At the outset, I want to take the opportunity to offer my deepest condolences to Harvey Morrison Sherratt's family and his parents, Gillian and Stephen. No words of condolence or consolation to Harvey's parents are enough. It is an extraordinarily traumatic thing to happen to any family, but in these circumstances even more traumatic in terms of the experiences the family and Harvey had with the hospitals and the clinical world itself, and it is unacceptable. The Minister met with the HSE and CHI board and has been working on this issue non-stop since she was appointed Minister for Health. The Minister has asked for a multidisciplinary report on the chronology from CHI regarding its involvement in Harvey's care and the key milestones as recorded on the CHI's hospital records. The HSE CEO received this draft report in August and has shared that report with Harvey's parents as well as with the Minister for Health. My understanding is that the Minister for Health and the Tánaiste are due to meet Harvey's parents in the near future. I understand fully the anger and the absolute frustration felt by the parents and by other families who do not receive surgical intervention at the right time for their child. I have spoken to Antoinette Burke since I met her earlier this week. We have arranged to meet. I do not want to get into discussing individual cases here in public, but clearly the issue there is one of clinical decision-making and the judgment made by clinicians. Clinicians, it seems, have taken a decision not to do surgery over many years in that case on a clinical basis. Obviously, any parent wants to do the very best for their child. It seems to me that the interaction or engagement between the clinical decision-making and the position of parents is one that has to be improved. Certainly, however, the question was put to me about the use of the word "emblematic", and I made that point in the context that if we look at, and I have read, the case in relation to Katie and Antoinette, there is a very clear disagreement in respect of the clinical judgment that consultants have made in that case. That said, I am going to pursue this. We have spoken to the CEO of the HSE in relation to this case also. On the broader issue of scoliosis, very significant resources have been allocated by Government to CHI. There is no point is saying there have not been; there have. The issue is that the translation of those resources to outcomes and outputs is a key issue for us. There have been a number of reports into CHI. All Deputies are aware of that. We are not happy with everything that has happened in CHI. We have an issue in that one consultant has been referred in respect of the utilisation of devices that did not meet the quality mark. We are awaiting a report on governance in CHI. The Health Service Executive has strengthened its service level agreement with CHI and is giving stronger supports to it. That process will continue in terms of underpinning, supporting and creating additional capacity in CHI in the immediate future and the time ahead. That is the direction of travel in respect of services, in particular spinal services, at CHI.
Sentiment score: 0.15
I am not applying my reply to the two cases the Deputy mentioned, for example. There is a fundamental question we have all faced if we are honest, whereby people come to us and say that as a parent they believe their child should get a particular intervention or surgery. If a doctor or clinician does not believe that is appropriate at that time or believes that the outcomes may not be optimal at that time for the child concerned, what is Deputy McDonald suggesting? This is a reality on an ongoing basis. It seems to me that we have to examine that relationship further, as well as the level of advocacy for the parents in these situations. That is why I think there is a weakness. Politicians cannot and should not arbitrarily intervene and say something should happen irrespective of what a clinical expert has said. We need some degree of consensus on that point. How it transpires and the advocacy for parents in that situation is something we should examine, in terms of stronger advocacy for parents in respect of clinical decision-making. In terms of what we are doing regarding the treatment abroad scheme, we have provided resources and there is an instruction to CHI and clinicians to refer, and I believe they should be referring patients on a continuous basis.
Sentiment score: 0.08
I appreciate the sincerity of the issues the Deputy has raised in respect of the challenges facing the country. Fundamentally, I make the point to the Deputy that since 2019 employment has grown in this country by 506,000 people. That is 506,000 people over five years. We have a strong and resilient economy and the most effective intervention in terms of poverty or living standards is work and jobs. I argue that the policies we have advocated here are advantageous to the enterprise economy and its continuation as compared to the policies the Deputy and those on the far left now allied with her have advocated. I make the point that there has been significant inflation since Covid-19 and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It peaked at close to 10% but since then the rates have considerably eased and living standards have improved significantly, with real wages and income increasing by between 3% and 3.5% this year alone. The nominal wage increase is about 5.5% and inflation is at 2%. I acknowledge, however, that prices are elevated. Food inflation is higher, at about 5%. I appreciate the Deputy's focus on targeting because we do intend to target in the budget. We do intend to prioritise the issue of child poverty and those most in need and under considerable pressure but equally we have to sustainably work our way through this. We now have the third lowest rate of inflation among the 27 European Union countries. This is something that cannot be ignored as we drive forward in terms of wage increases and so on, and also in terms of targeting child support payments. There are mechanisms we can do, which we did in the past, to try to protect those who need protection most, on energy costs and on food pricing costs. The key is that we want to do this in a mainstream way. It is not economically sustainable as we come out of this high inflation period over the last two to three years after Covid that we would continue doing large stand-alone cost-of-living packages. We have to mainstream provision in terms of the various mechanisms we have. For example, last year we eliminated the cost of school books in primary and second level schools. That is a permanent reduction in costs for families, parents and children. The Society of St. Vincent de Paul said that in the 2023-24 school year, it had a 20%-odd reduction in calls because of that measure alone. Hot school meals is another targeted mainstream provision that we have brought about. In other areas, we have done the same. That is the approach that I want to take. I welcome the Deputy's agreement that we need a targeted approach to these issues.
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I have indicated that we are going to do that. I said to the Deputy, prior to the summer recess, that we would target our resources as opposed to universal allocations.
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Through our social protection frameworks, we have mechanisms that will enable us to do that in terms of the various payments and so on that we can increase, but we will prioritise in respect of the child poverty question. We will prioritise in terms of disability and in terms of the additional costs that families with people who are disabled have to incur, and we will seek to alleviate that. We are conscious of the programme for Government commitments we have made in respect of the carer's allowance also. The budget, fundamentally, is an investment in the future of the country. We are prioritising capital investment. We need to catch up on infrastructure. Last year alone, there was an increase of close to 100,000 in our population. There has been a very significant increase in the population in this country over the past two to three decades and that is creating pressure, undoubtedly, on services and on infrastructure. We are investing in the future - in water, energy, grid, housing - and that will be a key part of the budget.
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First, I take the opportunity to welcome you back, Deputy, and I am looking forward to our continued engagements. I think we both share a love of west Cork and the people of west Cork, as well as their representatives in terms of quality, calibre and so forth. I am going to miss Deputy Cian O’Callaghan. I thank him for his forensic engagement over the last while. I also thank Deputy Cairns for her tributes to Councillor Patrick Gerard Murphy, a colleague of ours. We are in deep sadness because Patrick Gerard was a wonderful individual and the definition of what public representation at local level means. He was a man of great and deep insight, commitment, care and compassion, and great courage and bravery as well in terms of his own personal life and as a public representative. When we said that disability is the top priority of this Government, it is. I accept fully that there are shortcomings, to say the least, in some areas, particularly spinal surgery, assessment of need and the availability of therapies. On the other hand, it is important to create the other side of the narrative as well, that of unrelenting investment in additional needs, particularly, for example, in education in recent years, and exponential growth in services. If we take education alone, the State investment is about €2.9 billion in 2025. That is a 48% increase since 2020 and is a quarter of the entire Department of education budget. We now have 23,000 special needs assistants working in our schools, up 43% in the last five years. We added 1,600 SNAs this year alone. There are 21,000 special education teachers. The number of special classes has doubled to 3,700-plus. We have had 16 new special schools established in the last number of years and 407 new special classes sanctioned for 2025-26. That represents and reflects investment. It still is not enough. As I said earlier, our population is growing very significantly. If we look at the last two censuses, the most recent one showed a marked increase in the number identifying with a disability, both children and adults. That means we have to not just increase resources but systemically change as well. To be fair to the Minister, Deputy McEntee, and the Minister of State, Deputy Moynihan, they are already working to change the system for children with additional needs and their families applying for places in schools in terms of a centralised application system being piloted and the time to apply being brought forward by four months so that we have a better lead in time to the subsequent September. I will come back in on the other points later.
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First of all, Deputy Cairns's critique of the National Human Rights Strategy for Disabled Persons is wrong. There was significant participation of people with disabilities in the formulation, delivery and announcement of that strategy. They enthusiastically participated in that. Structures have been created to follow through on it. That is a kind of a cynical, poor response by the Deputy to what was a genuine-----
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I am just saying to the Deputy-----
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I met with the people at the launch of the strategy. I have created a disability unit in my Department to drive change. We will do it over the lifetime of this Government.
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It is right across the board. In terms of cost of living, it is not that simple and the Deputy knows that. However, there will be measures in the budget to help families with disabilities in terms of income supports. There will be measures in the budget in that respect.
Sentiment score: 0.28
We are not creating a free-for-all in terms of the rental market more generally. We are creating a national rent pressure zone, ultimately including the entire country. The bottom line is that we need more supply of houses. We need a significant and substantial increase in the supply of housing. That is the key. Without additional supply we will have a very challenging rental market. The Deputy indicated a case of 50%, which sounds illegal to me. I do not know whether or not the landlord is registered with the RTB. I do not have the specifics of the case but Deputy Stanley can forward them to us afterwards. As the Deputy is aware, the bottom line is that we have reformed the RPZs. The objective there is to create the opportunity for greater private sector investment in the private rental market to get more apartments built. That is important in terms of choice and greater access for people to apartments. We have done it in a way that continues to protect tenants. Very substantial protections have been introduced for tenants in the past five years, compared to what was there before. That must be acknowledged. I fully accept that costs are high. That is why we brought in the rent tax credit to be of assistance to renters in meeting the increased cost of renting. The reforms we announced on 10 June will strengthen the rights of new and existing tenants in Irish society. It is not a return to a free for all. The reforms were informed by a review by the Housing Agency, which did an analysis of the rental market for us, in particular of the rent pressure zones. The agency made recommendations on which we followed through on. All of the House wanted us to follow through on the Housing Commission's recommendations. It is in that context that the Housing Agency review followed through on them. There is a national cap now of 2% on existing rents. I do not know how one can go up by 50% but Deputy Stanley can forward me the details of that case. The rent tax credit has been continued. We will deal with that in the forthcoming budget also. We have provided a range of measures to ensure security for renters. I will not go through the full list of those. This year alone, on top of the Estimate for 2025, we have allocated a further €1 billion to the housing budget. Approximately €7.5 billion will have been spent on housing by the end of 2025. That is a very significant State intervention. We need more private sector investment in the rental market, in particular to build new apartments. We have taken measures, not just in the RPZs but also with apartment standards and other issues to attract further investment in on the private side to balance the State investment.
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We are going to continue with that agenda.
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No, I disagree with that.
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The Deputy mentioned the correlation between supply and price. Is he suggesting-----
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In terms of supply and its relationship with pricing, I will tell the Deputy one thing for certain: if we do not substantially increase supply, rents will go through the roof.
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The scarcity involved will increase the cost of any new tenancies that come along.
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I take it we are all agreed with more supply. That is a fundamental.
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It is not Deputy Hearne's turn. His party had its turn. Are we agreed that we need more supply?
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Second, we have very comprehensive and significant protections in place for tenants. Yes, the RTB has a function, obligation and role to enforce and ensure the protection of tenants in these scenarios and that fairness applies on all sides in respect of tenancies. Deputy Stanley referenced that we have brought in those kind of protections around evictions and so on. With the measures we have so far taken, and hopefully with some further measures, we will be in a position to get greater traction in building apartments, which we need to get done.
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