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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“In November 2021, I brought a truck in here to Leinster House for the same reason we are talking on this today, for the road hauliers. At a time of crisis in this country, they travelled the roads to make sure that we had food and energy in this country. I have a letter from Martin Ryan & Sons Transport, a big haulage company in Cappamore in County Limerick and I will give a small piece of it. It contains a summary of a table outlining the key cost increases imposed by Government policy in recent years. It states that they have calculated the direct impact on their business, drivers and vehicles based on the drivers' vehicles. The company has 173 employees and operates over 100 vehicles.”
“We now have a chance to deliver infrastructure for the people of the mid-west and the rest of Ireland if the Minister for Health is allowed to put procedures in place whereby we can have buildings in which we can actually care for people. I do not want money to stand in the way. I want delivery on budget and on time, and I believe the Minister can deliver in this regard. I hope nothing stands in the way. If the budget does not allow for it, there are people who will develop the projects for the Minister and give her the infrastructure she needs to ensure the delivery of care for people in a short length of time.”
“The Minister came to Limerick and we opened the 96 beds. I welcomed it. We now have options A, B and C, which we were looking for in Limerick for the care of the people of the mid-west. Developers have come to us saying that if the State does not have the money to build the facilities, they will build them for it and sell them back for €1 after 35 years. The reason I am saying this is that I hope our new Minister for Finance, who was in the position of the current Minister for Health and failed in it in areas where she is excelling, will not stop the funding for the delivery of healthcare. I hope a political situation does not develop in which the Minister for Finance sees the current Minister for Health as a threat to his leadership and also fails in this respect.”
“They are being tarred with the one brush. They are very upset with what the Government has done with people who have come here with no documentation, and that documentation has not been looked for. People who came here from other countries and have been working here, providing for people who are vulnerable, are disappointed with the Government for not vetting people coming into this country.”
“When people came here from Ukraine, the Irish people opened their houses and their hearts to help them. Many people from Ukraine have actually integrated and are staying here. They are working, contributing and paying tax here. Many people of different nationalities have immigrated into this country from Poland and other countries. They are now part of our workforce. They are now working here. They came here through a process, with documentation and everything, and they are working. They are seeing other nationalities coming in here that are abusing the situation. Due to the hatred that is being put out there, they now feel that people are looking at them as if they are here illegally. They are people who came into this country and are working. We asked them to come here, their lives are here and the next generation is here now.”
“Can you imagine having that system for the young drivers, the people who are trying to get on the road? Let us give them a cheaper insurance quote and get them on the road. They would be tracked as they went until they had their full licences. They would have the basic training about keeping within the rules of the road and would be rewarded for driving properly. That is an incentive for people who are trying to get on the road. Again, we need to tackle insurance fraud to make sure those people are held accountable.”
“If there are multiple claims, the Government and the authorities need to target those people and put them on a computer system to see if their claims are related or connected to others to save the people who are trying to get on the insurance ladder in these counties money. On younger drivers, where there is no public transport, we are trying to get learner and novice drivers onto the roads system. There was a system before that relied on a box. This box was put into the vehicle and, if you took off fast, braked too hard or went over the speed limit, it registered it. It was like having your parent sitting beside you telling you to slow down, drive on or be careful. The box was recording and the insurance company had a full set of data on your driving, your speed and everything else. It rewarded you if you drove properly.”
“We have looked into this and the number of claims being made by the same people or families in the one area have not been curtailed by the insurance companies. Looking at it from an insurance fraud perspective, a family and their wider relations could have made multiple insurance claims and the people of their county are now paying for them because a computer system says there are extra claims in the area. That is fraud. We need to target people making fraudulent claims. If somebody has an accident, that is fine but where someone claiming for an accident has had ten or 12 accidents before, that is a problem. If people have one, that is fine. They may have two. If they have three, questions should be asked.”
“I will start with insurance and insurance fraud. Insurance fraud is being paid for by all the rest of the people who are trying to get insured. Let us say a person is trying to insure their vehicle in Limerick, Tipperary, Cork or Clare. If we look at the same vehicle across the different counties, it seems to be the insurance rates are higher where the cities are. We did a small synopsis with a Toyota Corolla. We took the same vehicle with a 1.4 litre petrol engine and looked for insurance for the same person across all the sectors. There was a difference of €900 in Tipperary, €400 in Cork and €700 in Clare. It is the same vehicle but in different counties. The companies use geographic information systems to see how many claims are made in each individual county but they work on the basis of the whole county.”
“When is the Government going to give something back to people who are working? The working person in this country has no problem paying for the people who cannot work, for example, those who are disabled. All they want is a reward. By reducing the USC in the budget and not changing the tax base, the Government has already taxed workers this year. Everything the Government is doing is on the tax base; it is doing nothing for employees, employers or consumers. All it is doing is increasing the cost of living.”
“Many employers will pay it to keep employees in case they are thinking of going somewhere else. That is one side of it. The other side is when we look at the hospitality sector, which has had three wage increases for the lower earners. Those three wage increases were again passed on to the consumer. Then we got the reduction in VAT from 13.5% to 9%, which was great, but it will not be introduced until June or July of next year. That is six or seven months down the road. What did the Government do in terms of a sneaky tax? The tax on renting a room has risen from 13.5% to 23%. The Government added 10% to the rent-a-room tax. It said it would reduce VAT by 4%, but the tax for those who have conferences or anything like that has gone from 13.5% to 23%. Who ends up paying again? The consumer.”
“That is the problem I have with auto-enrolment. I do not have an issue with it as an employer, but I have been talking to employees who do have an issue with it. Auto-enrolment is also going to drive inflation because any business model is based on the need to make a percentage rate. We have seen what happens with food produce and transport networks across this country when there are increases. If the model changes, the cost is added on. Three years ago, a cup of coffee cost €1.50. Now the price is close to €4. In places, it is €4.20. Inflationary costs are added on to a business base. Businesspeople understand that. I am a businessperson. Again, the consumer will pay for this. The employer pays, so the employer has got to add it on. Employees say they will not take a wage cut, which is how they look at it.”
“If people have already been paying their taxes and everything else and they are due their statutory pension and the Minister wants them to pay into a pension out of their wages now, it is wrong that they are only going to get the same amount of money and nothing extra. There has to be a carrot, but the Minister did not allow for a carrot. Those people are employed and are paying their taxes at the moment. I agree that auto-enrolment is a good thing for young people. We had to start sometime. However, for the people who have been paying through the years and who are my age and older - there are a lot of them in this Chamber who are in the same situation I am in - there would be no extra benefit for when they get to the age of 66 or 67. Where is the carrot for hard-working people? Nothing extra is going to be given to them.”
“I am going to start with the auto-enrolment pension scheme. A pension scheme is good if it is introduced at the right time. To get down to brass tacks, for those who do not know, auto-enrolment means 1.5% for an employer and 1.5% for an employee. After six months, the employee can opt out of the 1.5% if he or she does not want to pay it. Is there any extra benefit for somebody in their 40s, 50s or 60s? What about people who are coming up to 64, 65 or 66? Is there any extra benefit for them in their pension if they pay into the auto-enrolment scheme? The answer I got in that regard was "No". If a person wants to pay a pension now, he or she will get nothing extra when he or she reaches pension age. Auto-enrolment should be brought in at a low base for young people and all the way up the line. That is the case 100%.”
“We have not even looked at what it is going to cost to maintain the outside of the children's hospital due to all the curvatures and glass. It is about the care within a building. The old two-storey Georgian houses have been here for generations and are beautiful-looking houses. They are boxes. Why can we not just build a box and care for the people who deserve the care, and stop all these expensive designs? It is about the care and the equipment in the building, it is not about the look of a building.”
“I thank the Tánaiste. It is unusual we are 100% agreed on both sides of the House that this needs to happen. This is a health emergency and under Covid guidelines we were led to do an awful lot of things under health emergencies. We had John Wall with us yesterday as a patient safety advocate. We have an emergency. Why can we not use emergency powers and legislate that this happen now? We have the commitment of the House that it needs to happen now. The people of the mid-west need this now. The biggest thing here is we have gone almost €1 billion over budget with the children's hospital here in Dublin. That would build the hospital in Limerick and cater for a lot of people. Build a box and put a box on top of that box.”
“We want a new hospital for the mid-west region. The lives of people in Limerick, Tipperary and Clare are at risk unless we deliver this. I have been critical of UHL since the start. I am delighted the previous management are gone. I am delighted with the management there at the moment because they are working with everyone who was at the meeting yesterday. People could not speak highly enough of the management in situ. Bernard Gloster is retiring. He is a massive loss, but replacing him is in the Government's hands and whoever takes his place better be as good as he is because otherwise we are going down the same rabbit hole again.”
“They said A and B plus C. I do not want this going back into Departments and being buried under paperwork with somebody getting paid stupid money to come up and not deliver. We have had private hospital built in Limerick in 16 months. It was on budget and on time. Let use that model against the spending on the hospitals delivered by the Department. Let us compare one to the other. That private hospital contractor made profit on that building, so why can we not build our hospitals more cheaply, and we take the profit margin out? Why do we not go to the private sector to deliver it? I want A, B and C. I am going to work with everyone who was in the room. There were other people who could not attend who are also in favour of this. The Minister, Deputy O'Donovan, is here. I hope he backs this as well.”
“I raise UHL. We will start off on a positive note. The Minister opened the 96-bed unit in UHL on 13 October. We waited a year and a half for the HIQA report but we have it now. It states exactly what I and others have been saying here for years about UHL. It came out with an A, B and C plan. My view is we need A, B and to work for C. Option A would involve expanding the capacity at UHL. Option B envisages the ED staying on the existing site, along with the infrastructure for critical and complex surgical procedures. Option C is a new hospital for the future. Again on a positive note, a meeting was held here yesterday, convened by Deputy Cooney. It was well-attended by all parties and none. For the first time I was at a meeting where everyone in the room was on the same wavelength. It was 100%. All parties were there.”
“I thank the Minister. Again, we are talking about health. The other side of things is that given the number of wind turbines that have been pushed through planning at the moment, it is not about wind energy. Cian Murtagh is a lecturer in Sligo and he has looked at Ireland’s energy mix. For the month of October, we paid €115 million in curtailment costs and over €300 million in the last three months, taking money from every household to give to people who are profiting from wind energy. This is a business case in terms of what people are doing. They are flooding the market with these now. How many of the wind energy turbines in this country are owned by Ireland? I believe 63% are owned by companies based in China. Our wind energy is a land-take and the energy will not be ours by the time it finishes. It will be gone to different countries.”
“How many High Court judgments will it take before the Government accepts that wind noise is causing health implications? People and communities in Limerick are taking up their own alliances because of the health implications where wind turbines are put up. Wind turbine planning applications are being lodged at a massive rate. The wind turbines that have gone up to date never involved health organisations. The HSE was not involved in the planning applications of the ones that exist. They are ignoring the health implications. Again, I am not against wind energy. I am against locations that are causing health implications for people living in those areas. People are entitled to their own health in their own residence. All they are asking for is to have their health protected.”
“At the outset, I am not against wind energy. I am against the health implications of wind energy. Will the Minister acknowledge that the High Court has now ruled in multiple cases that wind turbine noise can constitute a nuisance, even where developments are compliant with planning conditions, and confirm the specific advice the Department received from the Office of the Attorney General in March 2024 regarding this matter? What are his plans to implement that advice to ensure that Ireland’s regulatory framework adequately protects affected residents?”
“Sorry, we are here to help people. Branding Limerick like that is not nice. We are here to help people all the time, and Deputy Sheehan should not say such things. The whole country has a drug problem. Naming one place by itself is not right”
“If none of them works and the medicinal cannabis does work for people to give them a quality of life, I would be for that, as long as it is legislated for tightly and controlled. We should look at the Portugese model. If we take control away from the dealers, we might actually halve the problem. Something has to be done differently. All we are doing at the moment is punishing people who are addicted. Recently, Deputy Conor Sheehan said that Limerick was the cocaine capital of Ireland. It is not.”
“I believe Portugal has tried something slightly different. There, certain drugs have been legalised in a controlled way. Here, it was shown that people who were suffering from serious illnesses could be helped by medicinal cannabis after every other drug had been tried. In some cases, the only thing that actually worked was medicinal cannabis to give that person a quality of life. Under tight legislation and under tight laws, I would like to see those people have a quality of life if that is the only quality of life that is there, if the other drugs are not there to help them. We have legalised drugs in this country through our chemists and others, which are prescribed drugs for people.”
“Nobody wants to see people with addiction punished while the dealers get rich. In Limerick, Sr. Concilio in Cuan Mhuire has done an amazing job trying to help people with addiction. The centre has opened a farm and a garden centre to reintroduce people into the workplace. She has done brilliant work. A former hurler from Limerick, Ciaran Carey, has counselling services doing the same, using people who have suffered from addictions themselves, because they know what they talking about. We see people doing all this great work and then we are talking about punishing people who have addictions and we are letting the dealers go free. They go free because they are able to get the drugs into this country, the same way as food can be imported. There is nothing stopping them coming in. We need to try something different.”
“I thank the Taoiseach for his vague answer. The bottom line is the taxpayer will pay regardless. The vintage clubs are very important to me for one reason along with the men's sheds and women's sheds. The vintage clubs look after our ancestors and our past and use it for the present to raise funds. The Taoiseach is right. I did leave Fianna Fáil a good number of years ago and am now a member of Independent Ireland, a political party for the people of Ireland. It gives me a voice which I did not have within the Fianna Fáil Party and I will keep using that voice. I want a clear answer to my question. Will the taxpayers of Ireland have to pay for a candidate who is not running? With the laws that are in place, will the taxpayers pay?”
“If he reaches a certain percentage, even though he is not running for the presidency, will the taxpayers of Ireland pay for the mistake of running him in the first place during a cost-of-living crisis and after a budget that gave nothing back to working people but increased their taxes? This is the question the members of the Taoiseach's party are asking. They want to know whether it will be refunded for putting up a ghost candidate during a cost-of-living crisis.”
“No matter who we ask when we go around the county, and all vintage clubs across the country are doing it, even if people do not have a few bob themselves, they come up with it and support people who are vulnerable. We are having a presidential election. I will not mention any names but we have a candidate who has withdrawn from the race. This question is coming from members of the Taoiseach's party who have asked me this so I need to ask him. Is it correct that if that candidate who has withdrawn gets 12.5% of the vote, the Government will be reimbursed for the money it has spent to date and the taxpayers of this country will end up having to pay for that? It will come out of the public purse, which is raised by taxpayers.”
“I have some great friends with me today. I have been involved in Greybridge classic club for the past 15 years. The youngest member, Louise Crowley, is in the Gallery and she is the Limerick IFA chairperson - the youngest chairperson in the organisation. She has been a member of the club since it started and is also its secretary. The Macra na Feirme president and the outgoing president, Elaine Houlihan, are here as well. These people have been working around the area raising money for charities and people in need. Cliona's Foundation is one of the main beneficiaries of the Greybridge classic club. A total of €300,000 has been raised since its beginnings. We have a Christmas light run on 30 December in Limerick to raise money for vulnerable people, including Cliona's Foundation and Milford hospice.”
“The same Government that is going to the gutter has destroyed this nation. They destroyed their own party members. In the most recent election campaign, in the county of Limerick, Fianna Fáil was down 3,000 votes and Fine Gael was down 2,000 votes. There was a displacement of 8,000 votes but out of those 8,000, only 4,500 gave me the votes. That means 4,000 people at the previous election did not vote. There is a pattern. They do not believe any more that there is democracy in this country. That is shown today by this motion and what the Government has done. In terms of what it is trying to achieve, it forgot the grassroots. It will be reminded of that shortly.”
“It is no wonder that we see what we see when we look at the turnout and the rural versus urban divide when it comes to voting patterns. The highest turnout for any election by percentage occurs in rural areas. That is because of the grassroots. They all came from the county one time, moved to the cities and made their lives there. The grassroots grew up with politics. They saw everything that happened, listened to all the stories and wore different colours with pride because it was the party they followed. Now, they see a mockery being made of it by the Government that is in here today. When I look at the final couple of days of the presidential election campaign, I see the gutter stuff coming from people. They went into a candidate's past and said that they did this or that.”
“Fine Gael gave a direction to its councillors to block anyone who wanted to run. This sounds like a dictatorship. Now, we are going to have the lowest turnout ever in the history of the State for a presidential election. Anyone looking in here from the outside, people from all parties and none, are saying to me, that after all the years they have been doing so, they are not even going to vote. I could not believe it. People who used to carry me to vote are telling me they are not even going to go out to vote. What have Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael done to the loyal members of their parties, the people who put them in here time after time? They dictated to their supporters that they will not give them the basic right of democracy of the choice of President. Is that what we are telling the people of Ireland?”
“I support the motion. The Minister spoke about the Act. The Act should be something the Government reflects on when it comes to presidential election campaigns. This motion is about having people on the island of Ireland be allowed to vote in presidential elections. I am old school. For me, there are 32 counties in Ireland, not 26. I will never change from that. Out of respect for everyone in this country, I will say that it is the island of Ireland. In the farcical run-up to this presidential election, parties in this Dáil stopped candidates and gave direction to their members and councillors to block candidates running for the office of President of Ireland. Fianna Fáil did not even allow one of its own members to be nominated to go before its convention to run. Instead, it picked someone from outside the grassroots of the party.”
“When election year comes around, the Government is going to hand out the sweets again and say it is great but it is going to put people through a couple of years of torture and stress as they try to keep their heads above water. An awful lot of agencies have told me that mothers and fathers are going without food to make sure their children are fed. They are working and they have to do without food. Ask the people who are supplying the food banks and they will tell us the people who are coming to them. People have put houses over their heads, have not been a burden on the State and have agreed to work hard for the less well-off and the Government does not give them any bit of a reward. I ask the Minister to look at the vulnerable people in this country. They are now the people who are working.”
“The USC was brought in as a temporary measure for five years, but it still stands. The Government reduced it, when it should not be there any more, and it raised the tax base. How can the Government look working people in the eye when the price of food has gone up, the price of fuel in their car and getting to work has gone up and the price of transporting their children anywhere has gone up because of inflation? There is no rewards system in place for people who work. Let nobody be under any illusion. The Minister is holding the purse closed because he reckons the Government can hold together for the next couple of years.”
“I acknowledge the movement on the income limit for carer's allowance, which went up to €1,000. There should be no price put on caring. There should be no means test for caring. Caring is caring and there should be no price on it. Regardless whether people have the means, the carer's allowance should not be means tested. Carers provide care that the Government cannot provide. They save the Government money on care because they are caring for people for whom the Government cannot provide care. There should not be a means test. I have spoken previously on the universal social charge. By lowering the USC without moving the tax bracket up, the Government taxes people more. This budget should have been about giving back to people who are working. Give them back something, however small, rather than taking more.”
“I acknowledge and welcome the 9% VAT rate for hospitality, hairdressers and all the others concerned. However, when other budgets are put in place, measures apply straight away. If the price of diesel is going up, that can be done tonight, but when it is a cut in the VAT rate, people have to wait to July. A lot of businesses will not be in business by July because they were banking on the VAT rate coming down to sustain the three wage increases that have been applied in the past two and a half years. It is hard enough to keep the doors opened. If the VAT reduction had come in now, people would have looked favourably on not increasing their prices. The cost of everything, such as energy, is going up. If there is a base margin, prices have to go up.”
“They have to make profit to stay open and to pay for their employees who work for them because they want to support their families. Our Government and Departments waste money hand over fist and there has never been accountability. I ask supporters of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael to please not support this Government any more. If they do, their children and grandchildren will not have a future.”
“They have never seen one reward from this Government. This is coming from Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael supporters who were looking for them to lead but history repeats itself over and over. What is a sign of madness? If I keep doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result, it is a sign of madness. I ask the people who have supported Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael for years to please, for their children's sake and their grandchildren's sake, stop supporting them. They are making the same mistakes over and over: no accountability and money being wasted time and again. Hard-working people, hard-working companies and the self-employed in this country, if they do one thing wrong they are penalised because there is accountability.”
“We have been discussing that one of us needs to get a second job due to the rising costs of everything. After this budget, both of us need a second job. We have two children. Our eldest son deferred his college as we couldn't afford his fees and keep him supported, and now he has moved to Australia. I can't see the future for him to return home. Our youngest son will probably follow him in the next few years because the same thing. They see how hard their parents work and that they have nothing left over at the end of the month for a treat. They are front-line service workers. Regardless of what sector they are in, the people of this country wear their heart on their sleeve. They work tirelessly in every sector, from low income to high income. They work hard and they pay taxes for the less well-off and the vulnerable.”
“It lowered the USC, which to me is illegal because the Government told people it was a temporary charge. It also froze taxes. There was no movement up in the tax brackets. What did it do? It took it from one side and put it on the other side. The Irish Independent says this today: married couples with three children are less well-off today; married couples with one child are less well-off today, cohabitating couples are less well-off today; single mothers with one child are less well-off today; and single renters in high-income jobs are less well-off today. I will read something from a person who emailed me today: I am a nurse. I'm in full time, 37.5 hours a week and whatever overtime I can get. My husband is a bus driver and works full time, 40 hours per week.”
“The universal social charge, USC, was introduced as part of the then Government's effort to stabilise finances during an economic downturn. The USC is a tax payable on total income. It was said at the time it was a temporary measure. It is a bit like everything else in here. The guidelines for wind turbines were temporary but we were told we would get there. That was in 2006. In 2011, another temporary measure was brought in. That was 14 years ago. What is a universal charge? The universal social charge is a tax that applies to most types of income, including wages, salary, bonuses, pensions and self-employment income. USC is calculated based on gross income before any deductions or exemptions are applied. So what did the Government do in the budget? Do its members think the people of this country are fools?”
“Fianna Fáil was once known as the workers' party; Fine Gael was once known as the farmers' party. Both parties have turned their back on the hard-working people who supported them and put them back into this House. They put the two fingers up to them and told them, "We don't care." Constituents voted for those parties or voted for me and I work for all of them. I work for everyone. I do not differentiate between parties and non-parties. They are coming to me now - these are people in their 70s, grass roots of parties - and they say, "Richard, what has gone wrong with this Government? Our children and our grandchildren are going to pay the price for this Government." I will take the Minister of State back to 2011.”
“These people who worked all their lives were hoping they would get the benefit of what they worked all their lives for. The Government gave nothing to farming or to tillage sectors. Consider people who must use transport. What does the Government do? It increases the carbon tax again. Did the Government not look at the age of the vehicles on the roads at the moment? People cannot afford to upgrade their cars so the Government puts a carbon tax on those vehicles. That is what the Government has done. The carbon tax is on vehicles such as the trucks coming from the ports with food. They are travelling up and down the country. They come from Dublin Port which charges a tax. There are also transport costs, including putting tires on vehicles. Across the board, what does the Government do? It is puts on another tax.”
“I have given the Government every opportunity but we have to waste money on the design of hospitals that are not even opened. From now on, I want this Government to design, deliver and build and to provide care in the building. I want design and delivery. On Uisce Éireann, the Government goes on about building houses and that it is going to give a certain rate to build apartments. However, it cannot build anything without infrastructure and it is giving billions upon billions of euro to Uisce Éireann, which has not brought in one project on budget or on time. Would anyone be in business tomorrow morning if that was the case? No they would not. The Government has given €10 to the elderly while on the other hand it put up the price of a bag of coal. Despite food inflation, it gave €10.”
“How many hospitals could we have built on the overspend on the children's hospital, which has not even opened? In Limerick, a report that took 16 months to produce told the Government what was needed in UHL. People are in here giving out about UHL every day. I was one of them. It now transpires that UHL is looking after more patients coming through their doors from Limerick, north Cork, north Kerry, Clare and Tipperary. Per head, it has fewer people on trolleys based on the numbers who go through other hospitals. That is a fact. It came out in the report. We asked the Government to lift the ban so we could have more people working in the hospital to look after and care for the people but it did not do that either. A report has now come out and it has given the answers I gave the Government on the first day in this Dáil.”
“If someone is self-employed in this country, he or she prices a job for somebody, goes in, does it on budget and on time to make a profit, and pays his or her taxes. That is accountability. Our Government can go and have a €853 million overspend on a children's hospital that is curved, which means extra maintenance after it has been built and it never can be extended onto. All the furniture, blinds and everything else are special order and more expensive when it should have been about the caring in the hospital. Build a box. Put all the caring stuff into that box and look after the vulnerable people. How many nurses, doctors and assistants could have been paid for by the embarrassing Government overspend on the children's hospital?”
“He questioned how he was going to make his children go out to work and ask them to work for the vulnerable and for their own future, which they have no problem doing, so they can support people when their own Government is treating people not even like second- or third-class citizens. It is not treating people like citizens at all. People thought slavery was gone out of the dictionary until it came to this Government. That is what they are saying to me. The Government is now saying that the USC, which was brought in as a temporary measure, will give people more benefits. It should have been doing this already. It was brought in as a temporary measure and the Government kept it there. When is the Government going to stand up and look after the working person?”
“They have built and paid for their own house. They are mortgaged to the hilt. One of their children is now going to college and they are getting €500 towards their college fees when last year they got €1,000. They got a 50% decrease in payment and are paying more tax. With the giveaway budget last year, we thought there was hope that the Government was going to look after the working class people. The man I spoke to said he would be better off at home, not working. His family would qualify for more if he was not working. His children would get educated in this country if he was not working.”