Gillian Toole

I welcome and support this amendment to section 7 of the National Training Fund Act. I am extremely interested in and grateful for the discussion that we have had. This process in itself is a learning process for me. It will not be any surprise to either the Minister or the Minister of State that I want to focus my attention on Louth and Meath Education and Training Board, ETB, and Dunboyne Colleg…

Gabhaim buíochas leis an Cheann Comhairle, an Aire agus an Aire Stáit - an triúr agaibh. I thank the Ceann Comhairle for this opportunity. I would also like to acknowledge the information and support given to me by Meath IFA and the Irish Grain Growers group who have presented to the committee. Rather than repeat the statistics that have been so forthcoming from all parties and none today, as we …

Go raibh maith agat. I watch and I learn.

I am very appreciative of all the discussions I have heard, both in the Chamber and in my room today. There is a fantastic exchange of knowledge, diversity of debate and agreement on many subjects. I have edited out the bulk of my commentary rather than be repetitious. I will keep it with a community focus. I welcome the annually increased and increasing budget funding and the improving fiscal a…

I will begin by thanking all the departmental teams, the team in the Parliamentary Budget Office, and the ushers who were ferrying budget packages up and down today. I thank everybody who worked long, hard hours in preparation for this, in trying to go back over trends, looking through forecasting, looking at the global situation and then coming up with a plan that would try, first of all, to mee…

I wish to convey my most sincere thanks to the Minister, Deputy Carroll MacNeill, to the officials at the Department of Health, in the Health Service Executive, and in particular my former colleagues, as I am no longer practising, in the Irish Pharmacy Union, in particular Kathy Maher, the contractors committee and the executive, who have done sterling work over the years, which is now being recog…

I welcome the opportunity to speak in this debate. I thank all the family and young carers who carry out their tasks on a daily basis and save the State an absolute fortune. I thank the Oireachtas Library and Research Service, the Parliamentary Budget Office and my predecessors in the regional group, particularly Denis Naughten, who did substantial work on this issue and contributed to the positio…

Education is a freedom and enabling children and teenagers to participate and achieve their own personal goals is of paramount importance. School transport is a significant part of that enablement. The Government has made great strides in the area of special education and the improvements include working with the NCSE to bring forward timelines, so I am wondering why in this area we still have the…

This is probably the most divisive issue in politics. It definitely deserves more frequent discussion. I have been requesting this discussion for the past six months, so I am grateful for my two minutes now. What will be Ireland's migration management plan for the positive net migration of 79,000 people to our country? How is Ireland's ability to cope in the following areas being measured and pla…

I welcome the publication of the strategy and, most important, the commitments within it because that, in effect, is the roadmap. It will, most definitely, underpin the work of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Disability Matters and it will be our reference point. Indeed, we are already taking elements of it and incorporating them into the work plan of the current term. Is the plan of action lik…

I will be very careful if I go to west Cork on my holidays. I thank the Deputy for the heads-up.

On a more serious note, I thank the Minister, his team and I presume the Office of Parliamentary Legal Advisers for the sterling work on what I consider to be a future-proofing and highly considered safeguarding of the next generations of the country. I also express my gratitude to our juvenile liaison officers. I will name two of them from County Meath, garda Barbara Kelly and garda Aisling Conno…

I am going to share with the Minister a Meath East constituent's lived experience of domestic violence. I have her permission and I have anonymised everything. She is a 42-year-old and has been 19 years in an engaged relationship with three children. She was mortgage-approved and she had a wedding booked. During that time, she achieved two third level degrees. Her final assault was in 2020, when s…

Gabhaim buíochas leis an Aire Stáit and I thank Deputy Smith as well for affording us the opportunity to discuss this issue. I acknowledge and put on record the willingness of the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, to meet resident groups and the North Runway Technical Group as recently as 18 June this year. Those meetings - any that I have been able to sit in at - have taken the thrust of always being sol…

I thank the Social Democrats for bringing forward this important subject for discussion. At the risk of being pedantic, I have said it before but I will say it again and continue to say it: there is a very important saying, let food be your medicine. It is the foundation of health. The health basis and the knock-on health effects of this issue are yet to play out. I totally understand the role of …

I thank the Minister for the briefing and for the time he has put into committee meetings, which were very informative. I welcome elements of this amendment Bill, in particular with regard to judicial reviews and what I would call the disassociated objectors from one end of the country to the other. With the developer-led model, we cannot lose sight of serving the common good in tandem with the de…

Gabhaim buíochas leis an Aire Stáit as a bheith anseo inniu. I take on board the opening remarks of the Minister, Deputy O'Callaghan, and his comprehensive explanation of the procedures involved in these three out of the four motions we were expecting today. I understand the need for a common approach to procedures for international protection within the European Union. I will keep my remarks quit…

Twenty-one years passed between the Act being passed and the report being published. We need timelines and they need to be speeded up. We need the use of data for proper forward planning and multi-annual funding to ensure services reach the children who need them most. I welcome the publication of the report. I suggest a review period of two or three years in future to keep on top of the complexit…

Gabhaim buíochas leis an Leas Cheann-Comhairle, an Aire agus an Teachtá Ó Snodaigh as ucht an díospóireacht seo anocht. I have read through the report of the interdepartmental group on Dublin city and the task force recommendation. Pardon me if I am beginning to wonder if I am getting mixed up here. I see a reference to OPW management and a transfer. I do not see a mention of privatisation so if t…

Everybody here is ageing. We are here to represent older people and it is incumbent on us to act with a focus on solutions and a sense of urgency. Most people will, hopefully, age well at home with the necessary community and healthcare supports initiated by older person's councils through the Age Friendly Ireland initiatives. I think of Ita Healy and Barbara McCool in Meath, who are tireless cham…

Gabhaim buíochás leis an gCeann Comhairle, an Aire Stáit agus an Teachta Uí Ruairc. I thank Deputy O'Rourke for raising this most important issue. I thank the Minister of State for providing the Minister for Health's quite comprehensive briefing notes. I have only skimmed through them, but I will refer to them. I have to state the obvious. We have an ageing and increasing population, with a rise …

In this instance, I am not going to duplicate all of the statistics and summaries of the review to date that Members have discussed. I will approach this from the point of view of what may happen next and the human impact. There must be a compassionate approach to supporting the children and families through the review process without sterile communications and an impersonal review process. Havin…

5. Deputy Gillian Toole asked the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science the timeline for the single-phase delivery of the new campus for Dunboyne College of Further Education and Training, Dunboyne, County Meath, to be funded from as many relevant streams as possible, including but not limited to SOLAS, sports capital and national training funding. [26525/25]

I wish to ask both the Minister and the Minister of State the timeline for the single-phase delivery of the new campus for Dunboyne College of Further Education and Training, Dunboyne, County Meath, to be funded from as many relevant streams as possible, including but not limited to SOLAS, sports capital funding, national training funding and national development plan funding. This college began w…

I thank the Minister of State for the updated information. I reiterate that this college is delivering. At various times in this Chamber, we have discussed the need for occupational therapists, speech and language therapists and the development of apprenticeship programmes, as well as construction studies. LMETB colleges can deliver that. This process began in 2015, when Dunboyne was added to the …