Bill. The reality is that the State is handing over billions of euro every year to developers in this State in respect of Part V housing, affordable purchase houses, cost rental and acquisitions. However, yet we have no clear oversight as to whom we are engaging with or, indeed, an ability to understand the astronomical figures that are charged to the State by developers for these desperately needed homes.”
“At the moment, too many women in particular are being failed because of the shortage of HRT, as well as people relying on other medication as well.”
“We understand there are currently 335 notified shortages. There is a very well-flagged shortage of the Estradot patches, the HRT medication. Ultimately, there is much frustration on the part of women. I have heard pharmacists and women describe all sorts of ingenious and creative ways they have had to come up with to try and make the medication stretch, and to find substitutes. My sense is that there is a lack of co-ordination within the Department in this regard. I know there has been a call for some time for the establishment of a chief pharmaceutical officer role in the Department. Obviously, there is no magic wand for any of these issues, but we need greater leadership to provide certainty to patients regarding product shortages.”
“The budget is coming up next week and we very much believe that in a cost-of-living crisis, the State can play a key role for those families who are relying on the drugs payment scheme and reduce their prescription costs. It needs to go lower, to €50. The reality is that if it costs €78 million, it would have a very real and tangible impact on those families who are suffering from the cost of living. Those with a disability and people who are not able to work full-time hours because of chronic conditions are most reliant on medication and if they do not qualify for a medical card, they end up forking out a lot of money every month, €80, through the drugs payment scheme, so we want to see it reduced. The final point I want to make in the remaining minute relates to the shortage of certain medications.”
“We need to change that and make sure that there is a much more consistent hardship scheme in place and that the criteria are much more apparent, which ultimately makes life easier for pharmacists, by giving them clarity, and most particularly for GPs and crucially for patients themselves, so that they will be able to avail of it. It is not good enough if somebody who is prescribed medication then finds out that they cannot get it after a pharmacist and GP have sent off the forms to see if the patient can get it, and then to have to go back to the GP to get other medication. That is a huge inefficiency that we need to do away with. One of the final two issues I want to raise is the cost of the drugs payment scheme.”
“I know savings are specifically allocated within the agreement, arising from the ending of phased dispensing. My appeal to the Minister and to officials in the Department is that we would have a support service for vulnerable persons. A related issue is the hardship scheme. My experience is that its application has been very inconsistent across areas because it is a discretionary scheme. It is for medical card patients whose item is not on the PCRS list, but it is for the network health offices to make the determination and only if they have the funds to do so.”
“What pharmacists have been doing for a number of years is using the money from phased dispensing to effectively employ somebody to put the blister pack service together for their patients, again, for the reasons I outlined, for those very vulnerable patients. Those patients are now going to be asked to pay for that very valuable service. As somebody said, it is the Jurassic Park of medical technology and yet it works in terms of allowing people to know that they are taking their medication the right way every day. It also allows families to know that their loved ones are taking their medication in the right way every day. I am concerned that some people will not sign up to pay because they cannot afford it or they will not see the benefit of paying for it.”
“I do not propose to go backwards, but what we need to do is ensure that there is a new support service for vulnerable persons within the pharmacy system so that vulnerable individuals, in particular those with mental health conditions, can access their medication on either a daily or a weekly basis and are not given heaps of boxes once a month or whenever the prescription is dispensed, as that can be dangerous. If we are truly serious about trying to keep people at home and prevent greater hospitalisation, then we have to think very carefully about phased dispensing. While it is related to phased dispensing, it was the pharmacist's own decision to use the blister pack service.”
“The reality is that it is going to have an impact in particular on those who are being cared for at home and who are trying to live independently - people who have a carer coming to the home. Carers cannot physically dispense the medication. They can just hand over the blister pack. Those with a visual impairment are also impacted. One pharmacist told me he only started to use phased dispensing some years ago when a person with a visual impairment came to him and said they wanted their medication to come in a blister pack. Phased dispensing could facilitate that arrangement.”
“We know that some pharmacists have done an excellent job in recent years with immunisation and flu vaccination, but I welcome the commitment to pharmacists participating in a catch-up scheme. We would push strongly for the Laura Brennan HPV catch-up programme to be rolled out within community pharmacies. Unfortunately, the Government made a decision to suspend that well over 12 months ago and we very much want to see it up and running. The downside of the agreement is that we will see a very real and tangible impact on the most vulnerable, arising from the ending of phased dispensing for reasons 1 and 4 in the agreement. I am conscious the HSE has wanted to end phased dispensing for a considerable period, as there was an abuse of it by certain pharmacy groups.”
“Nonetheless, we need to see a much greater level of bowel screening and an increase in the age range of people undergoing screening. There is a real issue with free contraception. For most healthy women, having to return to their GP every six months is a cost they should not have to bear. The service is now going to be available from within the pharmacy in terms of clinical consultation on the prescription. That is very welcome. However, we are concerned that there is nothing in the agreement about expanding the free contraception scheme. At the moment it is for women from 17 to 35 years. We believe it should go up to 45 years. The cost of that would be only €10 million, yet it would provide crucial access to contraceptive services.”
“Although they have been trained to that level, those skills have not been utilised for a long period of time. The broadened scope of their functions now with regard to vaccination, the prescribing of contraception and the safe return of unused medicines is very much to be welcomed. It has been a particular bugbear of mine for a number of years, having had to deal with unused medications following the passing of family members. Some pharmacists have been good enough to take medications but others have not. Because of the inconsistency, there is enormous waste and inappropriate disposal of medication, so I very much welcome the change. We know that the uptake rate for bowel screening is below what it should be. The target is about 50%. The response to a parliamentary question last week stated it is about 46%.”
“I welcome this new community pharmacy agreement. We have a particular problem in Ireland whereby allied health professionals have not been able to operate to the top of their licence for many decades, whether that is a physiotherapist within a hospital setting or indeed a pharmacist within the community setting. While this agreement makes progress in this regard, it could go much further. A second issue with regard to healthcare is that we have a lack of timely access to GPs in our community. It is no surprise that some of the greatest shortages are in rural communities or the most socially disadvantaged communities in urban settings. In the context of GP care becoming increasingly complex, and while we have fewer GPs per capita , there is a real need for pharmacists to be facilitated to operate to a much higher level.”
“These wrinkles within the hospital system are down to the equipment that is not being properly optimised because of suppressed positions, and the delayed response to business cases by the HSE for breast surgeons. These are very real issues.”
“I very much share the Minister's concern but I know, for example, that there is an MRI scanner in a major hospital for which they cannot get access to the post because there has been a suppressed post. I can talk to her afterwards about this. There is also the reality of the very significant inequality for some women out there. Research published this year by the National Cancer Registry Ireland shows that 41% of women from deprived backgrounds have a much higher risk of death within five years of diagnosis compared with those from more affluent backgrounds and 24% have a higher risk of being diagnosed with late stage disease. We have had 4,000 diagnoses in 2022. One in seven of us women will get breast cancer in our lifetime.”
“All of us here have had people come to us really distressed because they are told they need an urgent appointment and then they are given an appointment, such as in one case that I was dealing with, of seven weeks later. The reality of course is that this is one part of the cancer care process. I understand that the conversion rate breast screening to diagnosis is about 8%.”
“For the past two decades we have seen some very significant improvements in cancer care in this country but there is a very real and very well-founded concern now that cancer care outcomes may regress if the current trend in the delays in care continue. We have an excellent framework in terms of the deadlines that have been set down within the NCCP with a 95% target of ten working days for an urgent referral and 20 days for where surgery is required. We know, however, that this is so patchy, as the Minister herself acknowledged, across hospitals and indeed will be missed by the majority of hospitals. We heard from the Irish Cancer Society this morning that 3,600 women this year are not seen within the ten-day target.”
“From the Department's hospital productivity dashboard, we know that the specialty that has seen the largest increase in waiting times over the past three years has been breast surgery. From parliamentary questions we have asked, we are aware that for breast cancer patients for whom surgery is the first treatment there is a HSE commitment to treatment within 20 days. Over the past eight years there has been a sustained and dramatic drop in meeting that target. In 2017, just over 10% did not get timely treatment but that number is now at 40% of all the women. We want to hear from the Minister how she will account for these failings and what actions are being taken by the Department.”
“The ground war is well under way as we know to raze the remaining 800,000 people in Gaza. There is a child dead for every hour of every day over the past 23 months. More journalist lives have been lost in Gaza than in the past 100 years. More journalists lives have been lost than in World War I, World War II, Vietnam and all the other major wars over the last century. I am not sure that we have any real idea of what is happening in Gaza right now. The key message for the Government today is that there can be no let up in the State’s efforts. I am really clear, as are my colleagues, that while diplomacy and politics are really important we also have to look at the economics of peace making and ensure no stone is let unturned in our country to do what we can to influence and bring peace to Gaza and to all Palestinians.”
“Beyond the act of politics, there is the economics of peace making. It is really crucial that we in Ireland say that we have not run out of road here. With regard to the occupied territories Bill, we must move forward and we must not hand back. In Ireland, millions of euro are spent every year in State procurement on products purchased from an Israeli manufacturing company. As a trade unionist, I take very seriously that there are jobs in Waterford with Teva pharmaceuticals but the reality is they also have a major contract with the HSE providing pharmaceuticals in this country. We have to look at using every leverage this State has to influence major multinationals with influence in Israel. There maybe talk of peace but it is hardly going to be a lasting deal when it is foisted by one side over another.”