Micheál Martin

We will keep going. Deputy Doherty raised the issue of those who were on hunger strike. We have made very good progress in respect of that. I have communicated in respect of that to those involved. I have written but they may not have received anything.

Fine. It is very clear from that correspondence that we are very close now-----

-----to bringing that to finality, including the issue of an apology. Turning to Deputy O'Sullivan, again in terms of disability and inclusion, we have since this report and the general election, established a disability unit in the Department, which manifested itself in the budget in terms of the domiciliary care allowance, the monthly allowance, going up another €20, and in terms of the income …

Just human capital. Myself and a couple of others.

There were no huge resources. No huge resources are allocated to strategising about how we engage and meet with other leaders.

I will say this to the Deputy on where our focus always is. The economic relationship is critical. I would not undermine that. It is not about the profit of companies but that critical economic relationship is about employment for a lot of people in this country. It works both ways, by the way. Irish companies have access to the market there and do well in the United States, and want to continue t…

They want more housing. They want more affordable and social housing and to enable people to either buy or rent at affordable prices. We need to get supply up. I think some of Deputy Boyd Barrett's policies would depress supply. That is where we differ. We need to get supply to 50,000 or 60,000 per annum. I think a lot of what the Deputy has articulated over the years would depress supply. It is n…

First of all, I thank the Deputy for raising this issue, which is an extremely important one. Obviously I am not familiar with the background of the specific case she has referenced just now. If she wishes to send me the details of the case, with the permission of the person concerned, I perhaps will be in a position to interrogate the issue more with the NCCP, which is the national cancer control…

-----following recruitment and the running of additional clinics.

As I said earlier, I would appreciate if the Deputy could give us the specifics of the individual case she has identified because then we could track that with the hospital. It is important to do that because Galway hospital said late last year that it would meet the NCCP targets by the end of December.

Yes, but also in terms of treatment. We need to get-----

In any event, I think it would be useful if the Deputy could send us the details of the case-----

-----with the permission of the person, obviously. Confidentiality will apply, without question. There has been a lot of investment in cancer services, and quite rightly so. Symptomatic breast disease was one of the first areas that we identified a long time ago as requiring a specific allocation of resources and investment from cancer screening right through, and, from a national point of view, i…

-----to ease any concerns that people who might have been recently diagnosed will understandably have.

Ar dtús báire ní aontaím leis an Teachta go hiomlán mar ar an taobh eile den scéal tá dul chun cinn le feiscint i gcuid mhaith nithe sa córas sláinte agus caithfear é sin a adhmháil mar aon le gach scéal eile. The key issue with waiting lists is waiting times and that always has to be the target. The shorter the time someone has to wait for an operation or other intervention, the better the outcom…

It is wrong to say that because when you look at our overall outcomes as a country, there is huge funding that has gone into health and I am sure the Deputy will acknowledge that. She has said it is not an issue of resources and significant funding has gone in, but in terms of key health outcomes over the past decade, there have been significant achievements. Ireland is now among a small group of …

I do not say that to minimise any trauma any individual goes through but we need a balanced debate in perspective and to acknowledge the progress that has been made while resolving to do even better in respect of other issues.

Yes, we can. Indeed, over the last number of years, we have dramatically increased capacity. Deputy Bacik mentioned the beds but she forgot to mention that, by the end of 2024 alone, we had 1,300 additional beds in the system. As the Deputy will know, during the Covid period, we took the opportunity to dramatically increase bed capacity in our hospital system, particularly in the critical care are…

Four more are due to open in 2026.

First of all, the Deputy has made an assertion and equated the ending of the one-off cost-of-living measures that were introduced during the height of the Ukraine energy crisis and so forth with cuts. That is wrong and he knows that. That is the first assertion, premised upon which his arguments are made, that is flawed. We must embed into the permanent social protection system, employment system,…

The disregards will continue to expand in budgets to come.

We are not restoring once-off payments across the board. We are not going to do that but we are going to continue to support, right through every area of government, supports for people with disabilities. We are going to implement the new strategy, which was agreed with advocates and organisations that advocate for people with disabilities, in consultation with the various organisations, in partic…

More fundamentally, we acknowledge that there are very significant pressures on people in terms of costs and pricing and making ends meet. The most effective way to deal with that is how you manage the economy more broadly and how you get inflation down to very low levels and have average wage growth and real income growth that significantly helps people to deal with those pressures. If you look a…

We reduced VAT on energy and we extended that reduction to 2030. We did that.

There is an issue with electricity prices. There is no question about that. The Minister has set up an affordability group on energy to deal with that. There are regulatory issues and more pan-European issues. We are an island nation. There is wider distribution. We are investing hugely in the grid and choosing investment in infrastructure because we need to make sure the growing population has ac…