Paul Lawless
Mayo · Aontú · Ireland
“Confidence in our education system depends on quality resources but parents remain seriously concerned about inappropriate material that is being promoted in our schools, libraries, etc. Concerns have been raised in relation to the book What's the T?”
“They would make up a higher proportion of the membership of the Dáil than is the case at Westminster. Aontú's leader, Deputy Peadar Tóibín, during his time on the Oireachtas enterprise committee, completed the first Oireachtas report on the all-island economy.”
“Difference is an accident of birth and it should therefore never be the source of hatred or conflict. The answer to difference is to respect it. Therein lies a most fundamental principle of peace — respect for diversity. Aontú believes fundamentally in a united Ireland.”
“It is important that those who oppose a united Ireland - who are now a minority on this island, and increasingly so - are treated as equals and with the respect they deserve in the discussions relating to a united Ireland. I have good friends from the Protestant tradition to whom I speak on a near daily basis.”
“The Tánaiste once said that he wanted to make Ireland the best country in the world in which to raise a child. He is failing in that regard. We have a situation where we have record homelessness among children, spinal surgery waiting lists and children with special needs or disabilities who are waiting for supports.”
“Rather than celebrating and respecting our differences and our right to be different politically or religiously, they wish to make us all the same. They want to make us all apolitical atheists who never speak on or campaign in respect of the issues.”
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“We are now almost five weeks on from Storm Éowyn and many communities in County Mayo are still without communications. Ballinamore nursing home, for example, is still without a landline. There are many elderly people without a landline and it is causing difficulties around accessing emergency services and accessing pendant alarms, which run off the landline. Many people in Mayo are still without this service and it is causing major difficulties. Days after the storm, the Tánaiste rather dismissively said communications were almost returned. That is far from the case in Mayo. What has been done in this regard? Can the Tánaiste please intervene to expedite the situation to return communications back to Mayo?”
“We should consider having one Garda vetting certificate that would allow the volunteer to engage across the different groups, etc. I want to bring to the Minister's attention the Icelandic model to ensure that children stay in sport and extracurricular activities from early childhood to adulthood. They introduced a card that allows for children to use the card for various sporting activities, etc.. That would have a massive impact and help young people stay involved in sports and activity. If we lose them in early childhood, it is very difficult to get back into good habits in later life. I want the Minister to consider the introduction of a tax break for gym membership. We have a tax break for people who have medical insurance, yet there is no tax break for people who take proactive steps in their own lives to stay healthy.”
“We should also focus on preventative healthcare from the earliest stages, from children upwards. Sport is of critical importance. One in five children stops participating in sport in the transition from primary school to first year. There is another massive drop off in terms of participation in third year among those who are 15 and 16 years of age. It is important that the Minister addresses it. There are serious issues in the changing of curriculum and additional bureaucracy. It is going to hamper extracurricular activities in schools, which will have a massive impact on them during their adult life as well. Volunteerism is also in decline. One in four volunteers never returned after Covid. There is a major difficulty around Garda vetting and the fact it is required for each and every organisation that a volunteer may engage in.”
“We need to address this issue. We need to show the same proactive and pro-business approach that the Government has shown to the foreign direct investment sector. This is a major concern. Businesses in Mayo are struggling - restaurants, shops, pubs, the fitness and beauty sectors and many other areas. It is important we understand that to address dereliction in towns, we must first stem the tide of business losses.”
“I thank the Minister of State for the response. I am surprised by the lack of data on insolvencies in recent years. The issues and the crisis facing the SME sector are getting increasingly worse. A Deloitte study recently found that almost 900 insolvencies occurred in 2024, an increase of almost a third on 2023. It predicted that the increase will continue, as will the issues affecting SMEs. The worst affected sectors are the hospitality, fitness and beauty industries. Since the Government hiked VAT, more than 700 restaurants have closed. This is having a major impact. Dereliction is an issue right across Mayo. The antidote to dereliction must be to first stem the tide of businesses closing. The fact that the Government has no idea how many businesses have closed and it does not collect that data is of major concern.”
“In my constituency, there is great work happening in the Mayo refuge. However, it is under-resourced. We need to ensure that victims who are brave enough to seek it receive the help they need. There are major difficulties around capacity in women's refuges across the country. I would appreciate if the Minister of State could give serious consideration to this. We need reform in this area.”
“We know there are major issues with young people accessing hardcore pornography. Such pornography distorts relationships between men and women. The image of women as objects being sexually violated is very concerning. We have raised this matter a number of times. We have a Bill that would ban hardcore pornography for young children. We need to take action on this matter and we need to stop delaying doing so. The Minister of State said in the past that it cannot be done. It can be done, it should be done and it needs to be done. In the case of Ana Kriégel, the poor 14-year-old girl who lost her life, hardcore pornography was a huge factor when it came to her attackers. We want to see action. The Aontú Bill would ban hardcore pornography for minors in this country. I also commend the great work of the women's refuges across this country.”
“We should not need to rely on brave victims, which is what Natasha is, to seek the justice they deserve. We do need tougher sentencing. Natasha's case underlines the very lenient sentencing that obtains when it comes to domestic violence. I also want to raise an important issue regarding the release of prisoners. It is unacceptable that the victims of domestic abuse only learn of the release of their perpetrators when they meet them in shops, clubs and so on in their communities. We owe it to the victims to give them the respect they deserve. We must also give them information in advance that the perpetrators of the crimes of which they were the victims are going to be released. There is absolutely no doubt that explicit hardcore pornography is blurring and distorting the lines and boundaries between sex and violence.”
“The crisis in gender-based violence continues to devastate our society. The number of domestic violence cases rose by 20,000 in the past four years alone. Women and children are bearing the brunt of this crisis, the impact of which is being felt in every constituency across the country, including that of Mayo, which has experienced its highest number of domestic abuse cases in over a decade. The Covid-19 pandemic, when the Government's message was to stay at home, caused a major difficulty for so many victims of domestic violence. For most of us, our homes places of solitude, protection and so on, but the pandemic gave rise to a difficult scenario whereby victims were essentially trapped in their homes with their abusers. The case of Natasha O'Brien was really shocking.”
“The section 39 and section 56 workers want to provide the service to the most vulnerable people our communities. I ask the Minister of State to avert this unnecessary problem and give those who care for the most vulnerable people the respect, recognition and pay they deserve.”
“It is interesting that commitments were made in the lead-up to the election but that these do not appear in the programme for Government. All the people in the organisations are seeking is equal pay for equal work. There is not a Minister in this Chamber who would accept an inferior pay scale for delivering the same work of his or her counterpart. That is what the Government is asking these great people to do. I will make a plea to the Minister of State on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of people who work in the voluntary sector. These people want to continue to deliver the service but they are finding it incredibility difficult. Unless the Government delivers on its promises, we will have strike action. Nobody in the disability sector wants that.”
“There is no point in discussing disabilities unless we can address the core issues relating to the disability sector. The core and fundamental issue is recruitment and retention. The CEO of the Disability Federation of Ireland stated that this issue is having a catastrophic impact. The reason that it is having such an impact and that there are so many difficulties is because two thirds of disability services are delivered by the voluntary sector. This Government has utterly failed the voluntary sector. Section 39 and section 56 workers have been led up the garden path by the Government. It made firm commitments to the great people in Western Care, Cheshire Ireland, Ability West and the Wheelchair Association of Ireland. It made commitments on delivering pay increases and on pay parity. However, it forgot about those commitments.”
“However, Roscommon County Council is still using the facility. I am asking the Taoiseach to intervene in light of the difficulties-----”
“Ballinrobe has paid a very high price for poor Government policy in recent weeks and months. The practice of placing very vulnerable and high-risk individuals in emergency accommodation has been a recipe for disaster. What is happening at the Railway Inn in Ballinrobe has caused major difficulties for the town. Crime is rising in the area. Garda numbers in Mayo are falling. Gardaí are really struggling to deal with the issues that exist. There has been a huge lack of rehabilitation support and a lack of Garda services in the area. The gardaí there are doing a tremendous job in very difficult circumstances. There are major questions regarding the operator of the Railway Inn. In recent days, Mayo County Council has agreed to cease using the Railway Inn as a halfway house or for emergency accommodation.”
“The farmer is the last in the line and is really struggling. It is a big issue and we need an agrifood regulator with teeth to address the issue of viability and fair price for farmers.”
“It is a bizarre situation where we have trees rotting on the ground and yet farmers cannot get in and salvage those trees because of delays in felling licences. Will he please expedite and prioritise farmers who have suffered as a result of windblown trees? The Minister also needs to consider a financial package in relation to this. Due to the fact that the price of the lumber the farmer is receiving is significantly lowered now and due to the reconstitution and the replanting costs, in many cases it is not viable for farmers. Will the Minister please consider a scheme that will support farmers in this really difficult time? We have listened to a debate here on farming. We need to look at farming as a viable industry because the fact is that the profits of the farming sector are landing in the factories, the supermarkets and the sawmills.”
“I raise the really important issue of forestry, particularly following the recent storm, Storm Éowyn. It caused massive damage right across the west, the north west, the midlands, and it destroyed thousands of hectares of forestry. These farmers planted under Government advice, encouragement and incentives. Indeed, these farmers followed Teagasc advice around what to plant and where to plant. This was no Ponzi scheme and yet following the storm, the farmers woke up with no forest in many cases and their pensions in real jeopardy. There has been a treble-whammy here as well because there has been a huge lost in growth of their trees, obviously increased harvesting costs as well as trees that have fallen, and the significantly lower cost of their product at the sawmill. Will the Minister please prioritise the issue of the felling licence?”
“The entire part of Mayo I am from, the Claremorris municipal district, an area in south and east Mayo, will not even be considered for affordable housing. There is an absence of any real scheme. On the tenant in situ scheme, a constituent called me last week who has been waiting longer than a year to sell a property to the local authority and who cannot do so. In the absence of these schemes, will the Minister consider reducing the cost of construction by removing VAT from construction material? It would make a very great difference in reducing the cost of construction.”
“This man will remain homeless because he is unable to access support through the vacant property grant. Will the Minister consider that situation? Will he consider introducing a scheme that would allow payments to be drawn down to help homeowners who are struggling to come up with the finance, if possible? On construction costs, I would like the Minister to seriously consider reducing the cost of construction by removing VAT from construction materials. The State takes the lion's share of building costs in this country. As I have mentioned before, this Government is great on rhetoric, PR and schemes but it is very poor on delivery. I will give another example. The affordable housing scheme is essentially still a pipe dream in Mayo. Five units have been promised but they are yet to come on stream. We hope they will come on stream soon.”
“It is really important that urgency is shown in that situation to turn those properties around quickly. We should look at directly employing tradesmen who will work with the local authorities on a full-time basis to ensure that those small issues are dealt with as quickly as possible. On vacancy, I welcome the vacant property grant but, when it was initially introduced, you essentially had to be a homeless homeowner to qualify. I recently came across a homeless homeowner. He had a derelict property and came into my constituency office seeking assistance. I sought out every scheme the Government has to offer and found that we could not help him. We cannot help him because he cannot draw down funds in advance or in stage payments. This man is a pensioner and is unable to draw down any finance from the banking sector.”
“I welcome this motion on housing, particularly in light of what we learned yesterday about County Mayo being the biggest county for derelict properties. Some 14% of the country's derelict properties are in Mayo. It is also the second highest in terms of vacancy, at almost 11%. Yet so little is being done - it is important the Minister hears this - to assist local authority housing staff in turning over those properties. It is not just on the private side. Local authorities right across this country are responsible for hoarding, and I believe the State is the biggest hoarder of vacant properties with 4,000 social and local authority homes across the country vacant. It takes an average of eight months to turn around these properties between lettings while it takes an average of less than a month in the private sector.”
“This should be examined. This is totally derogatory and unacceptable when it comes to the mother to whom I refer, who is doing Trojan work for her children, for society, for her community and for the economy. There is no regard for or appreciation of this wonderful person I met. I ask the Government to consider removing the means test immediately because it is unacceptable. I also wish to bring the Government's attention to the knock-on implications for the pension gap. This is a major issue for so many. It affects women disproportionately. The major pension gap relating to carers in particular needs to be addressed. The auto-enrolment scheme is going to exacerbate the problem. People who take time out of work to care for the most vulnerable in our society should be valued by this State.”
“Rather than taking four or five years to become a teacher, it now takes six or seven years. This needs to be looked at. We all learn from what happens on the ground. It is really important that we look at that in the context of addressing the teacher shortage. It is also important to look at specific training for teachers in the special education sector. I have met many people who care for vulnerable children and elderly adults. One wonderful lady who had taken time off work since the birth of her child spoke about how she had to give up her work, social life and hobbies. This woman did not get a cent from the State. The reason for this was because she was means tested on the strength of her husband's salary. Where is the respect and appreciation for this mother and the countless other women and fathers who do wonderful work?”
“Principals are looking for support and additional allocated hours so that we can help these vulnerable students to access supports and support the teachers who are helping them. This cannot be done, however, because many of these teachers are teaching full time and this role is an add-on. It is simply not good enough for the teachers who are working hard. I commend them. I know countless teachers and principals who are doing massive work. It is unacceptable that they are being left with such little support. I ask the Minister to consider providing allocating more hours to those teachers who are trying their best and encountering difficult situations while helping many families. What did the Government do during the current teacher shortage? It added another year to the professional master in education, PME, course.”
“In one case that is very close to me, a 15-year-old boy has still not received a diagnosis. The teachers in his school were left to make a decision on which children to put forward for assessment. The case was made to put a younger boy forward because the 15-year-old had almost finished his schooling. Imagine that. This is what is happening in our schools on the ground. There are also major issues with special educational needs co-ordinators in schools. This job has become very demanding. There has been a huge surge in the number of students in schools with additional language requirements. Teachers have to deal with this issue as well. It is causing major difficulties.”
“As recently elected TDs, we have all seen the pressing and urgent situation faced by many families. I have no doubt the Minister knocked on hundreds of doors, just as we did. We were met with challenging situations of parents and families trying to meet the needs of their children while managing work and family life and advocating for basic rights and the needs of their children. What struck me over the past number of weeks was that the Government moved earth to create more ministerial positions for its colleagues, yet we cannot show the same priority, urgency and creative, outside-the-box thinking for spaces in our schools and for National Educational Psychological Service, NEPS, psychologists, speech and language therapists, teachers, etc. The shortage of NEPS psychologists has massive implications. That is shocking.”
“On the development of Dublin, we learned today that the builders of the national children's hospital require an additional €800 million of taxpayers' money. We also learned that there will be a further delay until this time next year. The Department of Health has stated that the delay is due to the fact that it is difficult to bring children from hospital to hospital in the winter. I find it hard to believe that we are delaying construction again for that reason. Will the Taoiseach publish the clinical advice pertaining to this advice?”
“I am asking the Government and the Minister of State to bring in some common sense. It must prevail and local democracy must play its part. We have good councillors in this country who should be able to assist with local area engineers to bring some common sense to allow the good stretches of road to remain at the normal speed limit. Where there are dangerous junctions and data suggests there are dangerous areas the limits should be reduced but it should not come from national Government. The disregard for local democracy and local authorities in relation to speed limits is totally wrong and will lead to more deaths on the roads. It will lead to more dangerous overtaking because people will inevitably get frustrated and that will lead to more dangerous issues on the road.”
“This Government wants to ram through a total reduction of its limit to 80 km/h. I listened to a TII engineer on RTÉ radio during the week. He said that all roads without a barrier in the middle will be reduced to 80km/h. That means there will no road in the entire county of Mayo where motorists can drive at 100 km/h. We will have a situation where tractors will be overtaking cars in this country. We are penalising the good law-abiding citizens who obey the speed limit on our road. It must be said that this Government has failed to prosecute the reckless and dangerous driving that is occurring in this country. This Government wants to take us back to the ass and cart. While the cart has been consigned to history there is certainly no shortage of asses driving this legislation.”
“Road safety is a really important issue. We must punish reckless and dangerous drivers but the speed limit review is not the solution. It ignores the biggest issues of road safety around enforcement and the fact that the Garda traffic corps has fallen by over 40% since 2009. It ignores dangerous junctions and the lack of right-turning lanes that I have been campaigning on for some years such as the lack of traffic-calming measures, road condition and hedge cutting. While I accept to a degree that the limit on many local roads should have been reduced, the blanket approach to national secondary roads of bringing them from 100 km/h to 80 km/h is totally wrong. Take one example, the N60 linking Claremorris, Castlebar and Ballyhaunis is some of the best stretch of road in County Mayo.”
“During that time, the national cybersecurity agency had a budget of €5 million. In contrast, the Department of the Taoiseach had a public relations budget of €15 million. What is the total estimated cost of the cyberattack to this State?”
“The cyberattack cost this State €100 million. That is expected to grow by a further €600 million. It has been reported in the Irish Independent today that 500 people are suing the State in respect of breaches relating to the attack. An incredible 32,000 people had their data stolen. Following the attack, an international criminal gang set up 57 bank accounts in the names of HSE and Tusla staff and fraudulently claimed PUP Covid payments worth up to €183,000 from this State. During that time-----”
“The Government has announced a huge St. Patrick's Day delegation to the United States in recent days. The Tánaiste has been outlining the importance of these trips to his Cabinet. They are very important and the Cabinet should undergo an intense level of diplomatic training. In previous years, there were a significant number of mistakes. The former Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, snubbed a high-level executive meeting with business people who have invested billions of euro in the Irish economy. I am not sure if that was before his inappropriate comments in relation to Monica Lewinsky for which he was forced to apologise. More recently, the Tánaiste called the US President a "gowl". Will the Taoiseach commit to ensuring the Cabinet undergoes training to ensure these mistakes are not made again this year?”
“Will the Minister of State work with property owners and developers on vacancy and dereliction? In my town, a site is a listed building. It is causing immense difficulty for the developer in Claremorris to develop the site on Lower James Street. This developer wants to develop the site and should be helped. The Government should proactively engage.”
“In my area, the Claremorris-Swinford municipal district, the people are not even considered for affordable housing. Will the Minister of State please consider an affordable housing scheme for the Claremorris-Swinford municipal area? There is a cohort who do not quality for social housing but cannot afford property on the open market. They need an opportunity to get on the affordable housing scheme. The lack of a scheme for this are of Mayo will drive the concentration of capital and energy in the construction sector to other areas of the county, leaving the east and south of Mayo left behind. I also wish to touch on the issue of dereliction and vacancy. There is a significant number - 160,000 homes - vacant across this State. That is 11 properties for every homeless person registered in this State.”
“This Government is an accountability-free zone. It is no wonder there is a growing level of cynicism and lack of trust in politicians among the public when politicians clearly mislead them on such important matters. The truth on record breaking, as the Minister referenced, is that records were indeed broken last year when the number of homeless people in Ireland surpassed 15,000 and the number of homeless children surpassed 4,600. That is the only record the previous Government broke last year. There has been zero affordable housing delivered in my constituency, Mayo, and a total of five units are still promised for Westport after years and the fights councillors in the Westport municipal area had to have to achieve a miserable number of units.”
“I welcome the motion. We in Aontú support the motion on housing. It is important that we seek to hold this Government to account on housing, particularly in light of the former Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, and the electioneering and misinformation that went on in respect of housing by the previous Government. In October last year, one month before the election, the Minister said in this House: I have consistently said we will exceed that target. I still confidently predict ... that it will be the high 30,000s to low 40,000s this year. This was clearly false. It is clear the Minister was using the election and targets to mislead the people. If this happened in any other parliament in Europe, it would be a resigning matter. In this country and in this Government, it is a reshuffle - you get moved on. There is no accountability.”
“Farmers are very familiar with the LIS. This would protect the NBI and ESB networks across the country. I also propose the establishment of contingency contracts with farmers and agricultural contractors that would kick into action following storms and crisis situations. I was shocked to learn in recent weeks that some of the biggest and the best agricultural contractors in Mayo were not contacted. These people have some of the biggest and best machinery to deal with trees falling across roads and across power lines in forested areas.”
“There are no RTÉ-style bailouts, no golden handshakes, and no social protection net when they fall on hard times, just the expectation that they will get on with it - pay more taxes and deal with more regulation, etc. We are forcing these businesses down the insurance route at a time insurance premiums are already at an all-time high. Many businesses in the SME sector will not survive, not necessarily because of the storm but due to the lack of response and supports available to them following it. We need an immediate response involving reimbursement of the families and households who have been significantly affected. We also need financial support for the SME sector. In addition, we need a response to the storm. We must cull the trees along the ESB and NBI networks. I propose a similar scheme to the local improvement scheme, LIS.”
“That is the combined salary of the French President and the British Prime Minister. SMEs are the lifeblood of the rural economy and the economy of this great country. The Minister, Deputy Calleary, said last week in this very Chamber that the scheme does not cover commercial, agricultural or business losses. There are no supports available to the commercial sector or the agricultural sector following the storm. Small and medium businesses are the lifeblood of Mayo and the west. They are the very people and business owners that employ our neighbours, support our local teams, pay taxes to this Government and, once again, they are left out in the cold. The SME sector in this country is the one that suffers the most discrimination.”
“I acknowledge the great work of the people on the ground employed by Mayo County Council and all the local authorities, Uisce Éireann and in particular the ESB who worked tirelessly. I met men across Mayo who came out of retirement to help their former colleagues in the ESB. I met crews from Wexford and various parts of the country who came to the west to support the crews on the ground in Mayo and the neighbouring counties. However, I was hugely disappointed that the CEO of the ESB stated that he believed it should be the responsibility of the customers - the Irish citizens - to foot the bill for the storm, despite the fact that they already pay one of the highest electricity charges in Europe. Perhaps Mr. Hayes does not realise that because of his very large salary of almost €400,000.”
“It is still difficult to believe we are now almost three weeks into the aftermath of the storm and there are still people across the west who do not have power. While I do accept that the Government cannot control the weather, it can of course control, for example, forestry, protecting the ESB network and the distance between trees and the ESB and NBI network as well. It is of course the responsibility of the Government to take account of the slow and very sluggish response in the aftermath of the storm. The truth is that Dublin did not take this storm seriously. In the immediate aftermath of the storm, the Taoiseach travelled from Cork to Newry to attend a sporting event, while the Tánaiste was busy tweeting about his shoes. The people of County Mayo and the west deserved a much greater and more urgent response following the storm.”
“As for housing, I welcome the Government's proposal to build 300,000 houses over its lifetime, but there is no detail about how this is going to be achieved. In recent weeks, it emerged that the Government failed to meet its own modest target of 30,000, so how are we going to move from a target of 30,000 to 60,000? How is that going to be achieved? In the run-up to the general election, the Government misled the public about its targets by indicating, in the weeks leading up to it, that it would deliver 40,000, when the truth is it did not even deliver the target of 30,000 or thereabouts. This programme for Government is aspirational but very weak on detail and how it is going to be achieved. How can we believe anything in it, especially in light of the electioneering that went on regarding the housing targets in recent weeks?”
“Setting aside the fact Fine Gael voted for the deal in 2019, will the Minister of State tell me what countries she has contacted or canvassed to oppose it? The deal will cause untold damage throughout rural Ireland and have huge consequences for small family farms in my constituency and elsewhere across the west. Where are the Greens in this debate? The deal will encourage forest fires, deforestation and overgrazing in South America, not to mention the significant carbon cost of transporting poor-quality beef over such distances. In respect of the EU restoration law, I welcome the fact the programme for Government states that this will be voluntary, but will the Minister of State explain how the Government is going to ensure this? I do not see how we can do so unless we are, in fact, going to mount a legal challenge to the deal.”
“We need to see a serious commitment from the Government to addressing the east-west divide in this country. Getting back to the vagueness of the document, on disabilities, for example, it is clear its authors found the easiest ways to cut corners to make it look like the Government was doing something. It is going to, for example, work to end the practice of placing young people with disabilities in nursing homes. The authors do not explain how or set targets. The Government is also going to examine the criteria for inclusion in the travel assistance scheme but does not pledge to change the scheme, just to look at it. There is little concrete action in the document. In regard to the EU-Mercosur deal, for example, the Government promises to work with like-minded EU countries to oppose it.”
“Some of the detail is just not there. The word "review", for example, appears 126 times in the 160-page document. Dublin is mentioned 29 times, while Mayo is not mentioned at all. The word "east" is mentioned 23 times, while the word "west" appears just nine times, and some of those refer to the West Bank and west Dublin. The programme for Government neglects the west. We see this also in the geographical spread of the Cabinet, with 60% of Ministers located in the greater Dublin area, while Connacht and Ulster have just one senior Minister between them. It struck me last week, the week of power outages, while examining the power outage map and the ministerial geographical spread, that on every front there was no power in the west. The power has been confined to Dublin. This needs to change.”
“I am grateful for the opportunity to speak on the programme for Government. I am a new, young TD and I am eager to get to work and deliver for my constituency and this great country, but I am very disappointed with the length of time it has taken to produce this programme for Government and form a Government. The Dáil has sat only five of the past 70 days since my election on 29 November. The culture of breaks and holidays in this House needs to end. This House needs to show the urgency that the Government and the party of the Minister of State, Deputy Higgins, showed over the election campaign. I was shocked to learn that this House closes on the Tuesday following a bank holiday weekend, as well as on the Monday itself. I welcome many aspects of the programme for Government but it is very weak and vague.”
“We need to prepare now for the next storm. Ash dieback is another big issue. We need a scheme similar to the local improvement schemes to work with farmers to address ash dieback. Generators in water treatment plants must become a mandatory part of Uisce Éireann's machinery. We also need generators for private dwellings. Government policy has incentivised and in some cases forced people into chimneyless homes and we also need to protect those people and give them a backup.”
“We can offer accommodation to people seeking international protection for years, yet we cannot do it for our most vulnerable people. These are people with respiratory or heart conditions, for example, who rely on plug-in devices to survive. These are the vulnerable customers of the ESB. What priority was given to these vulnerable customers? All I could see was nothing. No help was given to those people. I call on the Government to immediately initiate a task force to understand the lessons and what we need to do. We need to get ESB, Uisce Éireann, Coillte and Eir in a room and get proactive in solving this. The ESB network, the Eir network and the NBI network need to be protected. Existing trees along the route need to be cleared immediately. We do not have time to wait for months for felling licences.”
“The level of frustration in Mayo and right across the west is really palpable. Many thousands of people in Mayo are still without power. That is 13 days without being able to heat their homes or cook for themselves. What has happened in recent days has been really shocking. Elderly people are shivering in their beds. Sick and isolated people in rural areas are unable to contact their GP. Today, elderly people and people in isolated areas are still unable to make contact with emergency services and their GP, yet this Government moves more quickly to go on holidays in the eye of the storm than to get into action to help our citizens in their greatest period of need. Hotels and other accommodation should been offered immediately to the most vulnerable people in the west.”