Peadar Tóibín

The Minister of State is digging a hole.

The Government has created some omnishambles this week. It is incredible that within the space of a week, the Government has done both the country and itself enormous damage. In many years' time, when perspective returns to this, the Tánaiste will definitely rue the decisions the Government makes today. In future, the only advice I can give him is to always talk to people in relation to any of the…

Critical infrastructure gaps in this country are probably the worst legacy of the Government over the last number of years. This country is really poorly served by infrastructure. The Government's friends in the IMF say that Ireland lags by 32% behind our peers in terms of infrastructure delivery. The biggest cost on society is the fact that this Government cannot deliver infrastructure. For ten y…

Yesterday the health committee heard that the national children's hospital will not be open, possibly, until autumn 2027. The opening of the hospital has now been delayed 18 times. The hospital that the Tánaiste signed off on is record-breaking for all of the wrong reasons. When the Minister, Deputy Carroll MacNeill, was asked recently when the hospital will open, she said that the opening date wa…

Given the billions of euro in waste and the wholesale incineration of taxpayers' money by the Government on the national children's hospital, does the Tánaiste not think that pre-legislative scrutiny would be a good idea for critical infrastructure in this country?

There is no link between critical infrastructure and the national children's hospital problem.

The fall in the number of gardaí in this country is one of the worst legacies of the Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Independent Government. It has enormous effects throughout society. I will focus on one of the effects, which relates to road traffic accidents. Mia Lily Keogh O'Keeffe was a young 16-year-old girl going about her daily life on a Saturday in Navan in February. She was killed at a pedestr…

There are three Ministers in the Department of justice.

The price of home heating oil has shot up by 85% in recent weeks. Last month, the price of 1,000 litres of home heating oil was about €950. This week is retailing for €1,750. This country saw the biggest increase in home heating oil in the whole of the EU. Very few families have the colour of €1,750 lying around the house. Hard-working families, nurses, teachers, gardaí and small business owners s…

When prices are surging it is not-----

First, working families do not get the fuel allowance. The working families that I am talking about who are in energy crisis at the moment are suffering significantly from this. Second, the war in Iran is a shocking situation, which has had an enormous effect on the price of fuel but Government taxes have a larger effect on the price of fuel. The majority of the price of diesel, 65%, comes from ta…

It is €40 million a week.

No.

Fuel taxes are not progressive and hurt low-income families most.

Progressive taxes.

The Taoiseach knows that most working families are not in receipt of that.

I do not think the Minister of State really understands how hard people are hurting at the moment or how disgusted citizens of this country are about the damage being done to their lives by the tax policies of this Government with regard to fuel. I do not think the Government has an iota of understanding. This is one of the most disconnected governments from the real existence of so many people I …

The Omagh bomb was the deadliest atrocity of the Troubles in the North of Ireland. It was second only to the Dublin and Monaghan bombings, which killed more people in the seventies. On 15 August 1998 the Real IRA, a group opposed to the IRA ceasefire and to the Good Friday Agreement, killed 31 people, including two unborn children, and injured 220 others. Confused telephone warnings were made whic…

Families are being crushed by this energy crisis. Small businesses are going to the wall. Carers cannot drive to mind the older people they are looking after. Workers cannot fill their car tanks, even just to get to work, and farmers' costs are spiking at a time when their produce prices are falling. At the heart of this crisis are Government taxes, and no other political party is calling this ou…

Like many other Deputies in this Chamber, I am a cancer survivor. I am blessed to be six years cancer-free. When you have cancer, it is like an enormous cloud descends upon you and your family. The more important message to go out tonight is that if you get treatment fast, the sun will shine again and that cloud will lift from your family. Getting treatment is the key issue and the problem is the …

I want to just inject the voices of ordinary citizens into this debate, if I may. These are the voices of a nurse and a garda that were posted on social media today. The first one said: I am a nurse working in a Dublin hospital but I live in the midlands. I travel 100 km to work and 100 km home every day. We live in the midlands because we can't afford to live in Dublin but we really can't afford…

I thank Independent Ireland for putting this motion to the House today. This is a very serious issue and one that we in Aontú have raised over and over again in this Chamber for many years. We believe that vulnerable children are being exposed to shocking danger by this Government and by a broken system over which the Minister presides. The figures speak for themselves. The national review panel p…

The past two weeks have seen a significant increase in fuel prices for families. It is now costing well over €100 to fill a tank of petrol or diesel for a normal family at the moment. That is absolutely scandalous. Incredibly, 65% of that cost is Government tax. Of the cost of petrol at the pumps currently, 65% is Government tax. This Government is an engine of fuel inflation in this country. This…

At the heart of this is a human tragedy. The response to a recent parliamentary question I submitted showed that in the last five years 126 individuals have been damaged up to and including permanent incapacity or death at CHI. A total of 752 other individuals have been damaged needing medical treatment. There have been 6,900 dangerous system failures within that organisation. Some 23,000 other in…

-----but they are only starting now. They were promised to the families at the meeting-----