Mary Lou McDonald

Under Standing Order 35(3), I propose an amendment to the Order of Business to strike from the business of the day Supplementary Estimates for Public Services 2025 - Votes 2 and 6. These Estimates have not been scrutinised by the relevant committee, that being the finance committee. The Taoiseach has repeatedly refused to attend that committee. Let me say that again. The Taoiseach has refused repe…

They should not be taken in this House until the Taoiseach presents himself and the appropriate scrutiny is applied.

When he gets to his feet, the Minister might clarify the precise whereabouts of the Taoiseach. Tonight, our justice spokesperson, Deputy Carthy, brings forward a very important piece of legislation - a Bill that would allow courts to impose a restraining order on someone convicted of a sexual assault, preventing them from approaching the victim when released from prison. Not alone would this incre…

Is he still away now, though?

Met Éireann issued a cold weather warning this morning. Temperatures are set to plunge to -3° with frost, ice and dangerous conditions expected over the coming days. People are anxious. People are preparing. People are scared because they simply cannot afford another winter like the last one. One communication to my office this morning was from a person who wrote: We got our autumn gas bill. It …

No. The Taoiseach's recall is wrong; it is sketchy.

All of the bragging in the world from the Taoiseach does not alter the fact that 250,000 people and families will reach out to the Society of St. Vincent de Paul for help. I am glad the Taoiseach's benches finds this amusing and that his would-be successor is grinning like a Cheshire cat while we have this exchange. I have to tell the Taoiseach that I do not find this funny. I do not need him to m…

They clearly do not.

No, we do not.

They cannot heat their homes.

The Taoiseach is delusional.

The case of nine-year-old Harvey Morrison Sherratt exposes profound and systemic failures. This child was left waiting years for essential spinal surgery, then removed from a waiting list without his parents' knowledge or consent. His experience was by no means unique. The Taoiseach has now committed to a statutory public inquiry into scoliosis and spina bifida services. When will the legislation…

28. Deputy Mary Lou McDonald asked the Taoiseach for a report on the work of the shared island unit. [63429/25]

Today, we note the resignation of the Minister, Deputy Paschal Donohoe, as he leaves the Government to take up a senior position with the World Bank. Paschal and I have been constituency colleagues in Dublin Central for many years and I wish him, his wife and his family well. I genuinely hope that the next chapter in their lives brings them good health and much happiness. Today, we must confront …

This year, though, has most of all been the year of broken promises by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, promises loudly made at election time and then thrown in the bin. The occupied territories Bill, diluted and sidelined, is a case in point. The Government promised tax cuts for workers, but it gave them to banks, landlords and developers instead. It promised support on energy bills, but it withdrew th…

It promised to abolish the means test for carers. So much for that. There was precious nothing. It promised 3,000 new acute hospital beds but it has budgeted for just 220. It promised a permanent double child benefit and then it withdrew that as well.

It has been a year of promises made and promises broken. Amid all this crisis, chaos and failure, what has the Government achieved in the Dáil? Well, hardly any legislation. It has been a legislative wasteland. It is a Government functioning on fumes and a coalition that governs by press release, not by law or action. This may well be the worst Government in the history of the State, because no Go…

Every day is men's day.

Right, on that note-----

You took me aback there, a Cheann Comhairle.

The case of Harvey Morrison Sherratt, a child in need of spinal surgery who was left to wait for years in agony and who died on 29 July this year, has been raised many times on the floor of the Dáil, and I raise his name again with the Taoiseach today. In the summer of 2024, Harvey was removed from the spinal surgery waiting list by Children's Health Ireland, CHI. In August of 2024, his parents fo…

That is astonishing.

That is what happened.

One of the fundamental problems here is that there has been a strategy or an approach of delay, delay and deceive adopted with these parents in the case of Harvey. He was removed deliberately from the waitlist. That decision was taken despite the fact he had been judged fit for surgery by an outside consultant. That happened. The Minister knows this because the protected disclosure arrived on her …

There is nothing legally to prohibit the Minister or anybody else in receipt of it to study and absorb that protected disclosure.