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Department of education and problems need to be worked through. The Department has to stay within the budget but, at the same time, this is not a problem that just emerged. While it is fair enough that the project only got planning last year, as I said

three. Another project involves a 15-cubicle transition unit for patient admissions and discharges to alleviate emergency department admission pressure. In 2020, Naas General Hospital received a €74 million budget. In 2025, the budget allocation for the hospital rose to €130 million. This investment in recent years

supporting the hyper scaling of technology companies and start-ups. We saw some measures in the budget and, hopefully, there are more to come in future to support the emergence of an indigenous technology industry here. Some of the steps we have taken could be adapted in other

homes for households at risk of homelessness not only as an exit pathway but also to prevent people from needing access to emergency accommodation in the first place. Prevention of homelessness in the first instance is an absolute priority. There are many prevention initiatives already under … measures, including housing support for use in shared accommodation schemes. Budget 2026 provides a total allocation of €563.5 million to address homelessness. This includes €513.5 million in current funding to ensure local authorities can provide sufficient emergency accommodation as well as essential related services. Housing First makes provision

home. The Minister said these empty words while announcing that the Government will tonight vote against the Social Democrats motion to introduce an emergency €400 winter payment for disabled people. This would be a modest first step to help disabled people get through winter until a proper cost … Leaders' Questions a couple of weeks ago: While the Government speaks of future plans, reviews and budgets yet to come, disabled people are already living with the consequences of inaction. The emergency winter payment campaign exists because people are being forced to choose between heating and food, cancelling

homelessness and housing. The additional €15 million that I allocated to my Department in the past few weeks for a second-hand acquisitions budget is a clear and unambiguous reflection of the Government’s commitment in this regard. When I became Minister, there was €60 million available … acquisitions that support families, primarily those larger families with children, to exit long-term emergency accommodation into housing. Together with income supports and measures relating to homelessness and housing in budget 2026 and beyond, I will continue to concentrate on expanding the vital services in our communities. However

something it has never done and never will do. We need an emergency programme for the building of social and affordable houses by local authorities on public land. There is no additional funding in this budget for the tenant in situ scheme, which prevents homelessness. This scheme

central priorities of budget 2027 is strengthening our response to people experiencing a mental health crisis and reducing lives lost to suicide. Building on the crisis nursing teams I announced this year for all model 4 hospital emergency departments, crisis nursing teams will now be established … budget 2027 will provide two new crisis resolution teams - one in Wexford and the other in north Tipperary - and six new drop-in Solace crisis cafés - Carlow, Louth, Wexford and north Tipperary and two more in Dublin - giving people experiencing a crisis an alternative to attending an emergency

which I am a part, will be mobilising in a protest, demanding that this Government relent and concede the demand for an emergency disability winter payment of €400 for those with disabilities and, beyond that, implement a cost-of-disability payment. A young man named Jack … facing all these cost-of-living pressures. The Government hammered those people in the budget by taking €1,400 away from them. Will the Government concede their demand for an emergency payment before the demonstration on Saturday

therapies such as speech and language, occupational therapy, psychology, etc. I welcome the additional moneys for the assessment of need included in the budget last week. I commend the teenage disability rights campaigner, Cara Darmody from Ardfinnan in south Tipperary, who has extracted two tranches of funding … disability based in the Taoiseach's office. However, we have seen no coherent plan emerging from this committee to tackle the assessment of need waiting list. Dollops of money at budget time alone will not solve this problem. Last week the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Disability Matters heard

This Saturday, disabled people and the Affordable Ireland campaign will be on the streets demanding an emergency payment after the Government took over €1,400 from them in the last budget. So far, the Government has refused to concede. There is no money for disabled people. There

percentage of the allocation under the schemes should be ring-fenced in respect of any emergency applications which might arise under these schemes during the course of the year. Budget 2026 provides an increase of €30 million for the scheme, with almost €130 million in Exchequer funding available

this has to do with their mental resilience. I was particularly pleased to see in the budget specialist nursing team out-of-hours services in all model 4 hospital emergency departments. I will come back to this because it is a particularly important intervention. There will be three

with the lived realities that people with disabilities face. It is telling people with disabilities to try to hold on until the next budget and next year when a cost-of-disability payment might be introduced. How is that going to give any person with a disability … disability and provide adequate financial support. No more reports and delays. There must be an emergency payment in advance of a permanent cost-of-disability payment being introduced in the next budget to help meet the real additional costs faced every day by people with disabilities

level of funding will be instrumental in the delivery of homes, support services, infrastructure and amenities for people and families across Ireland. In budget 2026, the total Exchequer funding being made available for the delivery of housing programmes is €7.21 billion, comprising capital funding of €5.19 billion … billion for water services of which €11.7 billion is for Uisce Éireann. This budget also provides for critical and capital investment in other areas such as Met Éireann and fire and emergency services

into account. Local authorities spend 18 times more on short-term emergency accommodation than they do on prevention or tenancy sustainment. Some 70% of that funding goes directly to private providers. There is nothing in this budget that gives any sense of things changing any time soon

Minister for climate and energy that Ireland will miss its 2030 emissions targets by half and the fact he has provided no emergency plan to seek to address that or reverse that trajectory. The climate consequences of that failure, of not reaching these targets, will have very real … took the lowest end of that range, €8 billion, out of our budget in a year, that is a surplus wiped out. The comfort we enjoy now in terms of being able to deal with emergencies - for example, Covid, the Ukraine war and responding to the Iran

years ago. That is exactly what is happening now. The Government's budget is based on a 2% demographic growth, yet we are seeing actual demand in the health service far outpace that. Emergency department, ED, admissions are up 6.75% this year, general admissions … replies to parliamentary questions from the HSE telling me it is forecasting demand for next year only now, after it has got its budget allocation. No wonder the health service is in crisis. No commercially viable business would ever operate like that, so why does the Government make

broaden the remit while mindful that we do not have an infinite budget and will have loads of applications. We need to have a conversation as we emerge from Covid and in a new world around our attitudes to alcohol and online. What the Deputy is saying reflects

homelessness, and specifically child homelessness. The Minister has specific measures. He achieved €100 million in the budget to acquire social housing and housing more generally to take more families out of emergency accommodation and get them into either local authority houses or acquired homes. There is a specific

service, which provides non-emergency patient transport for qualifying patients in the south-east region, was set up in 2013 on a discretionary basis by the HSE. The Minister is also informed that hospitals in the south-east region are allocated an annual budget to provide limited transport … other acute services. I understand that Wexford General Hospital has a total budget under its control for all patient transport costs in 2025 of €1.56 million, which includes ambulance transportation for inpatients, taxis and non-emergency patient transport services. For patients who require the non-emergency patient transport

billion increase on this year’s allocation. An additional €6.1 billion will be allocated for current expenditure, with the budget for capital projects increasing by €2 billion. The current expenditure package will provide: €2 billion for social protection, to provide for our growing population, expand existing schemes … time, Ireland faced a very different set of challenges - a young State with scarce resources, emerging from war and conflict. Yet, the State had the courage to commit 20% of its national budget to build Ardnacrusha, one of the most ambitious engineering projects in the world at that

worth noting – I always try to make this point when we are talking about this issue – that in the context the same budget in which the Government took such a cruel approach to disabled people, Google walked in the front door of the Department of Finance … into poverty. The Government must give an emergency winter payment to combat the hardship disabled people are facing today. After that, we must implement a permanent and decent cost-of-disability support payment, as we have included in our budgets for multiple years in a row. The people

need to make the model sustainable because we want to be able to stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes. The emergency approach that we have had to date does need to be replaced with a more sustainable approach and that is how we are going … property grant, we are bringing in a new derelict property tax in the next budget and we have also expanded grants for shop conversions. The issue of vacancy and dereliction in the housing emergency is rightly identified by the Deputy as a key issue on which we want

cost-of-living crisis in general but in particular a demand for an emergency payment for those who have seen €1,400 in cuts savagely implemented in the past budget. A striking feature of the speeches was people responding to the ridiculing that happened in here about