Ar dtús báire, aontaím go bhfuil sé seo an-phráinneach agus gur ábhar buartha é. Is olc an scéal é an rud atá ráite ag an Teachta McDonald. Is é an príomhrud ná go mbeidh an audit cuimsitheach agus go mbeidh sé againn chomh luath agus is féidir. At the outset, this situation is extremely serious and has necessitated an external audit. That is the first point. For any child to go through surgery is in and of itself a trauma. For parents it is also a trauma. If it emerges that children went through surgery that was not required in the first instance, that will not only be very traumatic in itself but a scandal. It is important we await the completion of the audit and its presentation to the Minister. I spoke to the Minister yesterday. She has not received any final draft or the completion of the audit. I have spoken to the Minister and she made that point to me. That then makes it very difficult all around, in terms of commenting in a piecemeal way or on an individual case or a case-by-case basis. I am not in a position to do that until the full, comprehensive audit is finalised, presented to the Minister and the Government and obviously shared with this House, as it will be. The Deputy is correct that CHI and Cappagh hospital have issued letters in recent weeks to families who may have concerns to provide information and so forth but, ultimately, it is the completion of the report that is key here. I understand there may have been drafts or whatever published, in The Ditch or elsewhere. I do not know. I cannot speak about the provenance of that other than to say the sensible thing for us to do is to enable Mr. Thomas and facilitate them to complete the report as quickly as possible given the anxiety and concerns that are undoubtedly out there. It is accepted those concerns will be there for families whose children will have gone through this particular surgery over a significant period of time. I understand the audit process is in its final stages. Feedback on the draft report has been received, I understand, by the expert author and is being reviewed. We simply have to assemble all the facts on a comprehensive basis, await the outcomes of the clinical audit and then decide on actions resulting from the outcome of that. The entirety of what took place needs to be understood and laid out fully and transparently. We would then follow through on actions that would be necessary. There are multidisciplinary teams in place in these hospitals in terms of pre-operative decision-making right across CHI and Cappagh hospital. That process commenced from March onwards. The hospital authorities are obviously taking on board the concerns and so on. It was raised initially via a protected disclosure in September 2023 relating to different thresholds for surgery being applied in CHI and the national orthopaedic hospital in Cappagh. The Department was notified in 2024. The clinical audit, as the Deputy knows, is being conducted by Mr. Simon Thomas, consultant surgeon to the staff of the children’s orthopaedic unit at Bristol Royal Hospital for Children. We simply have to await the completion of that.
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I hope it will be sooner rather than later to help deal with the concerns and anxieties, but also to deal with the issue itself.
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It is regrettable the Deputy would seek to politicise the issue, as she is attempting to do. The first people who should always be contacted in a situation like this are the families who are affected. That is why correspondence goes from the authorities - in this case, the hospital authorities, that is, CHI - to the families. That is as it should be. They should not be hearing about it in a piecemeal way or whatever because, first and foremost, they need full transparency.
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Second, the Deputy must know in her heart it would be unacceptable to try to release piecemeal and case by case in this case. The sensible thing to do is wait. It is frustrating that people have to wait, but we have to wait for the full audit. I know the Deputy is well aware of all this, but it does not suit in terms of the politics of it.
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The bottom line is that a draft report gets sent to all who have been involved.
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The feedback has come back.
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The audit will have all of that information available for everybody.
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That is the proper way to do this.
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I disagree fundamentally with Deputy Bacik's analysis in terms of housing policy more generally. Fianna Fáil and the previous Government did not double down on the policy of the last number of decades. The bottom line is, in 2023, for example, we saw the highest level of delivery of new build social housing since 1975. That is not doubling down on previous policies. It represents a step change in the building of social housing, which has happened over the past three to four years. The Deputy cannot deny that. We have higher targets but you simply cannot deny the fact that 48,000 new social homes is a step change from where we were before 2020. Whatever other hyperbole the Deputy will engage in, we have to deal in facts. The only agenda I as Taoiseach and the Government have is to build as many houses as we possibly can as fast as we can; that is it. I will do everything I can to make that happen across a number of fronts. The Deputy said we ignored the Housing Commission. We did not but the Labour Party did. The Deputy made a false statement when she said I said we might get rid of RPZs. I never once used those words. Go and check it, please, find the quotation and come back to me. I said a review of RPZ was under way. Guess who suggested there should be a review of the RPZs - the Housing Commission. I knew when the Deputy feigned interest in the Housing Commission's report that she did not really mean it because if she looks at the chapter on the rental market, it criticises the Oireachtas for its approach. It makes clear that we should explore issues with RPZs and so on - not get rid of them but explore the matter - and give certainty to private sector investment. I have said we need private sector investment in addition to public sector investment. Public sector investment this year will certainly go to €7 billion. Others estimate we will need approximately €20 billion. The State cannot do it all. We need private sector investment. Deputy Bacik's party and others have rubbished institutional funds as a vehicle for private sector investment in the housing market. It simply is not credible or sustainable to suggest that the Labour Party has a credible housing policy if it rules that out as a funding option for housing. Yet, that is what the Labour Party, the Social Democrats and others are doing and have been for the past four to five years because it is populist. It is good short-termism but it will not build a house. We need all hands on deck in housing. We need to unblock barriers on the ground. The housing activation office is not a secret; it was in the programme for Government, which was published. There was no secret about it at all.
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You did.
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In the past three or four years, the then Government, and the Fianna Fáil Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, gave power and resources to the Land Development Agency. Its work is under way.
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The Land Development Agency will get more equity and support to build more houses. That will happen but that is not the full story. We have to do much more. The bottom line is we have made a step change in the past three years. From approximately 20,000 houses built in 2019, we are now building approximately 30,000 plus. Housing for All targets were exceeded but everybody said they were not high enough.
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Now, we need to get to 50,000, which the ESRI said. The real challenge for the Opposition and the Government is how to go from 30,000 to 50,000. We will not get there with the populist, popular soundbites I hear every week we come into Dáil Éireann. That will not build 50,000 houses. We need real solutions that can deliver. The Government will do everything it can across all aspects to get solutions. I am not interested in the short-termism-----
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-----that passes in here for housing debate all the time. I am interested in getting real solutions and getting to the 50,000 per annum we need.
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Over the past three to four years, significant improvements were made to the minimum wage, workers' rights and sick leave pay. In 2022, for the first time, a statutory right was given to employer paid sick leave in the sick leave Act. The Deputy made the exaggerated comment that we are engaging in despicable action against workers. Sick leave has gone from three to five days. That was introduced in January 2024. The minimum wage has been increasing significantly over the past number of years as a result of Government decisions. It will continue to increase. To net out two issues, we decided to delay going from five to seven days and on the minimum wage, there is a delay in respect of matching the living wage. It will be a matter for Low Pay Commission to determine the increase. Those are the only two issues. The Deputy created a narrative around them that somehow there is an enormous undermining of workers' rights about to take place, which is not true. The Deputy mentioned auto-enrolment. Is he honestly saying that delaying auto-enrolment from September to January is a trampling of someone's rights? We spent years putting it together. The two main parties in government spent the past three to four years building up what was a very substantive programme in terms of getting auto-enrolment ready. In the context of the logistics involved, the payroll providers and so on, the view was that it should start with the tax year in January as opposed to in September. That is all. Let us not pretend that this is some massive undermining of workers' rights or anything like that. I am a complete convert to the idea of auto-enrolment. Sorry, I am not a convert; I am a believer. I passionately believe in it, and 800,000 workers will benefit from it. We are going full steam ahead with it as a government. Probably the most significant thing we will do for workers in this generation is auto-enrolment. It has been talked about for 30-odd years, and we are going to do it. The Deputy understands the context as well because he and his party fought the recent general election. Members on that side came into the House talking about the retail industry, which could not deal with the cumulative costs. Those involved blamed the Government. They had a point, because we did increase costs through improving rights for workers and other things. Many retail and many hospitality SMEs said that the cumulative impact of all of that was damaging both employment and their capacity to continue. We had people in this House talking about the closure of restaurants, etc. It is always about striking a balance in terms of how fast we go with progressive improvements. We did bring in the pay-related jobseeker's benefit scheme, which is a significant improvement on anything that we had for the past two or three decades. That is a significant additional right for workers and is well deserved.
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On what?
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I am sorry but we have significantly increased the minimum wage. We have significantly increased it over the past number of years, and it will continue to increase. The Deputy talks about the living wage. The Government does not pay the living wage. He does not pay the living wage. Employers pay the living wage. Shops pay the living wage. The Deputy's local Centra pays the living wage, which is what he is saying. During an election campaign, the Deputy will go into the local Centra, talk to the person there and say "Oh yeah, you're dead right. I'll talk to the Government about that". That is what everyone in the Opposition did in the recent election. They said costs were too high and that we must do something for small businesses and for hospitality. This is an attempt to try to balance how fast and how rapid we make progress. That is it. The Deputy should not try to conflate this with some major agenda that is anti-worker because that is not what this is about, in any shape or form. We are moving ahead with auto-enrolment. The pay-related scheme is a very significant additional benefit that we can improve upon on in time. The State will take on a significant proportion of that, which is important. In terms of the semi-State sector, rather than the ad hoc approach which has gone on for the past ten or 11 years, it is important to create a framework in terms of how senior executives in that sector are paid.
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The Deputy raised this a number of weeks ago. There are laws in place and there is a regulator. The regulator is the Central Bank. There is a tendency in the House to keep asking if we can investigate this and investigate that, but the established regulators have a function and an obligation to investigate if they receive complaints. I am not clear whether the individuals who have been defrauded, as the Deputy asserted, have made formal complaints in respect of the adviser to whom the Deputy refers or the companies in which that adviser was involved in establishing. Have actual complaints been sent to the Central Bank in respect of that? It is important to establish that, particularly as there are Central Bank registers. It is extremely important that customers are aware of the risk of fraud and related scams and that they ensure that the person or entity they are dealing with is registered with the Central Bank of Ireland. Those registers are available free online. The Central Bank also publishes warnings about unauthorised firms and will sometimes list such firms. I presume this person was a registered broker. I will ask if the Deputy can meet with the Minister for Finance in relation to this, to take him through the details. The Minister has, from policy perspective, some interaction with the Central Bank, which is independent in terms of the conduct of its work. If a business has shut down - and the Deputy has suggested that a business closed down and then another business was established by the same person - any new business would also require authorisation by the Central Bank before it can undertake activities which are regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. That authorisation process requires and includes a Central Bank fitness and probity review in respect of all of the key roles to lead the business and so forth. There are individual accountability frameworks within regulation. The Central Bank (Individual Accountability Framework) Act 2023 sets out clearly and fully where responsibility lies in regulated firms and includes conduct standards. If the Central Bank suspects, on reasonable grounds, that a subject has committed a prescribed contravention, it is in a position to hold an inquiry to determine whether the subject has committed such a contravention. There are strong sanctions in relation to individuals. It would be useful to know more. The Deputy sent me some documents in the past hour but I have not had a chance to go through them. I will read that material. I am not clear why the Central Bank has not engaged. I do not know if the Deputy has written to the Central Bank to make submissions to it on the people he has spoken about here.
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I welcome that the fraud squad seems to be, or is, involved, as the Deputy said. That is good news. It is reprehensible for anybody to defraud another person of funds, particularly their savings, through fraudulent investments. Nobody is untouchable. They can be touched and investigated and there is a process for doing it. We in this country are always going back to investigate the investigator. We do not need an investigation into the Central Bank, I suggest, but an investigation into the individuals whose fraudulent behaviour the Deputy has highlighted in the Dáil. That is what we need. That is why we establish regulators and resource them. We put a lot of funding into regulators. Fundamentally, into the future, the country must use existing regulatory authorities to do the majority of investigations. We love setting up commissions of investigation - inquiries that cost millions of euro, spend years at it and not getting the closure that people want in all cases. There is real law and sanctions here. We should pursue those avenues.
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