Micheál Martin

This is a disability service, is it?

For where?

The introduction of free schoolbooks for some 940,000 children and young people in primary and post-primary and special schools in the free education scheme from the start of 2025-26 was a really significant progressive decision that was taken some years ago by the then education Minister, Deputy Foley, and has been continued. The Deputy has raised interesting points about the mechanics of the sch…

I fully understand the issue the Deputy has raised. The ask is that there would be access to a single public service pension scheme. That is something that needs to be resolved through the industrial relations processes. We have made progress in respect of the salary side and the payroll aspect of this. Since September 2023 the Department has been providing a payroll service for formerly grant-fun…

The Deputy has raised fairly legitimate issues. There has been a tendency lately in planning to have no car parking spaces in certain developments. The Deputy made a fair point about restricting car use but not car ownership. There has to be more flexibility in the planning frameworks governing developments of this kind and, as the Deputy said, the Adamstown plan itself. I would like to see a comp…

My understanding is the Department, together with the HSE, will provide a total of €6.53 million to meet the full operational costs of the 51 beds in the new facility in 2025. I will follow up again with the HSE and the Department to confirm, but that is what I am being told.

Further resources will be available to expand the capacity of the new facility on an incremental basis in 2025, subject to an agreed business plan between the HSE and the Dublin Simon Community. The Deputy is correct that it is a very significant development. The Government has already provided €35 million to construct the facility. That provides for the 51 beds that were, up to now, in temporary …

-----per year across four clinical programmes can be provided. Approximately €6.5 million will meet the full costs. I will get the Department to come back to the Deputy on that.

I thank the Deputy for eloquently and very strongly putting the issues pertaining to what is happening in Gaza in terms of the behaviour of the Israeli Government and Hamas, and stating that action is required. We have taken a series of actions but I take the Deputy's point. The focus now has to be on this EU-Israel association agreement because, without any question, Article 2 of that agreement h…

It needs to be expanded. I will talk to the Minister in respect of it. The funding was allocated. There could be issues clinically - I do not know - with the allocation of resources. However, I will ask the Minister to revert to the Deputy in respect of the issue.

I thank the Deputy for raising the issue. As I said, the situation is barbaric. We urgently need to facilitate a high-profile visit by the international community to Gaza, including both political and media representatives, who could see at first hand the level of destruction and the appalling situation the civilian population there is now in. That would do more than anything to change the situati…

I agree with Deputy O'Donoghue and sympathise with his point. I will again talk to the Minister for Transport on this and ask him to engage with Bus Éireann to get this issue sorted. Chronological age is meaningless as a metric. It can be general but it is meaningless. There could be a very fit 75-year-old and an unfit 65-year-old. To borrow the phrase again, we need a little common sense applied …

The Deputy is saying there is a general problem-----

-----and an insufficiency of general school places.

It is very distressing for them and for their families. I will talk to the Minister in respect of this.

It is hard to find words sufficient for the topic before us. It is hard to describe the immense suffering, physical and psychological, that civilian Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have endured for more than 19 months: to never feel safe; to be uprooted time and time again; to feel the desperation that comes from not being able to find food for your children; to see your elderly parents and grandpa…

On point of order, I did not say that.

The Deputy is misleading the House. That is not right, now.

On a point of order, the Deputy misled the House when she said that I described the tabling of Sinn Féin's legislation as "repulsive". I said no such thing. I would ask the Deputy to withdraw that given the seriousness of the debate. This is a very serious debate involving lives and it is not good enough that the Deputy would falsely make that assertion. I did not say that and she knows I did not …

It is very easy to check.

The Deputy said that the Government is funding a genocide and I said that phrase was morally repugnant. At no stage did I say the tabling of legislation in respect of the Central Bank was repulsive. You know that. Why did you conflate the two to make a false statement? I would ask you to withdraw.

I ask you to withdraw.

It was a smear against me.

No sincerity.

At the outset, I appreciate the work Cara Darmody has been doing and her campaigning work with her father, Mark. She has been campaigning for quite some time. She initially began to do so in terms of advocacy for her family and now does so nationally in respect of disability rights more generally. When I was appointed Taoiseach earlier in the year, I committed that this would be a Government that…