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Dáil Éireann debate -
Thursday, 27 Jan 2022

Vol. 1017 No. 1

Ceisteanna ar Reachtaíocht a Gealladh - Questions on Promised Legislation

In fairness to the Tánaiste, only he could claim that rents increasing by 2% is a freeze on rents. By God, if that is where he is, God help renters out there.

I will ask him about an article by Darragh McDonagh published this morning that is based on records released under freedom of information. It clearly debunks the line peddled by the Tánaiste and other members of the Government that the event held in Iveagh House in June was an impromptu one. We now know that departmental officials were told to gather "down the back of the...[office]" in an email from the Secretary General's office the day before the event. Does the Tánaiste now accept that there needs to be a proper investigation into what happened and not an internal review, given what we now know? If so, when will that happen? Is he confident that no other gathering of this type happened in other Departments or Government residences?

I have not had a chance to read that article. The report is being done at the moment by the Secretary General of the Department of Foreign Affairs. It is entirely appropriate that he should do that; he is the Accounting Officer. We should wait until we see that report. We will pass judgment when we have it.

I will raise the matter of the once-off tax free €1,000 bonus payment. There was great shock among section 39 workers and disability service providers that they may be excluded from this. These are front-line staff who have worked in residential, respite, day and clinical services. At the height of the pandemic in March 2020, these staff donned personal protective equipment and worked in Covid-19 environments and family homes to provide continuity of services for the people they support. The Tánaiste stated last week that healthcare staff wearing gowns and masks and who are exposed to Covid-19 in clinical settings should receive special recognition. Are section 39 workers being considered for this payment that is being discussed in government at the moment?

The key test we are using is whether the workers were involved in the provision of healthcare. As the Deputy knows, we included, in respect of private employment, people working in nursing homes and hospices. The Department of Health is now drawing up the detailed guidelines. There will certainly be some people working with section 39 organisations who are directly involved in healthcare provision. We are looking in particular at the whole area of congregated settings because they are very similar in nature to nursing homes. All those details are currently being worked out.

I will raise the issue of the €100 electricity credit payment, which I understand is coming before the Dáil next week. Like many others, I share the concerns about it not being a targeted approach. I understand the administrative burden related to means testing something like that, but I cannot understand why this Government will also give 62,000 holiday homeowners that credit. A person who is wealthy enough not only to own his or her own home but also a holiday home will get an additional €100 credit on his or her electricity bills. Will the Tánaiste respond to that?

The Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, is working on the legislation at present. There will be a chance to debate and tease out these issues. One issue that has come up is that if we start to exclude or exempt particular types of residences, it makes it much harder to do. It seems it is quite straightforward to knock €100 or €113.50 off every domestic bill, but when we start to create different categories of people or residences it then becomes much slower and more expensive to administer. We have to bear that in mind.

The Government has consistently defended the role of big property investment funds by saying that they could contribute to addressing the housing crisis and delivering the famous supply. Last week, a crowd called Occu, acting on behalf of a group called Haliday, advertised build-to-rent apartments. These are two blocks, Cualanor, in Dún Laoghaire. One young woman I know, who is facing homelessness and is approved for the housing assistance payment, HAP, went there and was told by the person present to look around and that she could have whatever apartment she wanted. They were advertised, by the way, at €2,200. She said she would have No. 11 and, having looked at it, then said she would need to sort this out with HAP. She said she would have to overpay on the HAP homeless rate, which is only €1,900, but many people do that. As soon as she mentioned HAP, she was told: "Oh, I'm sorry, we are not set up to do HAP". My office then phoned the same crowd to ask why they were not taking HAP. We were told that it was not set up for it and anyway all the places had now been rented out. That is outrageous. What will the Government do about that kind of thing? How can it defend that behaviour by estate agents and owners of apartment blocks?

I will have to check this with the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, but my understanding is - I might be incorrect - that estate agents and landlords cannot refuse to accept HAP. This is an enforcement issue. Perhaps a complaint should be made and investigated.

Last night, a motion on providing a hybrid-option leaving certificate for 2022 students was defeated. The Tánaiste will be aware that many students who submitted projects may have already suffered from Covid, been in isolation until 14 January and missed their deadlines. They carry that dilemma with them right through to June. It is fair to say that one more time is what is required. Students have a legitimate expectation that legislators like us will provide for their educational future. The disruption of Covid and what it has caused, whether it is teachers missing or students themselves, means they deserve to be able to avail of the hybrid option one more time. I ask that this be given to them as soon as practically possible for the sake of their mental health and their families' well-being.

It is fair to say that students over the past two years have had great difficulty in trying to learn for their leaving certificate. I have a son who is doing his leaving certificate. I know that the Minister, Deputy Foley, is acutely aware of the difficulties and that clarity will be given as soon as possible. The advisory group in respect of State examinations is looking at this in real detail. Hopefully, there will be an announcement soon.

Last week, it was announced that front-line healthcare workers were to get a €1,000 bonus. Workers in nursing homes and hospitals are rightly in line for this bonus. It is glaringly obvious that one team of workers, home help workers and carers, have been omitted from this payment. Thousands of home help workers carried out Trojan work during the pandemic. They visited and cared for the elderly in their homes and, in many cases, had to work in a Covid environment. During the pandemic, they were exposed to the risk of contracting Covid on a daily basis while working in uncontrolled environments and doing their best to keep patients safely in their homes, even in some cases where families were not allowed visit.

Surely, given this workload, home help workers and carers in west Cork and beyond should be included in the €1,000 recognition payment. Last week, I met a home help worker in Dunmanway who said to me that it is not so much the money, it is the respect. Can the Tánaiste confirm today that home help workers and carers will be included in the €1,000 recognition payment?

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue. Home help workers, whether employed directly by the HSE or by a private provider but doing work on behalf of the HSE, will be included in the recognition payment.

Last week, during Questions on Promised Legislation, I emphasised to the Tánaiste the need to ensure that Sligo Airport in Strandhill is included in the new tender as one of the bases for search and rescue services. At that time, the pre-tender notification stated a minimum of three bases. In his response he said: "I can say what we expect to be the outcome." He also said that the outcome would be that there will continue to be four bases and he named Sligo as one of them but he also said that there is a contractual process under way. Since then, things have changed and a Cabinet decision last Monday reported that there would now be four bases. I ask the Tánaiste to outline if the tender now specifies or will specify the existing four bases, inclusive of Sligo. If not, is Sligo specifically mentioned?

I thank the Deputy. I have not seen the tender documents so I am not sure if they have been prepared yet but my understanding of the Government decision is that there will be four bases. The four bases are named as the existing bases of Sligo, Shannon, Waterford and Dublin.

Two weeks ago, a car crashed through a wall outside St. Paul's National School in Limerick. Thankfully, this happened a few minutes before the school finished for the day and no children were injured. We are seeing motorist behaviour outside schools throughout the country that is putting children at risk. Parents do not believe it is safe to let their children walk or cycle to school and as such it is compounding problem and a vicious cycle. We can break the vicious cycle through the safe routes to school programme. The challenge is the implementation, delivery and roll-out of this programme as quickly as possible. If it is rolled out quickly, we will create better towns, cities and villages. It is imperative that we get children walking and cycling to school. I ask the Tánaiste to set out what can be done to expedite the safe routes to school programme.

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue. The safe routes to school programme is a programme I am rolling out across the country. We are investing €1 million per day in walking and cycling infrastructure throughout the country. This is enabling the schools to work directly with the local authorities and An Taisce on projects and measures specific to schools in specific areas. This is not only being rolled out to specific or urban areas, but also to our towns and villages. Earlier this week, on Monday, the Minister for Transport, Deputy Eamon Ryan, and I announced a significant funding of €289 million for active travel, which will feed into the safe routes to school programme as well.

Given the withdrawal of a number of the major banks from this jurisdiction and the closure of a large number of bank branches all over the country, thus reducing the visual impact of business supports and access for customers, might it be possible to in some way enhance the degree to which customers can talk to their bank without talking to a machine, which has become ridiculous in recent times?

That would be some achievement.

Currently, everything is being done by way of answering machine or a machine of some description, which is depersonalising the contact that is necessary between businesses and banks, especially small businesses and traders but also personal customers. I ask the Tánaiste to use his good offices with the banking authorities to try to address that issue.

Deputy Durkan's question is a very good one.

It is valid question. I had this experience myself recently. For years, I have been using Internet banking and phone banking and using my card reader at home and so on, which I have found very good. I had not been in a bank for a long time, but I recently visited a bank on Baggot Street because I had to change the personal identification number, PIN, for my card. I had to interact with this very strange large machine that looked like an automated teller machine, ATM, but was not an ATM. It was very complicated. All I needed was somebody to help me out but there was nobody there except for a security guard and some machines. As it happened, I contacted the AIB helpline and the person who answered was extremely helpful and I was able to solve the problem, but it did remind me of the value every now and then of human contact and of having a person in the post office, the bank branch or wherever one may go. While we do not have any legal powers around this matter, I do engage regularly with the banks on behalf of businesses and I will raise the issue with them.

I want to raise the desperate situation of children with spina bifida and hydrocephalus, whose young bodies are being destroyed and mutilated while they are waiting for scoliosis surgery, which they could get in a timed, definite and planned capacity if the Government were to provide Cappagh hospital with the pitiful €5.1 million it needs to help them. That sum is chicken feed in the context of the HSE budget. Experts such as Mr. Connor Green and Professor Damien McCormack appeared before the health committee and literally begged for this money so that they could put in place a plan to deal with these horrific waiting lists. The mothers of these children, several of whom are from north Kildare, were expecting an announcement before Christmas and they were devastated when it was not made. I am pleading with Government to provide the funding. I ask Government to listen to the experts, not the bean counters in terms of the budget, to ease the pain these children are going through and to give them a chance.

The Deputy raised an important and sensitive issue. I do not have up-to-date information for her, but I will let the Minister know that she raised the matter and ask him to come back to the Deputy directly on it.

The review of south Kerry child and adolescent mental health services, CAHMS, makes for devastating reading. This failure by CAHMS has caused enormous pain and suffering for children and their families in south Kerry. It has had a catastrophic impact on some children. I believe this case warrants a full Garda investigation and I hope that happens. Will the State issue a formal apology to the children and the families involved in this case? Will the Government ensure that every child and family affected by this situation will get the care and support they need right now? I ask the Tánaiste to guarantee that this will never happen again in south Kerry or anywhere else in Ireland under CAHMS and to set out what measures will be taken to ensure that is the case.

As I said earlier, one of the things we absolutely have to make sure happens now, if it has not happened already, is that the children affected and their families get not only the supports and services they should have got in the first instance, but also any additional help they need to undo the harm and remedy the situation. We need to try to make things better for them in any way we can. Where there have been other serious events where there were failings in our health services, the HSE has put in place packages for patients and families. It is appropriate that that should be done on this occasion.

The HSE has apologised verbally and in writing to all of the children and families affected. That was done as part of the new open disclosure policy. The matter of a State apology will have to be given consideration by Government and by the Taoiseach. Having been involved in a few of them, I know that it is important to get it right. There is a particular format around that. It is something we will consider.

The issue of the leaving certificate has been raised. It is important we get an early decision. Reports in the media suggest that school historical results may be used in the standardisation of accredited grades. Two years ago, the Minister, Deputy Foley, correctly accepted that this would mean students in disadvantaged schools would lose out across the board. It is an elitist approach. There are viable alternatives in standardisation, including use of assessment tools as applied in the North, the use of rank order within a class to apply a percentage based average, and so on. We need a hybrid model. The use of historical data would be a mistake. It is elitist.

A solution based on those data might relieve stress on some people but it might also intensify the anxiety of students in schools in disadvantaged areas that previously had lower results.

It is extremely important when we are talking about the leaving certificate that there is fairness for children from delivering equality of opportunity in schools, DEIS, areas, disadvantaged areas and across the board. This is something the advisory group on State examinations is looking at in considerable detail. I am sure the Minister, Deputy Foley, is aware of it also.

I raise the lack of capacity in autism spectrum disorder, ASD, units in secondary education. The State has made considerable progress in the capacity of ASD units in primary schools, which is a good thing. However, there is an acute shortage of ASD feeder schools, particularly for children who are leaving primary settings and moving to secondary education.

I am sure these issues arise across the State. A number of families in Clondalkin have contacted me in recent days to tell me there will be no places whatsoever for their children come September or the following September. They have tried everywhere in the Clondalkin area and beyond but as of September, there will have no places available. It is obviously causing anxiety for the children concerned and their families. I understand this is an issue of resourcing and secondary schools are being resourced. However, there needs to be extra capacity for these families.

I thank the Deputy for the question. Special classes are an important issue. There are 2,118 special classes at the moment. This has been increased by 269 this year and it will be increased by 287 next year. That will create an additional 1,700 special class places. Notwithstanding that, it is important that we work with the National Council for Special Education, NCSE, and liaise on the transition between primary school and post-primary school. The local special educational needs organisers should be collaborating with schools to ensure spaces are available. If the Deputy has a particular school in mind, he can contact me or the Department directly and we can talk to the NCSE about the matter.

The Government has published the Housing for All update on the Government website. I met yesterday with two groups calling for one-bedroom apartments. Young professionals are trying to move out of home. The Dublin Simon Community is desperately seeking one-bedroom accommodation for rental. I want to ask the Tánaiste about the status of the planning objection legislation under the planning advisory forum chaired by the Minister of State, Deputy Peter Burke. Concerns about supply have been raised by Deputies in my constituency. Not 500 metres up the road, there are proposals for 147 units, including 51 one-bedroom apartments, 67 two-bedroom apartments and nine studios, and objections are going in left, right and centre.

I thank the Deputy. I note the Central Statistics Office housing figures came out earlier today. They showed that 20,000 new homes were built in Ireland last year. That was not as many as we needed but it was a reasonable performance, given that construction was shut down for a long period last year. We expect that figure will go well above 20,000 this year.

We know that we need more homes of all types in Ireland. We need large family homes, three-bed, two-bed and one-bed homes. The greatest shortage and need is for one-bed homes. That is why we need to make sure we build a decent proportion of them.

Unfortunately, there are huge numbers of objections to planning applications for new housing in this city and country, for almost any reason. There are also a considerable number of judicial reviews. The Attorney General and the relevant Minister are working on reforms to our planning legislation to ensure it is not so easy for people to hold up necessary housing developments for so long.

Is the Tánaiste aware that medical card dental services have completely collapsed in Mayo? We contacted each of the 30 dentists in the county listed by the HSE on its website. Of all the many dental practices throughout the county, only one said it was currently treating medical card patients and taking on new patients, and even then it was only doing so for specific treatments. In a county the size of Mayo, with a population of 130,000, that is shocking. Ten practices told us they are no longer providing any medical card dental services and only one practice is taking on new medical card patients. It is not good enough. This has happened because between 2017 and 2020, the allocation for medical card patients was cut by 30% from €3.5 million. There are two issues here. We need to know what the Government is going to do as a matter of urgency. We also need to know why the HSE is putting out false information around this issue.

I am aware that many dentists around the country have withdrawn from the dental treatment services scheme, DTSS, which is the medical card scheme. I am not sure about the details in Mayo specifically but many dentists have withdrawn from the scheme in different parts of the country. The budget for the scheme is being increased and discussions with the Irish Dental Association about getting the scheme working well again will soon be under way, if they are not under way already. I will ask the Minister to give the Deputy a more detailed response because I am not as up to date on the matter as perhaps I should be.

I too want to ask about the update on the benefit scheme to credit domestic electricity customers with €100 in 2022. I understand that inclusive of VAT, that amount will be €113. When will people get the rebate? Are there any plans to increase this figure? While we all welcome these kinds of announcements, it is unfair that people are not given clear information and timeframes. We were delighted with the announcement that front-line workers are to get €1,000. That is good news. However, there is confusion surrounding it. People are ringing us and we have no clear information. While these announcements are great, I suggest we put in place a timeframe to ensure we are absolutely clear in our information. When people ring our offices, we need to be able to tell them where we are and what the timeframe is.

The energy credit requires legislation. We anticipate that will be done quite quickly and, with the help of the Houses, it will be done within the next couple of weeks. It is intended that €113.50 will be knocked off people's bills by the end of March.

The Irish Hospital Consultants Association yesterday published data on waiting lists for University Hospital Waterford. Some 50,000 people are on some form of health waiting list, the majority of whom are waiting to see a consultant. What is obvious about the figure is that it is huge and affects people from across the region. It is the equivalent of the population of Waterford city. Patients from across the south east use the hospital.

For years, many of us in this House, including some of the Tánaiste's Government colleagues, have been pointing out that there are clear capacity deficits at University Hospital Waterford. Five years ago, at a meeting of Oireachtas Members, we were promised a new eye clinic, a new orthopaedic centre of excellence and additional bed capacity. None of those came on stream. The catheterisation laboratory, which has long been promised, is still being built and is not open. While we are looking at additional capacity in healthcare, and I support every additional cent and bed that goes into the system, can we also look at regional inequalities?

Waiting lists are far too high. That was the case before the pandemic and they have got considerably worse as a result of the pandemic and the cyberattack. We need to turn the tide in that regard and ensure those waiting lists and waiting times improve over the next couple of years. I absolutely agree that we need to look at the regional disparities. There will always be regional disparities to a certain extent but there should not be gross regional disparities where people in one part of the country have to wait much longer than people in other parts. We will have to take that into account.

I raise an issue of which the Tánaiste is aware, that is, the case of the 100 jobs in fulfilment operations in National Pen. Those jobs will be gone by January 2023. What engagement has the Government had with the company? This is not the first time we have been down this road. Communications between National Pen and its workers have been dreadful over many years. There is a fear around its promises and commitments. The Tánaiste also spoke of an attractive redundancy package. There is a fear in that regard among many workers who have given long-term service to the company. A top-tier management team is going up against individuals. The workforce is not unionised. We will finally have to address the issue of collective bargaining. Will the Tánaiste give me some information about the Government's engagement and the promises to ensure there is an attractive package for those who have done fine work for this company that has been in Dundalk since 1987?

My engagement with the company has been done through the Industrial Development Agency, IDA, which manages the relationship with National Pen. Unfortunately, some jobs are going to be lost. The operations are being outsourced to eastern Europe, to either the Czech Republic or Hungary. These redundancies, unfortunately, cannot be prevented although there will be job increases in other parts of the company. National Pen remains committed to Dundalk, which is welcome.

We are advised that a decent or generous redundancy package will be offered to the staff. I do not know the details of that but we are advised that will be the case.

Obviously, from the Government side, we will make sure former employees and employees who are being made redundant get whatever help Government can give them in terms of help with job searches and information about welfare or other opportunities such as education, training and upskilling.

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