Ivana Bacik

-----a more attractive career prospect and to improve pay and conditions for trainee gardaí?

7. Deputy Ivana Bacik asked the Taoiseach to report on his plans for new city task forces, and on when the interdepartmental group on the Dublin city task force report will submit its report. [5752/25]

I spoke earlier about the awful incidents of knife crime, particularly on South Anne Street, and expressed my sympathies to the family of Quham Babatunde. I do so again, as I do to all those victims of South Anne Street and Stoneybatter. Clearly we need to see the positive aspects in the report of the Dublin city centre task force implemented, particularly where the report called for 1,000 extra g…

17. Deputy Ivana Bacik asked the Taoiseach to report on his recent engagements with the British Prime Minister. [5754/25]

As the US Administration moves to the authoritarian right I think all in this House agree that it is vitally important that we strengthen solidarity across Europe and that we strengthen our links with Britain and between Britain and the EU. Given our unique bilateral relationship with Britain and the fact that we now have a Labour Prime Minister in Britian, we will all agree it is especially impor…

We welcome the commitment to investing on an all-island basis and the additional funding to the shared island fund. There are two areas that I would ask to be included. As the Taoiseach did not mention them when he was listing the priorities, I want to ensure they are clearly up on the agenda. The all-island strategic rail review report was published last year and contains really important proposa…

Yes.

The Minister, Deputy O'Donovan, has had a string of bad luck with ministerial issues. It is a sort of reverse Midas touch. In his previous role, he had to deal with bike shelter and security hut overspends by the OPW. Now, weeks into his new job, we find out about this extraordinary and alarming spend of nearly €7 million on a failed IT project at the Arts Council. This enormous waste of public mo…

I thank the Tánaiste for his response. I am glad he has acknowledged there are clearly questions for the Department as well as the Arts Council. I listened to the Minister expressing his anger and disappointment on the radio this morning, but we need more than just expressions of anger and disappointment from the line Minister. We need greater clarity on when he became aware of this. I am consciou…

I reiterate my call for a Dáil debate on this.

We were not.

This Labour motion offered the first opportunity in the Thirty-fourth Dáil to address and debate the question of housing. The motion set out a constructive and ambitious set of proposals and a pathway to reform housing policy and ensure Government could provide a resolution to undoubtedly the biggest challenge facing it and all of us and the biggest civil rights issue of this generation. We set ou…

I want to raise with the Taoiseach gaps in the education system for children who require additional supports. We are all very conscious of the serious shortfall in this area. In particular, I want to speak about children who are failed because the education system lacks support for those with dyslexia or dyspraxia. In schools and in our State exams, people continue to be let down. During State exa…

It is both issues; reading schools and reading classes.

I return to the biggest immediate challenge facing the Government, namely housing. Despite the bluster from Government, it has admitted that last year it built nearly 10,000 fewer homes than it previously stated. We all hear from our constituents in communities around the country that housing is the single biggest issue facing families and individuals. We hear this from people who are homeless, fr…

The Minister spoke about an uplift in housing delivery, but the only uplift likely this year it seems is an uplift in the rents people are being forced to pay. People tell all of us that they can barely afford to meet their monthly rents. Can the Minister give certainty to renters that RPZ laws will be retained or that there will be an equivalent safety net? There is nothing coming from Government…

He would not accept our proposals.

They were not.

We have a serious issue with waiting times for ambulance arrivals - 500 times in six months last year, ambulances took longer than an hour to arrive on the scene of a high priority case. These can be cases of life and death, literally. The Minister for Health may wish to respond. I have just been informed of a very sad case in my constituency in which an elderly woman suffered broken bones and a h…

I will supply those.

The world looked on in disbelief this week as US President Trump made his outrageous and brutal proposal for the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people from Gaza. I think we all agree that the people of Gaza have endured an horrific bombardment by Israel over many months. We have seen tens of thousands of civilians, including many children, killed and injured. The entire infrastructure in the …

Today at last and after an unnecessarily long break, we have arrived at the first Leaders' Questions session of this new Government term. I want to raise the emergency situation affecting communities all across this island, that is, the ongoing fallout from Storm Éowyn. At the outset, my thoughts and those of my Labour Party colleagues are with all those families and households that have been so s…

We all appreciate just how ferocious this storm was. I join with the Taoiseach in expressing sympathy to the family of the young man, Kacper Dudek, so tragically killed. It is simply unacceptable, however, that we still have 18,000 homes, farms and businesses without power so many days on from the outbreak of the storm. It is clear that much more urgent action is necessary from the Government to i…

Right through the election campaign, the Taoiseach and Government Ministers claimed that 40,000 homes would be built in 2024. We now know that this was a wildly exaggerated claim. In fact, the actual number built last year was almost 10,000 short of that figure. That 40,000 was a bogus figure. Earlier today, the Taoiseach rejected the suggestion from Opposition parties that he was deliberately mis…

It was very constructive.