Seán Crowe

I had not planned on speaking but I was listening to the debate. I would like to be associated with all the wishes of goodwill in relation to this time of year to staff and all our colleagues in the Houses. It has already been iterated that Sinn Féin's position is we are not opposing this Bill but the Minister has already indicated amendments will come. We are discussing a Bill tonight but I presu…

Most of us agree that blister packs are an essential and basic tool for improving medication management and safety. They can be the difference between taking medicines safely or risking missed doses, double dosing, or the all-too-familiar dangerous confusion for the recipient. We have all come across people who have been in that situation. I came across a case recently of a 94-year-old woman, wher…

101. Deputy Seán Crowe asked the Minister for Education and Youth if she is aware of the ongoing challenges regarding a school (details supplied) accessing a sports capital grant due to concerns of the archdiocese relating to financial costs incurred by primary schools when undertaking such a grant, if her departmental officials would be asked to mediate between the two parties in order to achieve…

This question concerns St. Thomas National School in Jobstown. I do not know if the Minister of State is aware of the challenges it is facing. There are a lot of moving parts. The latest challenge is coming from the archdiocese in looking for clarification on an undertaking from the Department about it. It relates to Jobstown Celtic Football Club at St. Thomas National School and the building of a…

There are a lot of moving parts with regard to this. Everyone is in favour of it - the club, the school, the community, South Dublin County Council and political representatives. The challenge is that the archdiocese wants to know who will pay for the opening and closing of the premises after the school uses the facility and who will pay for insurance and cleaning. The club is going to do all that…

It is a huge advantage to the area, the pupils in the school and the wider community. It is something that can be resolved. If an affidavit from the club stating that it would cover all the costs was given, that might be enough. The capitation grant is a problem but I might talk to the Minister of State afterwards. Perhaps we can put our heads together and, with the archdiocese, come up with a com…

The Government is helping developers with €100,000 per apartment.

I want to say hello to Cara Darmody and her family. I begin by sending my solidarity to families waiting for an assessment for their child or children. At the start of October, there were more than 8,000 children waiting on assessments of need in the CHO 7 area. Almost 1,600 of those children have been waiting more than two years to be seen. There are almost twice as many children waiting in one a…

There is going to be a lot of commonality in what we are saying here but the main message is that action is needed. I spoke at the OSCE conference in Istanbul recently about the ongoing global refugee crisis, with millions of displaced people fleeing conflict zones such as Sudan, Gaza, the Democratic Republic of Congo, DRC, and Yemen. It is a stark reminder of the consequences of the developed wor…

3. Deputy Seán Crowe asked the Tánaiste and Minister for Defence the current status of the procurement process for the military primary radar system; if rollout of the system will commence in 2026 and full operational status will be achieved by 2028; if there has been any change in the total cost of approximately €300 million for the programme; if the current training courses for such operations i…

The Minister has taken a disappointing approach. Back in 2011, I recall discussing the affordability of school uniforms in this House with Ruairi Quinn, the then Minister for Education and Skills. Unfortunately, at that time, we failed to convince him and probably more importantly, the officials at that time this was the way forward. If we cast our minds back to that period, we were in the middle …

I am probably not going to say anything that is much different from what many other Members said. As others stated, there is a lot of really good work being done around men's health. This month, we have seen it most publicly in sport, with Movember and the OddBalls Foundation becoming familiar to a lot of fans. As we all agree, men are still reluctant to go to the doctor and share personal inform…

The reality of unity, an end to division and the possibility of a united Ireland is very much part of the political conversation on this island now more than ever. It has been a focus point of discussion during the ongoing presidential election, even more so than when Martin McGuinness was running in 2011. It has moved beyond the hypothetical and people are now discussing what kind of Ireland it c…

It is my opinion, but it is shared by a lot of people out there, that budget 2026 failed to deliver any real hope or pathway for the families and individuals left behind by successive Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael Governments. Every week, new families or individuals who are homeless or facing homelessness turns up at my constituency office. That is fact. There is nothing in the budget that will bring …

Any plan that could end the wholesale slaughter of tens of thousands of civilians in Gaza is to be welcomed. The world has watched a genocide as children starve and aid rots just miles away. I welcome that a core part of the 20-point plan is to end the weaponisation of aid from the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and place it in the hands of the UN and the Red Crescent. However, for any peace deal t…

Is that not a healthy thing? We do not have to go outside the party.

There are 300,000 people in energy debt. The Minister for Finance will stand in this Chamber on this day two weeks and talk about how well we are doing in managing the economy when people in my constituency will be going to bed early because they cannot afford to turn the heating on. If the Minister of State goes to any of the shopping centres out my way, he will meet a lot of people who are sitti…

I agree with other speakers in that successive Governments have left dental services for public patients to collapse in the State. The dental services scheme for medical card holders has been in a state of chaos for years. In the term of the previous Dáil, the then Minister, Stephen Donnelly, assured us at a meeting of the health committee that a breakthrough on dentists was imminent and that serv…

There is a little boy called Rowan in my constituency. He is eight years of age and has still not been able to have his first day at school. He has been diagnosed with ASD and global development delay and, like many others, he has been let down. His mother is struggling to home-school him, with no support from anyone. Parents of autistic children in some cases apply to 20 or 30 schools for a plac…

Europe is becoming obsessed with spending on greater security and militarisation. We are so wrapped up in creating a fortress Europe that we are neglecting the fundamental concerns of conflict prevention and resolution. Surely it would be better to prevent a conflict in the first place than build walls and manufacture weapons of war. I spoke at the OSCE annual parliamentary assembly last week wher…

Whether it is student fees or protection for student renters, the Government continues to sow uncertainty and punish young people. We should be breaking down barriers to higher education and apprenticeships, not erecting them. Worse still, while this Government is obsessed with leaks to the media and innuendo, as we heard earlier, young people and their families have no idea where they stand in re…

It is 11.45 p.m. now and it is right and proper that we are discussing the situation in Gaza. With our long-standing commitment to human rights and neutrality in global conflicts, Ireland is well positioned to play a constructive role in addressing the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. We must now use whatever leverage we have in a diplomatic capacity on the international stage. We have a moral obliga…

My message is that we must use every lever at our disposal. I know Ireland is an outlier in relation to the occupied territories Bill, for example, but I respectfully believe that we must include services. Otherwise, it is tokenistic and only goes to soothe our own conscience. We need to turn off the tap of trade from the occupied territories and finally sanction Israel and its ministers for their…

The ability of Irish citizens, regardless of where they reside, to vote in presidential elections is an issue I have been working towards for quite some time. Gerry Adams and I cosponsored a Bill to that effect more than ten years ago. Tá bród orm go bhfuil mé fós ag leanúint leis an bhfeachtas. That Bill, the Thirty-fourth Amendment of the Constitution (Presidential Voting) Bill 2014, passed Seco…

I wish to ask about Duchenne muscular dystrophy. We recently had young people in the AV room who talked about the challenges they face. It is a wasting disease. There is a drug but it is not available here yet. It is available in the North. Would the Government look at early access as a shared island? The problem in the North is that it does not have the money to administer the scheme. The problem…