Richard O'Donoghue
Limerick County · Independent Ireland · Ireland
“The crucial point is that the HSE environmental health service examined the matter, visited the community and requested a public health investigation into the complaints. The public health section denied it. One part of the health service was looking for an investigation but the Department's public health section denied it.”
“I have a copy of that investigation. The Tánaiste and I met CEPA a number of years ago and we discussed these complaints. The Taoiseach is on the record 13 years ago saying that there are health implications to wind farms. There is something that I want the Tánaiste and all other Members sitting around the House today to do.”
“I thank the Tánaiste. The issue here is the inconsistency. In the Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown area, all noise complaints received by the local authority are investigated by the HSE.”
“Today, I am raising the issue of wind farms and their health implications. A number of weeks ago, I was copied into a serious letter from the Communities and Environmental Protection Alliance, CEPA, to the Minister of Health. I am informed that there has been no response, not even an acknowledgement.”
“I would also like to have the Minister for Health there to meet these people and to see if we can relieve concerns and meet young people and their families' entitlement to a night's sleep. This cannot go on for more years. We have been talking about this for years. We must think of the health implications and how we can help.”
“It has been proven without doubt that there are health implications to wind turbines in certain areas. I am not against wind turbines in areas where they do not have health implications, but this one does. So, when the Tánaiste is giving his reply, I want him to think of the children and families this is affecting.”
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“Management actions caused serious bodily harm and, in some cases, caused death. If there has been eight years of withholding information here, how many other cases like this have there been? The Taoiseach mentioned Aoife Johnston, God rest her soul. We have Jessica Sheedy as well. Management withheld information, had non-disclosure agreements signed and spent eight years with one case alone. That is obstructing the course of justice. This is my problem. They obstructed the course of justice. People and patients were put in harm’s way, and some people died. If this was outside the remit of the health service, the Minister, Deputy Jim O’Callaghan, would have me up the steps and have me in prison now for obstruction of justice and serious bodily harm. You would be put in prison if you had done this.”
“How many more non-disclosure agreements have been signed to prevent the course of justice? That is what I want to know. Will these people be fully protected under this Act if they come forward now? I do not want to hear, like others say, "You are 100% protected". We have heard that before where whistleblowers were involved. This time I need to know from the Government and I need an official response.”
“Under the Maternity Protection, Employment Equality and Preservation of Certain Records Act 2024, NDAs are void when victimisation occurs, including harassment, sexual harassment or discrimination in relation to employment. Are those people who came forward in whatever hospital around this country protected under the 2024 Act where patients and the public were put at risk and NDAs were used to withhold information from inquiries and investigations? Why were the public and patients put at risk under people who were not competent to do their job? I have full respect for people in all parts of the medical profession who are competent at doing their job. Sometimes a mistake happens, but you learn from the mistake; you do not cover it up. Eight years it took to get the information out, for somebody to admit guilt - eight years.”
“Last week I spoke in this House about Jessica Sheedy, who died in University Hospital Limerick, UHL, and the case of Dr. Lal, who admitted to 13 counts of misconduct. That has been dealt with on its own. I see the Minister for justice is here as well. I also need his help on this. Today I want to talk to the Taoiseach and the Minister about the hospital management, who used non-disclosure agreements, NDAs, to silence people and to avoid accountability. I am aware of people in UHL who came forward with concerns well prior to Jessica Sheedy's operation. Those people were victimised, their careers would not excel and they might have to look for references. They were used to sign non-disclosure agreements. This is wrong.”
“This Bill is very important and it is very important that we get it right. It is very important that we look after the people who are coming in here who need to be looked after. It is also equally important that we have a way of whittling out the ones we do not want here and who are a danger to our society and everyone else's society around them. This is not just coming from me. It is actually coming from different nationalities who have settled here. These people have integrated and their lives and their children's lives are now here, which I welcome.”
“We were slow to close the doors to airlines that allowed people from other countries on their aircraft who had paperwork to get on the planes over there but had no paperwork when they landed here. What we should have done at that time was turn them around straight back to the place that sent them here in the first place. People in this country are very welcoming to anyone. They will do whatever they can to make people feel welcome, but because of different things, people are also scared of the unknown. If someone arrived to the Minister's house tonight and knocked on the door, would he open the door and invite them in if he did not know them? Would he open the door and invite him in if they did not have the paperwork needed to enter his house? No, he would not. Why do we use one law for one thing and another law for the other?”
“Mistakes were made in the past and we were slow to block the door. I do not have an issue with people who want a better life coming into this country; I really do not. It does not matter what nationality they are. If they are coming in to make a better life for themselves and I know who they are, I do not have an issue. They will be part of our workforce and part of rebuilding Ireland. The problem I have is with the people who come into this country that we know nothing about. We have had a lot of people come into this country that we know nothing about. We have had people who come to this country and look for asylum and there were genuine cases. I do not doubt that, but we had a lot of people who were brought in here and trafficked in here for the wrong reasons. I have an issue with that.”
“By moving people into the cities and driving up the prices, and by not allowing people's children to move home from the cities, the Government has closed down the infrastructure in all our towns and villages. There has been a lack of infrastructure for years and all it has come up with is a plan. Plans are on paper; delivery is on the ground. We have given the Government ideas and solutions to everything it has come up with but it will spend millions of euro again on paperwork with no delivery. When is it going to deliver? When is it going to listen to the Opposition that has given it the answer on delivery? That is what the question is.”
“Fail to prepare, prepare to fail. I welcome anything that will help with infrastructure. The Government's failure is that it shoved people into the cities that had some infrastructure. What did it do then? It closed down every town and village around Ireland. What did that do? It drove up the price of houses because of a lack of supply. Askeaton has done without a sewerage system for 46 years. It is due to be done some time this year. However, we have been hearing that for 46 years. Dromcolliher has been waiting 15 years for an upgrade of the system. Hospital-Herbertstown had to put in on-site systems after they built 20 houses there. They had to put five of them on an on-site system because the sewerage system could not take housing.”
“We look after everyone, but we are not looking after people with disabilities or the elderly. All the things that we have worked for all our lives have been ignored by the Government. I put it to the Minister of State, Deputy Canney, that we need to make sure this is addressed, and quickly.”
“The Government reduced the USC but never changed the tax base. This means that people who are working are paying more tax. That is for everyone, whether they have a disability or not. People are paying more tax at a time when there are overruns in the HSE and in the various Departments. There are billions of euro in overruns, but the Government cannot provide for those who are the most vulnerable. The people I know who have disabilities, whether they are working or not, want to be looked at as ordinary people, but they also want equality from a work perspective and from a quality of life perspective. This means that if they go out, they want equality. Yet, the Government has done what I have just outlined. This is not what Irish people were ever about.”
“Last year, I had Maurice Noonan and Eilish Sheehy up from Limerick. Both are wheelchair users. They were looking for the simplest of things, namely access to buildings in order that they can have a normal life. Both of these people work. When we look at the measures taken in the budget, we can see that: the disability support grant was removed, resulting in a loss of €400; the living alone allowance was removed, resulting in a loss of €200; the fuel allowance was reduced to €160; the October double payment was removed, resulting in a loss of €254; and electricity credit was removed, resulting in a €250 loss. The total amount of those losses is €1,404. This is outside of the impact of cost-of-living increases. The loss in question affects for people with disabilities who work and those who do not work.”
“Until we do that, we will have hundreds of thousands of euro being wasted on legal challenges that could help people in need. I ask for the Minister of State's help with that. I hope we do not have to wait for seven or eight years for other cases in the health services to conclude when they could be fixed if people put up their hands and were accountable. We need to learn from our mistakes. That goes all the way up the chain to the very stop. We need to stop the cover-ups and help people who are in need.”
“We saw yesterday that five gardaí were found not guilty after a long seven or eight years. That cost hundreds of thousands and had gardaí off the street when they could have been helping people. That could have been dealt with in a more timely fashion, which could have helped services that are badly wanted for people with mental health difficulties. We have to get this right. We have to make sure the funds available to us are used to resource the most needy, namely, the elderly and people who suffer with mental health problems. With all the challenges they have now, we have to make sure they get the best treatment. To do that, we have to stop waste and fix the issue with accountability, so that if people get something wrong, they put your hand up and say they got it wrong, learn from it and move on. That is what we have to do.”
“I welcome and support the motion. Not a day goes by that I do not think of my great friend of many years who died from suicide. I was with him the day before he died. At the time, he had even fooled me. I think of members of the emergency services who have to deal with things on a daily basis. I think of the Garda, the fire service, and suicide watch and search and rescue organisations. All these people, many of them volunteers, go out and do their best to help people. Then, I see investigations in the HSE where it takes eight years for a person to admit they were wrong and hundreds of thousands of euro wasted on legal fees because somebody did not put up their hand and say they did wrong. This money could go into services that save the lives of people suffering from mental health problems. The same is true in the Garda.”
“How can the Government go to people, tell them they are the polluters and fine them when, if it looks at anything that is being done at the moment, we have defunct systems all over the country? I have always said and I will say again that there are people building houses. They are designing and delivering them. Let them build the infrastructure for it within the criteria of what the Government wants. They can make money on delivering it, yet the Government cannot actually deliver something that has been fully paid for by the State. There is no accountability, which is why there is no delivery. That is why we do not get any messages back from Uisce Éireann. It is unaccountable.”
“How much is going into the top-end salaries and how much is going into the ground in replacing infrastructure? The EPA came out first saying, and all governments were coming out saying, "Farmers are the biggest polluters in Ireland." The Government is the biggest polluter in Ireland in the statistics, because all the raw sewage is going into the rivers, which people are drinking. The Government is treating it and people are drinking it. The farmers are being shown that they are the only ones who are improving the network, with all that they are doing, keeping within the criteria and all the regulations, and upgrading their systems week on week and month on month. They are making changes, but the same Government that is over them is not.”
“The bottom line is that the Government should never have taken this off the local authorities. Uisce Éireann should never have been set up. We would have accountability then because, first, the councils could keep a good eye on what needs to be done with infrastructure and within the areas. The Deputies of this House could also keep in line with that and let the Government know where the money was being sent. The other thing was that they were actually getting in contractors to do the work under their remit, under their designs, on budget, on time. The contractor was making a few pounds but he was being overseen by the local authorities. It was being done. Now we have Uisce Éireann, Irish Water or whatever you want to call it these days. Let us audit its books.”
“In the case of Jessica Sheedy and the then CEO of UHL, will the Department of justice do an investigation into somebody who withheld evidence, misled an independent inquiry by not providing the relevant information at the time, and put people's lives at risk through the delay in providing the information? This independent inquiry has been done twice. It has gone to the UK twice. The final information was given in the UK. The real file was given in the UK recently, which has brought the case against Dr. Lal. There were people silenced under agreements. This was all done under the management at the time and that stands with the CEO. That means they misled an independent inquiry. Justice needs to be served, and people held to account if there is to be any learning in this case.”
“I thank the Taoiseach. I see that the Minister for Health is here, and the Minister for justice as well, and other Ministers. I am asking for their help. This took eight years and only for her mother Ann, Jimmy, Marcella and all her friends keeping at this and having a medical background themselves, this would have been buried for a lot longer. Only for the current management in UHL, this would have been buried. There has to be accountability of the people who were overseeing the hospital at that time. The problem is that this was buried for eight years. It is a learning hospital. If there was a mistake made, put up your hands and do not put anyone else at risk. There has to be accountability for the then CEO. They were in here in the committee. I have brought it up so many times in the Dáil. We have to make sure justice prevails.”
“It is a learning hospital. If best practice was followed and something went wrong, you would put your hands up and fix what is wrong because it is a hospital. It is a learning place. It was shown that there was no proper person doing the operation. They should never have been allowed do the operation in the first place. By covering it up for eight years, how many people have been seriously injured or have died under that same management? There should be a criminal investigation against the then CEO.”
“I will let the courts deal with what Dr. Lal did to the Sheedy family, to Jessica Sheedy's friends and to the wider community. However, I believe there should now be a criminal investigation into the CEO at the time of this misconduct. There are allegations of tampering with evidence and misleading an independent inquiry by not providing all documentation required for that inquiry to make a decision. There have been two independent inquiries but it is only now that all of the information has come out. It is alleged that staff members were silenced and made to sign non-disclosure agreements to protect Dr. Lal, who has now admitted misconduct. For eight years, people have been put at risk because of a cover-up in the hospital to protect Dr. Lal. That is what we are on about. There has been nothing about the patients who have gone in there.”
“Yesterday, there was a development on something that has been brought up in this Dáil in recent years. Jessica Sheedy died at 18 years of age in Limerick. She was admitted to hospital on 8 May 2018 for an operation and died on 11 May 2018. A Medical Council fitness-to-practice inquiry found that three allegations of professional misconduct and ten allegations of poor professional performance made against Dr. Lal were proven beyond doubt. Dr. Lal also accepts other allegations of professional misconduct were proven. I have brought up this issue many times in here. I know Ann and Jimmy personally. I was at their wedding. It has taken eight years to bring this case to where it is today. I thank the present management at University Hospital Limerick for allowing this to happen. I cannot say I have the same respect for the previous management.”
“That is what was said on "The Late Debate" last night - it only surveyed 800 people in Dublin. The Labour Party wants to apply this the whole country. It is bigger than Dublin, you know. It should come down the country and survey us as well. We would have no problem with that.”
“In other cases, we have people with mental health issues who want to come to work. They do not want to work at home. In cases where employers work with people and it is viable for them to work from home and it is beneficial for both parties, I encourage it 100%. However, I have an issue with legalising it unless the criteria can be worked around for all sectors. When it puts all sectors together, then we will have something we can work with. However, what we need to do here is strengthen it to help employers to accommodate people who want to work from home. However, we also need to have the Internet connectivity. I was on the “The Late Debate” last night with Nessa Cosgrove. She said that Survey Ireland did a survey of 800 people in Dublin. It is a big place. We must look at everyone; we do not just look at one area.”
“I support anyone who wants to work from home. I support any employer that can facilitate working from home. I do not support legalising that it is mandatory that an employer has to make people work from home because there is no glove that fits everyone. That is my problem. That means that the people here could all decide that, legally, they can work from home. We could have people in other sectors saying that, legally, they can work from home. There are general data protection regulation, GDPR, reasons that people cannot work from home. There are different reasons that people cannot work from home. We also have another side of it. Some people do not want to work from home and that is their right. There are employers that help people when they want them to work from home because they are actually more productive at home.”
“Yet, they are getting letters now from the tax office. They are calling me asking what the letters are about. The letters are hostile. Anyone who gets a letter from the tax man says they are hostile. It puts the fear of God in them. We are saying to the carers to go out and care but we are going to frighten the life out of them in case they have a dot out of place. There is no price on care. Remember that for our own families. Would you not love to see your parents being cared for properly in the confines of their homes? We have had it. Why are we not giving the opportunities to other people to have the same?”
“She is trying to work in between doing that and being a mother. She is trying to run all of this because we cannot get the carers. We talk about nursing homes. People have called me trying to get people in for nursing care. They cannot get into places because they are full. Why are we putting an obstacle in the way, stopping people being cared for in their own homes? If we took in the financial aspect of it, it makes economic sense for them to be cared for in their own homes if it is possible to do so. It costs the State less to have them cared for in their own homes. Why are we putting an obstacle in the way of care when the Government itself cannot provide it? We do not have the staff for it. We do not have the infrastructure in place for it. Independent Ireland started by saying that it did not want carers to be means tested.”
“They came in and did the basic things. From a security point of view, he knew they were coming, what time they were coming at and he knew everything about it. They became part of the family. To me, carers are family. They are looking after our loved ones in their homes, in their own environment, and in the years when they need it most. These people who looked after us and gave us benefits to make sure we could rear our own families. They paid their taxes, worked hard and looked after us as a generation. The least we can do is provide them with care in their own homes. A woman I know very well from my parish phoned me. She has to drive to the Kerry border every day to look after her father because they cannot get a carer. That is what she has to do. They cannot get the adequate hours.”
“Independent Ireland had asked the Government that there would be no means test for carers. It said that there should no means test for carers for one very good reason: how can you put a price on care? People are coming into people's homes for an hour. They are driving ten miles, driving to different parts of the county and giving an hour to a family member. The statistics show that with the way the birth rate is going at the moment, we will not have the population to care for the older generation - maybe in two decades' time when the Minister of State and I will be looking for care. There will be no carers if the Government disincentivises them now. I was very lucky that my father was cared for at home. As a family, we cared for him but we also had carers who came in to help us. They came in and lit a fire while we were out.”
“Independent Ireland and Independents are the only ones who have been talking up in Europe for Ireland and quality foods coming into Ireland. What are the rest of you doing over there? All you have done is try to stop Independents getting on committees to talk up for Ireland. It is about time we audited committees to see what Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are saying over at the committees, and any other MEPs over there from the other parties. Have they opened their mouths or are they just over there for the dollars, sitting on their backsides and forgetting about the people in Ireland and the quality of food that needs to come into this country? That is what this is about. Independent Ireland stood up for this country and for the quality of food coming into this country. It is about time you stood up for Ireland and not for yourselves.”
“Independent Ireland held a protest in Athlone where 27,000 people turned out from all across different areas around this country. Sinn Féin came. Even the Green Party came. It was not just about the farmers. They all came to support an Independent Ireland protest that was organised by Ciaran Mullooly, MEP, Deputy Michael Fitzmaurice and the Independent Ireland team. They came and supported it. I did not see People Before Profit there. I did not see the Labour Party there. I did not see the Social Democrats there. This is about the quality of food for the people of Ireland. I saw the Leas-Cheann Comhairle there and I saw other Deputies from Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. They do not believe in your silence in Europe.”
“We are responsible for under-18s, including children. Adults are responsible for themselves and their health and what they are putting into their bodies. We can try to put things in place to tell people that vapes are bad for them but they are putting them into their own bodies. I heard somebody mention it recently, and I actually told someone myself, that they might be better off to go out and put their lips around the exhaust of a car with the fumes coming out of it than breathing in what is in some of these vapes. It is unknown what is in these vapes but any person who gives or sells vapes to a child should be 100% held accountable, and I would be 100% behind that.”
“We are talking about recycling and looking after the environment, yet all of these vapes are being thrown on the ground. We now have an issue with refillable vapes as well because it looks like liquid cocaine and so on can be put into them and people could be on drugs while they are having a vape. One makes the decisions for oneself as an adult. If you go down that slippery road, you are an adult, but for any person who is not an adult and any person who gives these vapes to people who are under age, the full rigour of the law should apply. There are children from the ages of nine, ten and upwards involved. One responsibility that has not been mentioned is that of the parents who are themselves vaping and showing their children it is okay to vape. Accountability comes back to parenting as well.”
“We have generations upon generations of people trying to keep their shops open for the delivery of food and goods to people but who cannot, yet a pop-up shop can do so. I have massive concerns about the age group who are now using these vapes. Children as young as nine are getting vapes. They are getting strawberry and Coca-Cola flavours. How easily led are children at that age? There should 100% be a crackdown on vapes. When the smoking ban came in, the then Government said it tried to limit the number of people who were using cigarettes. It raised and raised the taxes on cigarettes. There are a lot more people addicted in this country to nicotine than there are people who are smoking. The highest rate is among people who are vaping. We are catching people throwing one-off vapes away.”
“I am a reformed smoker - I have not smoked a cigarette in 30 years. Then came in the smoking ban, which was targeted at adults. I do not agree with these one-off vapes but if one is an adult, one should have the common sense to know whether to use a vape. Personally, I would nearly prefer to see somebody smoke a cigarette than what is inside those vapes because their contents are unknown, as are the adverse reactions to them. If one is an adult, that is a decision one has to make. My issue is with the number of pop-up shops selling these vapes. We have had shops that were there for decades but had to close down because they could not make a living, yet these pop-up shops can set up on high-end streets and keep their doors open. They can make massive profits and keep the doors open by just selling vapes. It is absolutely crazy.”
“They now say they want to have this assessed. The cost of the assessment and the necessary works is €1 million and they do not have a penny to throw at it. I want to make the building safe and they are saying "No". I need the Minister's help in the new year to make sure we can get people back into towns and villages and into buildings that we can modernise while respecting the streetscape and iconic buildings. We must get people back into the upstairs of listed buildings.”
“If we keep the front facade, the sash windows and the roofscape, we could make it look like the old street, but we should allow people to modernise the inside of houses. I am not talking about iconic buildings. They must be protected. I am talking about buildings on the streets that people can live in. We must streamline the system. I have one building at the moment that is in the curtilage of a listed building, which is in the care of the OPW. Planning permission was granted to renovate the house, which we have done. Planning permission was also granted to extend the property, but we are still waiting to do that because when the planning permission was given, they never saw that there was a building at the back of it. The building looks lovely architecturally but it is actually dangerous and it will fall into a neighbour's property.”
“People lived in these buildings from the 1400s, 1500s, 1600s and all the way up along the line and there was no such thing as curtilage. Now the front facade and the front roof structure must be protected. If there are buildings that can be brought back into use for young people or anybody who wants to live in them, we must allow them to modernise the inside. I am talking about houses, not iconic buildings. I know of a case where a young couple was allowed to extend onto the back of their house but the front part was listed. This was a street house. They were made keep the timber. They said they could take down the timber, slab it and put the timber back up again. The costs would be massive.”
“I welcome any changes to amend planning legislation. Something I would like the Minister to look at in the new year is listed buildings and building over listed buildings. In Limerick, we have a lot of listed buildings and many buildings which are stopping young people from living over them. I have no problem with the fire regulations but the problem is that conservation rules mean the inside of these buildings cannot be altered to allow people to live over them, as was done for decades and centuries. We want to get people back into those living areas. We also need to look at the issue of buildings within the curtilage of a listed building. A property could be 30 m or 40 m away from a listed building but because it is within the curtilage, they say work must be sensitive to that. We need to make this work for people in the 21st century.”
“They did not even know what a greyhound was. The same thing is happening here today. They do not understand the process that is happening here. They did not follow the science. They are talking about a minority of people, saying 2%. What percent of us look after us in terms of the Garda? If we look at a percentage, how many people in this country are medical people? They look after a population of millions. The Deputies are talking about percentages. They should get their facts right before they start discussing things they know nothing about.”
“People are saying the foxes are making their way into the city and they are. People are feeding foxes in the city. If that is what they want to do, that is what they want to do. If there is overpopulation and no hunting, that will mean we cannot defend against what a fox does to our animals. A woman in Cavan got six stitches during the week defending her chickens. We are not talking about all day, every day. There is a hunting season as there is a slurry season. There is a season for everything. People stood up here today and said they are not from a veterinary background. There are vets involved in this. The veterinary service is involved in this. The Social Democrats last year tried to ban greyhound hunting. They were on the television saying it was desperate.”
“I watched everyone standing up here with notebooks in front of them when speaking. What they were saying was rhetorical stuff. It was the same stuff coming out of their mouths. There is no urban and rural divide here. I have people from an urban area who come out hunting in our area and they have done it for decades. I am from a farming background. I live in an area where there is cover behind me. The hunt comes through the back of our land every season. I have seen the devastation a fox has caused when a cow was calving outside in the field. I have seen what it has done to lambs. I have also seen what the hunt has done in curtailing foxes in an area. In our own place, we had two sets of hens. We always kept hens. They were actually savaged so now I do not have hens.”
“Fair play to the Leas-Cheann Comhairle. It is a Limerick thing. These are the same people that are looking at a children's hospital that has gone €1.2 billion over budget, yet the Government cannot look after the vulnerable in regard to blister packs.”
“They want the Government to allow them to put up a modular unit on a small piece of ground at the back of their house so they can take care of them. These are the same people that are taking care of their own family because the Government did not. The Government cannot look after a simple blister pack.”
“What did it do but lower the USC? It never changed the tax base. It gave a minimum wage increase and taxed people more on the minimum wage increase. It said it was doing something good but it was taking it all back off people again. My God, has it come to this for the people in this country that the Government is giving them this and then taking it back? It is not taking it back singly; it is taking it back on the double and treble. These are the same people that come looking to the Government for help with their electricity bills. These are the same people who are saying they are doing without food themselves to provide food for their children. These are the same people that come to the Government to say they want to bring their elderly parents home with them.”
“Blister packs are essential for people who live with dementia. They are an essential part of the lives of people on medication who live at home. It is even essential for first aid responders who come to houses looking for people, as they know what they have taken. The main point in the debate is that the blister packs are for the same people who have blisters on their hands from working all their lives to support the Government. These are the people who are now retiring. They are the same people to whom the Government gave €10 extra in the budget for their pension. Now, it is taking €20 back. Let us flip to the other side. These are the same people throughout the country from whom the Government has taken €3 billion in carbon tax this year. Let us look at the amount of income tax this Government has taken in the past 12 months.”
“What happens if a carer is coming in to take care of an elderly parent? It is simple legislation. Listen to the people who know about it. Our budgets have to be costed from now on by people who deliver on time, pay taxes and make profits. The Minister and Minister of State have to cost their Department's delivery of infrastructure, whether it is housing or any development. Costings have to be evenly based across the board to make sure their Department is accountable. That means they could deliver more for less.”
“We are going to introduce modular units at the back of houses, which will hopefully come about early next year, but the Government has only allowed an extra 5 sq. m to the planning guidelines when a two-bed apartment is 63 sq. m. We have asked the Government to bring it up to 63 sq. m to allow for liveable accommodation. If elderly people said they would move into the modular unit to let the family move into their house, it would not be big enough to accommodate them either because the Government does not have the foresight to allow for a two-bedroom unit to be built on-site, which would be 63 sq. m. We are now looking at 45 sq. m. Will it not look at this again? What happens if a person living in the modular unit gets sick and somebody has to move in to take care of them?”
“He has listened to us talking about delivery of public versus private, and looking at budgets for delivery of public buildings that are privately built and then taken over by the public. We are looking at delivery of infrastructure that will then be given over to the likes of Uisce Éireann, where it will be built on time and on budget, making money travel further. We will get delivery faster. That is what it is about. Young people trying to get on the property ladder have moved in with their parents. Under the laws that are there, even if they have a modular unit out the back at the moment, they are being penalised by the local authority because the Bill, for people trying to move home to try to save to get on the housing ladder, has not gone through the House yet.”