Thomas Gould
Cork North-Central · Sinn Féin · Ireland
“I stand here in the shadow of Cork men and women who fought and died for Irish freedom. I think today of Mary MacSwiney, who went from her brother's deathbed to this Dáil. She was the true embodiment of a rebel. When we talk about the cost of Irish unity, Mary MacSwiney also spoke about the cost of Irish freedom in the Dáil.”
“The truth is the Six Counties have been economically trapped and cannot reach their full potential under Britain. If these economies were to grow like Cork and Galway, they would be a net positive financial impact on Irish unity.”
“The difference that Irish unity could make is much more tangible for them now. Ireland unfree shall never be at peace. I want to send a message to all of those young people. The cost of unity is the cost of their future. It is the cost of the life they could build here.”
“I welcome the debate today. Ireland has a proud history and tradition of myths and legends, from Cú Chulainn to Tír na nÓg to the Children of Lír, which have passed down through the generations. However, the latest myth and legend some people are telling is far more damaging. There are people who claim that we cannot afford Irish unity.”
“Professor Seamus McGuinness of the ESRI clearly stated that FitzGerald's hypotheses were based on a scenario that could never happen. Do you know what that reminds me of? For years, when we talked about climate change, climate change deniers were rolled out to give their opinions, even though all the science was against them.”
“The Minister of State referred to the new 90-minute fares and the fact that people can tap on and tap off. I want to let her know that the fare is €1.90 but next week, it will be €2.40. That is a 26% increase in the fare. How can that be justified?”
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“Parents in Cork were promised in 2022 that a new special school would be delivered in Carrignavar. Three years later, and only because of the campaign led by parents whose children will have no school place this August, and those parents campaigning and sleeping outside the doors of the Dáil, has the Government finally acted. Now there is work being done. Does the Minister know what was not done? There is no capacity for water treatment. Since 2013, Carrignavar has had no capacity. We are talking about putting a special school in. We are doing up an old primary school building that is available, but we have no water treatment. In the meantime, as the Minister knows, children are being bused or taxied from Knocknaheeny down to Fermoy, as they will be in August. That is the bones of an hour's drive.”
“The Convent Primary School in Mallow is looking for an extension and we are told there is a study going on. The Patrician Academy in Mallow has 43 children and is on a waiting list for a secondary school. There was a new school built eight years ago. It is unbelievable.”
“The Minister spoke about school completions, the number of people working on them and the work that is being done. My eldest daughter will be 19 in less than two weeks. She attended Gaelscoil Pheig Sayers when she was five. I was on the board of management. A new school is going to be built, probably in two or three years. It has been sanctioned and is going through design. Gaelscoil Pheig Sayers has been looking for a school building for 40 years, since 1985. It is unbelievable how slow this country is to deliver projects. The conditions in the school are very bad. It was formerly located above Na Piarsaigh GAA club. Only for them, they would not have a school at all. The school then moved to a business park and then to another school. They were like nomads.”
“The Minister of State made a point about school places in Cork and Kerry. We have schools that are looking to put in ASD classes. They are crying out for ASD classes. Scoil Eoin in Ballincollig is looking to put them in, but it cannot. It has no room. It is waiting on a rebuild. It looks like Scoil Barra in Ballincollig will be offered prefabs. It has land it wants to build on to put in ASD classes. We have the Padre Pio school in Churchfield, one of the best schools for integration between mainstream and ASD classes. It has taught special and additional needs children in prefabs for 15 years. These are the most vulnerable children we have, yet here we are with the Minister of State listing out everything the Government is doing. I have a list in Cork of people who are looking for places for their children and they cannot get them.”
“Remember, the people rose up once against water charges and if they have to do it again they will. I thank everyone, from the water workers to the water campaigners and the Right2Water movement, for standing up and saying "No water charges". I ask the Minister to please support the Bill if he is really honest.”
“People have a lack of trust in him and the Government. No one loves Uisce Éireann like Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael do. In the midst of the public anger and outcry at water charges when the Government tried to bring them in, people stood up. The thing about Uisce Éireann is that the lack of transparency is unbelievable. It might as well be in Area 51 for what we know and can get out of it. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have made it clear. Their own TDs come out and attack Uisce Éireann when things go wrong but, at the same time, they have turned a blind eye to decades of underinvestment. We have water pipes in Cork that have been there longer than the history of the State. If the Minister really wants the people to trust him, I ask him to support the Bill.”
“Uisce Éireann has refused to supply the people of Cork with clean, safe, reliable drinking water. You can imagine the anger people felt when it was suggested that water charges could come back and be introduced for excessive water usage. The public health advice from the HSE and by Uisce Éireann in Cork is to run your tap until the water runs clear. A man who contacted me ran his tap for six hours before the water was clear. He ran it for six hours and he needs to know that he will never be charged for following the public health advice. Instead of trying to bring in water charges by the back door, the Government should focus on ensuring the people of Cork have clean, safe drinking water. The Minister should support the Bill if he is guaranteeing us he does not want to bring in water charges.”
“Gabhaim buíochas. Officials from Uisce Éireann met with Cork City Council last night. They refused to attend the meeting if it was in public and failed to answer many of the legitimate questions posed by councillors. I met them in February and I was told I would receive responses to my questions that evening. It took a full month before I got a response back. Uisce Éireann is a law unto itself. It is a public service body which provides no service and hides from the public. I can only imagine the harm that would be done if it could charge people for water. People in Cork are already paying water charges because the water from the taps is so dirty that they have to go to the supermarket every week to buy water in order to have clean water to drink.”
“The Taoiseach will have seen the campaign run by parents to get special school places for their children both nationally and in Cork. They have fought a Trojan campaign. There was an announcement last week that there would be additional places but it is an absolute scandal that parents must go out and fight for their children's right to an education. In 2022, there was an announcement for the new special school in Carrignavar in County Cork. There is now a fear that this school will not be open in September and may not be opened at all. I have two simple questions for the Taoiseach. Have the capacity issues in Carrignavar been resolved? Will the new special school in Carrignavar be opened this year?”
“He used come out to coach our under-14 team every year. Why? It was because the kids would get to know a garda and would build up a relationship. It was good for him, good for the Garda and good for the community. That is the kind of stuff we need. Whether it is through education, sport, the arts, including music and dance, we need to work with young people to get them away from criminality.”
“In the past couple of years, I have seen a number of young people die by suicide, which is absolutely tragic, because of intimidation due to drug debts they had and their families being threatened. We need to be able to work with young people. The youth diversion scheme needs to be broader. It needs to go into clubs and schools. I am involved with a GAA club in Cork. It is a terrible thing to say, but I know a certain kid who will be gone and will not be playing by the time they are 14. We have volunteers who are running the teams and doing their best, but we know the kids who need the most help will not get it because we have just two or three volunteers helping out. Youth diversion projects should be working with this. There was a superintendent in Cork, Mick O'Loughlin, who was a former Cork player, a great GAA man and a great garda.”
“We sincerely want to work with the Minister on this. We will support positive initiatives but in the austerity years, funding for youth clubs, youth projects and education were all slashed, whether these were for diverse communities, the Travelling community or working-class areas. We need that funding restored. That is the first thing I ask for. Second, we need investment in more community policing, especially in areas where we know there is huge social deprivation. You can see it. It is there in part of the constituency I come from. There is a big cross-section where I come from, but certain areas need extra help. We need community gardaí on the ground.”
“I and some other Deputies and Senators met with the Construction Industry Federation in Cork last week. The figures it supplied us with are unbelievable. In Ballincollig, the figure for what was supposed to be delivered for 2028 was 3,947. Does the Minister know how many planning permissions have gone in? Only 125. In Blarney, they have planning permissions in for only 10% of the figure that is to be achieved by 2028. I had a question to the Minister last week about the situation with thousands of local authority houses boarded up across the State. Will he not just give the local authorities the resources and funding necessary to get these out? I have advocated that there would be a team in place in every local authority area to retrofit these houses and allocate them straight away.”
“We need to treat the housing emergency in the same way we treated Covid. The whole of Government needs to get behind this, as does the Opposition, to come up with solutions. I do not want to see 4,653 children in emergency accommodation. I asked the Minister's predecessor how many children must become homeless before the Government finally accepts its policies are wrong. I will ask the current Minister the same question. How many children need to become homeless before you will put your hand up and say "We cannot fix it"? Someone needs to take responsibility. I deal with families every day. I held a clinic on Monday. Of the 21 people I met, 17 had housing and four were homeless. This is on the watch of the parties opposite. Fine Gael has been in power for 14 years and Fianna Fáil for ten. It is getting worse every month.”
“The Minister brought forward an amendment here, but he failed to include sporting organisations, voluntary groups and many others which have been affected by the storm but are not being supported. I again ask the Minister to look at those groups.”
“They are cutting back on essentials like food, clothes and energy because they are struggling and running into arrears and borrowing money. While I know some people in my constituency are going to the credit union, others have to go to loan sharks because there is nowhere else they can get money. People are struggling and we are seeing high levels of stress and mental health issues, especially for parents with young children. The pressure on them is unbelievable. In 2023, Uisce Éireann made €329 million and made hundreds more millions in 2024. At the same time, Uisce Éireann cannot supply safe drinking water in Cork. We have a public health crisis in Cork while at the same time we have a cost-of-living crisis nationally. The Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael agenda of privatisation with Uisce Éireann or other aspects has caused huge damage.”
“In 2024, the ESB made €706 million in profit. At the same time the ESB and the Government have failed to put the proper infrastructure in place to prevent the loss of electricity that carried on for weeks in some areas because of Storm Éowyn. While the ESB decides what to do with €706 million in profit, some people are struggling to keep the light and heat on, and to pay their bills in the middle of one of the worst cost-of-living crises in the history of the State. That is not just me saying it or Sinn Féin saying it. Just this week, the ESRI has said that low-income households had to make high-risk changes to their finances to cope with the cost-of-living crisis. People are taking on more debt. They are using up whatever savings they have.”
“Many people do not have the money to buy water, and that is what Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have given to us. Cork City Council was to meet with Irish Water, the HSE and the EPA yesterday. The meeting was cancelled because Uisce Éireann will not come to city hall to answer questions. For two and a half years, we have had dirty and unsafe water in the second city in this State. The Deputy is coming in here talking about water charges. For five years, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have stopped-----”
“I wish to inform the Minister and the other Deputies talking about excess water usage that water in Cork is undrinkable. Some of the time, it is not fit for human consumption. In Gurranabraher, the area in which I live, test data is coming back stating that the levels of manganese are so high that the water is unfit for human consumption. Still, we cannot get a "do not consume" notice from Irish Water. The HSE is washing its hands of the matter and the EPA is running for cover. Right now, there are water charges in Cork, because people are spending between €20 and €30 per week on water. Does the Minister know that manganese can have a devastating effect on young children's neurological development? That is what the people of Cork are drinking.”
“Without criticising the Minister of State because he is new into the job - I said this to previous housing Ministers and I will say it to him now - will he please increase the funding? Many local authorities do not have the budgets to carry out that work. In Cork, there are hundreds of boarded-up void houses. Can the Minister of State imagine being homeless and looking at them? It is a sin.”
“I will try to be constructive but, following on from my colleague, €11,000 is a joke of an amount of money. I appeal to the Minister of State to increase that amount. A local authority that has a property that will cost between €50,000 and €80,000 to fix will leave it idle and fix the voids that are cheaper. The Government is only giving €11,000 plus the grant for the retrofitting, so call it €25,000. Therefore, all the cheaper houses are done first, but what happens then is that the local authorities are leaving the houses that are worst affected idle for years. Houses in my constituency have been left idle for three or four years and it then causes antisocial behaviour and dumping. Can the Minister of State imagine the environment in which the children are growing up?”
“The first thing the Minister is going to do will be to increase the level of homelessness. The Government brought in a scheme a number of years ago to ban evictions. The question must be asked about the banning of evictions and the getting rid of the tenant in situ scheme: who got to the Ministers and who got to the Government?”
“Right now, a couple can get €877.50 on HAP. Does the Minister of State know how many properties in Cork are listed on daft.ie today to rent for that amount of money? How many? The answer to that questions is none. The Minister of State talked about making changes to one of the few things that the Government got to work. Does he realise the cruelty his Government is inflicting on people now? It will drive families and people into both homelessness and emergency accommodation. Cork City Council has overachieved. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael TDs come in here criticising local authorities. We have a local authority that is doing it right, beating the targets and getting more people in. What is the Government going to do? It is going to limit the numbers. The decision to row back on this is a disgrace.”
“The Minister and Minister of State should go back and read the Act because I do not believe they have any understanding of what they are looking to do and what we are looking to do. We are looking to protect one of the few things that the previous Minister, Deputy O'Brien, did when he was in office by listening to all the Opposition parties when we put forward a tenant in situ scheme as a way of preventing homelessness. I will put an idea to the Minister of State. As a Corkman, he should understand this. There were 1,874 families and individuals given notices to quit in 2024. Cork City Council purchased 79 homes under the tenant in situ scheme, which prevented 79 families becoming homeless and going into emergency accommodation. There is something else the Minister of State might understand as a Corkman.”
“We are asking the Government for once to listen to Sinn Féin. We are coming along with ideas and solutions because the Government is out of them.”
“The Central Bank says the Government will miss its targets for the next three years. We know the Government's figures for last year were made up. The whole place knows that was a con. That was proved today when Deputy Mary Lou McDonald asking the Taoiseach a question. Four times the Taoiseach refused to answer the question about whether he knew the figures that came out last year and whether the Minister for Finance told him I am dealing with a family who are going to be evicted on 20 August, with three children on the spectrum. These three children will be homeless on 20 August. I have another mother with two children on the spectrum, with one child having sickle cell disease and they will be evicted on 29 April. I also know of another family. I have a list of them here. They are all being evicted because of Government policies.”
“When we look at them, it is the result of Government policy. Let us imagine how that lady felt when she saw the Taoiseach having a laugh and a joke with Donald Trump about how great things are in Ireland and the housing crisis. She was crying in front of me. She was crying because she will be homeless on 10 April. She was looking at the Taoiseach having a laugh and a joke. Where was this woman in all of this? Not alone this, I know another gentleman who has been 15 years on the list. He is facing eviction in June. When he went on the list, his three children were aged two, five and six. Now they are 17, 20 and 21. Their whole childhood was spent in insecure housing as a result of Government policy. They spent their childhood never being secure in a home. I will leave the Minister of State, Deputy O'Donnell, with a few comments.”
“I want to talk about a lady in my constituency who spent six years on the housing list and on the rental accommodation scheme, RAS. She is to be evicted on 10 April. Because of the sky-high house prices in Cork, the council is not allowed to buy the house under the tenant in situ scheme. The council has said the landlord is looking for too much. This lady has three children, the youngest of whom is three. This is the only home they know. This year, instead of Easter egg hunting and having a happy Easter, this family will be packing their bags. Where are they going to go on 10 April? Where will this lady and her three children live? She has no idea and no one has a solution for her. Can the House imagine the trauma that will be caused to those children if they have to go into emergency accommodation?”
“There are approximately 100 children with additional needs in Cork who do not have a school place this September. Their parents are putting up a Trojan campaign to force the Government to provide their children with a place. There are rumours that there will be an announcement this week about a new special school in Carrignavar. Will the Taoiseach confirm if that will be announced this week? Will it be open in September? Have the issues with water affecting the Carrignavar area been sorted out? I spoke to a mother before I came into the Chamber who is at her wits' end because her child has no school place. Children from Knocknaheeny are going to Macroom, children from Farranree are going to Carrigaline and another 100 children have nowhere to go. Every child is entitled to an education.”
“Blackstone Rovers pitch in Fairfield, next to Cathedral Celtic, was destroyed by scramblers. Brave volunteers are doing brilliant work in the community, but the reality is young people who destroy property with their scramblers and bikes know there are no gardaí around and the chances of being caught are very limited. Therefore, they feel they can do whatever they want. We need community gardaí on the ground. We have seen the same happen in Glenthorn Celtic, Ballincollig AFC and Knocknaheeny Celtic. It goes right across the city and is not confined to one area. We want more gardaí supporting clubs and volunteers. The Garda stations in Ballincollig, Blarney and Glanmire need to be open for longer. I am calling for extra resources, gardaí and civilian staff to make sure that happens. We need gardaí on the ground.”
“We will go back to another area where the Government is failing. In Cork city, figures show that there are 26 fewer gardaí compared with the end of 2023 and a staggering 61 fewer gardaí compared with two years ago. At the same time, over the past 12 months, burglaries, thefts and extortion have increased by 53% in the southern region. Last year, my constituency was subjected to a terrifying ordeal involving numerous petrol bombs, shootings and attacks on innocent homes where people were mistakenly identified. We saw what happened to people in the past who were terrorised for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. People are scared and the one thing they want to see is gardaí on the streets so they know there is someone there keeping an eye out and making sure there is law and order. People deserve to be safe in their homes.”
“They are crying out for help and all the Government wants to do is give more Ministers of State more expenses and waste our money.”
“As another example, in Cork, a total of €335,000 was spent on robot trees. It is unbelievable. Another €20,000 is being spent to maintain them. They are glorified seats and benches. There is no accountability. Who is being taken to task? Who is explaining how this happened? More important, who is going to say it will never happen again? Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are so out of touch. Last week, figures on homelessness were released. There were 10,683 people homeless, including 4,603 children. The Government is wasting millions while people are stuck in emergency accommodation. On Saturday, there will be a march in Cork for parents whose children do not have school places in special classes or ASD units. How can the Government explain the waste to those parents? Their children have nowhere to go in September.”
“It was intended to commemorate and remember the Kilmichael ambush and Tom Barry, Tomás Mac Curtain, Terence and Mary MacSwiney, the Delaney brothers, the Ballycannon boys and so on, but instead it was siphoned off for this fireman's hut. Now Cork has a glorified shed. It is an insult to their memory but it is an even bigger insult to ordinary people who are struggling every day with the cost of living. The Government is going to blame Cork City Council, the OPW, the National Gallery, RTÉ and the Arts Council, but the buck stops with the Government. It is in charge and it is allowing this unbelievable waste of money. The first item of legislation it passed when it got into the Dáil gave expenses to Ministers of State across the board. That was the Government’s priority.”
“There was €4,500 for the door, €13,200 for the plinth and steps and €141,000 for site works. You would think we were talking about building a mansion, but instead we are talking about fixing up a small fireman's hut in Cork City Council. A total of €361,000 has been spent on repairing this hut and it is not finished yet. I have spoken to contractors about this and they told me these prices are exorbitant. They said it is unbelievable the sums that have been spent and wasted. The hut is 8 ft high and the scaffolding to put around it costs nearly €5,000. This came from money that had been set aside for the decade of centenaries to commemorate our history and educate people about it.”
“What has happened is that it seems a number of businesses made a mistake when they applied for the ICOB 1 grant. Due to that, some of them did not follow up for the second ICOB. When they went for the third grant, even though they were eligible for the power up grant, because they made a mistake at the start, they did not get it. Is there any chance the Minister will reopen that grant for people who qualified for it but made an initial mistake? I have contacted his office, as has Deputy Louise O'Reilly, who is our spokesperson on this. These are genuine businesses that need that money-----”
“What is the number of businesses in Cork that received the power up grant; the number of businesses that received the increased cost of business grant, ICOB 1; and the number of businesses that wrote to the Department requesting assistance because of a mistake that was made in the initial ICOB application, which then prevented access later on to the power up grant?”
“I will make one final point. A Deputy spoke a minute ago about pushing data centres out to the west coast. The west coast has been without power for weeks. They cannot get people in their homes, their schools or their colleges and we have Deputies here talking about sending data centres out there.”
“Fixing the app will not fix the crisis in the bus service in Cork but it will at least give people the information they need to know if they will get a bus or if a bus will be there, whether a bus will be five minutes or 20 minutes or will not come at all, one of these famous ghost buses. We have a Minister of State with responsibility for digitalisation and a Minister of State with responsibility for digital transformation, and this in itself shows the issues in our public service. Some hospitals are still operating on paper files in 2025 and with the technology that is out there, and we are talking about AI. If we cannot get our hospitals, which are a vital sector, right, then this all needs to be looked at and delivered on. People need to be able to depend on their information and vulnerable services need to be updated.”
“It says it is a minimum of eight minutes, and possibly longer, and that is without any congestion. When the bus gets to the bottom of the road, the app tells people three minutes. That is not the truth. That is not the reality. Drivers cannot feed into the app, the control room in Capwell cannot feed into the app, and what we have is a bus service run by Bus Éireann and an app run by the NTA that is virtually useless. We talk about technology. How can we genuinely talk about the future of technology when people in the second largest city in this State are using an app that belongs in the Stone Age? In 2007, Google introduced real-time information on Google Maps. Seventeen years later, we are not using it to deliver reliable information on public transport.”
“We are talking about AI and the future of technology in the State. The reality is that while technology has moved forward in leaps and bounds in some areas, we still have large portions of our public service operating off systems that are from the last century. The bus app in Cork that is run by Bus Éireann and the NTA is one of the most unreliable and useless pieces of technology or apps that people could have on their phones. This is because instead of using real-time information, the app operates on paper-based timetables. These timetables tell us the bus on Ballyhooly Road, in my constituency, will be three minutes. It has to do four stops in rush-hour traffic. If the driver were driving a jet, they could not do it in three minutes. I checked it on Google Maps.”
“Do the Ministers of State realise how long a year is for a child in crisis? Do they realise how distraught the parents are when they look at their children and cannot help them? This Government is talking about early intervention and providing resources, but they need it now. They need it today. We need an urgent intervention in CAMHS in Cork and Kerry. We have seen scandals and apologies but this Government has failed to deliver. It has failed the children of Cork and Kerry 100% when it comes to CAMHS. People do not want apologies. They want this Government to put the money, therapists and supports in because, God forbid, there are children who are at serious risk.”
“When she was eventually accepted on to the list, she was told that it would take two and a half years to be seen. When she contacted me, she wrote that her family was in crisis. These are just examples of the countless cases with which I and others are dealing. These children will be adults some day. What will happen to them after they have been failed? Often the initial referral is for a minor issue, but because there is no support and nobody to help them, their anxiety escalates and their depression grows. Parents fight tooth and nail for their children but they are meeting a dead end when it comes to CAMHS in Cork and Kerry because the waiting list is so long. More than 1,000 children are on the CAMHS waiting list in Cork and Kerry and one third have been waiting more than a year.”
“There is a crisis in children's mental health services in Cork and Kerry. A total of 60% of all children on waiting lists for CAMHS appointments for more than one year are in Cork and Kerry - 60% in just two counties. Hundreds of children experiencing severe mental health issues are on a waiting list while their parents and loved ones watch their condition deteriorate. A mother contacted me recently. Her child was refused access to CAMHS twice. In December, she was finally accepted and was told that she would be waiting 13 months to get an appointment on the priority list. Her child has not attended school for two years. She wrote "I am begging ye". She is at her wits' end. Could someone help her and her child? Could someone help and support them? Another lady contacted me whose child was refused access to CAMHS three times.”
“I will finish with this. People with children and babies have to buy bottled water. The people at risk here are people who are blind or have sight issues, as well as older people, who are drinking this water because they do not have the money to buy bottled water.”
“One family contacted me and said that in hindsight, when they looked back, it was probably the drinking water that made the family sick but they did not know at the time about high manganese levels and the effects they have on people. Uisce Éireann has told the Minister of State that where the water runs clear, it is safe to drink. It is not. We have the figures here. When the water is tested and it is not fit for human conscription, why is a notice not put out to the public saying not to drink the water in this area as it is not fit to drink? I need answers. The people of Cork need answers. This would not be acceptable anywhere. I want the senior Minister to come to Cork and see whether he, his family or this Government would drink this water. We are not going to drink it anymore. People are paying €20 and €30 a week-----”
“With regard to the Department and Irish Water-Uisce Éireann sending this in, who are they codding? Do they think we are fools in Cork? It says here that the Minister has no responsibility. If Irish Water is poisoning the people of Cork, it is the Minister's responsibility. It says here that the EPA is the regulator responsible for setting high quality standards. The EPA does not want to know about it. It is turning a blind eye. We have been trying to contact it and it wants to know nothing about it, and it is the same with the HSE. People in Cork have contacted me to say they are suffering with migraines and have had problems.”
“This bottle I am holding contains what we are drinking in Cork. It is yellow. The thing about this is that if you boil it, the cast iron, the dirt and the manganese are still in it. People are boiling the water at home thinking they are doing the right thing but instead all they are doing is drinking dirty water. Does the Minister of State think the people of Dublin would accept this? Why should the people of Cork North-Central accept it? Does she think the people of Dublin would accept dirty water or manganese levels that are unfit for human consumption? It is not me saying it. This is what these test results are saying. The response here today - I know it is not the Minister of State's response; she was reading it out - is absolutely pathetic.”
“It does not want to admit that half of the second city in the State has unsafe drinking water because of the consequences of such a scandal and the costs that would be incurred in supplying drinking water to half of Cork city. The HSE and the EPA are doing a Pontius Pilate, washing their hands of it. I have serious concerns. I will write to them to get them in front of the housing committee to explain why they are not acting. The consequences of manganese poisoning are long term and permanent. What we have here shown in red - I will send the Minister of State a copy of this - are the ones that are over 50 mg per litre. Some of them are 128, 186 or 131 mg per litre. This is dangerous drinking water that the people of the north side of Cork city are being forced to drink.”
“The World Health Organization, WHO, says that anything above 80 mg is a public health issue. No further test was done in Gurranabraher for three weeks, so, potentially, the people of Gurranabraher were drinking unsafe water for three weeks. There was no public health notification, no advertisement. No one was told about it. We are now seeing potentially unsafe drinking water being given. I will tell the Minister of State what this means. Children who are given this water over a prolonged period have serious issues relating to neurological delays and reproductive maturity. It is not Sinn Féin who says this. This is what the WHO says. I firmly believe Uisce Éireann is trying to bury this.”