Peadar Tóibín
Meath West · Aontú · Ireland
“Lonely Planet. It did a review of Dublin and stated, "Once Dublin’s grand boulevard, O'Connell St has struggled with decline". It stated that vacant buildings, derelict upper floors and long-stalled redevelopments leave this part looking neglected while retail has shifted elsewhere and been replaced by fast food shops that dilute its char…”
“The Irish people are a generous and decent people and have been over the past number of years, with the provision of supports to people from Ukraine who are fleeing the war. This is right and just. The war unleashed on Ukraine is absolutely wrong. Aontú will support the reduction in the rate of payment under the scheme.”
“I am very disappointed to see that the Government, the Social Democrats, the Labour Party, the Green Party and People Before Profit will vote against an amendment that wants to means test the payment, as an amendment also did on the previous occasion, and put it on a level footing with other housing assistance payments.”
“Landlords are rational and they will make economic decisions to best suit themselves. Landlords have been more inclined to take on Ukrainian tenants over Irish tenants in recent years. This system is discriminatory. It gives an advantage to guests in the country over the people who have lived here for most of their lives.”
“Anyone who sat the leaving certificate economics paper just a few weeks ago will know that demand also has a role. It determines what rents are, the price of houses, etc. It is physics and maths and not ideology. We need to get to a situation where we equalise supply with demand.”
“A global study by TomTom indicated that it is the 38th most congested city globally, behind cities such as London, Toronto and Rome. The task force indicated that the Cork Luas system would be built. That Luas system is in planning and that planning is taking a long while.”
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“Israel and its government have murdered 53,000 people. The grim horror of that sentence is still incredible when you think about it. Hamas has murdered 1,700 people, is a terrorist organisation and must release all hostages. However, Israel is killing 51 people for every person Hamas has killed. My colleague, Deputy Collins, is right that it is not about numbers, but it is about proportion and 51 times the level of blood has been shed by the IDF than has been shed by Hamas, a terrorist organisation. That reflects what Israel is today. I never imagined I would ever see this level of death and destruction happen in the world in real time and I never imagined most of the international community would turn their back to it and ignore it as well.”
“Older people were taken out of nursing homes and put into new nursing homes just so they could find somewhere to live. Most people across the country who need to find a nursing home for an older person, such as a parent, are struggling to do so. Families looking after loved ones are not being paid properly. As well as this, people who are working in caring for elderly people or people with disabilities get very little money for hours worked and have to travel from client to client off their own bat, paying for their own fuel during the day. The Government is basically ensuring there is continuous tightness in the labour market because it will not pay the proper wages.”
“Incredibly, the majority of them have gone through third-level education to achieve their qualifications, yet the pay is horrendously low. This Government even has a cap on the amount of money individual businesses can earn, and that has a knock-on effect on how much they can pay those particular individuals. The situation regarding children in State care is absolutely shocking, one on which there will be tribunals of investigation in the future. There are currently children going missing or going into special emergency accommodation that is not properly regulated, with children in some cases being exploited by criminal gangs involved in sexual exploitation. Again, individuals working in that space are not paid what they should be paid. As regards nursing homes, last year a raft of nursing homes closed throughout the country.”
“Yes, there have been changes in the threshold levels, but we need to delete that threshold and we need to do it fast. Looking at care in its totality, I mentioned that it is one of the most valuable services delivered in the country, but it is the most devalued service in terms of Government approach. Whether it is those caring for children in care centres, early years education or State care, for example, or for older people in nursing homes, or carers delivering care in the home, it is incredible that they are probably the individuals who are paid least in the State. We are talking in the main about people who are paid just above the minimum wage. This encompasses individuals who are in early years education.”
“I think this is at the root and the heart of the difficulty in Irish society. Carer's allowance is not social welfare. It is a payment given to people for work of value given to other individuals. We need to delete the idea that carer's allowance is in some way social welfare from the heart of Government. Having a carer's allowance threshold in place is at the heart of the difficulty for so many individual families who are struggling to provide care for their families. The Government put it into the programme for Government that it would delete the threshold in the context of achieving this, but we have seen no meaningful step change on that. We have seen no meaningful pathway or progress on getting rid of that in completion.”
“Additionally, practically the same number of people are stuck on trolleys outside hospitals and cannot get in because these beds are taken up with people who should be elsewhere. An enormous cost to the State results from that level of dysfunction and not providing the necessary care to individuals. If carers were paid with money instead of platitudes, they would be the richest people in Ireland. We are going to see this Chamber fill up over the next two hours and Members are going to tip their caps and express enormous gratitude for the wonderful work of carers. Carers do not want platitudes any more, to be honest. Carers just want a proper salary and wage for the work they do. The problem I have is that typically the Government looks at carer's allowance as social welfare.”
“This means they have gone through the hospital system and been looked after. All the work to be done by the doctors and nurses is complete. They cannot do any more for these individuals. These individuals are only in hospital because there is nowhere else for them to go. This is incredible. These people could leave hospital if they had a proper nursing home, a proper carer in their home or a step-down facility such as the national rehabilitation centre but, because these services are not provided or funded, these individuals are stuck in hospital. This means there is an enormous cost to the State because these individuals are stuck in hospital. It is also extremely difficult for these individuals because they are stuck in hospital.”
“It means as well that those individuals can be brought on, developed and loved and cared for in comfort and without pain and suffering. This is enormously beneficial for society. Care is also extremely valuable in financial terms. Billions of euro are saved in terms of the care given by loved ones to loved ones throughout Irish society. If the State were to take on the cost of delivering that care, it would put great pressure on the State's coffers. Undoubtedly, it would not do it as well or efficiently or with the same level of love. This is the second major aspect. According to a response we in Aontú received to a parliamentary question, right now in the hospital services there are 373 people who have been clinically discharged in hospitals in Ireland currently.”
“I welcome this motion from Independent Ireland. It is very well written and if implemented would make a significant difference to carers and people who are cared for. Care is the most valuable service delivered in Ireland now. First and most significant, it is most valuable in human terms. The relationships we have with people are actually the most important things that exist. When we strip everything back and take all the superfluous stuff away, at the end of the day it is the relationships we have with our loved ones that are the most important issues. So many individuals and families have either a parent - a mother or father - or a child who they are struggling to care for or are struggling to find care for. Care, therefore, is enormously valuable in human terms.”
“Not only is it refusing to provide the service, but it is rubbing salt in the wounds of the constituent or citizen who is simply trying to get a cancellation date for his or her next test. It is not fair and it is in no way good enough.”
“In no other county in the country does the majority of workers have to leave the county to get to work. Only 1,000 people per day use a train because the trains only skirt the edge of the county. Navan is the biggest town in the country without a rail line. We have been waiting on that. It has been promised by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael for decades now. Many buses are now ghost buses but, if they do pass, they are often full before a passenger can get on. People therefore do not have an option. The Government is not providing a public transport system for them to get to work and it will not allow them to get a licence to drive a car to work. That is not fair. If a person fails a test, they can now download an app to try to be put on a cancellation list. The Government is charging €45 for that app.”
“She went onto the website, which is atrocious and always crashing, and managed to get a date for her next test. She just failed last week. When is her date for the test? She will get a date for the test in January. This Government should hang its head in shame in light of the wait time for that particular woman. She said that when she left, she was told that four or five other people had roughly the same experience. Never in my 18 years as an elected representative have I seen it this bad in County Meath. This is a particular problem for Meath because we do not have many transport options. We are the biggest commuting county in the country with 85,000 people having to commute to work every day. The vast majority of these have to commute outside the county.”
“Let us look at the urgency shown by this Government. The Dáil has sat for 35 days since the general election. That reflects a lack of urgency coming from the very top in the delivery of services in this country. At the start of the year, Meath was already the county worst hit by delays in testing. That delay has grown a further eight weeks since the start of the year. The Government is talking about a national target of ten weeks. In Meath, people are waiting an average of 42 weeks to get a test. There should not be a waiting time of more than a fortnight to get a test but people are waiting 42 weeks. We were told in March that we were going to get three extra testers in the county but there is no sign of them as of yet. I was recently contacted by a constituent who had failed a test.”
“Incompetence is the defining characteristic of this Government, which has displayed a complete inability to deliver services. In many areas, the USSR did a better job of delivering services than this Government. Right now, delivery of a whole range of services is grinding to a halt across the country. There are places in this country where you cannot get clean water from the taps. The electricity drops in 50,000 homes every week. We are talking about a very basic and simple service here but people are waiting 30 or 40 weeks for a driving test to be delivered. It is mind-boggling. It is bananas how this Government is just not able to deliver simple things. That is before we talk about the likes of the national children's hospital, the national maternity hospital or any of the other big projects the country is waiting for.”
“All of these things cannot be true at the same time. Will the Taoiseach correct the record of the Dáil yesterday and state exactly the purpose and the reason these individuals received those letters and give clarity to the parents on this matter?”
“The Taoiseach is injecting confusion into the hip operation scandal. Yesterday in the Dáil, I asked him about the letters that were sent to parents covering a period as far back as 15 years ago. I asked on what basis those parents were being sent the letters if they were not part of the two-year audit. In his answer, the Taoiseach gave a number of contradictory statements. He said first of all that the letters recalling patients were part of a routine follow-up of appointments. He also said that the letters were because the Department had identified patients not included in the audit but may have been affected by the findings. He said that the letters were sent because the media had reported on the draft audit report. RTÉ is reporting that the letters were sent as a recommendation of an unpublished review.”
“The latter holds an enormous amount of documentation, evidence and facts relating to the killing of hundreds of Irish people through or by British forces in Ireland. If that relationship is to be reset, now may be the time to look for a significant delivery of such information to public inquiries so that people can get to the truth. Will the Taoiseach also tell us the status of the interstate case relating to the legacy Act?”
“I will also raise the issue of an investigation in respect of Sean Brown. All of us in this Chamber have talked about what the GAA means to us. Sean Brown was murdered in large part because he was a GAA member and official. On the day he was abducted by loyalists, he was simply closing the gates of Bellaghy Wolfe Tones Gaelic Athletic Club in Derry. I welcome the Tánaiste's meeting with the family of Sean Brown. I believe he gave the family great confidence that action will be taken. I also welcome the Taoiseach's words on this matter in recent times. At a recent meeting with the British in Liverpool, it was articulated that there would be a reset of relationships between this State and Britain.”
“They can then take a judicial review, which can take some time. On certain occasions, they can go back into the asylum process even after that judicial review. Most deportation orders issued are not enforced. It is a voluntary system. We have no checks at airports to see if they are leaving the country or not. Even after that whole process, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael Ministers have overturned 4,000 deportation orders. That is incredible, given the cost just to process those deportation orders.”
“Can I put on the record of the Dáil that I have sent an email to the leaders of all political parties to ask them to sign a Bill that would look for voting rights for Irish citizens in the North of Ireland? It is an issue bigger than any political party and we should not put party first in relation to it. We received a parliamentary reply showing Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael Ministers have quashed or overturned 4,000 deportation orders in the past ten years. The number of deportation orders quashed or overturned is a multiple of those enforced. Most want a fair system but a strict one nonetheless. We currently have a system where people can apply for asylum and it can take many years for a decision to be made. They can appeal that and it can take some time for the appeal to be made.”
“The idea that we would start to track and perhaps even pay hospitals for their activities and outcomes, instead of the manner in which hospitals are paid now, would be beneficial in ensuring that money does not get lost on the front line and get caught up in layers of administration. My worry now is whether all the parents who could potentially be caught up in this scandal over the last 15 years have been contacted. What is the depth of information they have received? Is it a generic letter or have they been given information specific to their own cases?”
“There are major problems in the health service that the Government can act on now that have led, in part, to the difficulties we are suffering. There is not proper data collection in our health service at the moment. There is not a proper digital patient number in the health service. We do not have a good register of information in the health service. The capture of outcomes is not valued in the health service. We do not track patients in a similar fashion to other jurisdictions to enable us to be able to flag these situations, if they should arise at all. Fixing those particular issues would be of extreme benefit to patients in the system and ensure these issues do not happen in the future.”
“What culture facilitated this? Where were Children's Health Ireland, CHI, and successive Ministers for Health during the 15-year period in question? The Department of Health is responsible for all those aspects of our health services. We are asking parents to have confidence in what is happening in respect of their children, yet we cannot tell them what happened to other people's children over the past 15 years. If the idea of the audit is to try to make-----”
“Imagine the fury that must exist among the thousands of parents who left their children in difficult circumstances in a situation where potentially the operations they were undergoing were not necessary and could have damaged them. All operations involve challenges. Infection and surgical trauma are possible. It is a serious issue when an anaesthetic is administered to a young child. Potentially thousands of parents have been left in limbo. For many, there is an excruciating absence of information. This is the real difficulty for them. They want to know how this happened and how hospitals could carry out particular operations at a rate five to ten times higher than the population of the country needed and no one seemed to pick up on it. What Government structures allowed this? Where was the leadership in the hospitals where this happened?”
“It is currently a major problem within the State that children who may not have reached the threshold in terms of hip surgery or who may not have suffered from hip dysplasia in the first place may potentially have had operations carried out on them. I understand that 561 people were included in the audit carried out over the past two years. If the audit is to look back 15 years, however, we could be talking about thousands of parents and children being involved. I had to leave my son in an operating theatre for a procedure. It was not as serious as the ones we are talking about at the moment, but I saw the fear in his eyes before I left the theatre. It was very difficult to leave that location.”
“I, too, offer my deepest sympathies and the sympathies of Aontú to the family of Kevin Flatley. This is a disaster for Kevin's family and friends. It is also a disaster that 90 gardaí have lost their lives in the line of duty since the foundation of the State. Many families fear when their parent or loved one goes out to work that they might not see them come back. Yet, those people still commit to going out and working for our safety on a daily basis. Families are struggling to get healthcare for their children on a daily basis. The dysfunction in the healthcare system is leading to enormous delays and difficulties for families. We have a situation where families actually managed to get operations for their children. As we found out, in many cases those operations were unwarranted and unnecessary.”
“We have a major crisis in terms of resources in the hospital and that is why this is happening. It is not good enough to pause what is happening; we also need to get rid of the pay and numbers embargo on staff so that we can resource the treatment that needs to be delivered to patients.”
“I welcome the pause in insourcing, but we have to ask why this is happening. I spoke to staff in a hospital in the midlands today. They told me they had a red escalation over the bank holiday weekend, which is unheard of in the middle of summer. It is something that usually happens in December and January. They have been told to get patients out of the hospital and free up operations and other elective engagements so that they can orientate staff towards the people in emergency departments. There are 461 people on trolleys today - 461 people who were crowded into hospitals overnight with the lights on and did not get any sleep, etc. Some 50,000 hospital appointments have been cancelled so far this year. Over the past four years, 800,000 hospital appointments have been cancelled. Today, there are 800 vacancies for consultants.”
“The Government's pay and numbers policy is an effective recruitment embargo on the health service. The INMO is having its conference today. Will the Minister send a message to that conference today to say to nurses and doctors that the Government has their backs? Will he send a message to say that the Government will end the practice of public staff creating private companies and funnelling patients from public lists into their own private companies in future?”
“A third company was owned by a HSE employee with another hospital. This corroborates the allegations of this practice happening that have been made to me. That report states that the Government was getting a handle on it, but we are actually hearing of this happening in real time at the moment. Hospitals have work coming at them at a fierce rate at the moment. I know of one hospital with a backlog of 960 biopsies at the moment. Within that backlog, there are people with cancers. There are delayed diagnoses, delayed treatments and more negative outcomes as results of this. It is clear that we do not have enough beds within the system. It is clear that investment is not getting to the front line and is getting caught up in administration. The population of the State grew by 100,000 people last year.”
“I put a parliamentary question to the Minister for Health a couple of weeks ago to see if this practice is widespread within the sector and the response I got is quite shocking. An internal audit report carried out by the office of the chief internal auditor was written less than a year ago and its job was to ascertain if private companies were used to provide additional services such as this. It found that there was a major breakdown in terms of compliance and value for money. For example, UHL was found not to have conducted an open procurement process with €14.2 million paid to these types of providers just in one year, 2023. Management confirmed that there were no dedicated procurement functions within the group for this. In UHL two private providers were owned or part-owned by two separate UHL employees.”
“I have been told by people working within the health service that there are senior healthcare professionals at the moment, including some consultants, who are creating their own private companies and diverting patients from public waiting lists to their newly created private companies. It has been alleged in one case that a consultant, who created a private firm to read scans, used the hospital public waiting lists to funnel work through rostering into his own private company. It is an incredible situation and a major conflict of interest for anybody in a public role to be doing this in relation to their own businesses. The Minister must admit that we cannot allow anybody on the public payroll to be in a position where they are creating a private company and funnelling public work to their own private company.”
“Referrals to speech and language therapy and other services have yielded nothing but long waiting times, and his GP believes he needs immediate interventionist care. The foster mother, who is doing her utmost for this child, has contacted Tusla, CAMHS, disability services, social workers, private psychologists - everywhere she turns she meets delays. That is what those absences, those massive levels of vacancies, mean to an individual child.”
“I indicated the massive figures of absences and vacancies in the sector but I want to drill down to what this means for an individual child. I have been contacted by a constituent who is a foster mother of a child. She has worked tirelessly to help her young boy. The boy presents with significant complex behavioural problems and has been expelled from two preschools and four times already from primary schools. He is currently on reduced school hours because of the situation and he is falling back in his education massively. Despite urgent GP referrals to CAMHS, he is facing a 14- to 18-month wait for an initial assessment. In the meantime, his condition is deteriorating and his education is severely disrupted.”
“In my constituency I have seen children waiting for 14 months to get onto CDNTs and some cases where children are being bounced between CAMHS, CDNTs and therapy services without ever ending up on a waiting list at all. The Minister of State has to agree that this is outrageous.”
“My information indicates that the independent review has been commenced by the National Disability Authority. The Minister of State might confirm in her answer if that is the case. The figures I have seen as to what is happening in the CDNTs are absolutely shocking. They are unbelievable. In 2023 there were 817 vacancies in CDNTs across the country. In CHO 1 there has been a drop-off of 22% in therapy hours in the space of a year. Some 44% of CDNT posts in the HSE are vacant at the moment. Some 43% of psychologist posts are vacant at the moment, 62% in CHO 1 and 59% in CHO 5. That is a failure on a monumental scale when we see that the majority of those posts are empty.”
“In recent days I have received significant information that there is an independent review of the children's disability network team service model. It has been obvious to most people that this system is completely broken around the country. Will the Minister today confirm to the Dáil that the entire CDNT service model is being independently reviewed?”
“There are five other cases, such as the Brandon report in Donegal and the report of a 17-year-old girl who died by suicide. When will these reports be published? We need to get to grips with what is happening in our care system in this country.”
“It is a pity we have so little time because there actually are so many important things here for both of us to discuss. I will quickly refer to the story on RTÉ today on the Grace report. That particular story on RTÉ reported that legal officials responsible for the affairs of the woman known as Grace claim that extensive submissions made to the commission by lawyers representing the woman were not included or referred to in any way in the commission's final report. The Minister must be deeply frustrated, like everybody else, if that is the case. How can it be justified that solicitors, who were the voice of Grace, were silenced by the commission in its final report? There are other cases the national independent review panel is looking at.”
“The reliance of Tusla on special emergency accommodation is incredible and we know that companies, to which Tusla has paid millions of euro, have actually falsified documents relating to verification. At present, is the Minister sure that 100% of people working in special emergency accommodation are Garda vetted?”
“There have been 221 reported cases of sexual abuse of children in State care in the past ten years. That is a very dark figure. The other information I have received shows that, at the moment, there are 37 children missing from Tusla care, which is disastrous. Since 2021, Tusla has made referrals to the Garda of 161 children who are suspected of being victims of child sexual exploitation, 115 of which children were in care and 46 of whom were known to Tusla. Since 2014, 235 children have died who were either in State care or were known to State care. Ten of these children were murdered and 51 of them died because of suicide or drug overdoses. Again, these are shocking figures.”
“A series of documents and emails that were exchanged between the Minister and the CEO of Tusla have been released to me under freedom of information legislation. They paint a very bleak picture of what is happening with the welfare of children in State care. How many children in care have been reported to have been sexually abused in recent years?”
“That clinical lead admitted that the intensive care beds in their entirety would not be open until long after the hospital is opened at the new campus. However, that person said there will be a balcony where nurses can have their lunches, there will be Wi-Fi, there will be plugs and that these are must-haves in a national children's hospital. I say that intensive care beds are must-haves when it comes to a national children's hospital. Another example of the gaslighting of parents is we are told that the national children's hospital will not open until 2026. The excuse from the Department is it is too risky to move these children through the winter months. How do hospitals in cold-climate countries do such a thing? This can be done.”
“We have raised these issues many times in the Dáil. A level of gaslighting is happening in respect of the HSE, CHI and the Department. Looking at CHI and who is on its board, we see businesspeople more than medical experts. One is a former HR director at Brown Thomas. Another is a business consultant, another is a lawyer, another is a former Secretary General of the Department of Education and so on. The reality is they have failed children. They are refusing to answer questions in the media. We believe they should resign. In 2023, a clinical lead from CHI was asked questions about intensive care beds in the new children's hospital. Many operations for children are being cancelled at the moment for the lack of intensive care beds.”
“When he was very young, my second eldest son had a procedure in a hospital that necessitated going under an anaesthetic. It was not as severe as any of the cases we are speaking to. It was ten years ago, but I still remember the fear on his face as I left that room. I still remember the difficulty I had in leaving that room and my son behind in that particular situation. If I found out afterwards that the procedure did not have to happen, that the procedure was actually doing damage to my son and was causing pain or discomfort or necessitated extra surgery on the back of that, I would be enraged, furious and disgusted at the system. Any parent in a similar situation would be in exactly the same situation. Yet, that is exactly what is happening here. There are significant problems with CHI.”
“It is absolutely phenomenal that we have two separate unpublished reports into two separate scandals involving CHI at the moment yet, despite that, the Government is still backing the board of CHI. We know that in one case children were subjected to unnecessary surgeries, where they did not meet the threshold for surgery. Separately, we know that poorly sourced springs or coils made from corrosive material were implanted into the spines of children, which significantly damaged these children. It is an incredible situation that the Government is standing strong behind CHI in this situation. A whistleblower made a protected disclosure to the Department in September 2023. There are key questions around that. We need to know whether the surgeries continued after that whistleblower made that information known to the former Minister.”
“It is looking for a mudguard to deflect attention from its actions on the housing crisis. It is another effort to outsource what should be the competency of the Minister. He is well paid and has at least 20 senior managers in his Department. Will the Government go about the job of building houses for Irish people?”
“The Government is employing a new housing tzar with a salary of €430,000, which is an incredible figure. Because of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Independents, that may well be the salary someone needs to buy a home in many parts of this country at the moment. We have a record-breaking Government for all the wrong reasons. We have record house prices, rents and numbers of people on the homeless list at the moment. There are incredible figures. This Government is in reverse on the most important issue facing the country. In the majority of Government targets on housing, the Government cannot meet its targets, even those targets that are well short of what is actually necessary. Does the Taoiseach agree that at the heart of this plan is that the Government is looking to put space between itself and the housing crisis?”
“The family of murdered Sean Brown is still fighting for justice in the North. The Government has rightly brought a case to the European Court of Human Rights against the British legacy Bill. What pressure is the Government putting on the authorities in the North and the British Government to ensure Irish people in the North of Ireland achieve justice?”
“Fourteen-year-old Noah Donohoe went missing for six days in 2020 and was found dead in a storm drain in Belfast, yet there is still no clarity about what happened to him. His mother, Fiona, continues to valiantly fight for justice. Three years ago, thousands of people took to the streets to protest against a public interest immunity certificate which redacted enormous amounts of information. The PSNI's investigation has been littered with failures. It has refused to obtain a water sample from the drain in which Noah was found and the coroner has now been recused. Last Saturday, thousands again took to the streets. Equally concerning is the fact that other mothers are now coming forward to say their children were killed in shocking circumstances and they have not found justice either.”