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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“I listened carefully to what the Taoiseach said at the start. He spoke about what Dublin City Council and the OPW are doing with regard to the Dublin task force, but we heard little or nothing about what the Government itself is doing. We still have no legal implementation body. We still have no budget funding, which was called for by the chair of the task force. There is a bitter irony here because others have spoken about The Complex. The task force report talks about the need to create a cultural hub. The Complex was actually pictured in the report, which was launched back in October 2024, yet the Government could not stump up a small few million euros.”
“At the end of the day, we cannot allow these families to remain in legal limbo this time next year. I hope the Department is doing all in its power to ensure that, in the first quarter of next year, we will have something tangible in our hands because at the moment we are talking about the abstract. We are just talking about our recommendations as a committee but, in some ways, they are not worth the paper they are written on until we see what is going to come back from the Department of Health. I hope that, sooner rather than later, we will see something from the Department. I pay tribute to all the families watching tonight and all those campaigners. I hope their fight and journey will be completed early next year and that they will have certainty with regard to their family life.”
“Of course, family life is not straightforward or linear. Couples or, indeed, individuals go down the donor-assisted route and then there may be a family breakdown. In that context, it is important that procedures are in place to be able to recognise that. At the end of the day, if the legal recognition is only with one parent, then we have a grossly unequal situation for the whole family, not just for the parents. The 18 recommendations already have been discussed so I will not repeat them. There is a sense of impatience among the number of families out there who need this legislation. We need to hear the timeline. We want to be able to scrutinise that Bill. I am sure the Oireachtas Committee on Health will do everything it can to make way for that Bill through our committee.”
“In tandem with that, there is a strong view that we have to afford discretion to AHRRA with regard to the surrogacy agreements that are out there now. I hear what the Minister of State is saying with regard to the real concerns about women who provide surrogacy services. There are real concerns about exploitation and all of that and I absolutely stand with the Minister of State in that regard. That cannot become a blockage to looking at the rights of the child, however. At the end of the day, if a child is born, then we have to put aside how the child came into being and focus on the rights of the child. That is why the discretion piece is important, notwithstanding that all sorts of safeguards have to be put in place. That is certainly one of our key asks when it comes to what should be in this Bill.”
“We would like to see that done sooner rather than later. We have yet to hear a timeline as to when this legislation is going to be brought forward, however. I was rereading this afternoon a letter that was sent to the Chair of the committee, Deputy Rice, in June 2025 in which the Minister talked about the drafting being well under way. We are now six months on and we still have yet to see it. No one is doubting the complexity of what we are talking about in this regard. We are all extremely conscious of the complexity but that is not an excuse for delay. Certainly, in the context of some of the 18 recommendations in our report, recommendation Nos. 2 and 3 in particular, ultimately, this has to be based on a child’s rights-based framework. Part and parcel of that is the paramountcy of the child's best interest.”
“In response to the gaps in the Child and Family Relationships Act 2015, my colleague and party leader, Deputy Ivana Bacik, brought forward legislation in 2023, effectively attempting to address a lot of the gaps we are talking about today and to try to make right the legal inequality for the families we are talking about. It is not just about a child’s right to citizenship or inheritance; it is also about his or her right to travel and, of course, his or her rights in the event of parental separation or death. It is critical the Department gets a move on in drafting the legislation. I hear what the Minister of State is saying and I thank her for her statement this evening. First, I acknowledge that it is good to hear that the Minister, Deputy Carroll MacNeill, will commence section 232 of the 2024 Act.”
“I know a group of campaigners who have come together, and I want to pay tribute to their tenacity and perseverance. Theirs has been a very long journey in terms of fighting and battling for what should be a legal right for every child born in this country to have both their parents recognised. The year 2024 was obviously a major milestone in terms of the passing of the legislation. I want to single out in particular my then fellow Senator, Mary Seery Kearney, whom Deputy O'Gorman also mentioned and who worked so hard in this area. Politics can obviously be a cruel business and she is not in the House this term but she did a huge amount of work in that area. We have major gaps in the 2024 legislation that need to be resolved.”
“I am very glad we are having this debate this evening. I pay tribute to Deputy Rice and, indeed, all our fellow members of the health committee in quite an unorthodox way of keeping the heat and light on this issue. There are ultimately a very small number of families affected by this but the impact of the lack of a comprehensive legislative framework has a profound impact on their lives. They are facing into yet another year of ambiguity and uncertainty in their families' lives. I am painfully conscious that there are many types of families watching this evening. Many types of families end up having to go down the donor assisted route, obviously, both in terms of gay and lesbian couples and also couples who cannot get pregnant due to either illness or infertility. There is a very diverse group of people out there.”
“If we are serious about recognising the health impacts and that significant numbers of young people are taking up vaping, we need to have a vaping cessation programme that may or may not look like the smoking cessation programme. It certainly needs to be developed. My final message is that we welcome this Bill. We will support the passage of this Bill, but we want to see an awful lot more coming from the Department of Health with regards to vaping. To be frank about it, the Department is hugely behind the curve. We worry about industry pressure on the Department given the very slow pace of bringing initiatives to the Dáil and Seanad on vaping. The crystal clear thing has to be that we recognise that vaping is a significant issue now in our society both in health and environmental terms. The Government needs to get to grip with it.”
“I accept that they would feel aggrieved when they heard that message, but we have to look at who is taking up vaping who has never smoked a day in their life and wonder how we can tackle some of that as well. We asked a parliamentary question in September as to the Department of Health's initiatives regarding vaping cessation. There is a well-established smoking cessation programme, which is decently funded by the Department, in place now for many years. When we asked the question about somebody who presents who wants to give up vaping, we are told that the Department has no funding in place. That is a concern. This would not require a large amount of money.”
“We cannot have a new generation - another generation - effectively addicted to nicotine products with all the issues that go by that. There is a certain irony here that there has been longstanding target of Government, which was set back in 2013, to have smoking prevalence at a rate of 5% by this year. The figures are three or four times that at the moment, but we have a target for the reduction of smoking. We do not have anything with regards to vaping. We need to look at that. Regarding single-use versus the multiuse vapes, the price point is something that we need to look at. We in the Labour Party urge the Minister of State to give serious consideration to minimum pricing, or indeed a taxation. Again, there will be people looking at this who want to give up smoking. They are looking for an alternative and want that help.”
“While there are those products out there, there are key concerns with regard to the price point of those products, which would bring into question the incentive of any individual to recycle or do something with the vape when they are priced at such a low point. Enforcement is going to be very important now with regards to the ban on the single-use vapes, but also in terms of the appropriate disposal of the multiuse vapes as well. Regarding the health issue, nicotine is highly addictive and harmful. It has an impact on adolescent brain development. Yet, significant numbers of teenagers and young people are now vaping. As Deputy Donnelly eloquently said, there are people who never smoked who are now taking up vaping. That has to be a public health concern.”
“Thirty-one million vapes is one third of all electronic devices sold in Ireland. I was shocked when I saw those figures. The reality is that vapes are simply not being recycled. There are clear concerns about the level of awareness out there about how to dispose of the waste. Effectively, this is an electrical good. They are a significant source of litter containing both plastic and lithium-ion batteries. We cannot tolerate the throwing away into general waste of vapes. There are significant issues here. There is the banning of the single-use vape, but also the compliance with the waste electrical and electronic equipment, WEEE, directive of vapes that can be used repeatedly.”
“There is emerging evidence from within medicine that there is a high level of correlation between vaping and sleep issues, anxiety, heart and lung damage and toxin exposure. We have heard from some school principals reporting increased irritability among secondary school students. We are still very much in the infancy of vaping. It is going to be a while before we will see the long-term impacts. The critical thing is that we are not waiting around like we did many decades ago with smoking to see what the long-term impacts are. The State needs to respond. Regarding the environmental reasoning behind this Bill, there is a clear environmental purpose to this Bill. A total of 31 million vapes were sold in Ireland last year. Yet just 1.1 million vapes were recycled.”
“That is true for many adults, but there is also another reality and another clear picture out there that a new dependency has emerged. For us, this is one small piece of the overall public health response that needs to happen. We look forward to the Bill that will regulate advertising. The advertising for nicotine inhaling products is probably an even bigger issue. We also need to make sure that we future-proof the legislation. It might be vapes of a particular type today. We spent a lot of time during the summer talking about HSC vapes. We are now talking about the legal vapes. There will be another product into the future. The reality for us at the moment is that the nicotine industry, because that is who is driving the sale and growth of vapes, are creating a new generation of dependants to effectively generate a profit.”
“The Labour Party welcomes and supports this Bill to ban single-use vapes. We also want to make it clear that this is one small part of an overall jigsaw that is required in a public health and environmental response to vaping. There has been an explosion in the number of people vaping over the past decade. There are figures reporting 7% of adults and 16% of 15- to 16-year-olds are currently vaping. The Lancet back in 2023 reported that in 2015, 10% of young people were vaping and now that is up to 30%. Any of us walking around our communities can see that with our eyes. Anybody involved in Tidy Towns can tell us what is happening on our streets. That requires a response. I accept the bona fides of vaping in terms of harm reduction and assisting people in smoking cessation.”
“What is the Minister going to do in the time she has given herself to ensure appropriate measures are put in place so that any patient who needs and wants blister packing or phased dispensing, which are separate but related, can access those services? We need to do more of it in future and not less. It is really regrettable that we have to spend any time debating the matter this evening when it should never have been included in the community pharmacy agreement. We also raised it on the floor of the Chamber when we were discussing the agreement back in October.”
“What has she done since the agreement was made in September to determine how that saving is to be used? Has the Department of Health done anything with pharmacists in that time? I am not hearing about anything having been done. What I am hearing is that it was wrong and not transparent of pharmacists to use phased dispensing money to provide a blister packing service. That is completely the wrong message. Many pharmacists have been doing this for the right reasons and have not been making money from the phased dispensing service. They have been doing it because they can see the impact on their patients.”
“The reality here is that older people and those with a disability have become pawns in a game being played out between the Department of Health and pharmacists. Phased dispensing has become a pawn in the game being played between the Minister and the IPU. That is really to be regretted. It is the antithesis of all the messaging that has been coming from the Minister and the Department over the past year as to how to improve our hospital system, prevent unnecessary hospitalisations and ultimately ensure more people are looked after at home. I will speak to where we are now. There are lines within the community pharmacy agreement that talk about a saving arising from the withdrawal of the two categories of phased dispensing. I have a question for the Minister.”
“I am struck by research that was done after the introduction of prescription charges in 2011. Obviously, they were not popular at the time but were done for a particular reason. Professor Charles Normand in Trinity College Dublin undertook significant research to show that there was a significantly higher number of strokes and heart attacks among the population who should have been taking their medication. Due to the introduction of prescription charges, these people failed to take their proper prescriptions. I worry that people who should be getting blister packing will not pay €10, €20, €30, €40 or indeed €50 - whatever the amount the pharmacist is going to individually charge - to get the blister packing service and then we will end up in a situation where health outcomes deteriorate and not improve.”
“Blister packing is the dinosaur of medical technology, but it works in terms of ensuring that vulnerable patients and patients with a disability get the appropriate medication. It prevents unnecessary hospitalisation, it gives peace of mind to families and it is utterly consistent with the perspective that we should try to keep people at home. As I said in this Chamber two months ago, it is a real backwards step in the new community pharmacy agreement that the Government would reduce from four to two the number of criteria to be eligible for phased dispensing. As many pharmacists will not be getting that money for phased dispensing, the free blister pack service that many patients were availing of is coming to an end and they will have to pay for it. The consequences are potentially very real for many patients.”
“I thank Sinn Féin for bringing forward this motion. I stand here frustrated that we are having this conversation at all. We should be spending time talking about improvements to the health service but instead we are talking about a service that is effectively going backwards. The reality is that when we were talking about the community pharmacy agreement in October in this House, I raised issues about phased dispensing and blister packing. There was no action from the Minister or her Department. It is only when uproar has arisen in the past week that she has responded to say that she has to try to work things out. We all know that blister packing is separate from phased dispensing, but the reality is that many pharmacists were using the money they were receiving for phased dispensing to put together blister packs for their patients.”
“We do not want such reliance on the NTPF, but it has become a necessary evil that we have to outsource because there is no other option following a decade of underinvestment in the health service. A key part of the legislation before us relates to ensuring that there is greater transparency in the context of the NTPF. My party very much supports the Bill.”
“There is a real issue now about where responsibility lies in terms of monitoring how people are allocated onto the in-service or outsourced service provision. Like Deputy Rice, I am less than 12 months in this brief as my party's spokesperson on health. In the context of all the revelations we have seen this year, one of the things which strikes me is that there is not a clear sense of responsibility as to who takes ownership of the transfer of people from waiting lists to the NTPF. The latter makes certain claims. Hospitals in certain areas have taken responsibility themselves, with varying degrees of consistency. We need to get the right level of transparency when it comes to the NTPF. So much money has been put into the fund.”
“So much of the conversation in this regard revolves around staffing, and rightly so, and beds. The conversation also needs to be about equipment and devices. We are not talking about CT scanners, MRIs or PET scanners in this instance; we are talking about a device that costs €2,500. In the context of a consultant seeing a patient, however, the latter could be waiting four years before they are monitored. It is a reflection of how broken parts of our health system are that we are not even getting the basics right. Ultimately, we need to make sure that we have a much more comprehensive and systematic attitude towards the collection of data in the health service. That is why the Labour Party is happy to support the Bill. The NTPF is charged with a number of responsibilities, one of which is oversight of waiting lists in hospitals.”
“In Galway, 600 people are on the waiting list who have been waiting 12 months; some have been waiting four years. Patients have to wear this device before they can see the cardiologist. For urgent patients needing a monitor in CUH, the wait is up to four months. These are patients who are deemed to be urgent. The cost of this monitor is just €2,500. There is much technology, devices and equipment in the health sector that costs hundreds of thousands of euro. This is a very simple, relatively cheap device in the general scheme of things within the health sector. Yet, we are not seeing the investment needed to ensure that the people involved can be properly monitored, get to see their cardiologists and move through the system. There are so many blockages in the system. It is not just about staffing.”
“There is a cost, human and financial, for the failure to have joined-up thinking on the lack of resources in our health system at this point in time. A patient came to me in my constituency in recent weeks. He is a patient at Beaumont who needs to be tested via a Holter device. It is a monitor that effectively detects arrhythmias or heart palpitations. His consultant cannot see him until he has worn that small device to monitor his heart rhythm during the daytime. When we started asking the questions across the various hospitals, we saw that the next available appointment in Beaumont for a Holter monitor is June 2026. In St. James's, the average waiting time is 22 months. It has only ten monitors and 733 patients on the waiting list.”
“When we asked the question earlier this year, we saw there was a 170% increase in the wait list in three short years. A fundamental problem ultimately is the lack of a periodic publication of the waiting lists in that sector to see whether we are seeing an improvement or, which is of course what is happening, a disimprovement in the children's disability waiting list figures. We have heard from Bernard Gloster that there is now an action plan for physiotherapy, speech and language therapy, SLT, and OT. We very much welcome that. I welcomed it at the committee a few weeks ago but there is a glaring absence with regard to psychology waiting lists. The critical thing here is we do not have systematic data collection on diagnostics in primary care.”
“It should be just to get the private room, but instead people feel they have to take it out in order to jump the queue and get faster access because there is that lack of confidence and trust in so many parts of the public system. An important part of the Bill that was referred to in the reporting on the waiting lists is the glaring absence of the NTPF figures because they just relate to acute hospital care. We do not have comprehensive waiting list data with regard to primary care and diagnostics. We all know that in primary care, and we have all asked the parliamentary questions, which we have to ask because it is the only course of action to try to find out the information, just how bad the waiting times are. In recent weeks, we saw that 28,000 children are now on a psychology waiting list.”
“I got a letter some days ago from a consultant ophthalmologist in Cork, who talked about a particular patient who will have to wait until 2028 to get her cataract surgery done. This patient is deemed to be semi-urgent, yet she will have to wait well over three and a half years from when she was referred. This ophthalmologist talked about having made protected disclosures and raising concerns to the highest level about the lack of resources, yet little is being done. There is a huge amount of frustration, upset and lack of trust in the public system, which is pushing people into the hands of private health insurance. Nobody should feel they have to have private health insurance in this country.”
“As was referenced, Sláintecare very clearly set out that there should be legislation, and that there needs to be maximum wait times for both performance targets and accountability with regard to these wait times. The experience of so many across our public healthcare system at the moment is of unacceptably long wait lists. Currently, 625,000 people are on acute hospital outpatient waiting lists and 110,000 are waiting a year or more. While the targets are there, only 30.5% of people are being seen within that ten-week target, which is a deterioration on where things were at last year. Things are actually getting worse rather than better. We then see the Government opposing legislation such as this, which is obviously brought in good faith to try to ensure there is real accountability within the system.”
“I very much thank Deputy Cullinane and Sinn Féin for bringing forward this very important Bill. I express real disappointment that the Government is opposing this legislation. We have to be honest here. As recently as September, the Secretary General of the Department of Health talked about the Department remaining committed to achieving the Sláintecare targets of ten weeks for outpatient appointments and 12 weeks for inpatient and day-case procedures. We all know, however, that unless someone's feet are held to the fire, it is hardwired into legislation and we have clear legislative targets, this will be a pipe dream within the health service.”
“What screams back at me from this reply from the Department is that there are no ideas about how to support and secure the future of a place such as The Complex. There is a fobbing off or passing the buck to the local authority. A capital scheme was referenced in the reply. Anybody who has any notion about any of our communities across the country would know that €300,000 was totally insufficient to allow any local authority to go and purchase space. There is certainly great frustration on my part. The Minister, Deputy O'Donovan, says he wants to develop arts spaces across the country but we see zero ideas coming forward and a pushing back to the local authority. The reality is that a bespoke solution would need to be found for The Complex, but we are not even hearing a willingness on the part of the Department to engage on the issue.”
“The State needs to do more than that. It needs to step in and either ensure cultural mortgages or purchase or co-purchase of buildings with arts organisations.”
“While the context for my question is about The Complex in Dublin 7, the heart of my constituency, a really important multidisciplinary space home to art studios and an arts or performance space, and the plea for help to keep that space open, there is a wider context as to how State policy supports these facilities across the country. I said earlier to Deputy O'Donovan, the Minister with responsibility in this area, that he has made some very positive noises about wanting to support the development of arts spaces across the country, but I also note he talks about developing a scheme along the lines of the sports capital grants. That is great in some ways, but the reality, as any of us here in Dublin know, is that you need to be able to own the building or have a long-term lease on it in order to be able to access funding.”
“I think this is the third time this week that I have risen to talk about support for arts and cultural spaces, not only here in Dublin but across the country. Since I came into the Houses five years ago, and I am sure Deputy Boyd Barrett is the exact same, I have spoken out about the closure of arts spaces and studios, particularly here in Dublin, because the reality is that culture cannot compete with capitalism. We have seen a hollowing out of arts and culture spaces across our city over the past two decades. We have counted over 52 spaces that have been forced to close. The reality is that there is a lack of State support for these vital spaces that are intrinsic to the cultural fabric of our communities and our city.”
“Why would he be so positive in his message in Limerick and so negative and dismissive of an arts centre in Dublin? Are we to take it that his interest in the arts is only confined to areas outside Dublin?”
“The poet, Michael Hartnett, has a special place in my heart, not only because of his poetry but because his maternal home place in Camas, outside Raheenagh, is a part of the world that I know very well. When the Minister was launching the Éigse Michael Hartnett Literary and Arts Festival earlier this year, he acknowledged that there is a need for capital funding for arts in this country. The Limerick Leader reported that he said he wanted to help to develop arts centres, theatres and other artistic infrastructure around the country. I am delighted he said that. However, in a letter to an arts space in Dublin yesterday, the Minister said something completely different. He passed the buck to local authorities and washed his hands of any responsibility for his Department.”
“The Department of culture has made it very clear it is not in the business of purchasing or ensuring the long-term lease for properties. We are asking what the Minister will do to save this arts space in Dublin?”
“My question is on that same topic because I understand the Minister attended two meetings with both members of the board and management of the Complex, along with the former Minister, Paschal Donohoe, over the past number of months. He is obviously very familiar with the situation. The Complex's ask is very simple, in that it has secured funding from DCC and it has a loan but the third part of the jigsaw is securing funding from Government. The reality and the context here is that for the past 20 years, we have counted up to 52 losses or closures of arts spaces and studios in Dublin. The reality is that Dublin is being hollowed and culture cannot compete with capitalism. The Minister has engaged directly with the Complex. There was a hope the Government would step in.”
“It must be done now with regard to those families who have gone through the 1 October deadline and presented paperwork, even if it is incomplete, so that they are given a letter of eligibility. The second key thing is the need for a special school in Dublin 1. I ask that this be a priority for the Minister of State, of all the areas across the country, given the level of educational disadvantage. We need to see progress on that.”
“Another family with a child of the same age had the money to go and get the assessment done privately, and they have now got through the hoop and they are going to be assessed for next September. Why are we exacerbating this inequality between families with children with additional needs? It is beyond me why we would have a process put in place to supposedly show compassion and understanding, and to prevent the mismatch that we are seeing happening whereby children who should be in special schools are in autism spectrum classes, and children who should be in autism spectrum classes are in mainstream classes. This is a new barrier that has come into the education system. I ask that the Minister of State would take this back to the NCSE. Something has to be done now, not for next year.”
“I thank the Minister of State for that. We all appreciate the expansion in the number of places but the reality is that there was a time when Ministers here would get up and say that one did not need an assessment of need and that the education system did not need a diagnosis to provide additional support. Of course, that is the case for special schools but what we are seeing now is a potential deepening inequality between families. One of the families that approached me could not afford to go private for their child's assessment of need. They waited and their child is aged five now. They only got their assessment of need this year. They have been precluded from the process because they did not get all their service statement. They will now have to wait until next year.”
“That is wonderful, but there are 16 CDNTs across this country that have no special school in their catchment area. One of those areas is Dublin 1. No child in Dublin 1 will ever be top of the waiting list for a special school because there is none in the Summerhill CDNT area. That is wrong. That is so wrong because the level of need in that area is higher than in many other parts of the country. We need a special school in Dublin 1. I appreciate that the Minister of State, Deputy Higgins, is stepping in for the Minister of State, Deputy Michael Moynihan today. We had hoped he would be here. The specific point I am putting to the Minister of State is that we need to see a change to the parent notify system.”
“Of course there is the whole issue of the lack of special needs assistants, SNAs, in certain primary schools across the country. We need a degree of common sense and cop on, which is not what we are seeing from some SENOs. I have previously been very critical of parts of the National Council for Special Education, NCSE. I think there is some fantastic work being done by the NCSE but it is really patchy. There is a lack of consistency with regard to what is being done across the country. We know that some SENOs are not applying common sense with regard to the letter of eligibility. I want to use my remaining time to raise a related issue with the Minister of State. I understand what she will say about the new special schools that have been built.”
“We have to transform how special educational places are allocated in this country. There is a huge mismatch as it is. I welcome initiatives like the parent notify system but it is not working, particularly when these barriers are being put up at a local level. We have to remember the assessment of need process takes three to four years in most areas across the country. The particular issue that I ask the Minister of State to look into concerns the service statements. We know there can be a delay of six months or more for parents to receive their service statement because of quality control issues with regard to outsourced assessments of need and co-ordination within children's disability network teams, CDNTs. We have that context. Then we have the context of the lack of special classes and special schools.”
“Families have contacted me who have put in their application for 1 October but because all parts of the assessment of need process, the service statement in particular, were not ready, they have been told by the special educational needs organiser, SENO, that they cannot get a letter of eligibility and they are just going to have to wait until next year. It is simply disgraceful for a system that was set up to try to identify children. The child has had the assessment of need; they are just waiting on the service statement but they are still told, “No”. It is another barrier being put up to these children. For how many years have people stood up in this Chamber talking about the families who are having to apply 20 or 30 schools? Think of the cost of a birth certificate for every single application.”
“I suspect I will be raising a lot of the issues Deputy Whitmore raised. I am coming to this from a position of enormous frustration because of the lack of co-ordination and planning within the Department of education in tandem with the Department of Health over many years. The parent notify system, in theory, is great. I know the date was, of course, brought forward this year to allow both Departments to be able to plan for the future. I very much welcome it. However, the actual process is failing a number of families really badly across the country.”
“In January 2024, the Taoiseach's Government committed to a public information campaign on the benefits of immigration. Why has this not happened? Has that plan now been abandoned? I heard the Taoiseach's comments earlier. The reality is that some migrants are more welcome than others, judging by the changes to the family reunification system last week. Migrants are the backbone of many sectors in our economy and yet we are seeing mixed messages that are a gross failure of leadership by the Taoiseach's Government. To my mind, these mixed messages are fuelling racism and we are seeing far too many attacks on migrant workers across our communities. Is the Taoiseach going to commit to a positive public information campaign on the benefits of immigration to this country?”
“I thank all those who have come here today. I am very proud that we in the Labour Party are bringing forward this motion. As I said earlier, I thank the Minister of State, Deputy Mary Butler, because she has played a very important role in the conversation. I will end with the words of Sarah: "If you'd just let us live our lives in peace, with the right medication, with the right time, we would be fine".”