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.
TDs / Micheál Martin
Micheál Martin
Taoiseach
Portrait: © Houses of the Oireachtas (Oireachtas (Open Data) PSI Licence) · source file
0
questions asked
Members of the Government answer questions rather than ask them
688,766
words spoken in the chamber
686,628 as a minister, 2,138 as a TD
197
votes recorded
Each Yes, No or Abstained in a recorded vote
From the Dáil chamber only: committee meetings are not in this archive.
Members of the Government answer parliamentary questions rather than ask them, so this page lists none of theirs.
Month by month
Low months are usually recesses, when the Dáil does not sit. The archive runs to 22 October 2026.
Contributions to debates 6,546 in all
Dec 2024Oct 2026
Show as a table
| Month | Contributions |
|---|---|
| December 2024 | 11 |
| January 2025 | 6 |
| February 2025 | 438 |
| March 2025 | 518 |
| April 2025 | 317 |
| May 2025 | 426 |
| June 2025 | 424 |
| July 2025 | 344 |
| August 2025 | 0 |
| September 2025 | 146 |
| October 2025 | 375 |
| November 2025 | 291 |
| December 2025 | 281 |
| January 2026 | 326 |
| February 2026 | 529 |
| March 2026 | 229 |
| April 2026 | 385 |
| May 2026 | 474 |
| June 2026 | 425 |
| July 2026 | 181 |
| August 2026 | 0 |
| September 2026 | 198 |
| October 2026 | 222 |
Debates they spoke in most
Plus 6,426 contributions in the regular slots, such as Leaders' Questions and Priority Questions. Speech from the chair is not counted.
Party, constituency and offices
- constituency Cork South-Central 29 November 2024 to now
- party Fianna Fáil 29 November 2024 to now
- office Taoiseach 23 January 2025 to now
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 locations. These inc…
-----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 has not been adhered …
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 situation and the momentum …
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 here.
On Deputy Whi…
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 grandparents suffer rather …
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 say that. I ask the …
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 would make a step c…
The Deputy has offered no solution. She has offered rhetoric, and that is all.
The bottom line is this. We will do everything we simply can to deal with the existing waiting lists and so forth. There has been a significant increase in the numbers of assessments that have actually taken place - a 30% increase on 2023 - but that in itself will not deal with the current situation. We have to have a multifaceted response. We need more therapists in third level colleges.
We will be providing more private funding to procure assessments. All of that, however, will not, in my view, redirect the work of therapists most appropriately, which is to provide services to children.
I am making a point. Under the current system, the status quo is simply not tenable. The Deputy must know that deep down, so there has to be change in respect of that.
In my view, we have to explore every avenue we can to increase the number of therapists and to recruit more therapists. The money is there in many instances-----