Dáil Éireann

Vol. 1010 Tuesday, No. 4 13 July 2021

DÍOSPÓIREACHTAÍ PARLAIMINTE PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES DÁIL ÉIREANN

TUAIRISC OIFIGIÚIL—Neamhcheartaithe (OFFICIAL REPORT—Unrevised)

Freagra ar an Eascaire Corrthoghcháin do Dháilcheantair Chuan Bhaile Átha Cliath Theas ��491

13/07/2021A00100Return to Writ: Dublin Bay South ��491

13/07/2021A00200Introduction of New Member ��491

13/07/2021A00450Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders’ Questions ��492

13/07/2021J00400An tOrd Gnó - Order of Business ��500

13/07/2021R00100European Union Regulation: Referral to Joint Committee ��512

13/07/2021R00400Double Taxation Relief (Taxes on Income and Capital Gains) Orders: Referral to Select Committee ��512

13/07/2021R00700Appointment of Member of the Legal Services Regulatory Authority: Motion ��513

13/07/2021R01000Orders of Reference of the Committee on Key Issues affecting theTraveller Community: Motion ��513

13/07/2021R01300Ceisteanna - Questions ��513

13/07/2021R01400Departmental Programmes ��513

13/07/2021S00200Departmental Offices ��517

13/07/2021U00600Cabinet Committees ��521

13/07/2021V01050Ceisteanna ar Sonraíodh Uain Dóibh - Priority Questions ��525

13/07/2021V01600Hospital Overcrowding ��526

13/07/2021W00550Covid-19 Tests ��528

13/07/2021X00400Departmental Reports ��530

13/07/2021X01200Covid-19 Pandemic ��531

13/07/2021Y00800Vaccination Programme ��534

13/07/2021Z00400Ceisteanna Eile - Other Questions ��536

13/07/2021Z00500Departmental Funding ��536

13/07/2021AA00200Hospital Facilities ��538

13/07/2021AA01100Hospital Services ��539

13/07/2021BB00350Cannabis for Medicinal Use ��541

13/07/2021CC00200Hospital Services ��543

13/07/2021CC01000Mental Health Services ��545

13/07/2021DD00250Health Services ��546

13/07/2021DD00950Mental Health Services ��548

13/07/2021EE00550Hospital Procedures ��549

13/07/2021EE01900Long-Term Residential Care: Motion [Private Members] ��551

13/07/2021RR00500Ábhair Shaincheisteanna Tráthúla - Topical Issue Matters ��579

13/07/2021SS00100Teachtaireachtaí ón Seanad - Messages from Seanad ��580

13/07/2021SS00300Finance (Local Property Tax) (Amendment) Bill 2021: Second Stage ��580

13/07/2021LLL00300Saincheisteanna Tráthúla - Topical Issue Debate ��618

13/07/2021LLL00400Departmental Functions ��618

13/07/2021NNN00300Covid-19 Pandemic ��621

13/07/2021OOO00250Driver Test ��624

13/07/2021PPP00600Olympic Games ��627 DÁIL ÉIREANN

Dé Máirt, 13 Iúil 2021

Tuesday, 13 July 2021

Chuaigh an Ceann Comhairle i gceannas ar 2 p.m.

Paidir. Prayer.

Freagra ar an Eascaire Corrthoghcháin do Dháilcheantair Chuan Bhaile Átha Cliath Theas

13/07/2021A00100Return to Writ: Dublin Bay South

13/07/2021A00200Introduction of New Member

The Clerk of the Dáil made the following announcement:

I gcomhlíonadh Bhuan-Ordú 231 de na Buan-Orduithe i dtaobh Gnó Phoiblí, tá orm a chraoladh go nedearnadh, sa Chorrthoghchán a bhí ann an 8ú Iúil 2021, de chionn an Teachta Eoghan Ó Murchú d’éirí as, an comhalta seo a leanas a thoghadh don Dáil:

In compliance with Standing Order 231 of the Standing Orders relative to Public Business I have to announce that at the By-Election held on 8 July 2021 consequent on the regisnation of Deputy Eoghan Murphy, the following Member has been elected to the Dáil:

Dáilcheantar Chuan Bhaile Átha Cliath Theas: Ivana Bacik

Constituency of Dublin Bay South: Ivana Bacik.

Tá Rolla na gComhaltaí sínithe ag an Theachta de réir Bhuan-Ordaithe 1.

The Deputy has signed the Roll of Members in accordance with Standing Order 1.

13/07/2021A00400An Ceann Comhairle: We welcome our new Member, Deputy Ivana Bacik. No doubt she will make a significant contribution to this Lower House as she did over many years in the Up- per House and we wish her the very best of success.

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13/07/2021A00450Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders’ Questions

13/07/2021A00500Deputy Mary Lou McDonald: I extend a very warm welcome to Deputy Bacik. Fáilte mhór agus comhghairdeas. Well done on a very convincing and wonderful victory. She is now the 37th woman in the House and that is good news for all of us. Congratulations to Ivana. We all look forward very much to working with her.

Last week, the Taoiseach and his Government forced through an amendment to legislation dealing with Covid-19 business supports that provided yet another tax break to investment funds and cuckoo funds. This was an incredibly bad move, representing very bad value for taxpayers’ money, lowering the number of homes available to buy by ordinary workers and families, and pushing up the cost of housing for everyone. Indeed, it is a prime example of all that is wrong with the Government’s housing policy and another example of how the Taoiseach, his party and his partners in government do not understand the scale of the crisis in housing.

On Sunday, the Business Post reported that the Government’s plan to lease 2,400 homes this year alone will cost in the region of €1 billion over the lifetime of those leasing arrangements. What is worst of all is that, at the end of the 25-year period, the State will not own these properties, despite paying in excess of €375,000 each for them within the 25-year timeframe. We know these leasing arrangements are even more expensive, by the way, in the city of Dublin, running at almost €500,000 for each unit. Little wonder that the funds industry is delighted by the Government’s latest move, which continues apace despite the Taoiseach telling the Dáil in May that this practice should cease.

On the flip side of the coin, the latest figures available from the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage show that the cost of building social and affordable houses is much less than these expensive leasing arrangements, coming in, on average, at approximately €240,000. It is now apparent that the Government is content to fork out well over the odds to these funds for leasing arrangements for properties that will not be in the ownership of the State at the end of the leasing arrangement. None of this makes any sense at all. In fact, it is the same mentality that has given us the disastrous deal in respect of the cost of the national children’s hospital, which, as the Taoiseach knows, is running spectacularly over budget. Private interests should not be skimming super-profits off the top of building public infrastructure, yet that is what the Taoiseach is facilitating. His repeated assertion that these leasing arrangements are short term does not stack up when one considers that the arrangements will be in place for 25 years and, in the case of the 2,400 homes to which I refer, will cost the taxpayer and the State €1 billion.

Can the Taoiseach confirm that cost of €1 billion? Can he confirm what I have said, namely, that at the end of the 25 years, these homes will not be owned by the State? I urge him again, as I have urged him before, to cease and desist from pursuing these failed policies and, instead, invest in the construction of social and affordable homes. What we need is not sweetheart deals for these cuckoo funds; we need a doubling of capital investment in social and affordable housing. That is what should be announced in the summer economic statement.

13/07/2021B00200The Taoiseach: First, I take the opportunity to congratulate Deputy Bacik on her election to Dáil Éireann and welcome her warmly to the House.

13/07/2021B00300Deputy Ivana Bacik: Thank you, Taoiseach. 492 13 July 2021

13/07/2021B00400The Taoiseach: She has been a long-standing activist on public and social issues. I think the people of Dublin Bay South recognised that and reflected it in their affirmation of her role. I have no doubt from her previous parliamentary experience that the Deputy will add value to Dáil Éireann. I also pay tribute to her party for its success in the by-election. No doubt we will have the occasional engagement and debate on issues pertaining to society and the future of our country.

Regarding Deputy McDonald’s charge, her portrayal of the Government’s housing policy is flawed and wrong in its assertions. The decision last week related to social homes and social housing. Without question, the Government’s focus has been on the need to build social and affordable housing directly. In fairness, any objective look back over the past month will show a Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage who has been very active here on several fronts. Last week alone, I refer to his decision regarding reducing rent and ensuring it cannot increase in the future beyond the rate of inflation. It was a highly significant move the Deputy chose to ignore. I also point to the range of affordability measures in this regard, including legislation concerning the Land Development Agency, affordable homes and shared equity. I note the Deputy railed against it for the last several weeks but then ended up voting for the Affordable Housing Bill 2021.

Therefore, it is very difficult to take the Deputy seriously. She came in here week after week and attacked the Minister for a variety of measures, which her party subsequently supported and voted for. The Deputy spoke about taking this issue seriously and understanding the nature of housing. In reality, I do not think it is possible to lay that charge against any party in this House, given the record of the Deputy’s party in opposing so many housing projects which were shovel-ready and ready to go. Sinn Féin opposed 975 homes in Clondalkin, 30% of which were social houses. The party opposed 500 homes in Tallaght, of which 80% would have been social and affordable houses. In addition, it opposed 278 homes in Swords. More recently, the party voted against 1,200 social, affordable and private homes in Ballymastone, Donabate. That development would have delivered 238 social homes and 238 affordable homes at prices between €250,000 and €270,000. Sinn Féin also opposed the Land Development Agency Bill, which is about affordability and getting State delivery of both social and affordable homes. The party spoke out and railed against the shared equity scheme, which will help people to buy houses at an affordable level and opposed the help-to-buy scheme, which so far has helped 22,000 first-time buyers. The Deputy’s party and its spokesperson said we did not need it and have called for the scheme to be scrapped.

I do not get any sincerity in the Deputy’s protestations about housing and I do not get any substance either. I get a sense that the Deputy’s object and mission is to exploit the housing crisis for electoral gain only and is not interested in solutions around housing. The Deputy and her party are interested in exploiting the housing problem. I can say this much in that regard. In the context of the housing for all strategy, which the Minister is working on and will publish, our overwhelming focus will be on the direct building of social houses. We are in transition now. We simply cannot turn off the tap, when social houses can be provided through this leasing arrangement in the short term to provide for 2,400 families who can avail of social housing through this model. It is not at all the ideal model and that is why it will be seen that the focus is coming off of it. However, it is not the main focus now and it never has been. The main focus is on direct build and on the State getting directly involved in building and providing affordable homes for people who need to get access to homes they can afford in cities and towns across the country.

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13/07/2021C00200Deputy Mary Lou McDonald: Public land should be used for building public housing - social and affordable housing - full stop. The days of Fianna Fáil and its crony friends, the big developers, creaming off at the people’s expense should be over. I would have thought the Tao- iseach would have learned that from catastrophes past but perhaps he has not. He is confirming that €1 billion will be spent and will go into the pockets of these investment funds to lease back homes that will not be owned by the State. His assertion that this measure is transitional or short-term is patently untrue, given that the lifespan of these leases is 25 years. Moreover, the Government’s focus is not on direct build. If its focus on was on direct build and the delivery of public, social and affordable housing at scale, then we would not have this point of contention or disagreement. It is Sinn Féin’s view, as well as that of the ESRI and many others, that we need to double capital investment in the construction of social and affordable housing. I ask the Taoiseach to please confirm that the summer economic statement will contain a doubling of capital investment in this way. He is the Taoiseach and I would appreciate a direct answer.

13/07/2021D00200The Taoiseach: The Government is a year in office. It has been hit by the Covid pandemic, which resulted in 8,000 or 9,000, if not 10,000, houses not being built due to the two lockdowns. That has set us back somewhat but we are going to try to catch up as quickly as we possibly can. Anyone looking at the figures would have to come back with the conclusion that the focus is on direct builds, both social and affordable, and the State getting involved in affordable housing. Through the Land Development Agency, we are utilising State lands to get far greater amounts of housing delivered. The issue is about housing supply and getting far more houses built in the coming years than we have been building in the last number of years. Last year, the number was close to 20,000 and it would have been much higher but for Covid. This year, we had a target of 25,000 but Covid hit us again. We are hoping to get close to 18,000 and if we can exceed that, all the better. From then on, in the housing for all strategy, for which additional capital funding will be provided, the focus, as has always been the case as far as I am concerned, will be on direct builds and affordable housing.

13/07/2021D00300Deputy Alan Kelly: I welcome my colleague, Deputy Ivana Bacik, into Dáil Éireann and congratulate her on her achievement. We are very proud of her in the Labour Party. She is an incredible legislator and I thank the Taoiseach and the leader of Sinn Féin for their kind words. I assure the Taoiseach that Deputy Bacik is someone who will hold him and his Government to account over the coming days, weeks and years. He will find that out relatively quickly.

I want to ask about an issue that has come to the fore because an tUachtarán, Michael D. Higgins, raised it, that is, the significant scourge of gambling. It was also raised on “Prime Time” in an excellent report from Conor McMorrow. Oisín McConville, Cathal McCarron and other GAA stars have also highlighted issues they have and have been very open about their concerns and what happened to them. I watched the excellent European soccer championship over the last month or so, as did many others. I sat down to watch it with my daughter Aoibhe, who is a sports fanatic. The volume of gambling advertisements was, frankly, incredible.

I commend the Taoiseach on bringing in the smoking ban. Watching that on “Reeling in the Years”, it is clear that it was very positive legislation. When people watch “Reeling in the Years” from 2021 or 2020 they will wonder why we allowed such advertisements on television, radio, in print and online. We need to deal with the issue. The President is right. Twice in the last two weeks, he has raised this issue and said it was a scourge. The Government has talked about bringing in a gambling regulator and we support it on that but it needs to implement Sena- tor Mark Wall’s Bill to ban gambling advertising.

494 13 July 2021 The advertising out there is incredible. It never stops. It brings people who have problems with addiction back in. Some €1.36 billion was lost to gamblers last year. That is €300 per person but we all know that a large amount of money is lost by a small number of people. If we do not deal with this issue, many people will continue to have significant problems when it comes to an addiction to gambling, such as mental health issues and even - dare I say it - suicide because of it. The impacts it has on families are often hidden until it is too late.

As I said, the Taoiseach brought in excellent forward-thinking legislation many years ago to ban smoking indoors. The Government is bringing in a regulator for gambling but that is taking too long. In the interim, I ask the Taoiseach please to support us and support what the President of Ireland is asking us to do by banning gambling advertisements, particularly for young people, across all social, print and broadcast media. We could do this relatively quickly. Other countries have done it. We are behind on this issue. I ask the Taoiseach to please do so.

13/07/2021E00200The Taoiseach: I thank the Deputy for raising what is an important issue. I take on board the comments made by Uachtarán na hÉireann on gambling advertising. As the Deputy knows, the programme for Government commits to comprehensively reforming the licensing and regulation of gambling activities and the Minister of State, Deputy James Browne, is overseeing the reform of that legislation. In particular, he is focusing on the establishment of a gambling regulator which would be focused on public safety and well-being, covering gambling online and in person. The regulator would have the powers to regulate advertising both online and through more traditional media.

We will look at Senator Wall’s Bill. It would be important, as a precursor, to have an all- party approach and engagement on this in the Oireachtas. In the meantime, it is important that we pursue the legislation for the establishment of a regulator. The pathway is that it would be fully operational in early 2023 and the work is under way on the legislation to develop modern licensing and regulatory provisions for the industry. As regards the milestones the Minister of State has targeted, he envisages that the draft general scheme will go to government by the end of quarter 3 and it is intended to finalise the appointment of a CEO-designate by the end of the year. The regulator will have enforcement powers for licensing and powers to take action where individual or operators are failing to follow rules and regulations. It will have key objectives in making sure to provide for responsible and safer gambling as well as combating problem gambling.

Addiction to gambling is a terrible illness which can destroy families and individuals. The Deputy is correct on that. We need to stand back from the immediate legislation and look at the bigger picture around gambling. We need to look at what we can do to deal with the issue itself and support those who have an addiction to gambling and provide the necessary supports to them. The establishment of an independent gambling regulator could help to change the debate and the narrative around this. The regulator would develop the regulations, codes of conduct, codes of practice and so forth but perhaps it would also become the catalyst for the further policy changes that are required.

I accept that the situation and frameworks governing gambling are weak. The Broadcasting Authority of Ireland and the Advertising Standards Authority for Ireland develop codes around advertising and so on but it is something we need to take a broader look at as a Legislature. I will look at the Deputy’s proposals with a constructive frame of mind.

13/07/2021E00300Deputy Alan Kelly: I thank the Taoiseach for the positive reply and for his comments on 495 Dáil Éireann taking an all-party approach. Establishing a regulator is taking too long. I have serious issues with regard to what the regulator should be doing about how betting companies and establish- ments such as casinos behave. Gambling companies are totally unscrupulous. If people have a problem with gambling and they search “gambling” online, they will be flooded with advertisements for gambling. The Labour Party had a campaign to ban these ads and afterwards we were flooded with advertising for gambling based on an algorithm that threw these ads at us. Even having this positive conversation about gambling in Dáil Éireann will result in the people who are engaging on our behalf having gambling advertisements thrown at them. That is outside the print media, television and radio. I should not have to explain to my 11-year-old daughter what in-play betting is when it pops up in the middle of a European championship final. It is not acceptable. I want to see the regulator and I will work with the Taoiseach on that but in advance of that, we need to implement a version of Senator Wall’s Bill. We need to ban advertising for gambling in the media I have pointed out.

13/07/2021E00400The Taoiseach: As I said, there are two steps involved in this. We need to get a gambling regulator in place. The Minister of State, Deputy James Browne, is determined to do that. He is competent, diligent and committed to it and I have no doubt he will get it done. We will then need to have a wider debate about gambling advertising more generally. It would be useful for an all-party committee to give consideration to the issue the Deputy has raised. A relevant committee may already be in existence. I am conscious of the plethora and proliferation of advertisements on social media. Their impact on the lives of young people, in particular, can be very damaging indeed. We need to do everything to wise up to that and to deal properly with it as a Legislature.

13/07/2021F00200Deputy Matt Shanahan: On behalf of the Regional Group, I welcome Deputy Bacik. I am sure she will make a fine contribution to this Dáil.

I have a strange request to make of the Taoiseach. I ask him to please consider pausing the development of the national maternity hospital at St. Vincent’s University Hospital and of the Cork elective hospital until we have appropriate project management budgeting and oversight. I make this remarkable request because, as a Deputy, I am notionally charged with providing parliamentary oversight on public spending. Budget 2022 is being framed at the moment, as is the review of the Project Ireland 2040 capital projects, and this Dáil knows virtually nothing of these plans. Parliamentary questions are answered glibly or not at all. Ministers usually refuse to address the question asked. The Committee of Public Accounts and the Comptroller and Au- ditor General only look at the spilled milk they can find and, from next Monday onwards, even that thin oversight will hibernate until autumn.

There is more drone footage than there are spreadsheets in the Project Ireland 2040 plans. It is impossible to see where public money goes. Is that because it suits those at Cabinet? Is the bulk of discretionary spending being funnelled into Dublin and Cork, which are home to almost all the Ministers? Do not tell me I am wrong. I call on the Taoiseach to namecheck some projects and show me where the money is going. I call on him to publish proper, granular data on public spending, particularly for capital projects. Vast parts of Ireland are frozen out of a fair share of capital spending and are fobbed off by tokenistic urban regeneration and development fund, URDF, funding, when the billion euro projects flow to Cork and Dublin. With €10 billion of capital expenditure this year, the south east should be getting €890 million and Waterford should be getting €230 million. There are no significant projects currently being implemented in the south east. Níl rud ar bith le feiceáil. There is none, nothing, nada in respect of all core regional issues, including our hospital and university, the M24 motorway, the north quays, our 496 13 July 2021 railways, port and airport. The Government, like almost every Government before it, has slow- walked every strategic project from the south east while nursing along its own pet projects. We would make wiser decisions about spending if the people could see where their money is going. That is what I am asking the Taoiseach to implement.

13/07/2021F00300The Taoiseach: The need for a national maternity hospital is without question. The women of Ireland need a modern national maternity hospital providing the best of care at a tertiary level. The current conditions are simply not good enough or tenable into the future and cannot be sustained. We need a new national maternity hospital. In terms of value for money, the procurement provisions in public expenditure will have to apply. That is why I desist from global figures and from saying it will cost this or that. It should very much depend on the tendering operation and a detailed specification before any global figures are referenced in respect of a project of the scale of a national maternity hospital. We need that hospital and the women of Ireland need it without question.

The Deputy asked about funding for the south east. The Minister of State, Deputy Butler, has been extremely assertive in respect of Waterford and the south east more generally, as have Minister of State, Deputy James Browne, and others. I was somewhat surprised when the Deputy called the URDF money tokenistic. It must be accepted that the €190 million disbursed from the fund to date is not tokenistic. That is substantial funding. On regional investment in jobs in County Waterford, the regional enterprise plan for the south east is currently being developed by the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, the Tánaiste and Minister of State, Deputy Troy, working closely with the south-east committee. The plan is building on successful clusters in the region in life sciences, pharmaceuticals, medical technologies, bio- pharma, agrifood, engineering, financial services, technology and international business services. The Technological University of South-East Ireland project has progressed. The university is vital and significant for the region and funding will accompany its development.

It is interesting that employment in IDA Ireland-supported companies has increased by 2.8% in the south east. Approximately 13,461 people are working in 74 such companies. For- eign direct investment, FDI, employment in the south east is now at a ten-year high. We must keep on developing that, however. That is why advanced properties are being developed by IDA Ireland to attract new investment to the region.

As the Deputy may be aware, there was a very welcome announcement recently of 90 jobs by Horizon Therapeutics for County Waterford. Enterprise Ireland is also supporting clients. The south east was one of the few regions with positive employment growth of in 2020. That growth amounted to 2%. As the Deputy will know, progress has been made in respect of the catheterisation laboratory, although it took time. It is expected that the main contractor will hand over the project by the end of June 2022, which is welcome. We will continue to allocate significant funding to the south east into the future.

13/07/2021G00200Deputy Matt Shanahan: I do not think anybody would argue that there is a need for a children’s hospital but I doubt anybody would agree that we need to spend close to €2 billion providing it. Our country has paid a high price for repeatedly stuffing up its finances. Our methods of oversight are not up to the task and the Office of the Comptroller and Auditor Gen- eral, as good as it is, is no match for the scale and ambition of and responsibilities relating to public expenditure. We will be back in the ha’penny place very shortly if we fritter away this public money on political codology and strokes.

497 Dáil Éireann An OECD study of budget oversight by the Oireachtas published in 2000 said we - as in Oireachtas Members - did not engage with the budget in a meaningful or impactful way. We still need better budgeting procedures and information. In 500 days or so, the Taoiseach will handle over his office to another person. I offer him the advice that instituting proper reporting on sectoral and regional spending would be an enduring legacy. I ask the Taoiseach to investigate actions that can deliver such a legacy of equity and fairness to the Irish people, particularly those who live in the south east.

13/07/2021G00300The Taoiseach: I thank the Deputy for raising the issue. Value for public expenditure is very important. The Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Michael McGrath, is both keenly aware of and focused on that and has already taken a range of measures and decisions to provide for it.

I reassure the Deputy that the Government is absolutely committed to the south east. That is evidenced by the overall funding that has been allocated to County Waterford under urban regeneration and our working with the council chief executive in terms of the north quays project, notwithstanding the recent difficulties there. The funding was allocated in advance in respect of that project and the difficulties relating to it have not been on the State’s side. We are working with the council to advance the project. Across the industrial and higher education sectors and in the context of a range of other projects, the Government will continue to support the economic needs of the entire south east region, including County Waterford, obviously, counties Carlow, Kilkenny and Wexford and so on.

13/07/2021G00400An Ceann Comhairle: I thank the Taoiseach. Deputy Shanahan raised the question about responses to parliamentary questions. I must say that in recent years, I would have considered in general that the quality of responses to parliamentary questions has improved. I will bring to the attention of the Deputy and of all Members that Standing Order 54 provides an avenue for Deputies who are dissatisfied with how questions are dealt with to refer them to my office. I am more than happy to deal with such referrals.

13/07/2021H00100Deputy Marian Harkin: First, I am very happy to welcome our new colleague, Deputy Bacik. She will make a positive contribution and I wish her well.

I have raised the following issue with the Taoiseach several times. The only reason I am raising it again is because it is an urgent matter and right decisions can still be taken. I speak of the need for a new Garda station in Sligo. To be clear, I am not asking the Taoiseach to intervene in an operational decision taken by the Garda Commissioner to restructure divisions as part of the new operating model. However, as soon as the Commissioner took that decision, the plans to build a new Garda station in Sligo were scrapped. This is despite the fact that before Christmas 2019, the Office of Public Works, OPW, deemed Sligo Garda station unfit for purpose. The restructuring of the Garda divisions meant approximately ten staff would move from Sligo but the new operating model means additional staff are coming to Sligo. In a recent response, the Taoiseach told me 20 new staff were coming there and consequently, there will be more staff under the current regime than under the old one.

The station is unfit for purpose. It was built in the 1840s and while some refurbishment has taken place, the building is still totally inadequate. It is too small; it is a warren of rooms and stairs with small poky offices and Portakabins out the back. The footprint of the building is just too small. The facilities within the rooms are simply not fit for purpose. I visited two weeks ago with my colleague, Councillor Marie Casserly, and it is not an exaggeration to say I was 498 13 July 2021 shocked. For example, the scenes of crime unit, where the equipment necessary to solve crimes is housed and the personnel are based, is beyond belief. I do not know how anyone works in it, let alone solves crimes. In addition, members of the Garda in Sligo have submitted a brief for the refurbishment of the station and 40% of their requirements are not being met. There is a long list. A new site was purchased and plans were drawn up. Sligo was part of a public private partnership, PPP, with Macroom and Clonmel but it has now been dropped and the money has gone elsewhere. The decision not to proceed with a Garda station in Sligo was not operational but financial. I ask the Taoiseach to look at that again.

13/07/2021H00200The Taoiseach: I thank the Deputy for raising this important issue with me. However, as I have said to her previously, the Garda Commissioner is responsible for the management and administration of An Garda Síochána, including the Garda estate. The Deputy will be aware the Office of Public Works has responsibility for the provision and maintenance of Garda -ac commodation. Works on Garda accommodation are progressed by Garda authorities, working in close co-operation with the OPW. The determination of the need for the development of a new Garda station in any location is considered by the Garda Commissioner in the context of the overall accommodation requirements arising from the ongoing expansion of the Garda workforce and the availability of capital funding, as well as the implementation of the recommendations of the Commission on the Future of Policing in Ireland.

My understanding is one of the key recommendations of the commission was the introduction of a new Garda operating model, which was announced by the Commissioner in 2019. As part of this reform, I am informed, the Commissioner decided not to progress a new build for Sligo Garda station, taking account of a range of factors, the most pertinent of which from the Commissioner’s perspective,was the decision to create a new three-county division, namely, Donegal-Sligo-Leitrim, the divisional headquarters of which will be in Letterkenny. I understand An Garda Síochána has invested, and continues to invest, significant funding in refur- bishing the current Garda station in Sligo and that further upgrade works are currently under way, including the provision of a new cell block to allow for additional capacity and improved custody management facilities. I also understand and am informed the planned works include accommodation for the scenes of crime unit.

It is important to note this is not a decision made due to finance or a lack of resources from Government. This is an operational decision taken by the Garda Commissioner in his capacity as Accounting Officer and as the person responsible by law for the allocation ofGarda resources. The decision was taken in the context of the significant reorganisation of Garda resources that underpins the new Garda Síochána operating model. That is the decision the Garda Commissioner has taken. I understand refurbishment has been carried out and there are further significant upgrades to be carried out to what is, I agree, a very old building. That work will continue and I will provide the Deputy and her Oireachtas colleagues with further timelines on that upgrade. That is the current position.

13/07/2021J00200Deputy Marian Harkin: The Taoiseach mentioned the OPW, which deemed that building unfit for purpose in December 2019. The Garda Commissioner then made changes around the operational model. I am not asking the Taoiseach to interfere but nothing has changed. The footprint of that building is too small and it is a warren of rooms. Despite the fact that some refurbishment has taken place, it still is simply and totally unsuitable. There will be more staff in Sligo Garda station and not fewer, so if it was too small in the first place, it is certainly too small now.

499 Dáil Éireann As a proper cost-benefit analysis is needed, will the Taoiseach ensure such a proper analysis happens for the refurbishment that is compliant with the public spending code? We do not have one and we are not getting value for money in that respect. I invite the Taoiseach to see Sligo Garda station when he can, where he can see for himself that what I am saying is not me grandstanding. This is about a Garda station that is totally unfit for purpose.

13/07/2021J00300The Taoiseach: I accept the Deputy is not grandstanding and I know other Deputies in the House raised the matter also. I get the sense from Deputies that local members of the Garda are clearly very concerned about this. The issue for the Government is that the Garda Commis- sioner has made a decision in respect of the new operating model and in light of this has made a decision on the capital works across three areas in that one division. That seems to be the challenge and the difficulty.

They are now concentrating on an upgrade of the existing facility in Sligo and Garda estate management is conducting an operational review. They are requesting that the contract to refurbish be amended to provide two additional cells. Works are proposed to redevelop the remainder of the station and these works are currently being assessed between Garda estate management, local management and the Office of Public Works. As the scope of the work has not yet been finalised, we are not in a position to provide timelines or costs but we will keep Deputies informed of the progress.

13/07/2021J00400An tOrd Gnó - Order of Business

13/07/2021J00500An Ceann Comhairle: As Members know, we have agreed that for the duration of the Co- vid-19 emergency only, the rapporteur’s report on the Order of Business shall be taken as read. Are the proposed arrangements for this week’s business agreed to?

13/07/2021J00600Deputy Pádraig Mac Lochlainn: They are not agreed. The contempt the Government has demonstrated towards the Opposition in recent weeks in rushing through legislation with guil- lotines applied across the board is totally unacceptable. The disrespect for sectoral committees and for the Opposition’s duty and responsibility to scrutinise legislation is totally unacceptable. There is not enough time to debate the local property tax Bill, for example.

On foot of the proposed emergency health legislation, an emergency meeting of the Busi- ness Committee was held earlier and the Opposition indicated it would agree to more sitting days. We have no opposition to additional sitting days and we could even sit next week. Let us take enough time to go through these matters.

The Maritime Jurisdiction Bill 2021 formally cedes Rockall to Britain and that has never been done in legislation before. It has 45 minutes allocated to the debate but Sinn Féin has submitted dozens of amendments. It is derisory and disrespectful and the order must change. I ask the Taoiseach to agree to more sitting days this week and next week.

13/07/2021K00100Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett: We have major concerns about the vaccination passports for the reopening of hospitality being discriminatory and unethical and about young people working in the hospitality sector potentially being put in the position of risking their health. These are serious matters. In that context, the idea that the legislation is going to be rammed through in one day, when it has such serious implications in the context of civil liberties, health and equality, is absolutely unacceptable. 500 13 July 2021 On the Finance (Local Property Tax) (Amendment) Bill 2021, many people will be facing a significant additional financial burden on what some of us consider to be a deeply unfair tax on the family home. Again, this legislation is being rammed through. What is happening on both counts is unacceptable. We strongly object. There should be more time for all of these things. If necessary, we should sit next week in order to have proper scrutiny.

13/07/2021K00200Deputy Mattie McGrath: We object to the Order of Business. We have had no proper discussion on the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy, CAP. We are aware that peat pro- ducers and those who operate nurseries are outside the House today and are greatly concerned about issues coming down the track in that regard.

On the Health (Amendment) (No. 2) Bill, Deputies still do not received copies of the legislation that the Cabinet is supposed to have produced. We are supposed to have a amendments in by 5 p.m. After a row at the Business Committee, my group will have ten minutes - one minute and 40 seconds per Deputy - to speak on this important legislation. The Government has a totalitarian and authoritarian agenda. We are in danger of becoming a checkpoint society where anyone from bouncers, restaurant staff and gardaí can demand to see our medical papers. This is unethical. It is medical apartheid, as I said last week. We have been told through briefings that the Minister for Health can, at any time, introduce statutory instruments to allow another group of people to do this. It could be the Army or anybody who decides to do it. I am looking for more time for the debate on this legislation. It cannot go ahead. This legislation is totally regressive and yet we do not have time to debate it. The Dáil must sit on Friday or next week to debate it properly.

13/07/2021K00300Deputy Duncan Smith: Whatever is agreed at the Business Committee on Thursdays is becoming completely irrelevant. This is increasingly becoming a pattern. There is not enough time. We knew that the Health (Amendment) Bill was coming since last Thursday. It was not published until earlier today, however, and we have now been presented with a revised schedule. There is not enough time to debate the Bill. This is a fundamentally flawed way of doing the business of the Oireachtas. This time last year, the Dáil session ended in a walkout, which was not what we wanted to see. Now, we have been presented legislation that is literally divid- ing the country in two yet we have just over two and a half hours in which to debate it. We have only seen it today but amendments are due in a couple of hours. That is not the way to do business. This was coming down the tracks and we had plenty of time. There is no need to operate like this.

13/07/2021K00400Deputy Jennifer Whitmore: I agree with my colleagues on the guillotining of Bills. I also object to the Order of Business on the basis that the Climate Action and Low Carbon Develop- ment (Amendment) Bill 2021 will be the subject of a very short debate. The Bill is being guillotined. Fundamental changes were made in the Seanad just last week and the legislation is now being rushed through. The changes and amendments that were made changed the Bill from being something that was meant to be science driven and evidence driven to something that is now politically driven. That is unacceptable and represents a slap in the face to the people, the committee members and the experts, all of whom gave evidence and their time to ensure that we got a very robust Bill. The Government has completely undermined that. I ask that we be given additional time to debate this because there are serious issues which need to be discussed.

I must also make a point about the words that are being flung out here, such as “authoritarian” and “apartheid”, as if they involve no consequences. I have a message for one of our colleagues from the Auschwitz Museum, which states: “Instrumentalization of the tragedy of all 501 Dáil Éireann people who...suffered, were humiliated, tortured & murdered by the hateful totalitarian regime of Nazi Germany to argue against vaccination that saves human lives is a sad symptom of moral and intellectual decline.” I ask Members not to refer to that. It is absolutely disgraceful that people’s memories are being trampled on in this way. Members should not be comparing vaccination programmes to the Holocaust.

13/07/2021L00100Deputy Thomas Pringle: I wish to be associated with the comments of all previous speakers in objecting to the Order of Business, in particular to the proposal on the Health (Amend- ment) (No. 2) Bill. As has been stated, we are not getting enough time to debate it. The Climate Action and Low Carbon Development (Amendment) Bill is also being guillotined and only a short amount of speaking time is being made available. Legislation used to be rushed through coming up to the recess at Christmas but now it is happening in the run-up to the summer break. It is not proper for the Parliament or for democracy. We must oppose it and set down a marker stating that it is not right and it should not be allowed to continue. The reality of the situation is that the Government will continue with it, and we will continue to oppose it.

13/07/2021L00200Deputy Matt Shanahan: The Regional Group noted its disquiet this morning at the Busi- ness Committee, in particular on the guillotining of the Health (Amendment) (No. 2) Bill. I echo what other Deputies have said. I know we are in the run-in to the recess, but this is extremely important legislation and the Regional Group has done a lot to try to promote screening using antigen testing. We will not have any time to look at that in detail or to table amendments.

The lack of debate on the local property tax must also be re-examined.

13/07/2021L00300The Taoiseach: In the context of the legislation pertaining to hospitality, the fundamental objective is to facilitate the reopening of indoor dining and hospitality in a safe way, in line with the advice from the national public health authorities. This is not something we would ordinarily enter into in terms of differentiating between vaccinated and unvaccinated people, but with the spread of the Delta variant, there is an obligation on the Government and on the Oireachtas to protect those who are not vaccinated from getting Covid-19. The Government plan takes a three-phase approach. In the first instance, it is to facilitate the reopening of hospitality and indoor dining-----

13/07/2021L00400Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett: What about the workers?

13/07/2021L00500The Taoiseach: -----through vaccination certificates, and to restrict it to those who are vaccinated and those who have recovered from Covid The second phase is to do an assessment of the potential use of PCR testing and the third phase is to look at antigen testing. The legislation provides a framework to enable that to happen.

One way or the other, we must get off the fence in this regard. Last week, people were urging us to bring forward proposals. We are now bringing forward proposals. We indicated last week that we would have a plan by 19 July. It is fairly straightforward, simple legislation. I accept that we would not ordinarily engage in such measures, but we are in the middle of a global pandemic.

So far, we have safely reopened a lot of society and the economy. We want to consolidate the progress we have made in bringing so many jobs back into the economy and keeping the pressure on the virus. We want to commence the next phase, which is challenging because of the Delta variant. I do not underestimate the risks. I do not underestimate Delta. That is why the public health authorities and NPHET were very clear in their advice that indoor dining 502 13 July 2021 would be restricted to the vaccinated and those who have recovered from Covid.

13/07/2021L00600Deputy Paul Murphy: Let us take the time to debate the legislation.

13/07/2021L00700The Taoiseach: It is in the light of that advice that the legislation is framed. We said we would have a plan by 19 July for the hospitality sector.

It is interesting that France and Greece are moving in the same direction. Ireland would have been considered an outlier ten days ago in this regard, but not so any more. Such is the fast-moving nature and evolution of Covid-19 that we must protect people. That is the context for the measures. We also need solutions to the issues that have arisen in respect of indoor dining and hospitality.

In respect of the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development (Amendment) Bill, a lot of time has been allocated to it. Even the pre-legislative scrutiny was very extensive.

13/07/2021L00800Deputy Mattie McGrath: What about the Common Agricultural Policy, CAP?

13/07/2021L00900The Taoiseach: The CAP has been debated in this House. Through the Chair, we should refrain from the frequent use of such language. In recent weeks, I have asked the Deputy not to keep using terms such as “Nazis” and “totalitarianism”.

13/07/2021L01000Deputy Mattie McGrath: I did not use those terms.

13/07/2021L01100The Taoiseach: The Deputy did previously. He consistently makes ridiculous assertions in this House that insult and are offensive to people.

13/07/2021M00100Deputy Mattie McGrath: In your opinion they are ridiculous.

13/07/2021M00200The Taoiseach: It is not my opinion. They are offensive. Do you understand what Nazism was about?

13/07/2021M00300An Ceann Comhairle: Allow the Taoiseach-----

13/07/2021M00400Deputy Mattie McGrath: Who are you serving, I wonder?

13/07/2021M00500The Taoiseach: Do you understand what the Holocaust was about?

13/07/2021M00600Deputy Mattie McGrath: I never mentioned the Holocaust. Words are being put into my mouth, a Cheann Comhairle. I did not use the word-----

13/07/2021M00700The Taoiseach: That is what Nazism was about.

13/07/2021M00800Deputy Mattie McGrath: I never uttered that word-----

13/07/2021M00900An Ceann Comhairle: Members, please.

13/07/2021M01000Deputy Mattie McGrath: -----not here or anywhere else.

13/07/2021M01100The Taoiseach: I asked whether the Deputy knew what it meant.

13/07/2021M01200Deputy Mattie McGrath: Spare me the history lecture, please. You should apologise to me. I did not use that word.

13/07/2021M01300The Taoiseach: I did not say you did. 503 Dáil Éireann

13/07/2021M01400Deputy Mattie McGrath: Please, correct the record.

13/07/2021M01500The Taoiseach: I did not say you did.

13/07/2021M01600Deputy Mattie McGrath: You did.

13/07/2021M01700The Taoiseach: No. You have-----

13/07/2021M01800Deputy Mattie McGrath: You said I should not use that word starting with H. I will not even use it.

13/07/2021M01900The Taoiseach: You have accused the Government-----

13/07/2021M02000Deputy Mattie McGrath: I never used it-----

13/07/2021M02100The Taoiseach: -----of being like Nazis.

13/07/2021M02200Deputy Mattie McGrath: -----so stop the lies, please.

13/07/2021M02300An Ceann Comhairle: Can we please have a little order and hear the Taoiseach out? Our time is virtually up.

13/07/2021M02400The Taoiseach: You have accused the Government of being like Nazis.

13/07/2021M02500Deputy Mattie McGrath: You got your answer last week.

13/07/2021M02600The Taoiseach: You have repeatedly accused the Government of being like Nazis in this House-----

13/07/2021M02700Deputy Mattie McGrath: What is this?

13/07/2021M02800The Taoiseach: -----so why are you referring-----

13/07/2021M02900Deputy Mattie McGrath: We cannot even see the legislation that will be voted through the House this evening.

13/07/2021M03000An Ceann Comhairle: Deputy, please.

13/07/2021M03100Deputy Mattie McGrath: Where is the legislation?

13/07/2021M03200An Ceann Comhairle: The time is up.

13/07/2021M03300Deputy Mattie McGrath: Where is the legislation?

13/07/2021M03400An Ceann Comhairle: Deputy McGrath, please resume your seat.

13/07/2021M03500The Taoiseach: In terms of the climate change Bill, I think it is fair to say that-----

13/07/2021M03600Deputy Mattie McGrath: Withdraw that.

13/07/2021M03700The Taoiseach: -----the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, has given it great time and effort and has taken on board amendments from the Opposition-----

13/07/2021M03800Deputy Mattie McGrath: There is a guillotine.

13/07/2021M03900The Taoiseach: -----so that has to be acknowledged. 504 13 July 2021

13/07/2021M04000Deputy Mattie McGrath: You are deluded.

13/07/2021M04100An Ceann Comhairle: I thank the Taoiseach, but the three minutes are up and I have to put the question.

13/07/2021M04200Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett: A Cheann Comhairle, the Taoiseach did not respond to the point about the property tax.

13/07/2021M04300Deputy Paul Murphy: A Cheann Comhairle, it cannot be acceptable that the Taoiseach gets to ramble through three minutes of an answer and that is then the end of the process.

13/07/2021M04400An Ceann Comhairle: Excuse me, but I am putting the question. Are the proposed arrangements agreed to?

13/07/2021M04500Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett: Not agreed.

Question put: “That the proposal for dealing with this week’s business be agreed to.”

The Dáil divided: Tá, 26; Níl, 19; Staon, 0. Tá Níl Staon Bruton, Richard. Brady, John. Burke, Colm. Browne, Martin. Carroll MacNeill, Jennifer. Cairns, Holly. Chambers, Jack. Clarke, Sorca. Durkan, Bernard J. Cronin, Réada. Farrell, Alan. Harkin, Marian. Flaherty, Joe. Healy-Rae, Danny. Grealish, Noel. Kelly, Alan. Griffin, Brendan. Mac Lochlainn, Pádraig. Haughey, Seán. McDonald, Mary Lou. Hourigan, Neasa. McGrath, Mattie. Lahart, John. Mitchell, Denise. Lowry, Michael. Murphy, Paul. Madigan, Josepha. Ó Murchú, Ruairí. Martin, Micheál. Pringle, Thomas. Matthews, Steven. Quinlivan, Maurice. McConalogue, Charlie. Ryan, Patricia. McHugh, Joe. Smith, Duncan. Murnane O’Connor, Jen- Whitmore, Jennifer. nifer. O’Dea, Willie. O’Donnell, Kieran. Ó Cathasaigh, Marc. Phelan, John Paul. Shanahan, Matt. Smyth, Niamh. Troy, Robert. 505 Dáil Éireann

Tellers: Tá, Deputies Brendan Griffin and Jack Chambers; Níl, Deputies Mattie McGrath and Pádraig Mac Lochlainn.

Question declared carried.

13/07/2021P00100Deputy Mary Lou McDonald: It is very clear that the full and safe reopening of the hospitality sector is urgent so that businesses can open, workers can get back to work and people can interact socially once again. Instead of a thought-out orderly plan to make this happen we have, once again, a last minute scramble from the three parties of government to produce legislation that is discriminatory, ill thought-out and which many will regard as unenforceable. The Gov- ernment will force this legislation through the House with very limited debate. That is wrong. I cannot understand why the issue of PCR testing and antigen testing as mechanisms and tools, along with proper and effective infection control, are again being kicked down the road.

13/07/2021P00200An Ceann Comhairle: Thank you, Deputy. Time is up.

13/07/2021P00300Deputy Mary Lou McDonald: What we need is a plan to include everyone and not a plan to exclude some. That is fundamentally wrong and flawed and it is wrong to force it through in this rushed manner.

13/07/2021P00400The Taoiseach: I have to say, regrettably, that since the Government was formed, on the issue of Covid and Government policy pertaining to it, the Deputy and her party have decided to take a divided and divisive approach, an incoherent and inconsistent approach. Whatever way the wind blows, they take that course. They take a Tadhg an dá thaobh approach. They are hunting with the hound and running with the hare, whichever way. It is all about votes and how they exploit the issue today and how they exploit Covid next week. They are not solution driven or solution orientated. It is all about exploitation for electoral gain. That is the only and sole criterion the Deputy uses in her assessment of Government initiatives.

13/07/2021P00500Deputy Mary Lou McDonald: Does the Taoiseach propose to answer a question rather than make attack points against members of the Opposition? That would be a refreshing change.

13/07/2021P00600The Taoiseach: Sometimes they are for the opening of hospitality. A month later, they are for zero Covid. Other times they are for anybody being able to travel into the country. Other times they want mandatory hotel quarantine.

13/07/2021P00700Deputy Mary Lou McDonald: I put a question to the Taoiseach.

13/07/2021P00800An Ceann Comhairle: The time is up, please.

13/07/2021P00900The Taoiseach: It is time the Deputy got off the fence. Does she want hospitality to open, as she says she does? Then she should deal accordingly with the plans the Government has put before her to do it safely. The reason the testing is not there is because the public health advice is clear. We are following public health advice in respect of the vaccinated and non-vaccinated. The Deputy knows that.

13/07/2021P01000Deputy Ivana Bacik: I thank the Taoiseach for his kind and gracious words and all of those 506 13 July 2021 who gave me such a warm welcome today on my first day in big school, as it feels. I am very grateful and honoured to have been elected last week to represent my home constituency of Dublin Bay South. I am just over the moon to be here. I thank all of those who supported me. I thank my amazing campaign team, my parliamentary Labour Party colleagues, my director of elections, Deputy Duncan Smith, and my great campaign manager, Dermot Ryan. I also thank Chloe Manahan, Paul Daly and all my family. I thank everyone so much.

We campaigned on four key issues in the by-election. These were housing, childcare and eldercare, community facilities and climate justice. We heard a strong mood and appetite for change on these issues. I promised all of those to whom I spoke about housing, and whose stories I listened to about their experiences as renters facing insecurity of tenure, fears about rent hikes and evictions, that the first thing I would do, and the first issue I would raise in the Dáil if elected, would be protection for renters. Will the Taoiseach and the Government be willing to support the Bill I have prepared along with my colleague, Senator Rebecca Moynihan, which is before the Bills Office and would provide protection to renters, tenants and those living in rental accommodation against rent hikes and evictions and would provide for a better quality of life?

13/07/2021P01100The Taoiseach: I again congratulate the Deputy on her election and I congratulate her campaign team. On these issues, the Government is very clearly focused and has already introduced groundbreaking legislation on climate justice and climate change, which I hope will get through the House this week. On housing, the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage has brought in very strong protection for renters. Last week, he introduced significant measures on limiting rent increases to inflation. This is a significant move given the position prior to this. The Minister deserves to be commended on this move in respect of restricting increases in rent and introducing legislation to protect renters. We will also focus on other issues in terms of childcare.

13/07/2021P01200Deputy Gary Gannon: I take this first opportunity the Social Democrats have had to welcome Deputy Bacik to the House. She is a wonderful and progressive legislator.

It is 25 years since the report on revitalising areas by planning, investment and development, RAPID. The report founded the principles of community-led drug and alcohol task forces. The first of these was in my constituency in the north inner city. Twenty-five years on from the report, it is to my dismay that the north inner city drugs and alcohol task force has been suspended due to governance issues that have not been specified by the HSE or the Minister of State, Deputy Feighan. It is absolutely essential that drugs task forces are community led with independent chairpersons who are nominated and elected by community representatives. I implore the Taoiseach to re-establish the north inner city drugs task force with an independent chair as chosen by the community representatives.

13/07/2021P01300The Taoiseach: I have been a long-standing advocate and supporter of RAPID programmes. Previous Fianna Fáil-led Governments were very strong on tackling area disadvantage and having a whole-of-government approach to it. I have asked the Cabinet sub-committee on social affairs to examine reintroducing a similar programme. I am working with the Minister of State, Deputy Joe O’Brien, who is responsible for community development, to see whether we can recover the focus that was there at the height of the RAPID approach to socioeconomic disadvantage in certain parts of our cities. I am very keen to develop that.

13/07/2021P01400Deputy Gary Gannon: There was no answer to my question specifically on the north inner city drugs task force. 507 Dáil Éireann

13/07/2021P01500An Ceann Comhairle: The Taoiseach has answered. The Deputy might not have liked the answer but he has answered.

13/07/2021P01600Deputy Paul Murphy: Yesterday, the Government unveiled the so-called work placement experience programme. It is a new free labour scheme for bosses whereby workers will get less than the pandemic unemployment payment and will be expected to live below the poverty line while working. Put simply, it is JobBridge 2.0. Workers on the scheme will get an extra €3.43 an hour for working 30 hours a week for six months without a guaranteed job at the end of it. Bosses can have up to ten workers on the scheme without paying a single cent. This will actively discourage the creation of real jobs. When JobBridge was abolished, the Indecon report commissioned by the Government made ten proposals for any replacement scheme. Of those ten, the Government has ignored seven. What is the point in commissioning reports if the Government is just going to ignore them? The Taoiseach says the new scheme will be policed by new caseworkers while the Pathways to Work strategy speaks about expanding the role of private contracted companies, such as Seetec and Turas Nua, in handling cases.

13/07/2021Q00100An Ceann Comhairle: The Deputy’s time is up.

13/07/2021Q00200Deputy Paul Murphy: Will these case officers be outsourced in JobBridge 2.0?

13/07/2021Q00300The Taoiseach: First, I disagree with the Deputy’s analysis. I will simply say that the activation programmes and the Pathways to Work programme that was launched yesterday are very significant, very well resourced and supported financially by Government with one objective, namely, to facilitate work and working opportunities for people, specifically younger people, to reduce the numbers of people in long-term unemployment and, above all, to reduce the percent- age of people in youth unemployment. Activation is important and previous experiences show that it works. Under these work experience programmes, the rate will be much higher than anything before and they will be voluntary. People will engage in the schemes in a voluntary capacity. What we saw yesterday were real-life examples of people who had participated in programmes such as this and who not only got jobs but, in some instances, went on to found their own businesses and become job creators themselves.

13/07/2021Q00400An Ceann Comhairle: Thank you, Taoiseach.

13/07/2021Q00500The Taoiseach: We come from a different world. The Deputy looks at it through a parallel universe. To be fair, he has a different perspective.

13/07/2021Q00600An Ceann Comhairle: The time is up.

13/07/2021Q00700The Taoiseach: I happen to think the activation programme will work and I believe in it.

13/07/2021Q00750An Ceann Comhairle: I call Deputy Lowry.

13/07/2021Q00800Deputy Paul Murphy: I want to point out that the Taoiseach did not answer any of the questions that were put to him.

13/07/2021Q00900An Ceann Comhairle: Write to me if you are not happy, Deputy Murphy. I have called Deputy Lowry.

13/07/2021Q01000Deputy Michael Lowry: People are craving a sense of normality and a feeling of freedom. This is evident from the enthusiasm of the majority to be vaccinated. The issuing of digital green certificates will see thousands travel in the coming weeks. However, it will not bring 508 13 July 2021 joy to the thousands more who cannot obtain passports. While the April backlog of 83,000 has been reduced, there remains a minimum eight-week turnaround for online applications. Pass- port Express remains suspended. I am inundated with contacts from people across County Tip- perary who are genuinely in need of a passport. I fully understand and appreciate the pressure under which the Passport Office is working. Staff need practical support and resources to help them cope with a heavy workload. Unless this matter is resolved, there is little point in telling people they can travel with green certificates. Without passports, they remain grounded. What is currently being done to speed up the process of issuing passports?

13/07/2021Q01100The Taoiseach: I thank Deputy Lowry for raising this issue. I know a number of Deputies have also raised it with the Minister, Deputy Coveney. The passport service commenced the scaling up of operations on 4 May 2021 in line with the phased easing of restrictions set out in the Covid-19 resilience and recovery plan. The service has been focused since then on four priority areas, namely, clearing the Covid-19 backlog of 89,000 passport applications, processing all renewal applications, including new applications, within ten working days, processing urgent and emergency applications, and providing customer services through phone and web chat facilities. Progress has been made in clearing the Covid-19 backlog. Backlog applications that were completed properly have been processed and passports have issued. In the case of incomplete applications, the passport service has been in contact with applicants regarding the need to send in outstanding documents. Once all outstanding required documentation is received, the issuance of passports will follow. Passport service phone and web chat services are available to all people whose passport applications have, unfortunately, been affected by Covid-19 restrictions.

13/07/2021Q01200An Ceann Comhairle: Thank you, Taoiseach.

13/07/2021Q01300The Taoiseach: I assure the Deputy that the passport service’s goal is to continue to scale up operations after Covid-19 and to return to normal levels of service as soon as possible.

13/07/2021Q01400Deputy Mattie McGrath: I would like to express my sympathy and that of the people of Tipperary and west Waterford to the McCarthy family on the sad passing of Dr. Seán McCarthy, iar-Theachta Dála agus iar-Aire Stáit and a noble doctor who served the public of Tipperary and west Waterford well and beyond.

I have to return to a medical issue concerning St. Brigid’s hospital, Carrick-on-Suir. The Taoiseach has promised me umpteen times in here that he would meet Councillor Kieran Bourke, other councillors in Tipperary County Council and the hospital action committee. They are forced to come up to the convention centre tomorrow to protest and present their petition. The medical and nursing staff of the hospital, which has a state-of-the-art building, have been forced to collect signatures for that petition. They have had a huge response showing that people would put their loved ones in the hospital because they trust, value and appreciate it and the care they got there. Will the Taoiseach meet those people and the action committee to re- evaluate the scandalous decision to close down the hospital?

13/07/2021Q01500The Taoiseach: As I said before, I am not aware if people have been in touch with my office in terms of a formal meeting and so on.

13/07/2021Q01600Deputy Mattie McGrath: Of course they have. Several times.

13/07/2021Q01700The Taoiseach: I said I would be willing to meet them.

509 Dáil Éireann I have, of course, been in touch with the McCarthy family and I hope we get an opportunity at a future date to properly pay tribute to Dr. Seán McCarthy, who was an outstanding medical practitioner and GP, an outstanding sportsman who played for Tipperary and, of course, a wonderful Deputy, Senator and Minister of State. I hope we get that opportunity to pay due tribute to him and his contribution to public life and the well-being of the people of Tipperary and the country.

In terms of St. Brigid’s hospital, I believe the HSE has been in touch with the Deputies in the area. It is an ongoing issue.

13/07/2021Q01800Deputy Joan Collins: The Taoiseach said a couple of weeks ago that the State should not be renting homes on a long-term basis from funds involved in the practice of bulk purchase of housing estates. He went on to say that he would like this practice to end in the long term. Last year, 1,440 homes were leased from local authorities. This year, as we now know, 2,400 homes will be leased at a cost of €1 billion over a 25-year period. The State will not own these homes and tenants could be evicted when the lease agreement ends. Is there is not a bit of déjà vu going on here in terms of what happened when the housing assistance payment, HAP, was introduced in 2014? We were told the scheme was only going to be a short-term arrangement. It started off with a cost of €0.5 million, we were told, but €543 million in State funding now goes into private landlords’ pockets. Is this not an incredible situation for the State to be in and an incredible waste of public funding when we should be doing otherwise, namely, building houses? Does the Taoiseach agree that this is a consequence of the housing policy of his Gov- ernment and successive Governments?

13/07/2021Q01900An Ceann Comhairle: The Deputy’s time is up.

13/07/2021Q02000Deputy Joan Collins: Will he now declare that he will bring in a radical action programme to build 100,000 homes on public lands?

13/07/2021Q02100The Taoiseach: First, as I have said, the core Government priority is to build houses, both social and affordable, and to release more State land to facilitate the building of houses and get more delivery in developing houses overall. In respect of HAP, that scheme has been there long before this Government was formed, going back, as the Deputy said, to 2014. It is a more expensive way than social leasing, it has been asserted to me. Be that as it may, I do not believe that leasing is the optimal way to provide social housing. In the immediate short term, however, it gives us the opportunity, given the shortage of direct builds, the need to build up capacity on direct builds and as part of the wider suite of measures in the intervening period, to ensure that over the next 18 months, or maybe 12 months, 2,400 families will get social housing. That is the priority.

13/07/2021Q02200Deputy Joan Collins: When is the Government going to build public housing on public lands?

13/07/2021Q02300Deputy Jennifer Murnane O’Connor: First, I welcome Deputy Bacik to the House. I was very privileged to work with her for four years and I wish her well.

I have been contacted by parents with medical cards asking about payment for school transport. Medical cards cannot currently be inputted into the system because of the cyberattack on the HSE. I brought this up last week and I contacted Bus Éireann, which is now saying it is optional. If people can pay, they will be refunded for the first term. If not, they will not have to pay. The confusion is arising because nobody has been written to and people are panicking 510 13 July 2021 as to whether, if they cannot afford to pay, their children will be able to get on the bus. I ask the Taoiseach to sort this out urgently with Bus Éireann and the HSE The situation must be sorted for children who need to go on the school bus.

13/07/2021Q02400An Ceann Comhairle: The Taoiseach, briefly. We are way over time.

13/07/2021Q02500The Taoiseach: I thank the Deputy for raising what is a very important issue for people. She is always very close to the issues on the ground, to be fair. I will certainly talk to the Min- ister for Health and ask him to engage with the HSE, Bus Éireann and the Department of Edu- cation to make sure this gets sorted. People’s entitlements should not in any way be curtailed because of operational difficulties as a result of Covid or whatever. That is the bottom line.

13/07/2021Q02600An Ceann Comhairle: That concludes questions on promised legislation.

13/07/2021Q02700Deputy Danny Healy-Rae: May I raise a point of order?

13/07/2021Q02800An Ceann Comhairle: What is the point of order?

13/07/2021Q02900Deputy Danny Healy-Rae: Was the clock stopped while the vote was going on-----

13/07/2021Q03000An Ceann Comhairle: Yes, it was.

13/07/2021Q03100Deputy Danny Healy-Rae: -----and while the argument was going on in regard to the Or- der of Business?

13/07/2021Q03200An Ceann Comhairle: Yes.

13/07/2021Q03300Deputy Danny Healy-Rae: Does this mean that my question and those of the other people on the list today will have to wait until the middle of September to be raised? I wanted to ask the Taoiseach if he would extend the time for the registration of rights of way beyond 30 No- vember.

13/07/2021Q03400An Ceann Comhairle: Sorry, Deputy.

13/07/2021Q03500Deputy Danny Healy-Rae: It needs to be extended at least as long as the virus has affected this country.

13/07/2021Q03600An Ceann Comhairle: Please resume your seat, Deputy. You know the rules of the House the same as anyone. You have not been reached and that is not my fault. Please resume your seat as we have to carry on with the business.

13/07/2021Q03700Deputy Danny Healy-Rae: A Cheann Comhairle-----

13/07/2021Q03800An Ceann Comhairle: We have an agreed procedure that applies to everyone. It applies to you, Deputy Healy-Rae.

13/07/2021Q03900Deputy Danny Healy-Rae: I am asking the Ceann Comhairle to review the process we have at the present time for people getting in under questions on promised legislation.

13/07/2021Q04000An Ceann Comhairle: We will be reviewing the process, most definitely. Now we are moving on to the next business.

511 Dáil Éireann

13/07/2021R00100European Union Regulation: Referral to Joint Committee

13/07/2021R00200Minister of State at the Department of the Taoiseach (Deputy Jack Chambers): I move:

That Dáil Éireann approves the exercise by the State of the option or discretion under Protocol No. 21 on the position of the United Kingdom and Ireland in respect of the area of freedom, security and justice annexed to the Treaty on European Union and to the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, to accept the following measure:

Regulation (EU) 2021/693 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 28 April 2021 establishing the Justice Programme and repealing Regulation (EU) No. 1382/2013,

a copy of which was laid before Dáil Éireann on 17th June, 2021, be referred to the Joint Committee on Justice, in accordance with

Standing Order 95(5), which, not later than 21st September, 2021, shall send a message to the Dáil in the manner prescribed in Standing Order 101, and Standing Order 100(2) shall accordingly apply.

Question put and agreed to.

13/07/2021R00400Double Taxation Relief (Taxes on Income and Capital Gains) Orders: Referral to Select Committee

13/07/2021R00500Minister of State at the Department of the Taoiseach (Deputy Jack Chambers): I move:

That the proposal that Dáil Éireann approves the following Orders in draft:

Double Taxation Relief (Taxes on Income and Capital Gains) (Federal Republic of Germany) Order 2021, and

Double Taxation Relief (Taxes on Income and Capital Gains) (Republic of Kosovo) Order 2021,

copies of which were laid before Dáil Éireann on 7th July, 2021, be referred to the Select Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach, in accordance with Standing Order 95(1)(a), which, not later than 14th July, 2021, shall send a message to the Dáil in the manner prescribed in Standing Order 101, and Standing Order 100(2) shall accordingly apply.

Question put and agreed to.

13/07/2021R00700Appointment of Member of the Legal Services Regulatory Authority: Motion

13/07/2021R00800Minister of State at the Department of the Taoiseach (Deputy Jack Chambers): I move:

That Dáil Éireann, noting that the Government agreed on 29th June, 2021, to propose, for the approval of Dáil Éireann, Shane Galligan to be a member of the Legal Services Regulatory Authority on the Nomination of the Institute of Legal Cost Accountants, and pursuant to section 9 of the Legal Services Regulation Act 2015, approves the appointment 512 13 July 2021 by the Government of Shane Galligan to be a member of the Legal Services Regulatory Authority to fill a casual vacancy pursuant to section 10(9) of the saidAct of 2015.

Question put and agreed to.

13/07/2021R01000Orders of Reference of the Committee on Key Issues affecting the Traveller Commu- nity: Motion

13/07/2021R01100Minister of State at the Department of the Taoiseach (Deputy Jack Chambers): I move:

That the Orders of Reference of the Committee on Key Issues affecting the Traveller Community, as agreed by Order of the Dáil of 22nd September, 2020 and 28th April, 2021, be amended by the substitution of the following paragraph for paragraph 7:

‘7. The Joint Committee shall make its final report to both Houses of the Oireachtas by 30th November, 2021, and shall thereupon stand dissolved.’.

Question put and agreed to.

13/07/2021R01300Ceisteanna - Questions

13/07/2021R01400Departmental Programmes

13/07/2021R015001. Deputy Alan Kelly asked the Taoiseach if he will report on the work of his Department in preparing a formal commemorative event for all those who lost their lives during the struggle for independence as recommended by the expert advisory group. [34838/21]

13/07/2021R016002. Deputy Catherine Murphy asked the Taoiseach if he will report on the work of his De- partment in preparing a formal commemorative event for all those who lost their lives during the struggle for independence as recommended by the expert advisory group. [37251/21]

13/07/2021R01700The Taoiseach: I propose to take Questions Nos. 1 and 2 together. The Truce, which marked the end of the War of Independence, came into effect on 11 July 1921. Recognising the significance of this date, an all-party Oireachtas committee in 1986 recommended that the Sunday closest to 11 July would be the most appropriate date upon which to have an annual national commemoration ceremony to commemorate “all Irishmen and Irishwomen who died in past wars or on service with the United Nations”. At this year’s ceremony, which took place on Sunday, 11 July, the centenary of the Truce, we especially remembered all those who lost their lives during the struggle for independence. The ceremony included the laying of a wreath by President Michael D. Higgins and was broadcast live on RTÉ. Limited numbers were in attendance in line with Covid-19 restrictions to ensure the health and safety of all.

From 8 July last, the National Archives of Ireland, NAI, has been exhibiting material related to the Truce. I, the Tánaiste and the Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media, Deputy Catherine Martin, had an opportunity to view this material last week. An Post also issued two specially-commissioned commemorative stamps to mark the occasion. In addition, the National Library of Ireland, NLI, is cataloguing and digitising personal papers from 513 Dáil Éireann key figures in the project, “Towards a Republic” and holding a photographic exhibition entitled, “From Turmoil to Truce: Photographs of the War of Independence”. Under the communities strand of the decade of centenaries programme, several local authorities are also holding online and small commemorative events to mark the Truce.

The public health emergency caused by Covid-19 has significantly impacted the holding of in-person commemorative events marking important centenaries in 2020 and 2021, at State and local level, with some cancelled or rescheduled. We have had to be more imaginative in our planning, with many events moving online, and in creating opportunities that encourage as many people as possible to explore our shared history, in all of its complexity, in a respectful and supportive environment.

13/07/2021R01800Deputy Alan Kelly: The National Day of Commemoration took place at the weekend in Collins Barracks. It also marked the centenary of the Truce in the Irish War of Independence. More than 2,000 people were killed in the conflict before the Truce on 11 July 1921. Han- nah Carey was one of the last people killed. She worked as a waitress in the Imperial Hotel, Killarney and was hit in the throat by a stray bullet fired by a Royal Irish Constabulary, RIC, officer arriving on the scene after two British soldiers had also been shot. Ms Carey was one of 98 women killed in the War of Independence. Will the Taoiseach indicate what other formal commemorative events are planned during the year ahead? What is intended to mark the anniversary of the Civil War and the foundation of the State next year?

The National Day of Commemoration, held on Sunday, remembers all Irish people who have died in past wars or on service with the United Nations, UN. The Taoiseach will be aware of the long-running campaign for recognition of the heroes of Jadotville. This September will mark 30 years since the siege in the Congo. It is never too late to do the right thing. Will the Taoiseach and the Government support the campaign for the award of distinguished service medals, DSMs, or military medals for gallantry, MMGs, to the men of A Company, 35th Infan- try Battalion? Thirty-three Irish troops were recommended for the DSM or the MMG, our highest award for valour, by their commanding officer, Commandant Pat Quinlan, after that siege. Those soldiers held out for five days against all the odds at their posts in Jadotville during the siege, which occurred nearly 60 years ago now. An independent review was established by the Minister for Defence and it was granted an extension. Will the Taoiseach commit to the report being finally published and can we, hopefully, expect a positive outcome? The Taoiseach might give an indication in that regard.

13/07/2021R01900Deputy Mary Lou McDonald: Sunday’s National Day of Commemoration remembered all those killed during the Tan War and marked the anniversary, as the Taoiseach said, of the Truce. The all-party decade of centenaries advisory group has met just twice online. This group needs to be facilitated in playing a much more proactive role in developing a complete, and I would suggest more grassroots and community-driven, schedule of events. I state that because this period in our history will benefit from not just a broad consultation with all political traditions, which is of course very important, but from the widest possible community and civic participation.

We must do better in commemorating women. At a young age, Margaret Keogh was a member of Cumann na mBan and she was shot dead in her home in Stella Gardens, Ringsend, 100 years ago during a series of raids by the Black and Tans. Margaret was the captain of her camogie club, a passionate trade unionist and a Gaeilgeoir. She died of her wounds the morning after the Truce and was buried in Glasnevin with full military honours. Her coffin was carried 514 13 July 2021 by uniformed members of Cumann na mBan. Margaret was the only woman to die on active service during the Tan War. A commemorative plaque has been erected on her street but the fact remains that the revolutionary role of women in the fight for Irish freedom remains largely ignored and unsung. Cumann na mBan is not fully celebrated or remembered, be it in terms of structures or events. In this centenary year, we must change that. As the previous speaker said, it is truly never too late to do the right thing.

13/07/2021R02000The Taoiseach: The points made by the Deputies concerning the need to more effectively and strongly commemorate women were well said and it is well merited. Turning to the events at Jadotville, I do not want to pre-empt the review, but I am familiar with the case. I met all those involved, I have seen the film about the events as well and have read about the background to all of this. I sincerely hope that those men will get the recognition they deserve. Moving on to the question about other events, it has been a great pity that Covid-19 has really impacted our capacity, nationally and locally, to have a whole series of events to mark the Truce and the War of Independence period. For example, we could not mark the centenary of the burning of Cork last year, just prior to Christmas 2020.

In July, History Ireland will deliver the 2021 decade of centenaries hedge school programme, which will look at the Truce and subsequent negotiations up to the Treaty. UCC and RTÉ are developing an online initiative entitled “The Irish Civil War” for October 2022. A three-part television documentary series based on UCC’s Atlas of the Irish Revolution will be broadcast in October 2022 to mark the centenary of the Civil War. As part of the decade of centenaries, “The Irish Civil War” series will examine the critical years of the Irish State’s foundation, from the Truce period to the highly-charged Treaty debates and the split, to the outbreak of the Civil War, the conduct of that war and its short-term and long-term legacies.

The communities strand, as referred to by Deputy McDonald, will see Dublin City Council commemorating the Truce. The “Commemorating the Truce, 1921” online lecture series took place from Monday, 5 July to Friday, 9 July. Galway County Council will hold an online lecture with Dr. Conor McNamara, with the details to be confirmed. Westmeath County Council’s commemorative events include a podcast about the Truce with Professor Marie Coleman from Queen’s University Belfast, who is a native of Castlepollard in County Westmeath. Fingal County Council is holding a festival of history lecture series in September 2021. The “His- tory at the Castle” day, which will be held in Swords Castle, will include five or more speakers and performances based on this year’s chosen topics, namely, the truce, the end of the War of Independence, events local to Fingal, the destruction of coastguard stations and the opening of the Howth tram. The Government has at all times been informed and guided by the expert advisory group on centenary commemorations, chaired by Dr. Maurice Manning and Dr. Martin Mansergh.

The history of this period belongs to us all and we are very mindful of the complexities and sensitivities that lie ahead. It is very important that our history is faithfully presented, even when the historical record is distressing. We must acknowledge the great tragedy of all those who died or whose lives were transformed by the events that occurred during this time. I welcome, commend and encourage the continuing research of historians and custodians of records whose work enhances our understanding of these events, which have so significantly shaped our modern world. It is key that in all the centenary commemorations, we give due regard to excellence in academic research and recall, giving insight to people in the broadest possible way into what happened. In remembering this period in our history we will acknowledge both the military aspects and the constitutional parliamentary traditions and democratic processes 515 Dáil Éireann underpinning all traditions on this island. We will explore a range of issues in that regard, including the social and cultural changes that were taking place and the role of women during the revolutionary period.

On the social and cultural changes, Dr. Ida Milne has done work on the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, as it was called. I was often struck by how little attention that pandemic got in history books and on the curriculum. It is only in more recent times that scholarly research has opened up the extraordinary impact that pandemic had on social and cultural life in Ireland over 100 years ago.

There are other aspects to this as well, such as the treatment of women during the period, poverty and child poverty in particular. The role of Cumann na mBan needs to be properly commemorated. My late grandmother was a very active member of Cumann na mBan and a firebrand activist in her own right. Very often, these women did not speak about themselves too much afterwards but they played a crucial and very effective role in the movement for independence.

More broadly, it is important that the social context is articulated very strongly in the centenary recall and commemorations as well. I note what both Deputies have said in respect of that. Perhaps we could revert to the advisory group about the role of women more broadly. It is also important to point out that many women suffered hugely during that period, particularly because of the impact of the First World War on many families. Many husbands and partners were killed in that war, leaving many families in considerable poverty. There is a very good book written by John Borgonovo on this period in Cork. It brings home the social impact of all these issues and the strife, stresses and strains of different political communities, as well as the role of women in both, and how that manifested itself on the streets of Cork in 1917-18, 1919 and 1920. It is a fascinating period but very often the social contexts did not get the same priority as constitutional and political issues do. That needs to be corrected to some degree, as do issues such as the Spanish flu pandemic and the extraordinary impact that had on so many lives.

13/07/2021S00200Departmental Offices

13/07/2021S003003. Deputy Alan Kelly asked the Taoiseach if he will report on the work of the parliamentary liaison unit. [36198/21]

13/07/2021S004004. Deputy Mary Lou McDonald asked the Taoiseach if he will report on the work of the parliamentary liaison unit of his Department. [36336/21]

13/07/2021S005005. Deputy Mick Barry asked the Taoiseach if he will report on the work of the parliamentary liaison unit of his Department. [37671/21]

13/07/2021S006006. Deputy Dara Calleary asked the Taoiseach the status of work of the parliamentary liaison unit of his Department. [37702/21]

13/07/2021S007007. Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett asked the Taoiseach if he will report on the work of the parliamentary liaison unit of his Department. [37713/21]

13/07/2021S008008. Deputy Paul Murphy asked the Taoiseach if he will report on the work of the parliamentary liaison unit of his Department. [37716/21]

516 13 July 2021

13/07/2021S009009. Deputy Bríd Smith asked the Taoiseach if he will report on the work of the parliamentary liaison unit of his Department. [37719/21]

13/07/2021S01000The Taoiseach: I propose to take Questions Nos. 3 to 9, inclusive, together.

The parliamentary liaison unit in my Department assists the Government in its relationship with the Oireachtas. It works with the Office of the Government Chief Whip on issues that arise at the Business Committee and the Committee on Dáil Reform and Standing Orders, including Dáil reform proposals and amendments to Standing Orders. The unit supports the Office of the Government Chief Whip in the implementation of the Government’s legislative programme. In addition, the unit assists the office of the leader of the Green Party in work relating to Cabinet, Cabinet committees and oversight of the implementation of the programme for Government. In carrying out these duties, it provides detailed information on upcoming matters in the Dáil and Seanad, highlights any new Oireachtas reform issues and provides assistance in engaging with the new processes arising from Dáil reform. The unit is staffed by 3.5 whole-time equivalent staff, consisting of one principal officer, 1.5 higher executive officers and one clerical officer.

13/07/2021S01100Deputy Alan Kelly: The parliamentary liaison unit is a very important one. In the previous Dáil, there was significant reform arising from the dynamic that was in place with the confidence and supply agreement. The Taoiseach was a big champion of Dáil reform but we have now gone backwards. I accept that these are difficult circumstances because of Covid but Bill after Bill is now being rushed through the Dáil and Bills are being guillotined. Considered amendments to very important legislation will never see the light of day. They are never considered and we do not get responses from Ministers because they are never debated as we do not have enough time. It changes the whole dynamic of how we work here. Deputies get up and say what they have to say on an amendment that is not related to the issue they want to discuss, purely because they have to get it on record.

We cannot continue like this. Everything is last minute dot com. There is no time for review or scrutiny. Pre-legislative scrutiny has been thrown out the window. I can understand that things have to be done differently from time to time but now that this is becoming a consistent pattern, it is a real issue. I would like the Taoiseach to reflect over the summer to see how we can change this in order that we can better do our work collectively, both Government and Opposition, and stop the use of the guillotine and rushed legislation. If the Taoiseach was sitting on this side of the House, I guarantee he would be saying what I am saying.

As regards the parliamentary unit and working with us, very important legislation on hospitality is going through the Dáil this week. There have now been three different statements from the Government on the role of GPs in issuing certificates for those who have been infected with Covid. The Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media, Deputy Catherine Martin, said that GPs can issue letters and then the Minister of State, Deputy Ossian Smyth, came out and said she misspoke. This is the new word when Ministers get things wrong. The Government says he or she misspoke. I love it. I wish that had been around in my day.

13/07/2021S01200The Taoiseach: The Deputy probably did it too.

13/07/2021S01300Deputy Alan Kelly: I probably did but we did not say the person misspoke; we said it was a mistake. At least we were honest about it.

We now have confirmation that GPs can issue letters. Those are three different statements on the same topic. That is not the way to work with the Opposition. Members of the Gov- 517 Dáil Éireann ernment do not know what they are doing themselves. I am asking this sincerely. The Irish Medical Organisation, IMO, has issued a statement on this matter. We cannot have a situation where GPs will up to 90 all day, every day, issuing letters. Hundreds of thousands of people are affected by this. I ask the Taoiseach to inform the House what the position is. It is very difficult for the Opposition to work with the Government on issues and provide constructive opposition when the Ministers in this Government do not know what they are talking about in the first place or are inconsistent.

13/07/2021S01400Deputy Mary Lou McDonald: Notwithstanding the parliamentary liaison unit and the work that is done by the three staff the Taoiseach identified, the level of confusion and disor- ganisation within his Administration is remarkable. We have seen this again in respect of the Covid certificate. It would be helpful if the Taoiseach could clarify the matter of issuing letters and the role or otherwise of GPs in that regard.

I also raise the voisinage fisheries agreement between Britain and Ireland. As the Taoiseach knows, it has been in place since the 1960s and allows for reciprocal access to inshore waters for fishermen North and South. Brexit scuppered this arrangement and has created a hard fishing border for fishermen based in the North, who are no longer allowed to fish in the South’s waters. The Sea-Fisheries (Amendment) Act 2019 enacted by the previous Government was meant to address this issue, but that has turned out not to be the case. While the Government and the European Commission have restored access for the North’s fishing fleet to inshore -wa ters, there remains a hard sea border in offshore waters.

Does the Taoiseach accept that this goes against the spirit of the Good Friday Agreement, and more to the point, that it goes against the spirit of the Brexit trade deal that specifically recognised existing fisheries arrangements in place prior to Brexit? Can the outline the position of Government on this matter and provide a timeline within which the reciprocal arrangements for the North’s fishing vessels in offshore waters will be reinstated?

13/07/2021T00200Deputy Mick Barry: The unit deals with the Dáil in progressing the programme for Gov- ernment. A key challenge is the question of youth unemployment. In that context, I want to ask the Taoiseach about the work placement employment programme, JobBridge 2.0. There will be 10,000 positions for six months with 30 hours of work per week for €306. No doubt the Taoiseach will tell me that amounts to the minimum wage of €10.20 per hour but all the work placement participants will be on jobseeker’s allowance of €203. This means that they will receive an extra €103 for 30 hours of work, or €3.43 per hour. Does the Taoiseach accept that this is a cheap labour scheme? Can he confirm that it is not the State paying €203 and the employer topping it up but that every single penny will be paid by the State and that the employer will pay zero? Can the Taoiseach give me one good reason an employer would hire someone at trade union rates of pay or at the living wage of €12.30 per hour when it can hire ten people so cheaply on the Government’s new cheap labour scheme?

13/07/2021T00300Deputy Dara Calleary: I commend the unit on all the work and co-ordination it does. One of its responsibilities is liaising with the Parliamentary Budget Office. Is the Taoiseach intending to strengthen the role of the Parliamentary Budget Office in terms of the advice that it gives, particularly as we come towards budget 2022 and the national development plan review? Would the Taoiseach envisage replicating the Parliamentary Budget Office model in other -ar eas?

13/07/2021T00400Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett: The unit is supposed to assist in giving legislative effect 518 13 July 2021 to programme for Government plans. One of the aspects of the programme for Government the Taoiseach has repeatedly stressed is that he would support those sectors that have been impacted particularly harshly by public health measures. One of the sectors that I have mentioned many times is that comprising musicians, live performers, entertainers and so on. It appears that if they benefit from the live performance support scheme, LPSS, and do one or two gigs, they cannot go back on the pandemic unemployment payment, PUP, and they are effectively forced to be jobseekers. The latter is despite the fact that their sector has not reopened. There is no plan, even with the reopening of hospitality, for it to fully reopen. It is grossly unfair that musicians, entertainers and live performers are being pushed over a PUP cliff when they do some work on a pilot scheme, particularly when that is an isolated bit of work for them.

13/07/2021T00500Deputy Paul Murphy: It is appropriate that we have a question on the parliamentary liaison unit of the Government because the behaviour of the Government towards the Parliament in the past week has been striking. The Government has taken a bullying approach, using its majority to bulldoze things through without proper discussion. There have been two examples in the past week. Last Thursday, there was a motion to ram through the increase in the property tax without pre-legislative scrutiny and without the agreement of the relevant committee even. This week, far more seriously, unprecedented and discriminatory legislation that poses a threat to public health is being brought in and the Government plans, against the wishes of every Opposition group on the Business Committee, to get it through in one day. How is that a democratic approach to these important issues? I am against the substance of what is in it but does the Taoiseach not at least accept that we should have had a debate about this over a proper period? The way the Government is doing it risks the making of serious mistakes.

13/07/2021T00600The Taoiseach: I thank Deputy Kelly for acknowledging my role as a champion of Dáil and political reform in the previous Dáil. I acknowledge that.

13/07/2021T00700Deputy Alan Kelly: That is not what I said.

13/07/2021T00800The Taoiseach: The Deputy said I championed it. I noted what he said carefully. Deputy Calleary spoke about one of the key aspects of one of the reform measures we pushed, which is the Parliamentary Budget Office. That was a Fianna Fáil proposal in the previous election that we followed through on. Some of the key reforms in the programme for Government include expanding the role of the Parliamentary Budget Office to independently audit the cost of individual tax and spending measures contained in political parties’ budget submissions and general election manifestos and to assess their overall dynamic impact and broader economic impact. It also includes continuing to ensure that Oireachtas committee chairs are allocated according to the d’Hondt system. The latter was an important reform when it was introduced. It also includes introducing a new system to register Oireachtas attendance and protect the integrity of the expenses system. We will work on all of those areas.

The Deputy raised a broader issue of the guillotining of Bills, etc. On climate change, for example, a lot of views were taken on board through the Oireachtas committee’s pre-legislative scrutiny phase and subsequently. It is a Bill that has gone through change as it has gone through the House, and yet it is groundbreaking legislation. This has been an active session from a legislative point of view and a balance has to be struck between having due time for debate on legislation and also getting legislation through. We have a major housing crisis and there has been much activity on the part of the Minister in respect of a range of legislative housing initiatives that we need to get through. We need to place the Land Development Agency on a statutory footing in order to get on with the business of building houses and getting houses built. We 519 Dáil Éireann need to get the affordability Bill through - I am glad it has been passed by this House - in order to enable people to buy houses they can afford. We can have paralysis by analysis or agility and some degree of speed and efficiency and thereby get things done.

More broadly on some of the issues that have been raised, I would say to the Opposition and to those on the far left in particular, that at the beginning of this session there was a demand almost every week for a debate on something. I am not stating that those issues were not important but the balance between a legislative Chamber and a debating Chamber sometimes gets lost. Deputies seem to be more interested in statements and debates than giving more time to legislation. Then they complain afterwards that there is not enough time for legislation. The week is short. I have consistently stated, in opposition and in government, that the Govern- ment time devoted and allocated for legislation is, with the best will in the world, tight enough. Many Members use the House as a platform. They have an entitlement to do so because they have been elected. Let us not pretend that the management or utilisation of our time or how individual Deputies or different parties will use their time in the Dáil is all one-sided. There are many sides to that argument. Different parties will have different perspectives and emphases in that regard. That needs to be said.

On hospitality, the Office of the Government Chief Information Officer, OGCIO, is the key office for certificate generation in the context of the digital Covid-19 certificates for vaccination and recovery. They are being produced by the OGCIO using data provided by the HSE. That is it. Vaccination certificates are being pushed out and that approach is enabling us to get certificates to as many people as possible as quickly as possible. For example, for certificates based on vaccination, you can get the certificate if you have been vaccinated against Covid-19 if the HSE has a valid email address for you from the vaccination process. You will get your digital Covid certificate by email. Otherwise, you will get your certificate by post. The digital Covid certificate will be in portable document format, PDF, and when that is emailed to you-----

13/07/2021T00900Deputy Alan Kelly: What about GPs?

13/07/2021T01000The Taoiseach: I will come to that. You may download it to your phone where the quick response, QR, code on the PDF may be inspected or scanned. These digital Covid certificates will be emailed or posted in the coming days. It is already happening. A certificate of recovery will be available from 11 days after a positive test and will be valid for no more than 180 days.

4 o’clock

The digital Covid certificate can be requested via a helpline, the details of which will be published shortly.

13/07/2021U00200Deputy Mick Barry: What about JobBridge?

13/07/2021U00300The Taoiseach: The certificate will come through the Chief Information Officer.

13/07/2021U00400Deputy Alan Kelly: Three Ministers said three different things and the Taoiseach does not know.

13/07/2021U00500The Taoiseach: I ask the Deputy not to misbehave.

520 13 July 2021

13/07/2021U00600Cabinet Committees

13/07/2021U0070010. Deputy Mary Lou McDonald asked the Taoiseach the membership and terms of reference of the Covid-19 oversight group chaired by the Secretary General of his Department. [36222/21]

13/07/2021U0080011. Deputy Mick Barry asked the Taoiseach when the Cabinet committee on Covid-19 will next meet. [36303/21]

13/07/2021U0090012. Deputy Alan Kelly asked the Taoiseach when the Cabinet committee on Covid-19 will next meet. [37567/21]

13/07/2021U0100013. Deputy Mick Barry asked the Taoiseach when the Cabinet committee on Covid-19 will next meet. [37672/21]

13/07/2021U0110014. Deputy Dara Calleary asked the Taoiseach when the Cabinet committee on Covid-19 is next due to meet. [37703/21]

13/07/2021U0120015. Deputy Jennifer Murnane O’Connor asked the Taoiseach when the Cabinet committee on Covid-19 will meet next. [37706/21]

13/07/2021U0130016. Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett asked the Taoiseach the membership and terms of reference of the Covid-19 oversight group chaired by the Secretary General of his Department. [37714/21]

13/07/2021U0140017. Deputy Paul Murphy asked the Taoiseach the membership and terms of reference of the Covid-19 oversight group chaired by the Secretary General of his Department. [37717/21]

13/07/2021U0150018. Deputy Bríd Smith asked the Taoiseach the membership and terms of reference of the Covid-19 oversight group chaired by the Secretary General of his Department. [37720/21]

13/07/2021U01600The Taoiseach: I propose to take Questions Nos. 10 to 18, inclusive, together.

The Cabinet committee on Covid-19 was re-established by this Government last summer to assess the social and economic impacts of the potential spread of Covid-19 and oversee the cross-government response. The committee, which I chair, meets regularly as required. It last met on 28 June. The date of the next meeting has not yet been set.

A Covid-19 oversight group chaired by the Secretary to the Government meets regularly to provide advice to the Government in the strategic economic and social policy responses to the management of the disease and to consider National Public Health Emergency Team, NPHET, advices. Membership of the oversight group includes senior officials from my Department and the Departments of Health; Public Expenditure and Reform; Enterprise, Trade and Employ- ment; Finance; Foreign Affairs; and Justice. It also includes the Chief Medical Officer, the chief executive officer of the HSE, the chair of the Irish epidemiological modelling advisory group, the director general of the Central Statistics Office and the chair of the vaccines task force, along with the chiefs of staff to the Taoiseach, Tånaiste and Minister for Transport, Deputy Eamon Ryan. Senior officials from other Departments attend as required.

The Government continues to follow its plan to review and monitor the control of the virus and follow the prevailing public health advice in support of a safe and gradual reopening, in line with Resilience and Recovery: The Path Ahead. As the House is aware, the Government’s 521 Dáil Éireann most recent announcement indicated that the next phase of reopening will be based on a cautious approach with an emphasis on lower risk activities, following advice from NPHET that the incidence of the Delta variant in Ireland poses a significant risk, particularly to those who are not yet fully vaccinated. It is a difficult decision for many sectors, particularly for many businesses which had hoped to open last week.

The vaccination programme continues to make significant progress however, with over 4.7 million doses of the vaccine now administered and almost 57% of the adult population now fully vaccinated. Since last Monday, those aged between 18 and 34 have been receiving Jans- sen vaccines through participating pharmacies. Registration of those aged between 30 and 34 for an mRNA vaccine began last Wednesday through the vaccination portal. Since 5 July, the numbers permitted at outdoor events increased as planned to a maximum of 200 attendees for the majority of stadiums and to 500 for stadiums and venues with capacity greater than 5,000, with appropriate protective measures. There is no limit on the numbers of people taking part in household visits once all are fully vaccinated, or have had a confirmed case of Covid-19 infection in the previous nine months. In line with current advice, unvaccinated households may have visitors from one other unvaccinated household. Fifty guests are permitted to attend wedding receptions with protective measures and the number of mourners permitted at funer- als continues to be limited to 50, regardless of size of venue. People should continue to work from home unless it is necessary to attend in person. Indoor activities such as organised events, group training, exercise and dance will not yet proceed.

Following engagement with the hospitality industry representative bodies on the range of options to operationalise the NPHET advice of 28 June, and in the context of the overriding objectives to protect public health and to mitigate the potential for further restrictions arising from the Delta variant or other variants, the Government has agreed a phased approach to reopen the hospitality sector in a cautious but progressive manner, commencing with those who are fully protected by vaccination or prior infection.

13/07/2021U01700Deputy Mary Lou McDonald: I ask the Taoiseach to clarify the role of GPs in providing certification on either recovery or vaccination because multiple positions have been put into the public domain. We need clarity from the Taoiseach on that matter.

Sinn Féin will later bring before the Dáil a motion in support of families’ calls for the Gov- ernment to establish a public inquiry into the neglect and deaths of their loved ones in nursing homes during the pandemic. By May of last year, nearly 1,000 nursing home residents had died from Covid but when the third wave hit in January of this year, the hard lessons still had not been learned. Twenty-one residents in Ballynoe nursing home in Cork died from Covid in the first two months of this year. A HIQA report following an unannounced visit in January to Cahercalla nursing home in County Clare described management’s response to an outbreak of Covid as “chaotic and disorganised”. The home failed on every point of inspection in that report. Last year, I met with families of those who died from Covid in Dealgan House Nursing Home. They have raised their concerns with politicians and all of the statutory bodies over the past year.

Nursing home staff are to be commended on the care they have provided throughout this pandemic but it is clear that the sector requires urgent reform. The current system of oversight is simply not working and this has cost lives. Sinn Féin’s motion reflects the serious shortfalls in care, governance, safeguarding and investment that have been starkly exposed over the past 16 months. It also sets out the remedies and solutions needed to provide residents with the care 522 13 July 2021 and protection they need and to which they are entitled. I call on the Taoiseach and his Govern- ment colleagues to support the motion, establish a public inquiry and put in place the regulatory and safeguarding protections so urgently needed.

13/07/2021U01800Deputy Mick Barry: The caretaker Prime Minister of the Netherlands, Mr. Mark Rutte, said yesterday, “We had poor judgment, which we regret and for which we apologise.” In a society with a higher vaccination rate than ours, he rushed a reopening and the cases multiplied by 20 times within a fortnight.

The legislation is being rushed through the Dáil and Seanad, and rushed down to Áras an Úachtaráin. Concerns related to civil liberties and workers rights are not being heeded. The voices being listened to are those of the publicans and restaurateurs. Although it often has been far from the reality, the battle against the virus has, at least in words, been waged by the Gov- ernment under the banner of social solidarity. That is now being thrown to the wind. People are now to be discriminated against on the grounds of their health status. People who are in early pregnancy will be locked out, as will people who have health conditions that mean they cannot take the vaccine and young people who are unable to access a vaccine through a phar- macy. How can the Taoiseach not see and admit that his two-tier indoor hospitality proposals are divisive?

13/07/2021U01900Deputy Dara Calleary: It is important to acknowledge that the vaccination programme has been successful and is taking on massive momentum. However, we should also look at the impact of the pandemic on young people, about which I spoke to the Taoiseach last week. We must also look at long Covid. I ask the Taoiseach, if he gets time in the coming weeks, to watch last night’s episode of “Panorama”. Long Covid is having an effect on previously healthy people. The Cabinet sub-committee should put some work into the impact of the pandemic on young people and how we can get them through it.

13/07/2021U02000Deputy Jennifer Murnane O’Connor: I also have concerns about the legislation for the Covid certificate, although I welcome it. I know the Taoiseach is listening to advice from NPHET and health professionals. However, my office has heard the concerns of people in their 40s and 50s who have not received vaccines and are waiting for appointments. That is a big concern. Some people with medical issues cannot get a vaccine and I understand they will not be able to get a letter from a doctor or the HSE. There is big confusion here. I acknowledge that the Government has been working hard on this issue.

As Deputy Calleary said, young people have been especially affected by the pandemic. Young people who may not be vaccinated will be working in the hospitality sector. There is an old saying that the devil is in the detail. The detail of this reopening of hospitality must be communicated properly. A man rang me today. He is not vaccinated so will not be able to enjoy indoor dining. He asked whether, if he goes for an outdoor meal, it means he will not be allowed to use the toilet inside and if there will be a toilet outside. These are the questions that need to be asked. We must communicate. I know how hard the Taoiseach and the Cabinet have worked on this, and I welcome that, but I firmly believe communication is the key to make sure we deliver.

13/07/2021U02100Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett: I am very strongly of the view that the vaccination programme is the key to getting us out of this grim pandemic and reopening society. In that context, I believe the legislation the Government is pushing through is damaging and divisive. It is a gift to those who are anti-vaccination. Even civil liberties groups, such as the Irish Council 523 Dáil Éireann for Civil Liberties, ICCL, have warned that it raises profound questions about discrimination and the ethics of demanding medical or health information from people. The council wrote to the Taoiseach to the effect that it smacked of mandatory vaccination insofar as the Government is denying entry to people who, for example, have health issues and cannot be vaccinated, have not been vaccinated yet or have not been entirely convinced of the efficacy of vaccines. It is very important to say that the World Health Organization has consistently opposed anything that smacks of mandatory vaccination as threatening to undermine the vaccination programme. I believe it to be very divisive. It causes problems that could undermine the public health effort and, of course, it threatens the health of young workers who will have to work in hospitality when they are unvaccinated.

13/07/2021V00200Deputy Paul Murphy: The Taoiseach is making a serious and reckless mistake again. The Government is risking the health of hospitality workers who are mostly unvaccinated. It is risking hundreds of unnecessary deaths, tens of thousands of potential cases of long Covid and a fourth wave and another lockdown, which people would find utterly demoralising.

I have two specific questions to ask the Taoiseach. Has NPHET agreed to the Government’s alteration of its recommendation by saying that children aged under 18 of parents who have been vaccinated are now allowed to go into indoor hospitality? Obviously, they are not part of a family bubble once they are inside a pub or restaurant, eating or drinking and not wearing a mask. How does that make any sense? Has NPHET agreed to it?

How is there still no legislation, 500 days after the first case of Covid-19 in Ireland, with regard to ventilation? There is more talk about it and more reference to guidelines. That is great but if the Government does not actually bring in legislation, it is not worth a whole lot.

13/07/2021V00300An Ceann Comhairle: I am not quite sure yet how many minutes are remaining. There are not very many.

13/07/2021V00400The Taoiseach: Generally, in response to this issue, there are choices facing Government and the Oireachtas. We can decide not open indoor hospitality at all. That is a decision we can take. Is that what people want us to do? If so, they should please articulate that. I think Deputy Murphy is of the view that we should not. He has been straight about it. I do not know what Deputy Boyd Barrett’s view on it is.

13/07/2021V00500Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett: Delay it until people are vaccinated.

13/07/2021V00600The Taoiseach: I do not know what delay means. Do we delay until vaccination? That is fine. NPHET is of the view that if we restrict it with a verifiable and enforceable approach to the vaccinated and those who have recovered from Covid-19, that is a safe way of doing it and that is what the legislation reflects. We are, therefore, doing this in context of public health advice.

Public health advice did not reference children. I take that point. The children will be part of a family bubble, however. They will be part of the family bubble in terms of dining out. They cannot be drinking in a pub for obvious reasons given their age but they will be in a family bubble. That is in line with public health advice in terms of the issue of the vaccinated and recovery from Covid-19. That all has been preceded in the first phase of this reopening of indoor dining and hospitality. There is no desire to be divisive at all but there is a desire to protect. That is the only issue here in terms of not allowing the unvaccinated indoors. It is not about mandatory vaccination. It is nothing to do with that. We have managed outdoor hospitality 524 13 July 2021 well since we have reopened it and it has gone well, insofar as it can. The next phase will be more challenging and difficult.

I do not underestimate the Delta variant. It is very serious. We are not in a similar place to we were prior to Christmas, however. We have achieved substantial vaccination already both in terms of first doses and people who are fully vaccinated. This is about balance and there are risks involved. It will require vigilance and adherence on the part of everyone. It will require personal responsibility to adhere to the law and to the basic principle that I can go indoors if I am vaccinated or if I have recovered from Covid-19. That is very important to facilitate this latest phase of the reopening of our economy and society. It is about balance. It is also about protecting workers. The Chief Medical Officer has been very clear that workers will obviously have protections but they will also be serving a vaccinated cohort, which significantly, gives added protection.

13/07/2021V00700An Ceann Comhairle: I thank the Taoiseach. That brings us to the end of Taoiseach’s Questions.

13/07/2021V00800The Taoiseach: Long Covid is an issue I take very seriously. We need to follow through and do some more research in terms of the numbers of people who could get long Covid and the long-term implications of the disease.

13/07/2021V00900An Ceann Comhairle: I am afraid the time is up. I thank the Taoiseach and Members for those questions.

13/07/2021V01050Ceisteanna ar Sonraíodh Uain Dóibh - Priority Questions

13/07/2021V01100An Ceann Comhairle: The Minister for Health will make a brief statement for the information for the House.

13/07/2021V01200Minister for Health (Deputy Stephen Donnelly): I thank the Ceann Comhairle for allowing me to update the House on my Department’s processing of parliamentary questions since the cyberattack on 13 May. Parliamentary questions are a core part of how democratically- elected representatives seek information from Ministers on behalf of the people of Ireland. The cyberattack caused severe disruption to my Department’s parliamentary question process and I fully understand that this situation has been very frustrating for Deputies. I wish to assure colleagues that we are determined to get everything back on track as soon as possible. I thank colleagues for their ongoing support and patience as we continue to work towards this goal. It is important to note that my Department is routinely assigned the highest number of all parliamentary questions tabled. The Department of Health, for example, received 25% of the 30,000 parliamentary questions tabled in the first half of this year. To put that into context, the Depart- ment of Education came second with 9%.

As colleagues will be aware, a significant proportion of parliamentary questions assigned to my Department are referred to the HSE for direct reply. Following the attack, the HSE shut down all of its ICT systems, including email and its ICT links with the Department. As a result, HSE systems were not able to receive or process referred parliamentary questions. The HSE has advised that while the restoration of HSE staff email, which is critical to responding to parliamentary questions, is taking place on a phased basis, problems still remain in some areas. Furthermore, discussions are ongoing between my Department, the HSE and the Office of the 525 Dáil Éireann Government Chief Information Officer in order that links can be safely restored between the Department and HSE ICT and parliamentary questions can be securely processed and answered by the HSE. I am informed that good progress is being been made and anticipate that connec- tivity will be in place shortly.

As parliamentary questions continued to be submitted immediately after the cyberattack, a backlog has developed, which my Department is working to tackle. As soon as it became possible to transfer parliamentary questions to the Department, which was two weeks ago, the Oireachtas Questions Office transferred batches of 100 to 150 per sitting day. This will increase to 200 per day from next week. As it stands, because of all this, there are approximately 1,400 parliamentary questions on hand, which the Department is in the process of answering. While steady progress is being made, as Deputies will understand it will take some time to process responses to these questions. I ask Deputies for their continued understanding and forbearance in this regard.

13/07/2021V01500Acting Chairman (Deputy Bernard J. Durkan): I thank the Minister. We now proceed to Priority Question No. 33 in the name of Deputy Cullinane.

13/07/2021V01600Hospital Overcrowding

13/07/2021V0170033. Deputy David Cullinane asked the Minister for Health the level of overcrowding in hospitals; his plans to expand hospital capacity in the coming months; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [37545/21]

13/07/2021V01800Deputy David Cullinane: My question is about overcrowding in acute hospitals. I am sure the Minister will have seen the repeated warnings from healthcare trade unions over the past number of weeks to the effect that hospital overcrowding is very close to being back at pre- pandemic levels, which is unacceptable.

We know overcrowding in hospitals is a symptom of a wider problem with regard to a lack of capacity. What are the levels of overcrowding in hospitals? What is the Minister going to do to increase capacity in our public systems to reduce overcrowding on one hand but also reduce unacceptably high wait times?

13/07/2021V01900Minister for Health Deputy Stephen Donnelly: I thank the Deputy for raising this very important issue. I acknowledge that our hospital system is facing challenges and has been close to full capacity in recent weeks. It is very important to acknowledge this has caused distress for patients, their families, and of course for our frontline healthcare workers who are working in very challenging conditions.

Attendances at emergency departments, EDs, have increased steadily since the beginning of the year and were almost back to 2019 levels, for the same time that year, just before the ransomware attack occurred in May. The last year with which reasonable comparisons can be made is 2019 due to the unusual attendance patterns in 2020. The HSE has estimated that for the week ending 4 July attendances were up 12% on the same time in 2019. There are a number of reasons for this, including the opening up of society as Covid-19 restrictions are lifted and additional GP referrals due to issues accessing diagnostics arising from the ransomware attack. The increased attendances, Covid-19-related patient safety protocols, and manual workarounds and reduced access to diagnostics due to the ransomware attack, have all been contributing to 526 13 July 2021 slower progress of patients through the system. The Government has funded significant initiatives across the health service to expand capacity, including, as Deputy Cullinane and I have discussed before, the €600 million invested in the last winter plan. It is worth noting that in spite of all the pressures Covid brought to bear over the winter, thanks to this very significant investment and extraordinary work right across our healthcare system, the ED attendances for the winter, which arguably should have been the highest on record, were the lowest on record. I credit everyone in our healthcare system who contributed to that. I have more I can share with the Deputy in the follow-up.

13/07/2021W00200Deputy David Cullinane: It is the case that overcrowding is becoming a problem in hospitals again. That was always going to be the case as we came out of a very difficult time for those who work on the front line. I acknowledge that, as the Minister said, it a has been a very difficult year for those on the front line because of Covid on the one hand, which led to the can- cellation of much non-essential healthcare and a slowing down at times of essential healthcare and then on the other we had the cyberattack. However, the waiting lists were a problem long before the pandemic and overcrowding was a problem long before the pandemic. While the Government did make substantial additional investment available to the healthcare system last year in the budget, if one tries to find out how many of the beds were delivered, be they acute beds or community ones, it is very difficult to get the answers. Maybe that is down to the cyberattack but I would like it if the Minister was able to share that information with us.

For the Minister’s information, next week I will be launching a document myself on how we can reduce waiting lists. The Government often asks where the Opposition’s solutions are. I have some of those solutions in the document. I will ensure the Minister gets a copy of this and would like to see him bring forward his plan for how we are going to reduce waiting lists in the time ahead.

13/07/2021W00300Deputy Stephen Donnelly: I thank the Deputy. I look forward to seeing the document. Nobody has a monopoly on the solutions to this so I very much look forward to seeing the proposals. To respond directly to the Deputy’s question, through the winter plan and this year so far, an additional 834 acute beds have been delivered, with another 229 expected this year. In addition, 73 sub-acute beds have been added with 40 more planned for this year. There has also been substantial funding to increase home support hours, as the Deputy will be aware. The strategic plan for critical care is now in place. It aims to increase ICU capacity to 321 by the end of this year and to 446 in the longer term. The €52 million provided for implementation of this plan will allow for an additional 66 beds to be put in place. The HSE has advised that 42 of those 66 beds are now open, bringing our baseline capacity to 297 beds as of right now.

13/07/2021W00400Deputy David Cullinane: If the Minister could send on all of that information it would be very helpful. However, an awful lot of what was promised has not been delivered. I accept what he outlined is additional capacity and that it is going to make a difference. Any additional beds and any additional staff member in the health services is something I will welcome but as I have said to the Minister on a number of previous occasions, the problems are not just ones of capacity, although that is one part of it. Structural changes must also be made, though capacity is critical. I want to see, for example, the introduction of unique patient identifiers so that we have a system that can actually speak to itself and which is integrated. I want to see an integrated waiting list system. I also want to see hospital consultants having access to diagnostic equipment. We know much of that equipment is antiquated and must be replaced. We also know they struggle and fight to get access to theatre space and we must expand capacity in that area. Last year’s budget was light on capital investment. We must also follow through on all 527 Dáil Éireann the commitments that were made, which were substantial but not all of which were delivered upon, especially in the form of beds and staff, which is the critical part. It is one thing to promise; we must deliver.

13/07/2021W00500Deputy Stephen Donnelly: I must say I agree with much of what the Deputy has just said. On building up the acute capacity, it is the biggest expansion in a single year ever to have been attempted, as far as I am aware, and the reports back from the HSE are very positive. On the Deputy’s point, there are areas where the planned expansion is not on target, largely because of Covid and the cyberattack, and obviously it has been a very difficult year. However, specifically on what we are talking about, there is really good progress and they are doing really well. The Deputy quite rightly referenced access to diagnostics. One area we have invested a lot in this year is access to diagnostics for GPs, which obviously takes some of the pressure off the acute system. The feedback I am getting from GPs, where that has been invested in, is very positive. It is keeping patients in their community for treatment. It is really a matter of doing all this so that the patient pathway the whole way through is increased so people can stay in the community and if they do need to go into hospital, they can get back out to the community as quickly as possible.

13/07/2021W00550Covid-19 Tests

13/07/2021W0060034. Deputy Verona Murphy asked the Minister for Health the current capacity of the Co- vid-19 test, trace and isolate system; the number of contact tracers currently in place; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [37673/21]

13/07/2021W00700Deputy Verona Murphy: Will the Minister detail the current capacity of our Covid-19 test, trace and isolate system, state what number of contact tracers are place and give us details on these matters?

13/07/2021W00800Deputy Stephen Donnelly: I thank the Deputy for her question. In line with the evolving public health policy advice, the HSE has put in place a comprehensive, reliable and responsive testing and tracing operation. Testing and contact tracing continues to be an important element of our response. Our current swabbing capacity is 175,000 tests per week. Demand for testing and tracing is high, as the Deputy will be aware, but every test centre around the country currently accepts walk-ins, which is being very well-received in communities around the country. Alternatively, a test can be booked on the new online booking portal for any nearby test centre, so it is very accessible right now. Contact tracing centres operate 12 hours a day, 7 days a week and are fully-rostered every day. The dedicated workforce, now totalling 930 contact tracers, has been really important to ensuring adequate capacity for contact tracing up to 1,600 detected cases per day. This involves full data gathering and phone calls to all cases and their contacts. The service can now deploy digital mechanisms to significantly increase capacity and continue to contact trace through surge periods if the daily rate goes above 1,600 cases a day.

The testing and tracing programme undergoes continual evaluation and development in response to changing demands and evolving evidence. The HSE has been provided with resources to maintain a robust testing and tracing system to meet ongoing demand. It ensures that its potential to detect and mitigate the impact of the virus across the population is maximised.

13/07/2021W00900Deputy Verona Murphy: I thank the Minister. On 8 May 2020 I requested from the Tánaiste a road map for testing and tracing. He was acting Taoiseach at that time and said he 528 13 July 2021 would indeed ask the HSE to produce a road map and on 14 May we saw the road map. He said:

Our mission is to get people back to work, get businesses open again and get the economy humming so that we have the resources we need to build a better society... [W]e will maintain an intense focus on the virus and follow four guiding principles: isolate, test, trace and treat, so that we can quickly react if things go wrong and if [we see] an increase in cases... The crucial thing is to keep doing the right things, to stick to the strategy and maintain our focus...

At that time we had 234 contact tracers. I am glad to hear we now have 930 but I want to know whether they are full-time, that is, working continuously for the 12 hours and what number of people do they trace individually.

13/07/2021X00100Deputy Stephen Donnelly: We have 930 staff in place. I do not know who is working or the exact hours involved but I can confirm the part in which we are interested, namely, whether contact tracing capacity is operating to its full potential 12 hours per day, seven days per week. The answer to that question is “Yes”. We do quite in-depth contact tracing compared with many other countries. We do contact tracing with various protocols, with a full list of phone calls and following up on the close contacts. It is a level that many other countries do not do but we have found it very useful in identifying local outbreaks before public health teams go in. The Deputy will be aware, for example, of the serious recent outbreak in Dungarvan, which is not far from her constituency. The outbreak was identified and contact tracing was done before public health teams went in and engaged with people. I am thankful that in Ireland we have had a fantastic response from the public, members of which isolate in order to protect themselves and everybody else. As a result, outbreaks like it are being contained all the time.

13/07/2021X00200Deputy Verona Murphy: The issue is capacity when the numbers start to grow. We have had an average of approximately 600 cases per day over the past week. When we had 234 contact tracers, we were seeing 1,200 cases per day. I appreciate that officials were able to handle what happened in Dungarvan with the test, trace and isolate system. I am asking about what happens in future, when we get above 1,200 cases per day, as that was the level at which it col- lapsed last year. What will be our capacity to deal with this when we come under pressure if we have current levels of tracing? What happens if each person has five close contacts, which, I imagine, is a minimum number? It would mean that we would have to contact 3,000 people on a daily basis. This is why I am interested. I want to know that this is a robust system, that it will not collapse and that we will not have to go back into lockdown because we did not resource our testing, tracing and isolation capability.

13/07/2021X00300Deputy Stephen Donnelly: The daily capacity has been significantly increased to 1,600 detected cases per day. The Deputy has raised a very important question, which is, what will happen after 1,600 cases per day are detected? Based on what we are seeing in Scotland and the modelling we have from Professor Philip Nolan’s team, we will very likely be looking at more than 1,600 cases per day. There are various protocols to be put in place around using electronic means and shortening phone calls in order to further increase capacity. Probably the most important part of the answer comes from the Chief Medical Officer. He made the point when this happened last winter - he made it again in the discussions we are having with the HSE about what we do when the level is reached - that there comes a level of virus in the community after which contact tracing becomes far less relevant. Contact tracing is really important in dealing with isolated outbreaks in order to find and protect people by isolating them. As the Chief Medical Officer stated, we can get to a point where contact tracing is not the focus as there is a 529 Dáil Éireann switch to more population-based tools.

13/07/2021X00400Departmental Reports

13/07/2021X0050035. Deputy Pauline Tully asked the Minister for Health when the disability capacity review report will be published; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [28331/21]

13/07/2021X00600Deputy Pauline Tully: When will the Department of Health’s capacity review of disability services be published?

13/07/2021X00700Minister of State at the Department of Health(Deputy Anne Rabbitte): I thank the Deputy for tabling this question. To be honest and get straight to the answer, I will provide a clear timeline: it will be published within a week.

13/07/2021X00800Deputy Pauline Tully: I am delighted to hear that. This report was completed last No- vember. Many parliamentary questions on the matter have been tabled to the Minister of State by members of the Joint Committee on Disability Matters and other Deputies. The committee itself, various organisations, including the Irish Wheelchair Association, and the Oireachtas disability group and the organisations it represents have all queried the matter with her..

The Minister of State knows better than I that there is a deficit in the area of disability so this news is very welcome and important. I presume the report will help inform preparations for budget 2022. I know the Indecon report comes under the Department of Social Protection rather than the Department of Health but it is another important part of the jigsaw that will indicate the cost of disability in future. I know the indication is that it will be published in the coming months. Will this be considered in the context of the budget?

13/07/2021X00900Deputy Anne Rabbitte: Prior to having the disability capacity review published, the Gov- ernment delivered on disability matters over the past 12 months and when we went through the process of budgetary preparedness last year. It is important to provide a recap on what we have delivered. There have been 126 individuals moved from congregated settings and funding was put in place to ensure a total of 102 new residential places, as well as 144 replacements in the community. More than 80% of the backlog of assessment of needs since June 2020 has been delivered. The first programme to tackle the issue of persons with disabilities under 65 in nursing homes is in progress and a full compliment of children’s disability network teams are to be in place from the end of this summer. Significant progress has been made in the recruitment of 100 therapists with an additional 85 therapists on top of that. The Government progressed these matters despite the fact that the report has not yet been published. We will continue to progress issues and put disability at the centre of our agenda at all times.

13/07/2021X01000Deputy Pauline Tully: I welcome and acknowledge the work that has been done. There have been significant moves towards a social model of care and away from the health model of care, which is the right way to go. The Minister of State is doing tremendous work in that field. There are, however, some very stark statistics regarding disability. We have the lowest employment rate for people with disabilities in the EU and one of the highest poverty rates. It is certainly higher than average and we are one of the worst five countries in that regard.

The Minister of State mentioned people in nursing homes who are under 65 years of age. There are still approximately 1,300 such individuals. Significant progress is needed to move

530 13 July 2021 them from what are totally unsuitable settings and into community-based locations. Another statistic indicates that 0.3% of all people with disabilities access the services of personal assistants. This is vital in order to allow people to live in the community and have the supports they need. In order to move towards community services and supports, we must investment in information technology, housing, transport and education. In order to implement the provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, UNCRPD, we must see disability-proofing across all Departments.

13/07/2021X01100Deputy Anne Rabbitte: I concur completely with the Deputy about disability-proofing across all Departments. As I speak, we are disability-proofing the medical model through the Department of Health. When I move to a new Department dealing with inclusion and equality matters under the Minister, Deputy Roderic O’Gorman, we will reach out to every other Department, including those dealing with education, transport and employment. Disability is not just about medical needs but it is about how a person can access education, do transition planning and ensure that employment can be accessed in order to facilitate independent living with help from housing authorities. I have every faith that this disability capacity review will touch on every Department.

13/07/2021X01200Covid-19 Pandemic

13/07/2021X0130036. Deputy Mattie McGrath asked the Minister for Health if he will initiate an immediate public enquiry into the handling of Covid-19 by the Government and NPHET, including an immediate investigation into the nursing home deaths; if there will be an independent external audit of the advice from NPHET and its modelling by an external team of auditors who are not otherwise engaged by the State; the rationale for Ireland’s position as an outlier in Europe in the context of the level of restrictions on hospitality and antigen testing here; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [38064/21]

13/07/2021X01400Deputy Mattie McGrath: I ask the Minister for Health if he will initiate an immediate public inquiry into the handling by the Government and NPHET of Covid-19, including an immediate investigation into nursing home deaths. Will he commit to an independent external audit of NPHET’s advice and modelling by auditors not otherwise engaged with the State? Will he explain and justify Ireland’s position as an outlier in Europe regarding the level of restrictions on hospitality and in the use of antigen testing?

13/07/2021X01500Deputy Stephen Donnelly: I thank the Deputy for the question. It is fair to say that Co- vid-19 has had a devastating effect and caused huge difficulty for everyone in Ireland. That is especially true for people in nursing homes and their families, who have suffered huge hardship, as well as staff. The Department of Health is exploring ways to ensure their voices are heard.

It must be recognised that the pandemic has not concluded and at this time the priority focus of the Government remains on the ongoing management of the Covid-19 response to ensure the gains we have seen are preserved and that those most vulnerable to the virus continue to be protected. NPHET and its modelling team have served us well, performing essential roles. I pay tribute to the chairs of both groups, Dr. Tony Holohan and Professor Philip Nolan, for their leadership and expertise.

Ireland’s response has been robust, as is evident when one considers some of the outcomes here relative to those in many other countries. Ireland currently has one of the lowest number of 531 Dáil Éireann cases per capita within the EU and UK and thankfully, when this is over and if things continue as is, Ireland will have one of the lowest levels of excess mortality also.

Our vaccination programme is also performing extremely well. By the end of the week the vaccination programme is expected to have administered 5 million doses, with more than 2 million adults fully vaccinated and more than 70% of the adult population having received their first dose. I am delighted to be able to share that when one considers the target population, Ireland has either the highest or one of the highest participation rates right across the board.

The Deputy raises the very important point of antigen testing. In January I established the rapid testing group chaired by Professor Mark Ferguson. More recently I have established an expert advisory group on rapid testing, chaired by Professor Mary Horgan, to support the roll- out of rapid testing right across sectors in the country.

13/07/2021Y00200Deputy Mattie McGrath: I commend and thank the front-line staff, the nursing staff and their attendants.

The independent investigation I seek should include a cost-benefit analysis of the Govern- ment-imposed lockdowns to date. For instance, the overall costs of the lockdowns must include delayed diagnoses and missed diagnoses, the effects on mental health and other health-related services, together with the economic and community impact versus the benefits derived from the longest-ever lockdown in Ireland.

Ireland has had the longest lockdown in the world and the second highest rate of nursing home deaths, which is so sad. Aon death amháin is one too many in any situation, but these were in nursing homes. Of these deaths, we know that 50% of the people who died were infected in 575 nursing home buildings and 15% of the deaths were due to people being infected in 86 hospital buildings. This is what I am coming at. I put it to the Minister that people go to those trusted institutions for care and protection and to the hospitals to get better, not to pick up an infection. We need a thorough external and independent investigation to find out where the mistakes were made and if we can be ready in the future to avoid something like this.

13/07/2021Y00300Deputy Stephen Donnelly: It sounds like the Deputy and I agree that everything that can be done to protect people in the nursing homes and right across the residential care sector must be done.

The Deputy will be aware that an expert nursing home group was brought together. They did a huge amount of work and produced a comprehensive report. Critically, an implementation group was put together because the Minister of State, Deputy Butler, and I wanted to make sure that this was not just a report that sat on a shelf. An awful lot of work has been done. HIQA and the HSE have been involved. As the Deputy is aware, the Defence Forces were at times brought in to help out as well. The Minister of State, Deputy Butler, and I will shortly bring forward quite ground-breaking legislation on the regulation of the nursing home sector and home care more generally. I share the Deputy’s view that everything that can be done must be done for people in the nursing home sector and in home care.

13/07/2021Y00400Deputy Mattie McGrath: I put it to the Minister that of the approximately 5,000 Covid deaths in Ireland, 40% of them occurred in nursing homes. Internationally, the Republic of Ireland has the second worst rate of nursing home deaths in the world after Canada. As society returns to normal, this issue must be addressed to bring release for the many families who have lost loved ones in the most tragic and traumatic of circumstances over the past 15 months. They 532 13 July 2021 must get answers. I am aware that a number of court case challenges are coming up in this regard. I have spoken with and met nursing home staff and I have visited one or two homes by invitation. They allege that they were literally left without personal protective equipment and in some cases were left without oxygen, which they allege was taken away by the HSE. This is shocking. We must examine this fully. I do not want an internal investigation. We must have an external, inward-looking investigation that has no commitments to any sectors in Ireland. It must be open, honest and transparent to find out if we can learn from the huge mistakes and the lack of readiness and preparedness for any kind of a pandemic. We must learn from the mistakes.

13/07/2021Y00500Deputy Stephen Donnelly: We absolutely have to learn from what happened. Some things were done well but undoubtedly there will have been mistakes made. I assure the Deputy that a constant review has been ongoing for a long time. The Minister of State, Deputy Butler, and I have had numerous meetings with the Department, with the HSE and with HIQA to be able to go through it, nursing home by nursing home, around the country, identifying those nursing homes that are most at risk.

13/07/2021Y00600Deputy Mattie McGrath: Who will do it?

13/07/2021Y00700Deputy Stephen Donnelly: HIQA in the first instance. As for how it works, HIQA does a very thorough examination right across the sector and then identifies specific challenges that individual nursing homes may have. They engage with the HSE and the Department to make sure that the supports are put in place. While I hear clearly what the Deputy is asking, I wish to assure him, as well as those people in the nursing home sector and their families, that this is not something new. We have constantly been reviewing, revising and learning and putting in place more and more safeguards right the way through this pandemic.

13/07/2021Y00800Vaccination Programme

13/07/2021Y0090037. Deputy Catherine Connolly asked the Minister for Health the details of the financial cost of the Covid-19 vaccination roll-out in Ireland; the details of the indemnity given to pharmaceutical companies with regard to the Covid-19 vaccines including the estimated cost of same; his plans to introduce a Covid-19 vaccine compensation scheme; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [38065/21]

13/07/2021Y01000Deputy Catherine Connolly: I welcome the opportunity to ask a priority question. It is very specific. It is about the cost of the vaccination roll-out, the nature of the indemnity given and to how many pharmaceutical companies, the cost of that and the nature of it.

Equally important is an issue I had asked about in December in a question to the Taoiseach, and which I have raised many times since, namely, the matter of a compensation scheme. The Taoiseach had said he was working on it.

Perhaps in my second chance to speak I will come back to the Meenan report.

13/07/2021Y01100Deputy Stephen Donnelly: The overall initial funding allocation for the Covid-19 vaccination programme and related expenditure approval is for a total of €200 million for 2021. Core responsibility for the operational delivery lies with the HSE, which provides detailed estimates of the gross cost of implementation to the Department of Health. While the cyberattack has

533 Dáil Éireann had some impact on data reporting systems, the latest figures available from May indicate expenditure of approximately €121 million. It is envisaged that the overall costs associated with implementation of the vaccination programme will be significantly in excess of the €200 million already allocated. My Department will continue to work closely with the HSE and the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform to ensure cost-effectiveness in the context of the Covid-19 vaccination roll-out.

Regarding indemnity, the content of the advance purchase agreements, including provisions relating to liability and indemnity, are negotiated with vaccine suppliers by the European Com- mission and its negotiating team acting on behalf of the member states. Member states may decide to opt in or opt out of any of the advance purchase agreements, APAs, for vaccines but member states do not have scope to recast the provisions of the agreement. The clauses in the APAs relating to indemnification and liability are open-ended. They require member states to provide legal supports, costs and payment of claims arising from any damages associated with the administration of the vaccine. I am aware that the UK and several European countries have introduced vaccine injury compensation schemes, although there are no plans at present for the introduction in Ireland of a Covid-19 vaccine compensation scheme.

13/07/2021Y01200Deputy Catherine Connolly: I thank the Minister and I look forward to getting that written reply and going through the figures. I believe that the Minister has said that to date it is €121 million - I did not quite catch it - or was it €200 million spent to date?

On the indemnity, it is of vital importance that we know the nature of the indemnity. I am truly tired of getting an official response that the EU negotiated this for us and that is it. I would really like to know what is the business case on that and the risk assessment, or whatever words one uses at the level the Minister is at, to tell us what we have signed up to.

On the scheme for compensation, the Meenan report was published in 2020. The Gov- ernment has had it since January 2020. Paragraph No. 14 says: “Regarding vaccination programmes the Expert Group accepts that there is a strong moral argument that the State, which actively encourages vaccination, should accept responsibility for those who suffer harm as a result.” The expert group stated there are “pragmatic reasons” to support the establishment of a compensation scheme and that “The Expert Group recommends the establishment of a vaccine compensation scheme as a matter of urgency.” Perhaps the Minister will comment on that.

13/07/2021Y01300Deputy Stephen Donnelly: On the Deputy’s first question, the budget for this year was prepared on a no-vaccine basis. No provision was made for expenditure relating to the implementation of the vaccine programme. I subsequently approved an initial reallocation of €200 million. That was previously intended for the purchase of personal protective equipment. The HSE is reporting that as of May, €121 million of that €200 million has been incurred. Our estimates are that the final bill will be well in excess of €200 million.

I will endeavour to get as much detail as I can for the Deputy with regard to the indemnity provided. I am sorry if the responses the Deputies received have caused frustration. The prob- able reason for the responses is that the details of the indemnity were not up to each member state. It was essentially a case of whether we wanted the vaccines and if we wanted them, we had to opt in to the indemnity scheme. I will respond in the next reply to the Deputy’s broader question on the Meenan report.

13/07/2021Z00200Deputy Catherine Connolly: I am not going away and I will keep persisting because this is

534 13 July 2021 the most basic information that we should have. Vaccines are an essential part of the treatment of the virus. We also need full information on the vaccination programme at every level. I do not know the cost. The Minister told me he approved up to €200 million, but that was prior to vaccination. Could we have the information on how much the vaccination programme is costing per month and per year?

The Minister said he will come back to me on the Meenan report, but I will not have a chance to respond. The report is dated January 2020. Mr. Justice Meenan said the expert group recommended the establishment of a vaccine compensation scheme as a matter of urgency. The urgency has been highlighted by recent publicity and public commentary concerning certain vaccines. That is going back, and that has multiplied a hundredfold now with Covid. It seems that no progress whatsoever has been made. Perhaps the Minister could clarify the issue.

13/07/2021Z00300Deputy Stephen Donnelly: In June 2018, the Government agreed to the establishment of the expert group to review the management of clinical negligence claims. It was chaired by the High Court judge, Mr. Justice Charles Meenan. The expert group examined the system from the perspective of the person who has made the claim to explore if there is a better way to deal effectively, yet more sensitively, with certain cases. Personally, I believe there is. Mr. Justice Meenan submitted the final report on the current system for managing clinical negligence claims to the then Minister for Health and Minister for Justice in January 2020, prior to the onset of the Covid pandemic. The Government subsequently published the Meenan report in December 2020. One of the report’s recommendations is that a compensation scheme be established.

On foot of a request from my Department, the Health Research Board, HRB, carried out an evidence review on the vaccine injury redress programme in other jurisdictions, which was completed in March 2019. The expert group’s report, in addition to the HRB’s evidence review, and consultation with other Departments and relevant State agencies will inform the development of proposals regarding the establishment of a compensation scheme, including the need for primary legislation, and work to advance policy development in this regard is under way in the Department.

13/07/2021Z00400Ceisteanna Eile - Other Questions

13/07/2021Z00500Departmental Funding

13/07/2021Z0060038. Deputy Ruairí Ó Murchú asked the Minister for Health the details in relation to the funding and supports that will be made available for family addiction services; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [37742/21]

13/07/2021Z00700Deputy Ruairí Ó Murchú: I wish to ask the Minister the details of funding and supports for family addiction services. I spoke to the Minister of State, Deputy Feighan, about the matter and he will not be shocked that I am looking for details on supports for groups such as the Family Addiction Support Network, FASN, in Dundalk. He attended the network’s events previously. The FASN plays a major role in the provision of family supports and also in drug- debt intimidation reporting, which is a significant issue. The network faces closure, and it needs funding from the State. I would also like to hear about the criteria and timelines. 535 Dáil Éireann

13/07/2021Z00800Minister of State at the Department of Health (Deputy Frankie Feighan): The national drug strategy, Reducing Harm, Supporting Recovery, recognises the role of families affected by drug use in contributing to the planning, design and delivery of effective addiction services. In budget 2021, I secured €280,000 in additional funding to support family services. This funding will be used to develop and broaden the range of peer-led, mutual aid and family support programmes in accordance with best practice, in line with action 16 of the national drugs strategy.

The development of family support services is listed as a drug and alcohol priority in the HSE’s national service plan for 2021. It is intended that the HSE will develop co-ordinated family support programmes in the following four areas this year: Dublin north inner city, Cork and Kerry, Louth and Meath, and Donegal. Each initiative will be allocated €70,000. I am pleased to report that the funding allocated for these services is currently being drawn down by the HSE in line with departmental guidelines. I am aware of the interest in the allocation of this funding in the four regions, including by the Family Addiction Support Network in Louth and Meath. I am confident that these initiatives will make a valuable contribution to supporting families with addiction issues in their local communities.

I welcome the publication of the Drogheda report. Drug activities are affecting individuals and communities in Drogheda and across the north-east region, leading to ill health, premature deaths, damaged family and social relations and drug-related violence and intimidation. I am committed to improving the availability of drug and alcohol services in the north-east region of Louth, Meath, Cavan and Monaghan. There has been an allocation of €150,000 for drug and alcohol services in Drogheda, and a further €150,000 for family support services to improve access to community-based drug and alcohol services across the region.

13/07/2021Z00900Deputy Ruairí Ó Murchú: I seek clarity. The Minister of State can correct me if I am wrong, but I understand two allocations of moneys were provided, one to be drawn down directly by the HSE, and the other that was issued by the North Eastern Regional Drug Task Force. One was to deal directly with family support services for those affected by addiction. We need to hear about the timeline and the criteria. This is an organisation that everybody, including the State services, recognises as doing necessary work but it is surviving on the basis of volunteerism. That is not sustainable into the future. These moneys have been promised for a considerable time. I would welcome some detail on the reason for the hold-up. I want to hear about the timeline and criteria and how quickly this money can be provided for use.

13/07/2021Z01000Deputy Frankie Feighan: I feel strongly that the families of drug users need to have appropriate, accessible and timely services available to them. I know the Family Addiction Support Network in Dundalk and across the country is aiding people who are often unaware that there is any help available at all. I intend to continue to work with all the relevant stakeholders across the statutory and community and voluntary sectors to achieve better outcomes for problem drug and alcohol abusers. I am aware that FASN, and all organisations providing addiction supports, have adapted to new ways of working during the pandemic. I will work with the Deputy. I encourage the FASN to engage with the HSE regarding the funding announced in budget 2021 for the region. It is the HSE that it will work with, and the Deputy can contact me if any issues arise.

13/07/2021Z01100Deputy Ruairí Ó Murchú: I have arrived in the Chamber directly from a joint policing committee meeting in Dundalk. The Minister of State referred earlier to the Guerin report. Drug-debt intimidation and addiction are major issues. We cannot let organisations like this fail. The FASN is liaising with the HSE, but it is concerned because it has been awaiting the 536 13 July 2021 money for a considerable period. We need to get the funding as soon as possible.

I return to the same question on the timelines and criteria for funding. There is no doubt that I will work alongside the Minister of State to deliver the funding because it is far too important to let it go. I am very worried that we are running out of time. We are also running out of time for supports for families. We are dealing with an organisation that deals directly with the Garda. Sometimes it is easier for people to talk to the FASN and then have information on drug debt and intimidation passed on to the Garda. It is vital that funding is provided.

13/07/2021Z01200Deputy Frankie Feighan: I was honoured to be invited by Gwen McKenna, on behalf of the Family Addiction Support Network, to launch the report, Crossing the Threshold - A facili- tator’s guide to running developmental and support groups. I understand the Department of Health agreed base funding of €152,000 for the FASN in 2020, delivered in four instalments of €38,000. Funding of €3,000 was also provided for a virtual annual conference, which took place earlier this year. In addition to the base funding of €152,000, the Department provides agreed funding for a drug-related intimidation officer of €52,000 per year for three years, commencing in 2020. Due to delays in filling the post in 2020, only €10,000 was drawn down by the FASN.

5 o’clock

I thank the Deputy for his question and I look forward to working with him. I enjoyed my visit to Dundalk. In the time of Covid, we do not get out enough, so I was delighted to be able to see at first hand the work being done there.

13/07/2021AA00200Hospital Facilities

13/07/2021AA0030039. Deputy Bernard J. Durkan asked the Minister for Health the extent to which the Naas General Hospital extension project is being provided for in the capital budget in the current year; when the project will progress to the next developmental stages; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [37598/21]

13/07/2021AA00400Deputy Bernard J. Durkan: This question relates to the urgently required extension at Naas General Hospital, which has been on the waiting list for some considerable time.

13/07/2021AA00500Deputy Stephen Donnelly: I thank the Deputy for his question. There are a number of projects in the capital programme for 2021 at Naas General Hospital. These include the day procedures-endoscopy unit, the oncology and physical therapy unit and a new acute mental health unit. Funding has been allocated to progress the project design for the day procedures- endoscopy unit and oncology and physical therapy unit projects. The procurement of the design team is nearing completion.

The scope of the acute mental health unit has changed considerably and is currently being reviewed. The service area has progressed an extensive exercise to examine the latest delivered mental health projects, including the national forensic mental health service hospital facility in Portrane. Following this review, service requirements have been rescoped to incorporate different room layouts, wider corridors and additional recreational space. Other scope changes have been made, such as the inclusion of a decking car park and seclusion rooms. The schedule of accommodation has just been confirmed and the design team is now working on the stage 1

537 Dáil Éireann report.

The delivery of capital projects is a dynamic process and subject to successful completion of the various approval stages as well as the availability of funding. The development of a modular isolation unit providing 12 single isolation rooms at Naas General Hospital is being progressed. The final contract to construct this unit is expected to be agreed within the next two weeks, with off-site fabrication and associated site works commencing in September. Con- struction of the modular unit is due for completion in quarter 1 of next year.

13/07/2021AA00600Deputy Bernard J. Durkan: I thank the Minister for his welcome reply. I ask that particular attention be paid to ensuring that the project goes ahead in a co-ordinated fashion so that everything happens simultaneously, it broadens to include whatever the hospital requires, and we do not have to revisit it in one or two years’ time. Will the Minister try to ensure that emphasis is placed on progressing the matter with all possible speed, given the length of time this project has been on the waiting list?

13/07/2021AA00700Deputy Stephen Donnelly: I will. These projects are important for people in the catchment area in the Deputy’s constituency and we need to progress them as quickly as possible.

I will offer a quick update on some of the background to the various projects. The day procedures-endoscopy unit and the oncology and physical therapy project were not prioritised to progress by the service area up until now and did not progress in 2020, given the impact of Covid, but I have outlined the progress. I might revert to the Deputy in my final response, as there are some good details around the change in the scope of the mental health project, which the Deputy has raised previously. To me, that change is good news for providing even better mental health facilities. The Minister of State, Deputy Butler, is involved in the detail of all of that.

13/07/2021AA00800Deputy Bernard J. Durkan: I agree with the Minister, in that as time goes on, changes are necessary. They are driven by requirements, society and demand. Particular emphasis must be placed on mental health in the aftermath of Covid. Indeed, there will be waiting lists and pressure on all hospitals’ facilities, space and staff.

I thank the Minister for the constructive line he is taking. I appreciate that there were difficulties due to Covid, but it is now necessary to proceed with all possible speed lest something else come along to hinder progress. I note the Minister’s promise in that regard.

13/07/2021AA00900Deputy Stephen Donnelly: I thank the Deputy for his kind words. In February, he raised the important issue of the scope of the mental health project. Much of it was to be reviewed. The original development proposal comprised the provision of an eight-bed intensive care unit at the existing 30-bed Lakeview mental health unit on the grounds of Naas General Hospital. In 2019, a further revised proposal to deliver 50 bed spaces, a nine-bed intensive care area and significantly upgraded infrastructure was received. In 2021, the scope has again been refined by the service area following a detailed examination of the latest delivered mental health projects to include different room layouts, wider corridors, additional recreational space and the relo- cation of staff rooms. The Deputy will be supportive of these. The Minister of State, Deputy Butler, is working hard on the delivery of that mental health facility, the mental health facility in Portrane and mental health facilities across the country, which are desperately needed.

13/07/2021AA01000Deputy Bernard J. Durkan: I thank the Minister.

538 13 July 2021

13/07/2021AA01100Hospital Services

13/07/2021AA0120040. Deputy Niamh Smyth asked the Minister for Health his plans for a roll-out of midwifery-led units across Ireland in line with the national maternity strategy. [37476/21]

13/07/2021AA01300Deputy Niamh Smyth: Will the Minister outline his plans for the roll-out of midwifery-led units across Ireland in line with the national maternity strategy?

13/07/2021AA01400Deputy Stephen Donnelly: I acknowledge the Deputy’s ongoing work in terms of advocacy and finding solutions for women’s healthcare, including the national maternity strategy and many other issues. As she is aware, achieving a revolution in women’s healthcare is a top priority for me and the rest of the Government. One of the cornerstones of advancing women’s healthcare is the national maternity strategy. This year, I allocated unprecedented funding to the implementation of the strategy. To put it in context, we allocated five times more money this year than in previous years. The strategy is a great one, the clinical community has bought into it and it has strong support from patients, patient groups and so on across the country. We need to see it happen now. The funding will increase access to community midwifery and to allied and specialist services for women and babies. It will help expand breastfeeding supports in our hospitals, enhance postnatal care in the community and strengthen training and education supports for staff.

Choice of care for women is essential. Important for ensuring that choice is providing access to comfortable, low-tech and suitable birth rooms for women and families. This is recognised in the strategy and is central to delivering on the goal of enhanced midwifery care. That is why funding of nearly €200,000 is being allocated to the development of three additional home away from home suites this year in Sligo, Letterkenny and Portiuncula, adding to the nine sites already in service. The suites effectively replicate the environment and birthing infrastructure available in the midwifery-led units in Drogheda and Cavan, which will help support the full implementation of the supported care pathway and provide enhanced experiences and choice for women, which is essential.

13/07/2021AA01500Deputy Niamh Smyth: I thank the Minister. I compliment him on his advocacy for this initiative. He mentioned Cavan general hospital and the midwifery unit there. It would be re- miss of me not to acknowledge and compliment its staff on the magnificent and pioneering job they do in that flagship midwifery-led unit, the first of its kind on this island. After it came the one in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, Drogheda.

The pandemic has given us an opportunity to put a new focus on midwifery-led units and home birthing. We have seen a magnificent increase in the number of women and families looking to deliver their babies at home. That is welcome. Such an holistic approach is important if women are to have a choice. The Minister invested in that, which is welcome. Is there an opportunity to find ways to expand upon our midwifery-led units?

13/07/2021AA01600Deputy Stephen Donnelly: The short answer is “Yes”. We need to put as much funding into and political and administrative focus on these services as possible. We must push on. That is why there is so much focus on getting the national maternity hospital, the home away from home suite strategy and the national maternity strategy moving as quickly as possible. With regard to the home away from home suites referenced by the Deputy, it is a similar environment to the birthing infrastructure of the midwife-led units, MLUs. There are nine sites, in Drogheda, Cavan, the Coombe, Mullingar, the National Maternity Hospital, Wexford, Cork, 539 Dáil Éireann Waterford and Limerick. Four sites in Kerry, Sligo, Portlaoise and Letterkenny are developing services as well. Some €195,000 was allocated this year. Some 19 services have antenatal midwifery clinics which is really important. Some 74 midwifery-led clinics are being held every week, which is fantastic to see. The national average of 24% of women are in a supportive care pathway at this point.

13/07/2021BB00200Deputy Niamh Smyth: From my experience in terms of the Cavan midwifery-led unit there, what I have found important and crucial to the further expansion, development, growth and promotion of that unit is buy-in from GPs. As I said, the one in Cavan not only provides a service for Cavan-Monaghan, but is a more regional midlands service for women across the area. Does the Minister have any input in terms of how GPs are buying in? Those types of midwifery units are dependent on women having that engagement with their GPs when they are making that decision for their pathway of care on maternity services. There is much to be garnered and gained from our GPs and those primary care services in communities throughout the country. If there is buy-in from those, we will see exponential growth in our midwifery- led units. I often find, from talking to women, they are not that aware of the service available. What can we do to encourage and nurture that?

13/07/2021BB00300Deputy Stephen Donnelly: It is a great question. There is no doubt there is more opportunity to improve the services in the community and in primary care. One of the things I have recently funded is a women’s health lead with the Irish College of General Practitioners, ICGP. That is the first time we will have a lead person whose job it will be do exactly that, with regard to figuring out whether more communication is needed with GPs, what other work, services and healthcare provision GPs can lead in the community and whether more training is needed in terms of core training for GPs, continuous professional development and so forth. Part of the answer is that and part of the answer is ongoing engagement with the GP community and its representative group to prioritise these. The Deputy will have seen there are some things we are doing which are acute-based but which will help. We have funded an endometriosis service specialising in advanced cases in Tallaght which will give more referral pathways to GPs as well.

13/07/2021BB00350Cannabis for Medicinal Use

13/07/2021BB0040041. Deputy Martin Browne asked the Minister for Health the status of the medicinal cannabis access programme; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [28321/21]

13/07/2021BB00500Deputy Martin Browne: I ask the Minister for Health the status of the medicinal cannabis access programme and if he will make a statement on this matter.

13/07/2021BB00600Deputy Stephen Donnelly: I thank Deputy Browne for his question. The provision of the medical cannabis access programme is as a result of recommendations by the Health Products Regulatory Authority, HPRA, in its review, Cannabis for Medical Use - A Scientific Review.

The review stated that if the policy decision is to make cannabis available for medical purposes, the HPRA advised it should recognise patient need but be evidence based. It was advised that treatment with cannabis be only permitted under a controlled access programme for the treatment of patients, with the following medical conditions, who have failed to respond to standard treatments: spasticity associated with multiple sclerosis, intractable nausea and vomiting associated with chemotherapy and severe, refractory, treatment-resistant epilepsy. 540 13 July 2021 Subsequently, the former Minister for Health established an expert reference group to advise on the development of a medical cannabis access programme. This group developed detailed clinical guidelines for the MCAP to be followed by clinicians, which contained inter alia guidance on ingredient combinations recommended for each of the three indications included in the programme.

The programme is a five-year pilot programme. The purpose of the programme is to facilitate access to acceptable cannabis-based products for medical use that are of a standardised quality and meet the requirements outlined in the misuse of drugs regulations 2019. It is an important and positive step forward for those individuals who are suffering serious ill health but for whom conventional treatments are not working. There are currently four products assessed by the HPRA for inclusion in schedule 1 of the regulations and more products are being assessed by the HPRA.

Reimbursement of the products, prescribed by approved medical consultants and supplied through community pharmacies for a specified therapeutic indication in line with schedule 2 of the misuse of drugs regulations 2019 will be on an individual named patient basis, aligned to the patient’s eligibility under the community drug schemes. It cannot be assumed that reimbursement approval will be forthcoming on submission of applications. A reimbursement decision will be communicated with the prescribing consultant in writing.

The HSE has indicated that the medicinal cannabis access programme is rapidly progressing and I hope to be in a position to update the Deputy shortly.

13/07/2021BB00700Deputy Martin Browne: The Minister will not be surprised to hear I am again highlighting the plight of Ms Vera Twomey and her daughter, Ava, who suffers from Dravet’s Syndrome. This family and other families still have to fork out €9,500 every three months to get Bedrocan and they have to wait as long as five to six weeks to get reimbursed. I know the Dutch authorities will not allow the commercial export of the oil-based cannabis products to pharmacies or wholesalers. That is its decision, but being unable to apply to the Health Products Regulatory Authority, HPRA, to have it included in the medicinal cannabis access programme, like other products, is something the Minister is in a position to influence.

As the Minister said, he is due to announce funding for the MCAP and he has asked his official to find a way to ensure patients will no longer need to pay upfront for Bedrocan. Yet Ms Twomey and other families are constantly told the Department is working on it and they have to patient. How patient must these families be? Ms Twomey told me this week she is exhausted from the pressure she is under. Can the Minister tell Ms Twomey, Ava and the other families throughout the country Bedrocan will be funded at source and when that funding will be announced?

13/07/2021BB00800Deputy Stephen Donnelly: I am, of course, aware of the case of Ms Twomey and Ava and many other families around the country. Can I just make a few points on Deputy Browne’s reasonable question? I have funded the medicinal cannabis access programme, MCAP, for the first time. While the programme existed previously, there was never any money allocated to it. We have now allocated money to it. It will be fully funded. It will cost a significant amount of money. We will be able to make an announcement and I look forward to being able to share that with Deputy Browne shortly. An awful lot of work has gone on this year to bring it to this point.

The Deputy will appreciate I cannot talk about any specific families for data protection rea-

541 Dáil Éireann sons, obviously. For many families in this situation, what is currently happening is the products are being delivered to their front doors from Holland. That is something the Government and the State is doing. The Deputy will be-----

13/07/2021BB00900An Leas-Cheann Comhairle: The Minister will get a chance to come back in.

13/07/2021BB01000Deputy Martin Browne: I appreciate the Minister has made the moneys available. It is there now. I am talking about the Twomey family because I know Ms Twomey well. I have been in her house and have seen the way Ava has responded to medicinal cannabis and Bed- rocan. Families such as the Twomeys and others have a worry every three months in terms of coming up with the €9,500. All they are asking for is a level playing field and for the Minister to give them an assurance the €9,500 has stopped and there is no more of that kind of pressure. It is enough having a child sick, like Ava was. We all know the case. I walked to Dublin with Vera. I saw the pressure she was under and saw her raising the issues.

It is about going from 30, 40 or 50 attacks per day down to one or two per week and seeing that child being able to go to mainstream school. I know the Minister is new to it, but the previous Government and Ministers have dragged their heels on it. I am asking the Minister to give assurance to those families that, from now on, there is no more having to worry about €9,500 being there every three months to access Bedrocan.

13/07/2021BB01100Deputy Stephen Donnelly: To the first question, Ms Twomey and others were having to go to Holland to secure things. The first thing I wanted to make sure was that stopped. I have given a commitment directly to Ms Twomey and I am happy to repeat it here on the floor, that would not happen again. We have a system in place whereby the pharmaceuticals are being hand-delivered to the door. That is the first thing and it is important. As the Deputy said, these things are not cheap. Using the Deputy’s figures, if it were €9,000, for example, every quarter for any family, it would be nearly €40,000 for the year. That cost gets covered by the State. Second, there should not have to be a prepayment for it. I can assure the Deputy, and Ms Twomey has been assured, that significant work has been going on in this regard. It is my intention that Ms Twomey and other families will not have to pay up front. We needed to establish why it was happening in the first place. There were technical reasons, which I can share later with the Deputy. However, I can give a commitment that we are moving as quickly as possible to stop the prepayment requirement because I do not believe it is acceptable. It is my intention to solve it.

13/07/2021CC00200Hospital Services

13/07/2021CC0030042. Deputy Réada Cronin asked the Minister for Health if he will liaise with the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth in the best interest of the child to urgently examine the lack of electronic records at St. Louise’s unit, Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children, Crumlin, for those children who have reported sexual abuse and are waiting months for specialist interview regarding same; and if the delay in providing the number on the lists to members of Dáil Eireann will be examined (details supplied). [43078/20]

13/07/2021CC00400Deputy Réada Cronin: Will the Minister for Health liaise with the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth in the best interests of the child to urgently examine the lack of electronic records at St. Louise’s clinic in Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin for those children who have reported sexual abuse and are waiting months for special- 542 13 July 2021 ist interview regarding same, and the delay in providing the number on the lists of Members of Dáil Éireann.

13/07/2021CC00500Deputy Stephen Donnelly: This is an important question that relates to a very sensitive area. St. Louise’s unit in Children’s Health Ireland, CHI, at Crumlin is a specialist unit dealing with sexual assault trauma, offering therapeutic interventions to children and families. Timely access to the therapeutic services offered at St. Louise’s unit is essential for families, and I note the extraordinary work of the staff in these services, providing a high standard of care to these vulnerable children, and by association their families, who have been through horrific situations.

CHI advises that since January 2021 it has seen a twofold to threefold increase in the number of referrals for assessment and therapy services. This has impacted on waiting times. The referral process has an average waiting time of six to eight weeks for the assessment and of up to five months for therapy services. The service is provided by a multidisciplinary team and the limitations on its availability can also impact on follow-up and longer-term therapy. CHl advises that a waiting list initiative, including face-to-face consultation and telephone support, is in place. I do not believe that the current wait time is acceptable, however, and I have asked my Department to engage as a priority with the HSE to seek viable solutions.

In response to the Deputy’s question on the provision of the waiting list data, CHI has confirmed it expects to be in a position to provide timely waiting list data for any future requests received within the normal 15-day period for such requests.

13/07/2021CC00600Deputy Réada Cronin: I thank the Minister for his reply. He will appreciate that getting clarity on this is very important. I have been raising this matter since last autumn. I first raised it on Questions on Promised Legislation with the Tánaiste and I have sent several letters to the Minister and his Department as well as tabling parliamentary questions. I have been trying to help a family in my constituency. It is not a waiting list of six to eight weeks as the Minister mentioned. This particular family, and the child was under seven years old, was waiting several months when I first raised the matter in the Dáil. The Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth tells me that this is an issue for the Department of Health, but the Department of Health has sent me back to the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth. St. Louise’s unit in Crumlin has been referring me to both Departments as well. These children need specific specialist help, so I am a little perplexed by the Minister’s reply.

13/07/2021CC00700Deputy Stephen Donnelly: I wish to make clear that there are two different times. One is for assessment, which is the six to eight weeks, but the other, critically - and this might be the situation for the family the Deputy is involved with - is the waiting time for therapy, which is five months. Having looked at this, I do not believe that this is an acceptable amount of time for a child to wait when it is therapeutic intervention in the case of sexual assault. I have instructed the Department to work directly with the HSE to find ways to quickly bring that five-month period down.

The Deputy referred to a delay in sending waiting information. I will come to that in my final reply.

13/07/2021CC00800Deputy Réada Cronin: Perhaps the Minister could examine the lack of electronic records. With paper records, it is very difficult to find out exactly where one is on the list. It is hard to

543 Dáil Éireann cross-check between different Departments and it is hard to know the number of cases. It is hard to believe that we are still relying on paper records at this stage.

I wish to thank the Minister and his staff, in the last week of this session, for the help they have given me on this and other questions. I know the Department has been extremely busy. It must be the busiest Department during the pandemic. However, it is time to move away from paper records so we can at least know how bad the situation is. It is horrific to think that cases have increased two- to threefold during the pandemic. It is horrendous.

13/07/2021CC00900Deputy Stephen Donnelly: I thank the Deputy for her kind words. It is good to hear that the Department and my team have tried to help, so I thank her for that.

With regard to the paper records, I take the Deputy’s point. The current patient management system in St. Louise’s unit uses dedicated charts which are separate to CHI at Crumlin medical charts, due to the very sensitive information involved, coupled with electronic records which are held on a secure server with controlled access, for reasons we all appreciate. It has not been possible to establish a reason for the delay in providing the information to the Deputy, but CHI has assured officials that it is in a position to provide such information within 15 days. Due to the recent cyberattack and its effect on documentary records, including email, CHI is unable to advise of the circumstances which led to the delay. I apologise to the Deputy for any delay she encountered.

13/07/2021CC01000Mental Health Services

13/07/2021CC0110043. Deputy Claire Kerrane asked the Minister for Health the reason funding was not provided for a service (details supplied) to ensure that it is fully staffed; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [28726/21]

13/07/2021CC01200Deputy Claire Kerrane: This question relates to the funding of the e-Mental Health Hub in Castlerea, County Roscommon, in my constituency. While events have superseded this given the fact that this funding has now been announced, halfway through the year, which I acknowledge and welcome very much, I want to know why the funding did not come into place last January, rather than halfway through the year as it is now.

13/07/2021CC01300Minister of State at the Department of Health (Deputy Mary Butler): I propose to take Questions Nos. 43 and 48 together.

The Government is committed to the ongoing and future development of the Castlerea Men- tal Health Hub in Castlerea, County Roscommon. The project is one of three child and adolescent mental health services, CAMHS, Connect initiatives planned. The others are in Limerick and Cork. This project was announced in June 2020 with two main elements identified for development - a new child and adolescent mental health service Connect day hospital and a psy- chiatry of later life day hospital. In 2020, €800,000 was invested in development capital works, refurbishment and staffing recruitment by the HSE. For 2021, 14 posts have been approved and €1.4 million allocated from within the overall allocation for mental health. Release of funding is imminent, and local services have approval to proceed with further development this year.

For the CAMHS Connect day hospital, provision has been made for staffing to include a consultant psychiatrist, a non-consultant hospital director, an advanced nurse practitioner,

544 13 July 2021 a senior social worker, a clinical nurse specialist, a senior psychologist and an occupational therapist. The consultant psychiatrist and non-consultant hospital director are in place and the advanced nurse practitioner and social worker are scheduled to start at the end of the summer. Recruitment for the other posts will start immediately.

13/07/2021CC01400Deputy Claire Kerrane: I thank the Minister of State, but I must ask the question again. I appreciate that a large amount of money went into developing this centre last year. It was opened in June 2020 and funding was made available for four posts. The remaining funding was to be put in place from 2021. The four posts were put in place and people were hired. Then the funding was pulled or ended in some way at the end of 2020. It is only now in July 2021 that funding has been put in place. These are critical services for young people throughout the western region, even beyond County Roscommon. They are critical services for older people. It is not good enough that I have had to raise this issue repeatedly. I have sent several emails and I have met the head of mental health services. I have raised this repeatedly. I have not received a reply to an email I sent to the Minister of State in May on this funding, which is regrettable and disappointing. I do not want to see us here next year looking for this funding again. Why was it not put in place in January?

13/07/2021DD00200Deputy Mary Butler: There is no story here. This is a fantastic initiative that was put in place by my predecessor last year when the Rosalie nursing home, which dealt with many people with dementia, had to close. Castlerea mental health hub was put in place. It is a fantastic initiative. Last year, €800,000 was made available, with €400,000 for refurbishment and €400,000 for staffing expenditure. There is no story here. The Castlerea hub will be extended. It will be an absolutely fantastic initiative. From the point of view of what it will do, the roll- out nationally of the three CAMHS e-mental health hubs in Castlerea, Limerick and Cork will significantly enhance overall CAMHS provision, including improved early intervention and monitoring of cases. In this region, the Castlerea hub will operate in partnership with a day hospital in Galway on a seven-day basis, which I have discussed with the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte. This will provide young people in counties Galway, Roscommon, Mayo, Sligo and Leitrim with a real alternative to inpatient care.

13/07/2021DD00250Health Services

13/07/2021DD0030044. Deputy Pearse Doherty asked the Minister for Health when respite care services will recommence in their full capacity; when services provided in locations (details supplied) in County Donegal will recommence; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [28645/21]

13/07/2021DD00400Deputy Pearse Doherty: As the Minister of State is aware, Covid-19 has presented a particular hardship for those caring for a loved ones. They have been without a break and respite. It is heartbreaking to speak to mothers and fathers who are finding it difficult to cope. In -par ticular, I want to ask about two respite facilities in Donegal. When does the Minister of State plan for these facilities to resume the provision of respite care services? The first is Drumboe Respite House and the second is Seaview Respite House. As the Minister of State knows, the facilities are crucial and critical for carers in Donegal and they need to reopen as a matter of priority.

13/07/2021DD00500Deputy Anne Rabbitte: I thank the Deputy for raising this question and giving me the opportunity to address it. Seaview Respite House was closed until January 2021 but it has reopened and Rehab has the contract to deliver care there. It is open only five days a week and I 545 Dáil Éireann would like to see it open seven days a week in the future because respite is such a crucial part and cornerstone of supporting families. Drumboe Respite House is a centre based in Stranorlar, County Donegal. It provides services including respite for adults and children with disabilities. It is run by the HSE. The service operates at capacity but provides ongoing emergency residential care.

Before I arrived, I made contact with the HSE in the community healthcare organisation, CHO, 1 area to discuss respite services. With regard to Drumboe Respite House, I am assured that accommodation for some of the residents who were there long term, as opposed to in a phase of respite, residential accommodation is being sought. This will be looked after during the week. The service will become a full-time respite centre. Until now, some people stayed longer than on a temporary basis. This is being addressed as we speak.

A review was carried out of respite services in the CHO 1 area. In budget 2021 it was determined we would open one new respite centre in each CHO area. It was determined as part of the review of the CHO 1 area that this would not happen in Donegal because there was no need. What was needed were time savings and the allocation of funding. The properties are there but the services need to be delivered differently. A respite house is being placed in the Sligo and Leitrim area for children with disabilities. This is to ensure the CHO area in its entirety has a decent complement of respite to support the families the Deputy is speaking about.

13/07/2021DD00600Deputy Pearse Doherty: I assure the Minister of State there is no decent complement of services for families in Donegal. We have been aware of the realities of Covid-19 for well over a year. Notwithstanding the fantastic job many staff are doing in facilities such as Drumboe Respite House, Stranorlar, which is being used as emergency accommodation for a number of vulnerable adults, children and families are being asked to forego respite care services. There is no end in sight for them.

If it is the case that contingency plans for accommodation or respite care in other facilities need to be put in place, then so be it. I ask the Minister of State to put in place a plan to reopen Drumboe Respite House as a matter of urgency. It would be welcome were she to provide a date for when this will happen. I ask the Minister of State to bear in mind that the children who use this facility are familiar with it. They know it intimately and they feel safe and secure there. This is an important consideration. After the year these children and families have faced, they deserve that the Department acts with urgency to resolve the situation and get Drumboe Respite House reopened for respite care services.

13/07/2021DD00700Deputy Anne Rabbitte: I need to correct the Deputy on a fact. He said it is not open. Of the three residents living in Drumboe Respite House at present, the plan is that two residents will move to Slieve Sneacht, Letterkenny. A technical assessment will be completed this week and a programme of minor works will be completed on the house. This has been prioritised in the programme of work and the move will be facilitated as soon as possible to do so. One resident has been identified for a joint placement with an external provider. Compatibility assessments are under way and this will be progressed on completion of compatibility and the engagement process with the external provider. Should the joint placement not be feasible, an alternative provider will be resourced. Drumboe Respite House will be used for respite, freeing it up completely for the families the Deputy is speaking about.

13/07/2021DD00800Deputy Pearse Doherty: It is not open for respite services and the families would like to know a date. Seaview Respite House in Mountcharles is another facility that provides a lifeline 546 13 July 2021 for many families in south Donegal and further afield. I have been raising the issue of this critical service for many years. The Minister of State said it is open for five days a week and she would like it to open seven days a week. There is no reason this cannot happen bar a budgeting reason. Will the Minister of State give a commitment to make the funds available to allow this service to open for seven days a week? It is slowly reopening but it only ever provided a five- day service. What the families are calling for, and what I am asking for today, is the Minister of State to act urgently to reopen Seaview Respite House on a seven-day basis. The need is there and it is very clear. If the Minister of State does not believe me, I invite her to come to Donegal to speak to the families who contact my office in desperation every week. They tell me in no uncertain terms that the facility is crucial. They need this support and I urge the Minister of State to look at this demand to open Seaview Respite House. She has said she would like to see it open on a seven-day basis. Let us do it. Let us make the funds available to Rehab to provide the two extra days.

13/07/2021DD00900Deputy Anne Rabbitte: Seaview Respite House was closed until the budget became available in budget 2021. The Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Deputy McCona- logue, has brought to my attention the need for it to be open seven days at week. Conversa- tions have started in the HSE to ensure a funding application will be put forward to expand the service from five days to seven days. The Deputy can reassure the families this is a priority in the Donegal area.

13/07/2021DD00950Mental Health Services

13/07/2021DD0100045. Deputy Johnny Mythen asked the Minister for Health the plans in place to deal with the waiting lists for autism spectrum disorder assessments in County Wexford. [28071/21]

13/07/2021DD01100Deputy Johnny Mythen: I submitted this question originally following a reply to a parliamentary question I received in April which showed that 503 children in County Wexford were waiting for autism spectrum disorder, ASD, assessment. The incredible number of 436 children have been waiting for more than 12 months. This is an increase of 142 children who have been waiting for more than a year since September 2020. These families are desperate for help but it appears the situation is getting worse. I ask the Minister of State to outline what will be done to address this acute situation in County Wexford.

13/07/2021DD01200Deputy Anne Rabbitte: I thank the Deputy for raising the question. The first quarterly HSE assessment of need report for 2021 indicates that as of 31 March 2021, the commencement of four assessments and the completion of 85 assessments were overdue in the Wexford area. Children who applied for an assessment of need after January 2020 will receive a preliminary team assessment. In some cases, these assessments will identify a requirement for a diagnostic autism spectrum disorder assessment. In the first quarter of 2021, 27 children in the south-east community healthcare area, which includes Wexford, were referred for follow-up assessments. This is the latest information available for individual counties in light of the recent cyberattack on the HSE’s IT systems.

I was in Carlow and Kilkenny yesterday with Deputy Murnane O’Connor. I met representatives of the Holy Angels Day Care Centre to discuss the query the Deputy has raised on early intervention for children who need to access preschool services. I have taken it on board and I will meet the HSE on Friday morning to address this vital issue regarding early intervention assessments. 547 Dáil Éireann It is not good enough that these continuing assessments would be ongoing while we are rolling out the progressing disability services, PDS, model. This factors into the question the Deputy asked and which Deputy Murnane O’Connor raised with me yesterday regarding the Holy Angels service. While I do not have access to the data because of the cyberattack, I need to be sure that no child is being denied a service because an early intervention is not being done to get him or her into preschool, whether an ASD preschool service or a preschool catering for complex needs. I will have an answer on that point on Friday.

13/07/2021EE00200Deputy Johnny Mythen: I thank the Minister of State. As she is aware, when a family receives a diagnosis of autism for a child, there are changes that may need to be made in terms of education, healthcare and other supports to ensure the continued heath, well-being and hap- piness of the child. These appropriate supports cannot be put in place if a family is left waiting for an assessment. This is highly stressful for the children, parents and siblings involved. It also affects school allocations of special needs assistants, SNAs. Some of these parents are in a state of desperation, trying to scrape together enough money to get a private assessment for their child. It appears that the cost of an assessment that would be accepted by the HSE is between €1,450 and €1,850. We cannot and should not have a situation where money is a factor in whether children receive the supports they require. That is wrong. These children and their families must be made an immediate priority for assessment. They cannot wait any longer. Can the Minister of State offer an remedy for the growing waiting lists for ASD assessment in Wexford?

13/07/2021EE00300Deputy Anne Rabbitte: As I said, this time last year, funding amounting to €7.8 million was made available through the Sláintecare initiative to address the backlog of assessments of needs. Since then, more than 80% of that funding has been delivered and we have managed to move forward with the PDS initiative. I have a concern in regard to CHO 5, however, in terms of ensuring all assessments are continuing.

We are really having two different conversations here. When I talk about health, I am talking about an interventions-based and needs-based model. The education side is about diagnosis-based assessments. There is a conversation that needs to happen between the Departments of Health and Education to ensure all children can access all services, including education. While they are receiving an intervention, they should not have to be waiting on a diagnosis. An intervention should happen the minute a therapist meets a child, whether it is speech and language therapy, occupational therapy or physiotherapy. Children should not have to wait for a piece of paper showing an assessment to determine which strand of education they can access.

13/07/2021EE00400Deputy Johnny Mythen: Between parents coming into my office worried sick about the time it is taking to get an ASD assessment and school principals contacting me in desperation about their SNA allocations for the coming year, it is clear that the issue of supports for children is growing more urgent by the week. The response to a parliamentary question I put down last September showed that 294 children had been waiting more than 12 months for an assessment at that time. When I submitted the same question at the end of April, that figure had increased to 436. I do not want to put the question forward again in September and be told there has been another increase. These are real children with skills and talents to offer the world. We must do all we can to ensure they can flourish in their full potential. They must not be left behind. I hope I have convinced the Minister of State that an intervention in County Wexford is urgently needed.

13/07/2021EE00500Deputy Anne Rabbitte: It is not just in County Wexford that this issue arises; the entire 548 13 July 2021 CHO 5 needs to be addressed. For every child that is presenting through CHO 5, I need to ensure that an early assessment is taking place and, thereafter, that an intervention is happening while we are waiting for the roll-out of the PDS framework. No child and no family should have to access private services. The whole purpose of my seeking funding to clear the backlog last year was to ensure we get to an intervention-based model, not an assessment process. An assessment should mean getting access to a place where we have interventions and services being delivered to families. That would cut down on the frustration people are feeling. The most important point in regard to the Deputy’s question is that progress really hinges on people having the piece of paper that enables them to access either preschool facilities, such as the Holy Angels service I referred to, or national schools. I will be addressing this matter on Friday.

13/07/2021EE00550Hospital Procedures

13/07/2021EE0060046. Deputy Jennifer Carroll MacNeill asked the Minister for Health if he will support a child (details supplied) in obtaining urgent and life-changing surgery as soon as possible. [27631/21]

13/07/2021EE00700An Ceann Comhairle: There is only time for Deputy Carroll MacNeill to introduce her question.

13/07/2021EE00800Deputy Jennifer Carroll MacNeill: My question concerns a two-year-old boy in Cork who came to my attention because of an initiative I am doing around the cost of having children in long-term hospital care. The boy’s urethra is in the wrong place and I cannot understand what the delay is in providing surgical treatment for him. May I come back in, a Cheann Com- hairle, after the Minister has responded?

13/07/2021EE00900An Ceann Comhairle: Given the urgency of the issue the Deputy is raising, will it be possible for the Minister to give a brief response and perhaps liaise with the Deputy afterwards?

13/07/2021EE01000Deputy Stephen Donnelly: I can give a one-minute or two-minute response if that is helpful.

13/07/2021EE01100An Ceann Comhairle: Yes, please.

13/07/2021EE01200Deputy Stephen Donnelly: I thank the Deputy for her question. I sincerely regret, as we all do, that patients can experience a long waiting time for hospital appointments and treatment. I am very conscious of the burden this places on patients and their families. No situation is harder than when it is children who need hospital care.

It is recognised that prior to the Covid outbreak, many adults and children were already waiting too long for appointments and procedures. Unfortunately, as we know, the pandemic and, more recently, the cyberattack have had a significant impact on the provision of scheduled care services and a further backlog has arisen. Waiting lists for public hospital services remain unacceptably high. I do not believe they are defendable. The Government, with, we hope, the support of the Oireachtas, needs to do everything it can to tackle these waiting lists. It is one of the big focuses for the Government and for me as Minister for Health.

I cannot discuss a specific case on the floor of the House but I am very happy to continue to discuss it privately with the Deputy.

549 Dáil Éireann

13/07/2021EE01300An Ceann Comhairle: Is that acceptable, Deputy?

13/07/2021EE01400Deputy Jennifer Carroll MacNeill: May I make on comment, a Cheann Comhairle?

13/07/2021EE01500An Ceann Comhairle: Yes.

13/07/2021EE01600Deputy Jennifer Carroll MacNeill: This is very important. The issue has been going on since the boy was born. I raised it with the Department in March after meeting the family for the first time. I have seen very different experiences in regard to surgical emergencies in Crumlin hospital. The decision in this boy’s case cannot be about waiting lists. I have brought a child in with septic arthritis, which is an orthopaedic emergency, and surgery took place four hours later, at 11 a.m. on a Sunday morning. In this instance, there is a child with his urethra in the wrong place. He is nearly two years old. Apart from the medical side of it, the developmental impact for that child in terms of growing as a human being and being able to participate in Montessori school and other things as he grows is surely of an equivalent measure to other emergency cases. I cannot understand how the hospital has not acted.

I will speak about this case privately with the Minister but it is important to state here that it is not just about broader waiting lists. This boy is at a delicate developmental stage. His case has to be a developmental emergency as much as a medical emergency. I thank the Minister for the offer to continue the discussion privately. It should not have to get to the stage where we are raising individual cases but I thank him for his response and the offer to engage.

13/07/2021EE01700An Ceann Comhairle: I thank the Deputy and the Minister. I hope other Members will accept that in the unique circumstances that the Deputy outlined, we had to give a little flexibility. Let me again lament the fact that something of that nature would have to be raised here at all.

Written Answers are published on the Oireachtas website.

13/07/2021EE01900Long-Term Residential Care: Motion [Private Members]

13/07/2021EE02000Deputy David Cullinane: I move:

“That Dáil Éireann:

notes that:

- due to the Covid-19 pandemic, guidance on visitation to long-term residential care facilities was issued by the Health Protection Surveillance Centre, which included requirements to facilitate window visits during all levels of pandemic restrictions;

- this guidance was not placed on a statutory basis and there was no authority which could compel its implementation, monitor compliance, or sanction a non-compliant

facility;

- nursing home residents, their families, advocates, and social workers have been raising concerns since the beginning of the pandemic that this created an unsafe environment, and warned of high risks of neglect and abuse, and that residents would suffer heavy consequences from isolation;

550 13 July 2021 - concerns were raised by nursing home representatives regarding the testing protocols and procedures around discharging hospital patients to care facilities, staffing levels, and ability to comply with regulations;

- nursing homes received financial assistance from the State to aid with pandemic protection measures;

- more than 2,000 nursing home residents have died due to Covid-19, equating to more than 40 per cent of Covid-19 related deaths in the State; and further notes that:

the Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) has warned successive Minis- ters for years that the regulatory, governance, and safeguarding framework for the older persons residential care sector was insufficient;

the Department of Health has yet to advance safeguarding legislation despite years of mounting evidence for its need;

there is no designated independent authority with powers to investigate individual complaints of neglect or abuse in the social care sector, and that Health Service Execu- tive Safeguarding and Protection Teams are not empowered or resourced to investigate; and

social workers are the regulated professionals who are trained for safeguarding and the protection of vulnerable people; and calls on the Government to:

- commence a full public inquiry into the deaths of residents and quality of care in nursing homes during the Covid-19 pandemic, and systemic failures in the sector;

- place Long-Term Residential Care Facility (LTRCF) visitation guidance on a statutory footing and give interim authority to HIQA to enforce it;

- expedite adult safeguarding legislation, including legal right of entry and powers of investigation for appropriate authorities;

- ensure all residents are treated as community clients with direct access to safeguarding social work services and all primary care services, including an independent social worker liaison attached to each Covid-19 cluster in LTRCFs;

- empower a State agency to independently implement, monitor, oversee and enforce safeguarding legislation and investigate individual complaints in the social care sector;

- fast track reforms to empower HIQA with improvement and compliance notices and improve social care sector regulations in line with HIQA advice;

- mandate reporting of neglect and abuse of residents by all staff in nursing homes to both An Garda Síochána and social worker Safeguarding and Protection Teams; and

- introduce accountability at an organisational level, in terms of penalties and criminal offences, where failures to govern safely in accordance with HIQA regulations result 551 Dáil Éireann in loss of health or life for residents in care of the service.”

I am sharing time with a number of colleagues.

The pandemic restrictions, combined with poor oversight of the nursing home sector, gave rise to a perfect storm that led to neglect and abuse. Our starting point has to be to acknowledge what happened. There is a responsibility on the State and the sector to acknowledge and deal with their failings before and throughout the pandemic. To protect the vulnerable, severe restrictions on access to nursing homes and long-term residential care facilities were put in place. In truth, this was an afterthought and there is more than enough evidence to suggest the State did not have sufficient knowledge of the sector it was dealing with. The pandemic exposed major and fatal flaws in our health and social care system that should have been known. Even by the third wave, many nursing homes were overwhelmed when outbreaks caused major staff shortages, as homes competed with each other and the HSE for staff.

The crisis exposed a sector that was fragmented, neglected and poorly governed, without adequate clinical governance and based on a weak regulatory framework. For years, HIQA, the regulator responsible for the sector, made recommendations to address these deficits and strengthen sectoral governance and regulation. The Irish Association of Social Workers, IASW, and family advocates, such as Care Champions, have for years been pointing to flaws in the State’s governance of nursing homes and the lack of safeguarding legislation to prevent abuse and neglect. Indeed, safeguarding legislation was introduced in the last Seanad by Senator Co- lette Kelleher. However, the previous Minister for Health, Deputy Simon Harris, did not accept or advance it. The advice fell on deaf ears and avoidable deaths, abuse and neglect were the consequences. In the last 18 months, more than 2,000 nursing home residents and staff sadly passed away from Covid-19, in instances related to outbreaks in their care homes. That was more than two-thirds of the deaths linked to outbreaks, and it does not factor in the quality years lost due to isolation and neglect. While the restrictions were necessary to reduce mortality, the prolonged isolation they caused for many was not. When visitation guidance for nursing homes was introduced, it allowed window visits at all levels of the plan. However, families and social care workers raised the alarm in this regard. It was not enforceable and this plan would lead to isolation and harm. The guidance was not the law. Nobody was given the authority to implement it, monitor compliance or sanction non-compliant nursing homes.

I have engaged in recent weeks with many families who lost members in nursing homes. They are not seeking to apportion blame, but they are seeking justice and the truth. Many of us will have seen the “Prime Time Investigates” programme several weeks ago which again set out harrowing accounts of people who could not see their loved ones before they died in nursing homes. Included were the stories of people who could not even watch their loved ones from a window of the nursing or care home. There were difficult and harrowing accounts, in some cases, of neglect or what could be described as abuse. This was all because of systemic failures in the sector. Many people working in the public and private nursing home sector did their absolute best, but we must also acknowledge that many of them were let down, as were the families and residents.

The starting point here must begin with establishing the truth and the facts of the situation. That is why this motion calls for a public inquiry, and it is necessary. We also want to see the visitation guidance for nursing homes immediately put on a statutory footing and the Health Information and Quality Authority, HIQA, should be given the interim authority to enforce it. Adult safeguarding has been promised time and again. It is a commitment in the programme 552 13 July 2021 for Government. It must be delivered and it must include the expediting of the legal rights of entry and power of investigation. No statutory authority or State agency has a right of entry into private nursing homes to investigate individual cases of neglect. That is wrong and it is a wrong that must be put right. We must fast-track reforms to empower HIQA, which has been stating for some time that its powers are blunt instruments. The organisation needs the ability to issue compliance notices and to improve social care sector guidelines in line with its recommendations. We also need accountability at an organisational level in situations where the failure of a nursing home to govern safely results in a loss of health or in death for residents in their care.

Therefore, serious issues must be dealt with concerning nursing home care and care of the elderly. We all know we need a new strategy and plan in this regard. It will only happen, however, if the political will is there to make it happen. The starting point for that must be a public inquiry to establish what happened in those nursing homes at that time. We must also put in place adult safeguarding measures, empower HIQA to be able to do its job and make more prominent the role of social workers and social care teams and the work they need to do to keep people safe in care homes.

13/07/2021FF00200Deputy Patricia Ryan: Nelson Mandela once said that “A society that does not value its older people denies its roots and endangers its future”. This Government has well and truly endangered our society’s future by its failure to implement proper safeguards. Our older people have suffered disproportionately during this pandemic. More than 2,000 residents of nursing homes have died due to Covid-19, accounting for more than 40% of Covid-19-related deaths in this State. We need a full public inquiry into the deaths of residents and the quality of care provided in nursing homes during the Covid-19 pandemic. The systemic failures in the sector must be addressed immediately.

Many concerns were raised by nursing home representatives concerning the testing protocols and procedures in respect of discharging hospital patients to care facilities. Those concerns fell on deaf ears. Concerns were also expressed about staffing levels and the ability to comply with regulations. Reaction to these concerns was slow. This is not good enough. If Sinn Féin was in government, we would have extended the temporary assistance scheme which provided supports for nursing homes to enable them to ensure that the right precautions were in place. This Government has ignored our calls to extend this scheme. It is wrong for the Government to put nursing homes again in a disadvantaged position. This is a vital support scheme to deliver public health recommended measures and its removal is a kick in the teeth for the sector.

It is high time that the Government got serious about the response to Covid-19. We must see a less reactive and much more proactive approach to this response. The approach taken by the Government concerning visits to nursing homes must recognise that we are dealing with real people. As I have said here before, loneliness is a killer. It is associated with higher rates of depression, anxiety and suicide. Loneliness among heart failure patients was associated with a risk of death that was four times higher, a risk of hospitalisation that was 68% higher and a risk of visits to accident and emergency departments that rose by 58%. Our older people have given the State much service and we must do better in repaying them.

13/07/2021FF00300Deputy John Brady: As early as last summer, it was revealed that there were 43 deaths at six different nursing homes across County Wicklow due to Covid-19. Those included the deaths of 24 people in Bray, with ten people passing away in just one nursing home in the town. Twelve people lost their lives in St. Brigid’s nursing home in Crooksling, on the border between Dublin and west Wicklow. Another seven people died in nursing homes in the rest of 553 Dáil Éireann the county. That is a total of 43 deaths in nursing homes in Wicklow in the first few months of the pandemic.

The first confirmed case of Covid-19 in a nursing home in Ireland was on 13 March 2020. On 23 March, the first resident at Crooksling tested positive for Covid-19. Despite this, the HSE seemed to fast-track pre-existing plans to close the public nursing home. Forty-six of the residents were transferred to Tymon North nursing home in Tallaght, two residents were moved to Baltinglass hospital and one resident was moved to the Maynooth community care centre. The transfer of those residents happened while eight of them were awaiting test results for the virus. Twelve of those residents died and 34 members of staff tested positive for Covid-19.

Many questions remain unanswered as to why these residents were moved in the midst of a serious outbreak in the facility and what impact the move had on the spread of the virus. The now Minister for Health, Deputy Stephen Donnelly, stated last year that nursing homes in Wicklow and elsewhere were left “screaming [out] for help” and they did not get it. He also stated that his work on the Covid-19 committee had painted “a dark picture” of how Wicklow’s nursing homes were dealt with by the State. I agree with him. The reality is that the former Minister for Health, Deputy Simon Harris, has serious questions to answer regarding how he managed and handled this situation. The Minister for Health and the Minister of State can now ensure that the calls for truth coming from families who lost loved ones are listened to and acted upon. Will the Minister of State ensure that the families get the answers and the truth they require or will she engage in the policy of the suppression of information, something which has plagued this State for far too long? We need clarity and information. The families need that and we need a public inquiry now.

13/07/2021FF00400Deputy Martin Browne: I call on all parties and none to take this motion seriously, as it deals with a subject of concern for many families across the country. I pay tribute to the staff of the nursing homes who worked so hard under extreme pressure and in extremely difficult circumstances to look after our loved ones.

6 o’clock

Their work is hugely appreciated. The nursing home managers who went to great lengths to ensure their facilities were full of kindness, support and security must be thanked on behalf of the many families who missed their loved ones for so long.

Unfortunately, the sector as a whole found itself in an unprecedented situation, which made it difficult to cope effectively. When Covid first struck, our nursing homes came under particular pressure. Figures reveal that up until the end of May, 2,051 deaths had been linked to clusters and outbreaks in nursing homes. Many nursing homes were unprepared for any infectious disease outbreaks. The consequences for many families were devastating. Each of these tragic deaths represents an individual and behind each individual is a family that has had to grieve the loss of a loved one through circumstances that were unexpected and for reasons that, in many cases, remain unknown.

There have been instances of poor governance and understaffing, and the poor provision of safeguarding measures was evident in particular nursing homes. Sadly, we have also seen instances of neglect. Many homes in the sector were unable to cope effectively due to chronic understaffing, weak governance arrangements, poor safeguarding provisions and a lack of investment. The recent “Prime Time” programme gave us some examples of these issues but

554 13 July 2021 unfortunately it was not an exhaustive account. It is for these reasons that Sinn Féin is backing families’ calls for an inquiry to establish what went wrong and ensure that changes are made in order that such a devastating situation does not happen again. These calls have been echoed by Care Champions, an organisation that represents residents and their families and is supported by the Irish Association of Social Workers.

An independent safeguarding authority must be established within an appropriate State agency and adult safeguarding legislation must be expedited. Mandatory reporting of suspected neglect or abuse must be the norm across the sector and workers who come forward with concerns should be supported and protected. These reforms must also clarify legal rights and give social workers the right of entry and powers of investigation in suspected cases of neglect or abuse. Sectoral regulatory and governance reform must be fast-tracked in line with HIQA’s proposals. Accountability at an organisational level, with appropriate penalties including criminal offences, must be put in place where a failure to govern safely results in harm or the death of residents. Residents in nursing homes deserve to get the best possible care and to know that they are safe. The mistakes of this pandemic must be learned from to ensure they are not repeated. I call on all Deputies to back Sinn Féin’s motion and ensure these changes are delivered.

13/07/2021GG00200Deputy Denise Mitchell: This motion would ensure that the safety, protection and rights of residents in nursing homes are safeguarded and that a public inquiry is established. Care Champions and the Irish Association of Social Workers have led the calls for a public inquiry and we support those calls. Covid had a significant and fatal impact in many nursing homes and the hurt and pain experienced by many will linger for a long time to come. Only a public inquiry will bring comfort for those residents who are still with us and for those families who have lost loved ones.

We need stronger regulation of the nursing home sector and we need a much closer relationship between care for older people and the State. The Covid crisis in nursing homes was made all the worse because the private system that operates the majority of nursing home provision in Ireland is too removed from the public system and the HSE, so it took too long to agree and implement a strategy. In many cases, older people died needlessly and the health of those who survived has deteriorated greatly. This is unforgivable.

The experience of isolation from loved ones has caused so much hurt and harm and we will never know whether this harm can be repaired. Lessons must be learned from this. The legacy of the Covid nightmare in nursing homes must be one of improvement and the protection of rights. Safeguarding legislation and a new model of providing eldercare based on home care and independent living outside of congregated settings must be the future. The only way we can understand what happened and why so many people died and prevent something similar ever happening again in the future is through a public inquiry. It is the only way we can establish the facts and ensure we can change the future positively.

13/07/2021GG00300Deputy Réada Cronin: I commend this motion and welcome the opportunity to support families’ calls for a full public inquiry into nursing home deaths during this awful pandemic. From the outset, I have been anxious and worried about how the Covid pandemic was handled in our nursing homes. That is why almost a year ago, during one of my first speeches, I called on the then Minister for Health, Deputy Simon Harris, to establish a quick, Scally-type inquiry into what happened. My constituency of Kildare North took a disproportionate, awful and terrible hammering. I am glad to say that each of the lives lost was recognised and dignified by 555 Dáil Éireann our coroner in Kildare, Professor Denis Cusack.

Some people have been vocal about avoiding an inquiry as they are anxious that blame not be attached, but an inquiry is not about blame - at least not for me. This was a novel virus, after all. However, it is about accountability and finding out exactly what happened so we can avoid it happening again. If we do not learn, we cannot prevent and avoid. In the first wave of the pandemic, 67 men and women in my constituency were transferred from hospitals without testing. That was entirely unacceptable, then and now. It was a grave error and omission that cannot happen again.

We need a radical rethink of our eldercare. Just like housing, the need for care when aged is left to the mercy of international wealth fund jackals. The fragility and care of our older people should not be profited from or privatised. Let us have an inquiry and find out the truth. Let us find out what happened so we can learn the lessons. Let this House honour our dead and all who loved and miss them.

13/07/2021GG00400Deputy Johnny Mythen: I thank my party, Sinn Féin, for bringing forward this motion. Its main aim is to have a public inquiry set up into the deaths of over 2,000 of our elderly citizens who died in nursing homes during the Covid-19 pandemic. It would also protect and strengthen the rights, safety and dignity of residents in nursing homes, now and well into the future. The purpose of this motion is to put into legislation better mechanisms, better procedures and, most of all, better governance to make sure the mistakes and failures of the past will never happen again. This will be done by establishing an independent safeguarding authority; through mandatory reporting of suspected abuse, with full protection for the workers involved; and through full accountability at high levels, including mandatory penalties and criminal offences where a failure in care results in harm or hurt to residents.

The Health Protection and Surveillance Centre data show that 2,051 deaths were linked to clusters and outbreaks in nursing homes. One of the ways we can stop this from happening again is by delivering truth and justice to the families and friends of deceased loved ones and re- examining the flaws and mistakes of the past year. We know the virus acted differently in older people than it did in the general public. We know the supply of PPE was a major issue for staff and that restrictions on visits had a devastating effect on our older citizens, especially when they could not see their grandchildren, even through a window. A recent report from HIQA stated that the absence of clinical governance was one of the factors in Covid-19 evolving in nursing homes. We must learn from the past year and a half by creating a better and more robust system that has at its core the capability of coping with a modern-day pandemic, with residents and their carers at the heart of any such changes.

We pay tribute to all the managers and workers who carried on, despite being at times under- staffed, bearing the risks to themselves and their families. They are the real heroes. I also offer our sympathies to all those who have lost loved ones as a result of this virus. I hope this motion will be accepted by all Deputies and that a public inquiry will follow as quickly as possible to alleviate the hurt and grievances endured by over 2,000 families, including having to bury their loved ones without proper ceremony or farewell.

13/07/2021GG00500Minister of State at the Department of Health (Deputy Mary Butler): I thank the Depu- ties for raising this important matter. The Covid-19 pandemic has led to an unprecedented challenge across our health services, nowhere more so than in our nursing homes. It has been an incredibly difficult time and we are all acutely aware of the huge sacrifices made by people 556 13 July 2021 living in nursing homes, their families and staff. It is fair to say that the health and safety of residents in nursing homes has been paramount in all our minds over the last 16 months.

Nursing homes are a key provider of care to older people in Ireland and over 30,000 of our citizens call them home. Those living in nursing homes are considered vulnerable to Covid-19 due to a variety of factors, including their age, underlying medical conditions, the extent of their requirement for direct care involving close physical contact, and the nature of living in congregated settings. As well as this, learning arising from the pandemic to date has highlighted that Covid-19 is much more likely to be introduced into residential settings where there are high levels of Covid-19 in the community.

Over the course of the pandemic, restrictions to visiting in nursing homes have been necessary to reduce the risk of spread of infection and to protect residents who may be vulnerable to the virus. However, visiting is part of the normal daily functioning of nursing homes. Mean- ingful social contact is important to our well-being and is something that we have striven to provide as safely as possible.

In communicating with nursing home providers, I have continuously reiterated the need to ensure that visits take place to the greatest extent possible, in line with evolving visitation guidance, public health advice and risk assessments. Visiting under compassionate circumstances has been maintained under all levels of the Government’s framework during the pandemic. I have also encouraged providers to communicate frequently with residents and families about visiting and to respond to telephone calls by family members as much as possible, given the constraints that staff were working under.

Thankfully, Covid-19 cases and outbreaks in nursing homes are at a low level, largely due to the positive impact of the vaccination programme. I am pleased to be in a position to report that updated guidance on visiting in nursing homes comes into effect from next Monday, 19 July. This is a significant step forward to a return to more normalised visiting for people living in nursing homes and their families. Vigilance must be maintained, as we continue to deal with the risks associated with Covid-19, and visiting should continue in line with public health advice and the necessary infection prevention and control, IPC, measures.

In another positive development, significant regulatory reform is ongoing in conjunction with the Health Information and Quality Authority, HIQA, and is in line with the Covid-19 nursing homes expert panel’s recommendations and lessons learned from the pandemic. In April 2021, the Government agreed the progression of interim enhancements to the current regulatory framework for nursing homes, which will occur this year. These proposals aim to enhance the enforcement and oversight powers of the chief inspector of HIQA.

With regard to safeguarding issues, I assure the House that the Government takes matters and allegations of neglect and abuse seriously. There are various structures and processes available to protect against abuse and poor care standards, and to ensure prompt action, including through the independent ongoing regulation and inspection of nursing homes by HIQA. To this end, I met representatives of HIQA last Friday. Safeguarding adults at risk in the context of their interactions with the sector is a key objective of the Department of Health, every statutory body under its aegis and every health and social care service that interacts with such adults. Where abuse is a potentially criminal matter, it is the full expectation of the Department and me that any such instances in our health and social care services would be referred to An Garda Síochána in the first instance and investigated accordingly. 557 Dáil Éireann The Department is at an advanced stage in developing its national adult safeguarding policy for the health and social care sector. Extensive policy development work, including stakeholder engagement and detailed research, has been concluded. This includes service user focus group research and a major international evidence review, published earlier this year. Legislation to underpin this policy will be developed. A range of structures and processes has been established by the HSE to support and further develop its national operational safeguarding policy.

A key principle of safeguarding is that it is everyone’s business and that all healthcare professionals have key roles in the prevention and reporting of abuse. The essential role of social workers in safeguarding is recognised. The specialist safeguarding and protection teams in each of the nine HSE community healthcare organisation areas are managed and led by principal social workers and staffed by social work team leaders with professionally qualified social workers. These teams provide a range of safeguarding functions, from direct case management to quality assurance, as well as oversight and support to all service providers, including those funded by the HSE. Community support teams, as recommended by the nursing homes expert panel, will be implemented across each community healthcare organisation and each of these teams will have access to dedicated social worker resources through enhancements of existing community safeguarding teams.

As the House will be aware, nursing home providers are ultimately responsible for the safe care of their residents. Since 2009, HIQA is the statutory independent regulator in place for the nursing home sector, whether in a HSE-managed or a private nursing home. The authority, established under the Health Act 2007, has significant and wide-ranging powers up to and including withdrawing the registration of a nursing home facility, which means that it can no longer operate as a service provider.

The Covid-19 nursing homes expert panel made a substantial package of recommendations, which also reflects that systematic reform in the way nursing home care, and health and social care for older persons more broadly, are delivered and financed. Many of the short and medium-term recommendations have already been implemented. A number of these relate to the delivery of a broad suite of supports provided to private nursing homes, including free personal protection equipment, PPE; serial testing; HSE Covid-19 response teams; IPC measures and training; and temporary accommodation for staff. The significant examination undertaken by the expert panel provides important learning and a framework for enhancing older persons’ services both in the short and long-term, and this work is progressing.

It must be recognised that the pandemic has not concluded. The ongoing management of the Covid-19 response remains a priority focus of the Government to ensure the positive gains being experienced are preserved and those most vulnerable to the virus continue to be safeguarded in light of the residual risk. This week, I met family members of people who sadly passed away in nursing homes. The Department is continuing to look at options which may be available to the State to listen to the voices of those who have lost a loved one. I conclude by expressing my sincere condolences to those who have lost a loved one during the pandemic.

13/07/2021HH00200Deputy Rose Conway-Walsh: I thank my colleague, Deputy Ó Murchú, for allowing me this time. The Minister of State knows about some of what happened in nursing homes last year. The reality of it has not sunk in properly with Government yet. I mention the pressure nursing homes were under when they were screaming for PPE and oxygen. That was the reality on the ground and patients continued to be transferred from hospitals without testing. The ambiguous guidelines that were provided for nursing homes and hospitals at the time led and 558 13 July 2021 added to this chaos. There were no GPs around at the time. GPs were just giving advice over the phone to nurses who were overrun in nursing home wards. These nurses were trying to take advice on a pandemic that we knew little about. There were no drips to give patients the medication that was needed. Patients with Alzheimer’s disease were kicking and lashing out because they did not understand what was happening to their bodies and because medication could not be given to them.

Healthcare assistants were in the middle of all of this and many of them are now suffering from post-traumatic stress. We need to capture their testimonies for that to be placed on record and to change things that happened at the time. These are the selfsame healthcare assistants who are still on the minimum wage. We laud them and clap for them but they are still on the minimum wage, which is hard to believe. Some of them have over a decade’s experience working in this sector. Families need answers and the truth. They have been traumatised by the circumstances surrounding the deaths of their loved ones. The Government must conduct a public inquiry. I commend my colleague, Deputy Cullinane, on bringing this motion to the floor of the House. We need a full public inquiry into, and accountability for, the horrors that went on in nursing homes right across this State.

13/07/2021JJ00200Deputy Pauline Tully: We in this State commend ourselves on actions we have taken to curtail the spread of the Covid-19 virus. However, the stark truth is that we have failed as a nation to protect the residents of nursing homes who are the most vulnerable people in our society. Residents of nursing homes have accounted for over 40% of all Covid-related deaths. The fact that over 2,000 people in nursing homes contracted the virus and died as a result is a damning indictment on the health service of this country. Many staff in nursing homes are to be commended on the work they did to ensure that nobody living in their establishment contracted the virus. However, unfortunately a number of nursing homes were asked by the HSE in their area to accept people from hospitals and were told the people being moved had tested negative for Covid and were, therefore, safe, only to be told a week later that some tests had come back positive. At that stage, the virus had spread among the residents of that particular nursing home. That is disgraceful and should never have been allowed to happen. There needs to be a full investigation into nursing home deaths due to Covid-19.

A nursing home, as its name indicates, is, in the first instance, a home for elderly people who are no longer able to live in their own homes and who require care and support. Everyone should feel safe in their own home. While I know that is not always the case, it should be for the residents of nursing homes. There are paid professionals in nursing homes to care for the residents. The lack of visitation allowed during the pandemic has led to concerns for the welfare of residents of nursing homes. The isolation, loneliness, mental health issues, neglect of care and occasional instances of abuse have gone undetected by family members and friends due to the fact that they could not visit their loved ones in nursing homes for a period of a year.

It is important that staff in nursing homes are mandated to report suspicions of neglect of residents, abuse of residents, or both, to An Garda Síochána and to safeguarding and protection teams. I am aware of members of staff who did the right thing, reported abuse of residents in nursing homes, only to be victimised or shunned by other staff as a result. That sort of attitude must change. It must become mandatory to report suspicion of neglect or abuse within the nursing home sector, as is the case in the educational system. There are national standards for adult safeguarding. There are policies on safeguarding. They need to be strengthened through legislation and a national authority for safeguarding must be established with clear guidelines on how and to whom neglect or abuse should be reported. 559 Dáil Éireann

13/07/2021JJ00300Deputy Imelda Munster: I am grateful for the opportunity to speak on this important motion. I support the calls that Care Champions have been making for a public inquiry into what happened in our nursing homes throughout the pandemic. We all know there were catastrophic failures in governance in our nursing homes. We saw very high levels of infectious disease and the sad loss of more than 2,000 people.

Staff were put into a nightmare situation where they were not given adequate supports and were left totally unprepared. Many of them also became sick and brought home the virus to their families. It was an extremely difficult situation for the families of those who were sick and those who died. Most people were unable to visit their family members to ensure they were being cared for properly or even to say goodbye.

It was clear from the very beginning that the sector needs widespread reform if vulnerable adults are to be cared for properly and to ensure that staff can work effectively in a safe environment. Many nursing homes found themselves completely unprepared and struggled to cope due to long-standing problems with chronic understaffing, poor governance and a lack of investment. The Government had privatised most of our nursing home sector and left them to it. We cannot wash our hands of our responsibility towards older generations in society. What we need is a full public inquiry into the scandal of nursing home neglect and deaths during the pandemic. We need to find out exactly what the failures were and how we can rectify matters to ensure that nothing like this can ever happen again.

We also need to listen to calls for the immediate improvements that families and advocates are calling for. Visitations, for example, are required to safeguard against neglect and isolation. As some nursing homes are still not complying with official guidance, this guidance needs to become law with enforcement powers for HIQA. We also need adult safeguarding legislation and an independent safeguarding authority needs to be created. The Government’s response to this has been lacking so far, to put it nicely.

13/07/2021JJ00400Deputy Dessie Ellis: It can often be a difficult decision for families to put a relative into a nursing home or for individuals themselves to choose to go into one. However, many people prosper, have a renewed vigour and thrive in a nursing home environment. Nursing homes should be considered safe and secure places for the elderly where they receive the care and assistance vulnerable older people need and deserve. However, there were questions over the regulation and governance of nursing homes which were raised by HIQA prior to the pandemic. These concerns could have had a direct effect on the response by nursing homes to the ensu- ing pandemic. Of real concern is the lack of oversight of nursing homes. The pandemic has highlighted these concerns even more. Nursing homes should not be a barrier to family contact. Isolation is a great problem for the elderly in society in general and should not become a problem in nursing homes. This was the case as a consequence of the various lockdowns. The visiting restrictions imposed led to the very isolation feared by many elderly people and it has certainly led to a deterioration in the mental health and well-being of many elderly individuals.

Nursing home staff were at the front line of the pandemic from the very beginning. There was initially a slow response from the Government to implement measures and nursing homes did not have access to the personal protective equipment they urgently needed, leaving staff and residents vulnerable. This vulnerability was further exacerbated by the use of agency staff who were moving between different locations and the transfer of individuals from hospitals to nursing homes without testing. The lack of a proper mechanism and protection for staff in reporting instances of abuse and neglect needs to be urgently addressed. The lack of proper oversight 560 13 July 2021 for the sector could leave it vulnerable to a deterioration in standards and, ultimately, the care of residents. The concerns raised by me and by others over the course of the pandemic need to be urgently addressed. A public inquiry needs to be set up to establish the full facts and bring closure for the families who have lost loved ones.

13/07/2021JJ00500Deputy Ged Nash: I appreciate the opportunity to speak on this important motion. Accord- ing to the Health Protection Surveillance Centre, more than 2,000 residents of nursing homes have passed away because of Covid-19, a number that accounts, in real terms, for over 40% of Covid deaths in Ireland to this point in time. This has been a massive issue in our society over the past year and a half. As the Minister of State and others have said, our thoughts are with those who are mourning the loss of their loved ones.

We must not forget that what might be described as a hands-off approach to nursing homes was to some degree prevalent at the start of the pandemic. HIQA provided the Department of Health with a list of what it described as nursing homes it believed would be at high risk at the beginning of the pandemic. What is even more concerning is that we do not know what follow- up the Department had with this list. Did the Department provide the list to NPHET in order that it could advise? It is clear that the Department of Health did not request that HIQA begin any preliminary assessments of these facilities, as no inspections were carried out at the beginning of the pandemic.

I agree that a public inquiry into these Covid-related deaths is required. It is now necessary. This is not the first time I have said that and I am not the only one who has said it in this Cham- ber, in the media and elsewhere. Many people require answers as to the State’s interventions into the nursing home sector during the pandemic. I am calling again for a specific commission of inquiry under the Act into the circumstances of the deaths of 23 people in the Dealgan House Nursing Home, Dundalk. Each and every resident who died there was a mum, a dad, a grand- parent, a much-loved aunt, uncle and friend. Their memories and human dignity insist that we know why and how they died. Their families and loved ones have a right to know. Society has a right know. For well over a year, I and others have worked closely with bereaved, and by now, frankly, exhausted families, to try to piece together what happened more than 12 months ago at Dealgan House Nursing Home last March and April. Families, who have suffered enough, should not have to be charged with hunting down information through freedom of information requests to the HSE, the Department of Health and HIQA to try to establish what happened to their dead loved ones. We now know that Dealgan House Nursing Home was in chaos from at least early April 2020. We know that now but nobody informed the families. For the nursing home and the agencies, family members were an afterthought, if that.

Material secured by freedom of information requests and through parliamentary question replies to me and to others show massive staff shortages and absences, as a consequence of Covid-19, from 18 March. The picture on 6 April showed that at that stage, only six out of 22 nurses were available to lead the care of 84 residents. The director of the home wrote to the then Minister for Health, Deputy Harris, on 12 April stating that there was on occasion, “one nurse on night duty, dealing with 80 residents, some of whom are very ill”. That illustrates the problem.

We know that HIQA was made aware of serious stuff shortages from 6 April.. Additional staff were provided by the HSE but too few initially. HIQA and the HSE, at the most senior level nationally and regionally, the then Minister for Health and the RCSI Hospitals Group were all aware of the grievous situation unfolding. All took some action, in time, but the fact is that 561 Dáil Éireann we still do not know the full and unexpurgated truth about what happened at Dealgan House Nursing Home or in other care facilities.

Ultimately, many deaths later, in the context of Dealgan House Nursing Home, the RCSI Hospitals Group had to take operational control of the situation as it was so bad. This was an absolutely unprecedented move; a public hospital group taking full operational control of the management and operation of a private care facility. This is not normal in anyone’s language.

In all our engagement with the HSE and the families, we still do not know with any certainty the threshold that was reached that prompted this unprecedented action. We need to know. Dealgan House Nursing Home is unique in that it was, and still is to the best of my knowledge, the only facility taken over by the State to ensure that the minimum standard of care could be provided to sick and vulnerable citizens when it could not provide the standard of care that was required and that should be demanded.

This demands our attention as lawmakers. It demand not just inquests from the coroner but a full commission of inquiry under the Act to shine a light and let the air in to get answers to the questions we all have, and ultimately, to understand what needs to change to make sure that what happened in Dealgan House Nursing Home will not be allowed to happen to anyone ever again, under any circumstances.

Nursing homes across the country are rightly concerned about the tapering of the temporary assistance payment. The decision to cut the level of financial support will have significant impacts on the money available to nursing homes that are still dealing with the impact and fallout of the Covid-19 crisis.

I note that in her closing remarks earlier, the Minister of State said, “The Department is continuing to look at options which may be available to the State to listen to the voices of those who have lost a loved one.” In my view, that needs to be formal process. Absolutely, the voices of those who have been affected and those who lost loved ones need to be heard. That needs to be done formally and not by some kind of tokenistic exercise, well intentioned as it might be, to hear the stories of those who have lost loved ones. We need a full, formal investigation or commission of inquiry under the relevant Act to get to the bottom of what happened specifically in Dealgan House Nursing Home, and indeed, where the case arises elsewhere.

More than that, I believe the Minister of State will agree that we need a national conversation about elderly care. Older people have given much and continue to give much to our society. They have to be treated well and looked after. If this pandemic has taught us anything, it is that we need to flip the conversation on to how we can keep older people in their homes for longer.

We need to have a conversation about the model of care that is developed to look after the interests of older citizens into the future with dignity and confidence. It should be a respectful model of care with a range of different options they will have to choose from in terms of what works best for them and their families but primarily for them as citizens with rights whose dignity should be respected. That will mean investment in a public model of care.

What has happened over the past 20 years since the introduction of attractive tax breaks by the former Minister for Health and Children, Mary Harney, is that people with little interest in the care of older people, initially people who were working and investing in a range of different activities across this society and country, decided they would invest in private nursing homes. 562 13 July 2021 Effectively, the State co-opted out the care of our older citizens to these private companies, which by and large do not respect the rights of workers. We know about the low levels of pay and poor working conditions in the private nursing home sector and that it is particularly hostile to the organisation of trade unions, with which it should be working in the best interests of the staff and in developing good models of care for older people.

I am grateful for the opportunity to discuss this really important issue for many thousands of people across this country this afternoon. I look forward to the Minister coming forward as quickly as possible with proposals about how we can hear from the families in a formal way about their experiences. That should involve a formal commission of inquiry, specifically into the events in a nursing home in my constituency of Louth, namely, Dealgan House Nursing Home, but potentially widened out to other areas that also need the attention of this House to make sure we remember with dignity those who lost their lives and give them the dignity they deserve, and to make sure we can learn lessons about what happened over the last year or 18 months and apply them to developing a better, more inclusive and dignified model of care in the future.

13/07/2021KK00200Deputy Róisín Shortall: I am glad to have the opportunity to speak in this important debate. I commend Sinn Féin on the detailed motion it has tabled. Much concern has been expressed about this issue over many years. Clearly, in the past 15 to 18 months, many of the shortcomings in elder care service were brought into tragic and stark relief due to the very high numbers of deaths that took place in our nursing homes. Some of those situations were highlighted in great detail in the recent “RTÉ Investigates” programme. I commend Mr. Barry O’Kelly on the work he did in that programme. There is no question but that the homes covered in that programme, as well as the whistleblowers who came forward and disclosed some of the awful practices that were going on in these nursing homes, require further investigation. There is a need for a public investigation into those particular nursing homes and into the allegations made by those whistleblowers. I have no doubt there are other nursing homes where similar bad practices existed, which resulted in tragedies for a number of the residents concerned.

This is, of course, an issue that we knew about. In many ways, it was a scandal waiting to happen. Was it really any huge surprise that there was such a high death level throughout the period when Covid-19 was raging? It was not really, when one considers how there was such light-touch regulation in this important care sector. That is something for which responsibility must be taken.

People have spoken about lessons that were learned and that need to be learned from the experience of the past 15 months or so with Covid-19. It has been said on umpteen occasions that there can be no going back to the old way of doing things. There is no doubt that Covid has exposed huge weaknesses in how we provide public services. That applies right across the board, particularly to our health service but also to childcare and to the funding model for our education system. There are specific weaknesses with our provision of social care, whether that is in the context of people with special needs, the area of disability or that of elder care. The pandemic has exposed huge weaknesses in how services are provided, including the over- dependence on the private sector and the farming out of responsibility for what should be core social care services. We must stop that and go back to doing things in a different way. The State must take responsibility for the provision of those services and where they are not being provided directly and there is private involvement, there must be strong regulation.

Prior to last summer, after the first wave, I remember being struck by people talking about 563 Dáil Éireann lessons that had been learned. I remember very clearly the then Taoiseach and current Tánaiste saying that we must find a new model of elder care. He was very specific about the matter and stated that we could not continue to provide older people’s services in the way we were doing. He said that we must be much more creative, much more caring and must listen to what older people and their families want. Despite that, we are 12 months down the road and have seen the third tragic wave and the massive impact it had on older people. That wave took the lives of so many additional older people, caused so many tragedies within families and there is still nothing specific coming from Government about how to ensure that we do not have a repeat of what happened and that we provide services in a more person-centred and responsible manner.

There is no excuse for not learning lessons. This time last year the whole issue of older people’s care, and nursing homes in particular, was examined in great detail, first, by the Spe- cial Committee on Covid-19 Response and, second, by the expert group on nursing home care established by Government. Their recommendations could not have been clearer. Last year, a very worthwhile submission was made by Sage Advocacy and there were written and oral submissions from that organisation to the special committee. At that time and since, there have been very strong cases made by Care Champions, yet we do not have that new model of care. There are three areas in particular that need urgent attention. The first relates to light-touch regulation, a feature of so many aspects of how we provide things in this country. Light-touch regulation of nursing home care has resulted in large numbers of tragedies and deaths and there is no denying that fact. HIQA, which is supposed to be the regulatory authority in charge of nursing homes, simply does not have the powers it needs to have in order to provide effective regulation. We know that last year HIQA said, “the current regulations need to be modernised and enhanced with additional powers and requirements”.

Consider the detail of HIQA’s powers. It must give notice of visitations and inspections, it must provide nursing homes with four weeks to respond and many things like that which are just far too weak. HIQA does not have the power to enforce staffing guidelines in the context of, for example, staffing ratios. That is just unbelievable. There are no staff-to-resident ratios in our nursing homes. Why is that the case? As a result of that to which I refer, there are no nurses on duty in many cases and there are large numbers of untrained and unqualified staff providing care and attention to out most vulnerable citizens. Why is that allowed to happen? It is a complete abdication of our responsibility for our most vulnerable people. We also know HIQA has called for safeguarding legislation. It said we must explore suitable structures and processes for external oversight of individual care concerns. Again, how long has this been going on? How long has the matter been with the Law Reform Commission? They were in before the health committee during the year and it does not look like there are going to be recommendations coming any time soon. This is another long-finger exercise.

The special committee made very clear recommendations on increased powers for HIQA, staffing ratios and safeguarding legislation. Those calls have been made and echoed by Sage Advocacy and Care Champions for some time. Care Champions wants HIQA’s powers to intervene to be expanded. It wants an end to announced HIQA visits and greater accountability for the nursing home sector. It is asking for statutory staff-resident ratios in all nursing homes. It says we need an independent one-stop complaints mechanism for both private and public nursing homes. Of course, at the root of all this, including the light-touch regulation, is the fact that successive Governments have seen fit to privatise the elder care system. It is essential social care which should be an essential element of our publically-provided health service yet successive Governments have chosen to privatise it to the extent that 80% of nursing homes are

564 13 July 2021 private. Nursing home care is now regarded more as a good investment opportunity rather than an essential part of our social care system. Equally, the Irish Association of Social Workers has been very vocal on this. It is essential that social workers have the right to go into all nursing homes and address concerns and complaints that are raised and take those up. However, as of now there is a complete lack of clarity in relation to the role of social workers in safeguarding.

There can be no more excuses for this. All the recommendations and all the weakness are there in black and white from a number of sources. What we need now is action from Govern- ment and it cannot come too soon.

13/07/2021LL00200Deputy Bríd Smith: I will begin by offering the condolences of People Before Profit Depu- ties to all who lost loved ones during the pandemic, but particularly those who lost loved ones in care home settings. I thank Sinn Féin for bringing forward the motion, but there should be no deed for it. I refer back to the text of two critically important recommendations People Before Profit secured in the Final Report of the Special Committee on Covid-19 Response. That report was published ten months ago in October 2020. The first recommendation reads:

That a public inquiry be established to investigate and report on all circumstances relating to each individual death from Covid-19 in nursing homes. Draft terms of reference should be presented for consideration by the Joint Committee on Health by the end of 2020.

Many of us in this House worked for hours and hours on the special committee and its key recommendation did not even see the light of day at the Joint Committee on Health. It was a recommendation we in People Before Profit were adamant about including in the committee’s report. The public is still clamouring for that inquiry and the demand is being voiced week after week in the national media. We all know that the “Prime Time Investigates” report showed many of the harrowing accounts of those who died from Covid in nursing homes. Calls for public inquiries came from all sorts of parties, many of them very diverse. They included the Coroners Society of Ireland and the Irish Association of Social Workers. As the Joint Com- mittee on Health has not presented the terms of reference within the time frame recommended, I am returning to the demand for a public inquiry from the special committee as a matter of urgency and fully back this motion. Specifically, I am requesting that a report be prepared on the Government’s failure to implement this first and most crucial recommendation of the special committee on Covid-19. The timescale for moving to implement this recommendation has gone beyond urgent.

I will also be seeking the report for the Government’s failure to implement the second recommendation People Before Profit had listed on the special committee’s report. It states:

A review shall be undertaken into the impact of privatisation on Ireland’s nursing home sector and to ascertain its impact on:

- nursing levels,

- expertise and qualifications of staff,

- medical and other facilities available in older people’s care settings as a result of the policy decisions by previous administrations to incentivise private care settings, resulting in 80% of residential care being provided in the private sector, and

- the adequacy of funding to deliver optimal outcomes.

565 Dáil Éireann We sought the review into the impact of privatisation because we refuse to be deflected from the significance of the single most momentous change to have taken place in the care of our vulnerable older people in recent decades. That is the wholesale privatisation of that sector, leaving a position where 80% of the care of vulnerable older people in need of long-term residential care was handed over to the for-profit sector.

In the private nursing home sector that HIQA selected for particular mention in a report last July, it mentioned “very limited clinical oversight of most nursing homes, particularly those in the private sector”. I remind Members that private nursing home sectors continue to operate without an acceptable degree of financial transparency. In its report of August 2020, the Covid-19 nursing homes expert panel was clear on the need for greater financial transparency. The State’s contribution was over €1 billion via the nursing home support scheme in 2019 and the contribution from the owners of private nursing homes - especially that of larger consortia - remains unknown.

The panel stated that funding and expenditure specifically invested by providers requires greater transparency. This should be noted when there are any changes to the contribution that older people are expected to make, either through their accessible income or assets, to long-term residential care. There must be acknowledgement of how the private sector operates and derives benefits from the scheme. For that reason, we will push for a return to the recommended review into the impact of privatisation on nursing home care.

I will return to an alarming report from HIQA sent to the Special Committee on Covid-19 Response in September 2020. Among other alarming issues, it indicated in the private nursing homes sector an absence of clinical governance, inadequate staffing levels and unavailable contingency plans in the event of sudden and unplanned absences. Resources such as personal protective equipment and access to specialised care and support were lacking and the layout of centres had an effect on the ability to separate healthy and ill residents or isolate ill residents as required. There was also a history of non-compliance with key regulations, such as governance, management of premises and infection control.

The manner in which the pandemic has affected nursing homes obliges us to confront the manner in which we have allowed long-term care of vulnerable older people to evolve in Ire- land. There have been very deliberate and highly ideological policy decisions underwriting that evolution. The trauma caused by the Government, its agencies and the nursing home sector should not blind us to the questions we are obliged to pursue relating to the deaths that have occurred in nursing home settings in Ireland.

Some of the stark figures were presented by Sage Advocacy and Age Action Ireland, which demonstrated to us that in July last year, 56% of all Covid-19 deaths took place in nursing homes, a setting where only 0.65% of the population lives. The HIQA report called on nursing homes in Ireland to be investigated but the authority indicated it was not in a position to have a physical presence in nursing homes during the pandemic. The fact remains that most of HIQA’s inspectors did not conduct risk inspections in those nursing homes when an increasing number developed Covid-19 outbreaks.

The families of those who lost their lives in these nursing homes must know exactly what happened to loved ones. A lack of communication from nursing homes was a common thread among many of the concerns expressed. There were unanswered phone calls or queries, caus- ing immense anxiety and worry for concerned relatives and friends, particularly in the cases 566 13 July 2021 of nursing homes where severe outbreaks were reported. That immense distress and those unanswered questions persist for those who lost relatives and a public inquiry that could provide answers to some of those questions is the very least that the Government owes these families.

13/07/2021MM00200Deputy Mick Barry: The Minister of State, Deputy Butler, is reported in the Irish Exam- iner this evening as saying she plans to report any potentially criminal allegations involving abuse and neglect in nursing homes to the Garda. She repeated the point in her speech. As the Minister of State knows, potential abuse and neglect in HSE nursing homes are already automatically referred both to the Garda and registered safeguarding social workers. I therefore have a question for her. Is it now intended to change the law so this would automatically be the case in privately owned nursing homes?

The interview in the Irish Examiner cannot just be about being seen to do something on a day when the Dáil debates a motion that highlights the Government’s inaction. It cannot be an excuse for further inaction. In that regard, I ask if the Government will legislate to allow trained and professional safeguarding social workers to make unannounced visits to all nursing homes. Nursing homes were closed institutions for most of the pandemic and closed even to relatives much of the time. The history of closed institutions in this State is, in general, not something of which to be proud, particularly when it comes to the protection of people who have effectively been locked in. Giving social workers the legal right to make unannounced visits is a simple and practical way to improve safeguarding in our nursing homes.

I specifically say “our nursing homes” but they are not really ours. Once upon a time, they were ours, but that was before the programme of privatisation pushed by successive Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael-led Governments. Today, 80% of nursing homes are privately owned and run for profit. The for-profit nursing home model did not perform well during the Covid-19 crisis. I strongly support the idea that the privatisation process should be reversed and the nursing home sector should be taken into public ownership before being fully integrated into the public health system.

In her interview with the Irish Examiner, the Minister of State was also quoted as saying she favours shorter inquiries rather than a national inquiry. Will she confirm that she was quoted correctly? If she was, she is the first Minister or Minister of State to voice clear support for an inquiry or inquiries of some kind or other. Will she clarify that point? I have no issue with local inquiries but the demand may be so great, we will end up with a national inquiry, in effect, in any case. I will vote for the national inquiry proposal tomorrow.

13/07/2021MM00300Deputy Verona Murphy: I thank Sinn Féin for moving this motion, which gives us the opportunity to discuss the impact of Covid-19 on nursing homes. There has been repeated reference in recent months to the nursing homes scandal, which became evident during our response to Covid-19. We have heard the number of deaths and, as Deputies have stated, over 2,000 nursing home residents are considered to be in the Covid-19 death category, and that is approximately 40% of all Covid-related deaths in Ireland.

We do not seem to have any specific details on what happened in the various nursing home settings and how Government policy may have played a role in making that problem worse. This motion calls for a full public inquiry into nursing home deaths. I am sure when we have contact with constituents, we all hear various versions of similarly sad or heartbreaking stories of vulnerable people in our nursing homes. We need answers.

567 Dáil Éireann The statistics and stories indicate there is a need for a full public inquiry. What really needs to be established is the extent to which the decisions of authorities resulted in extra and avoidable Covid-related deaths. To what extent were nursing home patients denied treatment that would have resulted in their recovery and to what extent were “do not resuscitate” orders used when nursing home residents were in hospital?

We had reports over a year ago of patients being discharged from hospital with Covid-19 and going back to nursing homes, leading to major Covid-19 outbreaks in nursing homes. We were conducting thousands of Covid-19 tests per day on healthy people but the authorities did not have a system in place to test vulnerable and non-healthy people before being discharged from hospital and allowed back to a nursing home. All of the young, healthy people in this country were persuaded that they needed to remain locked up in their homes in order to protect vulnerable people but meanwhile, it seems, these vulnerable people were being neglected by the same people who were telling young people they had a moral duty to stay at home.

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I am concerned about the proposal in this motion to put visitation guidance on a statutory footing. It may be the case that in some areas such regulation of nursing homes may be insufficient but I would be fearful of what the visitation guidance referred to in the motion might look like when implemented. We do not want to create a scenario where a husband and wife, perhaps having their final embrace, are subject to a HIQA representative standing over them with a clipboard and a stopwatch, or where no exceptions can be made for individual cases. More fundamentally, do we really want this House to decide when a husband can visit his wife in a nursing home and under what conditions? Do we really want to be deciding or be dictating to a child when he or she can see a parent. Making visitation guidelines into laws would be an overreach of the State. I have grave concerns about that.

The motion also calls for the mandated reporting of abuse and neglect of residents by nursing home staff. It is very hard to understand how this is not already mandated regardless of whether this motion as a whole is passed or not. I hope that the Minister is listening and will take the necessary steps to introduce and mandate reporting of abuse and neglect without delay.

Finally, the motion calls for accountability at organisational level. As an elected politician, it is my experience that our attitude to accountability leaves a lot to be desired. Yes, I do believe that the motion is correct in calling for the introduction of accountability at an organisational level with regard to penalties and criminal offences, where failures to govern safely in accordance with HIQA regulations result in the loss of health or life for residents, in the case of that service. It is not only at an organisational level that such accountability should exist. Those making the policy decisions should also be accountable.

I also want to voice my utter dismay at the abandonment of nursing homes with the stop- ping of the temporary assistance payment scheme. Not extending it in line with the other supports says it all.

13/07/2021NN00200Deputy Peter Fitzpatrick: I welcome the opportunity to speak. I thank those responsible for bringing this motion before House and for giving all Members an opportunity to debate it. The motion calls on the Government to take action on a number of items and I will deal with these individually.

The motion calls on the Government to commence a full public inquiry into the deaths of 568 13 July 2021 residents, into the quality of care in nursing homes during the Covid-19 pandemic and into the systemic failures in the sector during that dreadful period. I would like to put on record that I will support any motion that calls for a full public inquiry into nursing homes and their responses to the Covid 19 pandemic. We must, however, be very careful. This must not turn into a witch hunt against any nursing home and must be focused on all nursing homes and their responses. Not only must we look at how nursing homes responded we must also look at how the HSE, HIQA and other State bodies reacted. It would not be fair simply to target the nursing homes and not take into account how State bodies intervened and assisted the sector at this time.

A full public inquiry must be open and transparent and take into account the views of everybody concerned. I know from speaking to the families of many of those who sadly passed away that there are many unanswered questions. The families have a right to ask these questions. It is the very least they deserve.

This must not be a witch hunt against any single nursing home. The bottom line is that we must learn from the dreadful period when Covid-19 inflicted so much death and heartbreak to the residents of nursing homes. We must identify where the systems broke down. We must identify where supports are needed to ensure that we have robust systems in place that will prevent this happening again in the future.

As I said earlier, the families who lost loved ones in nursing homes during this period have many unanswered questions. They should be part of any public inquiry. Their experiences must be heard and documented. Only by hearing their experiences can we learn, and learn we must. We must ensure that this never happens again. It is the very least that not only the families affected deserve but also the residents and staff of the many nursing homes around the country.

It is my view that nursing homes do not become bad overnight. In my experience I have some very good memories of nursing homes and the care they give. My mother spent the last three years of her life in Dealgan House nursing home in Dundalk. I could not have asked for a better place for my mother to spend those last three years. She was treated with great professional care by all the staff.

It is important to remember that, just like the HSE, the vast majority of the nursing and care staff in nursing homes are professional people who have dedicated their working lives to care for others. I would not like to see a public inquiry as a witch hunt of these people. Once again I stress that we must be very careful and not have a situation where a public inquiry simply becomes a platform to attack nursing homes. It must be open, fair and transparent. It must identify where the system failed and put in place recommendations that will ensure this never happens again.

The motion also calls for the placing of long-term residential care facility visitation guidance onto a statutory footing and to give interim authority to HIQA to enforce it. Again, in principle I agree that we do need to give this a statutory footing although I would be concerned that interim authority be given to HIQA. I believe a public inquiry will answer a lot of the questions and provide a solution to this.

The motion also calls for the Government to expedite adult safeguarding legislation and I support this call. In addition, the motion calls on the Government to ensure that all residents are treated as community clients with direct access to safeguarding social care services and all

569 Dáil Éireann primary care services, which would include an independent social worker liaison attached to each Covid-19 cluster in long-term residential care facilities. In principle I agree with this but I urge caution in how we approach this. As I said, I genuinely believe that a full public inquiry into how the nursing homes dealt with the pandemic will provide many of the answers including putting in place the necessary safeguards for residents.

I broadly support the motion and thank those for bringing it to the House. We must be careful, however, to ensure that it does not become a public witch hunt against individual nursing homes. The families of those who so sadly lost their lives in nursing homes during this pandemic have many questions and these must be addressed and answers given. We must ensure that the scale of this never happens again and a full public inquiry that will investigate all sides of this is the only answer. We must find out where the systems broke down and put in place measures that will ensure this never happens again.

In her speech the Minister of State, Deputy Butler, said that she met with families this week and over the past weeks whose family members passed away in nursing homes. The Minister of State said that her Department will continue to talk with these families and to listen to these voices. This is very important. People have lost loved ones and they want to get their say. They want investigations and I believe that the Minister of State will do this.

13/07/2021NN00300Deputy Michael Healy-Rae: I thank Sinn Féin very sincerely for bringing forward this very important motion. At the very beginning, I must say to all the families who very sadly lost loved persons and loved family members and relatives in nursing homes, or indeed anyhow during the pandemic, we have to sympathise with them this evening. It would be wrong and neglectful not to do so at the very start of every contribution, and to pray for those people who left because of this illness and whose time in this world was cut short. For that we are tremen- dously sorry.

Many private nursing home operators who account for four in every five nursing homes in the sector felt that they were abandoned during the public health response in the first wave of the pandemic. The Coroners’ Society of Ireland has rightfully called for a wide-ranging inquiry into all Covid-19 deaths in nursing homes. There are many other information gaps that must be filled. Of course there are questions that must be answered and of course it is right to highlight that here tonight during this debate, but we must also highlight the excellent nursing homes that run great houses and that take great care of the people in their charge and in their care, and I want to do that on behalf of the nursing homes I represent in County Kerry. Those nursing homes went to extraordinary lengths during the pandemic. I know many of the workers in these nursing homes. The best way I could describe it is that they slaved night and day to ensure the safety and the well-being of the people in their care. These workers in the catering sections, the nursing sections and in the maintenance of the nursing homes all did Trojan work. Only for their efforts, and only for the nursing homes that were successful in keeping the virus out, the situation would have been way worse. First, we must look at where there were problems or mistakes or where things went wrong. We must also look at where things went right. I publicly thank the management, workers and staff of every nursing home in my county. I thank them most sincerely for protecting and helping to mind older people, our friends and relatives.

13/07/2021OO00200Deputy Richard O’Donoghue: I too sympathise with the families who have lost loved ones throughout the pandemic. What were the problems and what can we learn from the situation? I have seen nursing homes that lost 37 staff during the pandemic in a two-month timeframe because they were poached by the HSE. When the HSE offered positions, including 570 13 July 2021 through agencies, it almost crippled nursing homes that had been providing good care. It took 37 staff from one nursing home. The nursing home then had an issue down the line with providing adequate staff during Covid. There are questions to be answered in that regard.

Nursing homes in Limerick have gone above and beyond the duty of care for the people who lived in them. In one case, where a husband and wife were both in a nursing home, their children could not get see their mother because she was upstairs, but they could see their father through a window. When their father died, their mother could not get to see her husband.

Untold damage has been done due to a policy not being put in place, not only in nursing homes but also for those who brought children into the world, to ensure visitation rights for people. There will be a knock-on effect from that in years to come. We must ensure that this never happens again, no matter what arises. Families must be able to see their loved ones and family members no matter what the circumstances. Precautions must be taken for the protection of all. The HSE has a big question to answer in this regard as well.

13/07/2021OO00300Deputy Michael Collins: I welcome this excellent motion on the need for the Government to begin a full public inquiry into the scandal of the neglect and deaths in nursing during the Covid-19 pandemic. Some community hospitals must also be brought into this public inquiry.

At the outset, it is important to commend the many nursing home staff who worked hard under considerable pressure and stress, as well with as a lack of resources during the pandemic, to do their best to look after those in their care. However, it is clear that the sector as a whole was unable to cope effectively due to the chronic understaffing, weak governance arrangements, poor safeguarding provisions and a lack of investment.

The Coronavirus-related deaths of more than 2,000 people in nursing homes reflects an abject failure of policy and oversight by successive health Ministers and the agencies they oversee. Prior to the pandemic, fatal flaws were exposed in the health system and social care services. Many nursing homes and some community hospitals were unprepared for an outbreak of infectious disease. The consequences were devastating for families who lost more than 2,000 relatives in these institutions alone.

Given the shocking magnitude of this situation, I fully endorse and support the establishment of a commission of investigation or an alternative form of public inquiry into the handling of Covid-19 in long-term care facilities. Such an inquiry should be efficient and time-bound and interact actively with the families who lost loved ones in nursing homes during the pandemic. The scale of the deaths that occurred in care homes during the pandemic is truly unprecedented. It is a dire reflection of the state of Ireland’s health services and the lack of adequate resources available.

Were community hospitals and nursing homes up to HIQA standards that were set by various Governments? Scandalously, they were not. Unfortunately, I know for a fact that was the situation in west Cork. It has done untold damage to families in my constituency. Previous Ministers have questions to answer, not, in fairness, the two Ministers of State who are present, Deputies Butler and Rabbitte. More than 2,000 elderly people lost their lives.

Now the grants have been withdrawn from nursing homes, which is another scandal. On the one hand, we are told people cannot go into a restaurant or a pub because of the danger, yet on the other hand, health staff are being withdrawn to make sure that they do not get the virus in nursing homes. 571 Dáil Éireann

13/07/2021OO00400Deputy Mattie McGrath: The coronavirus-related deaths of more than 2,000 people in Irish nursing homes reflects an abject failure of policy and oversight by successive health Min- isters and the agencies they oversee.

Prior to the pandemic and illuminated again at the very beginning of the pandemic, fatal flaws were exposed in our health and social care services. Many nursing homes were unprepared for any infectious disease outbreak and the consequences were devastating for the families that have lost more than 2,000 relatives in these institutions alone. One death is one too many, but that number is shocking.

At the outset, it is important to commend the many nursing home staff and management who worked hard under considerable pressure, lack of resources and stress during the pandemic to do their best to look after those in their care. However, it is clear that the sector as a whole was not fit for purpose. That is not its fault. The HSE diverted PPE equipment away from the sector, such as valuable oxygen supplies.

The Government should apologise for the needless deaths as a direct result of its policies and lack of investment. Additionally, a full-scale investigation must be undertaken to ensure such a disgraceful situation never occurs again. I am truly flabbergasted that no systemic analysis of safeguarding practice and trends in the sector took place during the pandemic. I tabled a question to the Minister for Health today and I raised this issue with him as well.

I support Sinn Féin’s motion. An independent investigation should include a cost-benefit analysis of the Government-imposed lockdowns to date. I refer to the overall costs of the lockdown in the mental health area due to delayed diagnosis and missed diagnosis. The impact on all the services together is shocking, as well as the impact on the community, but the community does not matter; it is lives that matter. People died alone. Ireland had the longest lockdown in the world and the second highest rate of nursing home deaths. It is appalling. I do not blame the staff. We know that 50% of the patients who died were infected in 575 nursing home buildings and 15% of deaths were due to infection in hospital buildings. When we send someone to a nursing home, we talk with people and we check the area. I know that staff do their best, but we expect our loved ones to be safe above anything else and that they will not get infected or die as a result of something they pick up in a hospital or nursing home. A thorough and full investigation must be carried out to ensure that this can never happen again and that we learn from our mistakes. When we look back on it as history, it will be considered a tragedy, but I hope we can learn from it.

13/07/2021OO00500Deputy Marian Harkin: This motion from Sinn Féin, which I fully support, calls for a full public inquiry into the deaths of residents and the quality of care in nursing homes during the Covid-19 pandemic. The purpose of any public inquiry is to establish the facts in regard to the specific circumstances. Those circumstances include the fact that more than 2,000 nursing home residents have died due to Covid-19. That means more than 40% of Covid-19 related deaths occurred in nursing homes.

Those facts, along with the many different media exposés of totally inadequate care, neglect and, in some cases, abuse of residents, certainly make the case for a public inquiry. We must establish the facts. We must look at the context and evaluate the role of the many actors involved in the care of people in nursing homes. That includes the HSE and its response. It includes the management and staff of nursing homes. It also includes the supports that were provided or not provided by the various State actors. It includes the role of HIQA. It includes the role 572 13 July 2021 of hospitals in discharging persons back to nursing homes and-or the protocols around patients from nursing homes with Covid-19 accessing acute hospital services.

I wish to clearly state that I am not pointing the finger of blame at any group, sector or individual. The purpose of a public inquiry would be to establish responsibility. It would not be to prejudge or make assumptions about the public or private sector, but to consider the evidence and only then arrive at conclusions. Having held such an inquiry, we would then need to put legislation in place to ensure proper adult safeguarding. All residents should have direct access to safeguarding social work services and all primary care services. I agree with the report, which states that HIQA must be empowered to oversee and enforce safeguarding legislation. There also needs to be a legal right of entry and powers of investigation for the appropriate authorities.

Care Champions have reported more than 500 serious safeguarding concerns in nursing homes over the past 14 months. They emphasise that not all nursing homes are negligent, but some are, and that is what we are highlighting tonight. I have received substantial documentation from bereaved families of the Ballynoe nursing home United for Justice group. They outline their key concerns, of which there are many, including a lack of infection control, serious neglect of residents, a lack of adequately trained staff and minimal communication with families during the Covid outbreak. In truth, it is hard to read, but for the residents and their families, it was a terrible time. Perhaps the most powerful point in the documentation that the group sent to me is where the families say that a public inquiry and HIQA investigation would not just be for them, but for the other families around Ireland who were looking for answers. It is also needed for the safety and well-being of nursing home residents in future.

Another important element of this motion is how it would place long-term residential care facility visitation guidance - I emphasise the word “guidance” - on a statutory footing and give interim authority to HIQA to enforce it.

Of all the emails about Covid that I received as a public representative during the pandemic, the most heart-rending were from family members who could not visit for months on end and, in some cases, whose loved ones died as they watched through the windows. I am not mi- nimising the challenges faced by those who manage nursing homes. Those challenges were significant and, in some cases, it was a matter of life and death. However, if we had visitation guidance - I again emphasise “guidance”, not definitive rules and requirements, as we could not have those - on a statutory footing, there would be some clarity. It would take some of the awful responsibility off the shoulders of management at some nursing homes.

For all of us receiving emails and phone calls, the pain, grief and unanswered questions of so many families cannot be ignored. This motion contains many proposals that would help to answer a number of those questions. It contains other proposals that, if implemented, would help to safeguard some of our most vulnerable people in long-term care.

Before I finish, I wish to emphasise that many nursing homes and staff gave their all during the pandemic. They left no stone unturned in trying to protect their residents - their families, which is how they viewed them. I spoke to many of them during the pandemic as they struggled to ensure the best possible outcomes, be that through sourcing proper PPE or ensuring sufficient staffing levels. Many Deputies have spoken about the challenges nursing homes faced in this regard. People also tried to ensure access to acute hospital care where needed. Many staff and managers had sleepless nights and long days while trying to manage during the pandemic. Very 573 Dáil Éireann few people in this Chamber would want to exchange places with them, given what they went through day in and day out. Tonight, we are speaking in a wider context and of the need for a public inquiry and subsequent legislation where appropriate, but it is important to recognise the reality of what happened, the good with the bad and the bad with the good.

I have raised the issue of the discontinuation of the temporary assistance payment scheme, TAPS, to nursing homes. As the Ministers of State will be aware, every cent that is spent is ite- mised and accounted for. In my view and that of many in the nursing home sector, that money is still necessary in order to continue protecting residents and workers.

We are still awaiting a report on the proper funding of nursing homes. It is essential, as we cannot deal with one part of the problem while ignoring the rest. Nursing homes need to be resourced properly. The Covid-19 pandemic has cruelly exposed the fact that some need urgent investment. In the context of this debate, though, I support the call for a public inquiry while recognising the significant efforts made by many to protect our vulnerable people in nursing homes.

13/07/2021PP00200Minister of State at the Department of Health (Deputy Anne Rabbitte): I thank the Deputies for their valuable comments on this motion. The debate has been useful and will be of great benefit as the Department continues to progress proposals to enhance and improve services for older persons further.

I will pick up on a small, but key point made by Deputy Harkin that needs to be addressed by the Minister of State, Deputy Butler, and me. It has to do with recognising the valuable work and sleepless nights of nursing home owners and staff throughout Covid and the 100% they gave. It was not just staff and managers who had sleepless nights - the Ministers and Ministers of State who held those portfolios worked endlessly to ensure that supports could be put in place. We may have different views on how that can be best achieved, but we all want the same result, namely, ensuring that older people have access to safe, high-quality and effective care.

As the House will be aware, the Covid-19 nursing homes expert panel, which was established last year, provided a comprehensive report and package of recommendations regarding the ongoing response to Covid-19 and the longer term strategic reform of older persons care. Many of the short- and medium-term recommendations have already been implemented. Con- tinued learning and understanding of the progression of the disease in Ireland is an integral part of these recommendations.

There have been various examinations and reports with a focus on Covid-19, its impact on nursing homes and the lessons from the pandemic that can inform future policy, regulation and the model of care for older persons. There has been a clear national commitment to continue to learn from the pandemic as the national and international understanding of the virus evolves and, where necessary, to ensure that the public health-led approach evolves as evidence and learning materialises. The findings of these reports confirm that the infectious nature of Co- vid-19 makes it difficult to prevent and control in residential care settings. As mentioned by the Minister of State, Deputy Butler, Covid-19 is more likely to be introduced in residential settings where there are high levels of Covid-19 in the community.

In order to mitigate against these risks, the State has put in place a comprehensive set of public health measures, actions and responses to support nursing homes. Sustained communication and inter-agency co-operation remain central to the response to Covid-19 across the

574 13 July 2021 HSE, the National Treatment Purchase Fund, NTPF, HIQA and the Department. Guidance, PPE, staffing, serial testing, infection prevention and control training, accommodation and financial support have been provided to the nursing home sector, both public and private. In addition, multidisciplinary clinical supports are in place at community healthcare organisation, CHO, level through 23 Covid-19 response teams.

I again assure the House that adult safeguarding is a matter of paramount importance for all of society, including all Government agencies and Departments. The safety and protection of adults at risk of abuse or harm by others is a fundamental priority for the health and social care sector. A strong focus has been placed on adult safeguarding within the health sector, especially in recent years. In the health sector, a framework of standards, policies and procedures for safeguarding of adults who may be at risk of abuse, harm and exploitation in health settings is in place and further measures are being developed to strengthen this framework.

The Health Information and Quality Authority is the statutory independent regulator in place for the nursing home sector, whether it is a HSE-managed or private nursing home. This responsibility is underpinned by a comprehensive quality framework comprising registration regulations, care and welfare regulations and national quality standards. HIQA, in discharging its duties, determines, through examination of all information available to it which includes site inspections, whether a nursing homes meets the regulations in order to achieve and maintain its registration status. If a nursing home is deemed to be non-compliant with the regulations and the national quality standards, it may either fail to achieve or lose its registration status. In addition, the chief inspector has wide discretion in deciding whether to impose conditions of registration on nursing homes.

Another important point raised by the Deputies is that of visiting. People living in nursing homes and other long-term residential care facilities had limited opportunities to welcome visitors for a period of time. This was an unfortunate but necessary measure to help protect residents and reduce the spread of the virus. However, as the Minister of State, Deputy Butler, said, following many incremental changes to the level of visiting that could be facilitated, we are expecting nursing homes to begin the return to normal visiting from next week. This is a welcome development and a positive indicator of the benefits that older people in nursing homes are experiencing as a result of the vaccination programme.

It is commendable that our colleagues across government and the House are committed to working towards safer care for older people. It is acknowledged there are aspects of older persons services that require improvement. In line with the programme for Government commitment, we will work to ensure the best possible safeguards are in place to protect our friends and family in nursing homes.

I will recap on some of the comments made by the Minister of State, Deputy Butler, and reiterate that enormous work has been undertaken to improve our older persons services. A comprehensive package of policy responses and support measures was developed and implemented to support nursing homes throughout the pandemic. Significant progress has been made on implementing the important recommendations of the nursing home expert panel. A third progress report on the implementation of the panel’s recommendations is being finalised. It notes the following developments. The IPC link practitioner programme framework has been finalised and phased implementation commenced in March 2021. Phase 3 of the safe staffing and skill mix framework commenced in August 2020. Phase 3 includes three distinct stages, the first of which will focus on nursing homes. A national task force, with representation from 575 Dáil Éireann key stakeholders and agencies, has been established by the Minister to develop a framework for safe staffing and skill mix in long-term residential care settings for older persons. Funding has been provided to extend the research contract supporting the development of a framework for safe nurse staffing and skill mix across various areas for another three years. The HSE Covid-19 teams remain in place and continue to actively support prevention, preparedness and management of outbreaks, irrespective of whether facilities are operated by public, private or voluntary providers. In parallel, work is under way to progress the establishment of community support teams.

As the Minister of State, Deputy Butler, outlined, a range of legislative proposals is being brought forward which will enhance the governance and oversight of nursing homes and improve the reporting of key operational data. All of these positive developments, in addition to the wider reform of older persons services, will increase safety and oversight in the nursing home sector.

We know that people living in Ireland are living longer than ever before and we must ensure they live and age well. Therefore, it is clear that continued investment in our services for older people, including home care, is vital. The overarching policy of the Government is to support older people to live with dignity and independence in their own homes and communities for as long as possible. The continued development of a new statutory scheme for the financing and regulation of home support services is a key enabler towards achieving this aim.

The pilot of a reformed model of service delivery for home supports is due to commence this year. The Government has made improved access to home support services a priority. This is reflected in the unprecedented level of investment, secured by the Minister of State, Deputy Butler, for these services in budget 2021. Some 5 million additional home support hours will be provided for in communities throughout Ireland this year. Some €632 million was allocated in funding in 2021 and will provide for a total of 24 million hours of home support. The increased investment will contribute to meeting the programme for Government commitment to providing equitable access to home support services. There has been a significant reduction in the number of people assessed and waiting on funding for home support throughout 2020 and into 2021, with additional hours being delivered.

I look forward to supporting the significant work which is in train to further improve older persons services. I thank the Members once again for the opportunity to speak on this matter. I express my sympathies to the families who have lost loved ones during Covid-19.

13/07/2021QQ00200Deputy Pat Buckley: The motion calls for a public inquiry into the deaths of people in nursing homes during Covid-19, including the quality of care that was provided. I am conscious there has to be balance found here. Nursing home staff have been under severe pressure and resources are probably also a factor. The Irish Association of Social Workers and the bereaved families of residents of the Ballynoe nursing home in Glanmire are also calling for a public inquiry. The inquiry must get answers to the families’ questions on the lack of infection control, serious neglect of residents, staff calls for help to the HSE Covid-19 response team not resulting in any additional supports, lack of nutritional fluids and residents being left for hours on end during the Covid-19 outbreak. The list goes on and on. This is a very worrying issue and excuses will not wear well with the people who need answers for those they have lost.

I am calling on Deputies across the House to support the motion. We need clarity for these people. We must ensure this never happens again. That is one of the most important points 576 13 July 2021 here.

I pay homage to the staff and families who did their best in extreme difficulty. Unfortunate- ly, sometimes the best is not enough. Last week, we were discussing another centre in my home town, the Owenacurra Health Centre, which has never had a Covid-19 case. In that context, we have to congratulate people as well.

I urge the Government to support Deputy Cullinane’s motion, support all of us, support the families who have lost loved ones and also to support the staff in these nursing homes, and their families, so we can emerge with a proper result. However, it must be clear, adequate and solid. People need real answers. People have to be accountable and responsible for this as well. My final call is for the House to support this motion.

13/07/2021RR00200Deputy Ruairí Ó Murchú: This motion calls for a public inquiry into what happened in nursing homes. We all accept that there were failings by the State and other factors that have to be investigated. There are lessons that we have to understand and then there are actions that we have to implement. All of us offer our condolences to the families who have been through absolutely abject tragedy. We also show solidarity with those people who have worked through very difficult periods and did all they could in nursing homes, but the question remains. There were failings and the State has had major failings. A number of reports have been produced in the past while and we know there are actions to follow from them. We must ensure that happens.

Deputy Cullinane has also asked that we get the safeguarding aspects and the framework correct and that we have social care teams front and centre. HIQA is on record as stating that it does not have the powers that are required to carry out the regulatory job it has to do. All these parts need to be put in place because, at this point in time, we are failing to look after elderly people in the community. It is just not good enough, so we have to take action. It is absolutely necessary.

I doubt that the Ministers of State will be shocked when I raise, once again, the issue of Dealgan House Nursing Home, the absolute tragedy that over 20 people lost their lives and the families who were detrimentally impacted by this at the beginning of the pandemic. The Minister and the Minister of State, Deputy Butler, met the families. The Minister stated that they need a mechanism to allow them to get answers. The families are making freedom of information requests and putting forward parliamentary questions from some Deputies, including me. They are meeting the HSE and the RCSI Hospitals Group. They are carrying out an investigation on their own. That is not good enough. I accept that there is a disputed narrative, but the only means of getting to the truth is to have a full public inquiry. It is not enough for the Department of Health to set up a mechanism for grieving families to have somebody to talk to. There must be full investigative powers. I commend the motion to the House.

13/07/2021RR00300Deputy David Cullinane: I will start by offering my condolences to all the families who lost loved ones in nursing homes and, indeed, to people who lost loved ones over the course of the pandemic to Covid-19 outside nursing homes. This has been a very difficult time for everybody. I do not dispute the fact that all Members of the House, be they in the Government or in the Opposition, want to ensure there are the best levels of care for older people and that we do our best to ensure that whether somebody is in a public nursing home, a private nursing home or being cared for in his or her home those people have the highest levels of protection, the highest quality of care and that they are properly protected. I welcome the fact that we are going to have a statutory home care scheme and all the additional home care supports that are 577 Dáil Éireann being put in place. That has to be one of the approaches we take into the future as well.

This is not about public versus private nursing homes. Some of my family members were in private nursing homes for a long time and received great quality care. I am indebted to the people who provide, and work in, those services for the care they gave my grandparents over many years. I am sure others have had the same experience. Nursing homes, especially private nursing homes, were left in a very difficult situation during the very difficult time period of the pandemic. I will not rehearse what I have said already, but we know there were failings. Those failings must be acknowledged. If we are going to learn and change, we must first acknowledge those failings. The public inquiry I am seeking would not be a type of witch-hunt. It is not about apportioning blame. It is about establishing facts. When one establishes the facts one is in a position to learn and to deliver the changes that are necessary, which I do not doubt that the two Ministers of State who spoke are committed to in terms of their respective portfolios.

Before the pandemic arrived, there were issues relating to the need for adult safeguarding legislation. There is a commitment in the programme for Government in this regard. I accept that many legislative measures had to be put on hold as the State and the Department of Health dealt with the difficult situation of the pandemic, but we have to introduce these reforms as quickly as possible. If the Government introduces those reforms, it will have the support of Sinn Féin and the Opposition to do that as quickly as possible.

There was reference to adult social care teams. It is a fact that there is a two-tier system in the State. If somebody is a resident in a public nursing home, he or she has access to these safeguarding social care teams. If a person is one of the 80% in a private nursing home, he or she does not. There is an issue, as I have said for some time, and it has to be remedied if there is an individual instance of neglect and, in some cases, abuse. Obviously, if there are elements of abuse that are criminal in nature, the Garda of course can be involved. As we have seen previously, however, there are cases of neglect. We have seen it with Áras Attracta, Leas Cross and elsewhere. There are many instances of neglect which do not fall under the criminal code but which need to be investigated properly, yet it seems that no authority has the power of entry into a nursing home to do so. That has to change.

There is no excuse. The former Senator, Colette Kelleher, produced a Bill on adult safeguarding. We just have to do it. We must get it done and ensure that legislation is delivered. We must empower HIQA to issue compliance notices and give it more teeth to do what it needs to do. I agree with previous speakers about the TAPS funding. It cannot be money that is provided forever, but it was premature to cut that funding at a time when nursing homes are still obliged to put infection control measures in place.

I will finish by commending the Irish Association of Social Workers and Care Champions. Any review or inquiry that is carried out has to include the families of those who lost loved ones, survivors in nursing homes and the staff who did Trojan work during that time. My heart goes out to all those staff who worked in horrific circumstances. We must hear their voices. We need a public inquiry. Let us establish the truth and the facts, and then let us deliver the changes which are necessary.

Question put and agreed to.

13/07/2021RR00500Ábhair Shaincheisteanna Tráthúla - Topical Issue Matters 578 13 July 2021

13/07/2021RR00600An Leas-Cheann Comhairle: I wish to advise the House of the following matters in respect of which notice has been given under Standing Order 37 and the name of the Member in each case: (1) Deputy Joan Collins - to discuss the suspension of the North Inner City Drugs and Alcohol Task Force; (2) Deputy Jennifer Murnane O’Connor - to discuss when the assisted human reproduction Bill will be published; (3) Deputy Colm Burke - to discuss if the temporary assistance for nursing homes will be reinstated; (4) Deputies Jennifer Whitmore and David Cullinane - to discuss Covid-19 restrictions in Irish maternity hospitals; (5) Deputies Dara Cal- leary, Emer Higgins and Joe McHugh - to discuss the issue of the delays in driver theory tests, the impact these delays are having on people and the plan to address them; (6) Deputy Michael Moynihan - the availability of dental treatment to medical card holders under the dental treatment services scheme; (7) Deputy Carol Nolan - to discuss a response to the Joint Committee on Agriculture, Food and Marine’s report on proposed regulation of veterinary medicines in Ireland; (8) Deputy Brian Stanley - to discuss when we can expect the return and scaling up of cancer services; (9) Deputy Eoin Ó Broin - to discuss providing an update on the working group on defective buildings; (10) Deputy Sorca Clarke - to discuss the provision of hospice and palliative care in Longford and Westmeath; (11) Deputy Dessie Ellis - to discuss the leasing of properties from investment funds by four local authorities in Dublin to be used as social housing; (12) Deputy Chris Andrews - to discuss the regeneration of social housing complexes in inner-city Dublin following the ruling by the European Committee of Social Rights; (13) Deputy Paul McAuliffe - to discuss Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, SEAI, grants for private homeowners, delays in the process and homeowners being unable to apply for a second time; (14) Deputy Patricia Ryan - to discuss the latest cost of €2.5 billion for the new national children’s hospital; (15) Deputy Willie O’Dea - to discuss funding for ASD Ireland; (16) Deputy James Lawless - to discuss the proposed decision to not send an Irish dressage team to the Olympics this year; (17) Deputies Marian Harkin and Michael McNamara - to discuss the extension of the pyrite scheme to counties Clare and Sligo; (18) Deputies Richard O’Donoghue and Matt Carthy - to discuss the escalating cost of public liability and professional indemnity insurance; (19) Deputy Verona Murphy - to discuss the three-year waiting time for disability dental services in County Wexford and the many difficulties family carers experience; (20) Deputy Thomas Gould - to discuss the lack of greenways, cycle ways and parks on the north side of Cork city; (21) Deputy Pauline Tully - to discuss action to ensure school places are sourced for children with disabilities who receive a home tuition grant; (22) Deputies Mattie McGrath, Michael Collins, Danny Healy-Rae and Michael Healy-Rae - to discuss a full financial review into the use of taxpayer funding through various Departments and agencies to An Taisce; (23) Deputy Brendan Griffin - to discuss the need for a landing facility for the local fishing industry at Cromane, County Kerry; (24) Deputy Maurice Quinlivan - to discuss what progress is being made in the efforts to recruit a chairperson for the Shannon Group; and (25) Deputy Pearse Doherty - chun plé a dhéanamh ar cás na mná agus fir tí sa Ghaeltacht i mbliana agus na impleachtaí ag éirí as na colaistí Gaeilge a bheith curtha ar ceal.

The matters raised by Deputies Joan Collins, Whitmore and Cullinane, Calleary, Higgins and McHugh and Lawless have been selected for discussion.

13/07/2021SS00100Teachtaireachtaí ón Seanad - Messages from Seanad

13/07/2021SS00200An Leas-Cheann Comhairle: Seanad Éireann has passed the Affordable Housing Bill 2021, without amendment. Seanad Éireann has passed the Companies (Rescue Process for Small and Micro Companies) Bill 2021, without amendment. Seanad Éireann has passed the 579 Dáil Éireann Finance (Covid-19 and Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2021, without recommendation.

13/07/2021SS00300Finance (Local Property Tax) (Amendment) Bill 2021: Second Stage

13/07/2021SS00400Minister for Finance (Deputy Paschal Donohoe): I move: “That the Bill be now read a Second Time.”

In my remarks I will briefly outline the background to the introduction of the local property tax, its position in our overall taxation system and why it should be maintained but in a reformed structure. As the introduction of a property tax represented a major structural change in the tax system the local property tax was considered in depth in 2012 by an interdepartmental group chaired by Dr. Don Thornhill. Among other contributions to the debate on the optimal design of a property tax, the interdepartmental group noted the 2009 Commission on Taxation’s proposal for an annual residential property tax to be self-assessed and banded by property valuation.

The design group considered that under a market value approach applied to housing, the market value of a residential property would be related to the characteristics of the building itself, the site on which it was located and the features and amenities of the neighbourhood. There would be a relationship between the market value of a house and the benefits to the owner in terms of enjoyment of the amenity value of the properties. The group proposed a tax that would contain limited exemptions and reliefs. It was introduced in 2012 and is collected by the Revenue Commissioners. The local property tax is the largest extension of self-assessment in the history of the State, with more than 1.3 million taxpayers obliged to file local property tax returns and pay the tax in respect of approximately 1.9 million properties. The local property tax has two objectives. These are to broaden the domestic tax base and replace some of the revenue from transaction-based taxes with an annual tax.

In 2015, Dr. Thornhill was engaged to conduct a review of the local property tax. In line with one of his recommendations, the Government agreed to postpone the revaluation date from 1 November 2016 to 1 November 2019. This postponement meant that property owners continued to have their properties valued for local property tax purposes on the basis of their 1 May 2013 declared valuation and were not faced with significant increases in their local property tax liabilities in 2017, 2018 and 2019.

I initiated a further review of the local property tax which reported to me in 2019. I considered that it was essential that the principle that formed a central part of the terms of reference for the 2015 review of local property tax, which was relative stability in local property tax payments over the short and longer terms, would inform the deliberations on the matter. The review group reported in April 2019 that it had not found it possible to deliver on the maintenance of the relative stability objective for all taxpayers against a background of significant but geographically uneven variations. I deferred that valuation to 1 November 2020. Absent any change in the local property tax legislation, the valuations of properties on 1 November 2019 would have been the basis for calculating local property tax liabilities in 2020 and beyond. This would mean that 27% of residential property owners would see an increase of between €101 and €200, 28% would experience increases between €201 and €300 and 30% would see higher increases.

The Bill arises from the programme for Government, which includes a commitment to bring forward legislation in relation to the local property tax on the basis of fairness and that most 580 13 July 2021 homeowners will not face an increase in their local property tax. It is necessary to have this legislation enacted before the summer recess. This is required to enable the Revenue Commis- sioners to make the essential technical preparations to implement the various changes to the local property tax regime that are contained in the Bill before the valuation date of 1 November 2021. In the absence of this legislation, revaluation would take place on 1 November 2021.

Ideally, legislation to give effect to reform of the local property tax would have been enacted in 2020. However, the process leading to the formation of the Government and finalisation of the programme for Government, not to mention the consequences of the pandemic, meant there was not sufficient time to implement the commitments during the remainder of 2020. This, therefore, led to a third deferral, with the revaluation date moved to 1 November this year.

Home owners, especially perhaps in urban areas, may have concerns over increasing property prices since 2013 and the effects of this on their local property tax liabilities. It is important to bring a level of certainty to this area, which is another reason it is essential to have the amending legislation enacted. The local property tax was introduced in 2013 and was designed to serve a dual function. As I noted, one function is to provide a stable funding base and to deliver structural reform through broadening the base for taxation.

It is important to note that the Bill does not deal with the third element of the programme for Government commitment concerning local authority funding and, in particular, the equalisation contributions from local authorities and the decision to move to a 100% retention model. I will work with my colleagues, the Ministers for Housing, Local Government and Heritage and Public Expenditure and Reform in the 2023 and 2024 budgetary cycles.

The most noteworthy proposal in the Bill is a revised method for calculating local property tax liabilities, which is set out in section 24. The 2019 local property tax review analysed five scenarios broadly based on a €500 million target yield excluding any local adjustment factor. The analysis is based on economic modelling and the predicted outcomes can offer only indicative conclusions. A key challenge encountered during both the work on the review and the more recent analysis is the significant variation of property price increases geographically and, in particular, the uneven pace and rate of increase in residential property values throughout the country since the original valuation on 1 May 2013. A guiding principle informing the design of the local property tax is simplicity for taxpayers and for Revenue, which collects the tax. In this regard, the new basis for calculating local property tax liabilities builds on the existing band structure and is a variation of scenario 5 of the 2019 local property tax review.

The new approach maintains the number of bands at 20. Band 1 is expanded from €1 to €200,000 and band 2 contains values in the range €200,000 to €262,500. The other bands are widened by 75% to create bands of €87,500. For properties in bands 3 to 11, inclusive, a mid- point rate of 0.1029% will be charged. At present, a higher rate applies to properties valued above €1 million, with the first €1 million charged at 0.18% and everything above that at the higher rate of 0.25%. Properties are charged on the self-assessed value at individual property level. Under the proposed variation of scenario 5, it is likely that owners of high value properties with values over €1 million would benefit from reductions in local property tax liability due to the widening of the bands and the reduced rate. To address this, a higher rate will be applied to properties above €1 million by charging a higher mid-point rate on bands above €1.05 million and introducing a third rate for properties valued above €1.75 million. Therefore, properties in bands 12 to 19, inclusive, are charged a mid-point rate of 0.1029% on the first €1.05 million and 0.25% on the balance over €1.05 million. Properties in band 20 are charged 581 Dáil Éireann on individual property values as before, which is to say 0.1029% on first €1.05 million, 0.25% between €1 million and €1.75 million and 0.3% on the balance.

8 o’clock

An important principle underpinning the tax is that the number of exemptions is low, which helps to keep the tax rate low for those who are liable to pay it. Sections 10 and 13 to 15, inclusive, of the Bill accordingly provide that the exemptions for first-time buyers and homes in unfinished estates will lapse. Section 16 provides that the current exemption in respect of pyrite-damaged properties will cease to apply for new applicants after the end of the two-year period following the enactment of this Bill. Any taxpayer qualifying before that date may avail of the exemption.

In regard to damaged properties, the Government has been very active in addressing the problem of pyrite damage and the more recent manifestations of mica-related damage in some western counties. Since 2014, approximately €166 million has been provided for the pyrite remediation scheme for certain eastern counties and Limerick. I understand that more than 2,800 applications have been received under that scheme and, so far, approximately 2,380 dwellings have been included. In 2020, 1,866 properties were exempt from local property tax, LPT, under that provision. Section 18 of the Bill provides for a similar temporary exemption from LPT for homes that have been damaged as a result of the use of defective concrete blocks in their construction and whose owners are eligible for the defective concrete blocks grant scheme. The period of exemption will be six years, on a similar basis to the current pyrite exemption.

Section 20 provides that property valuations will be reviewed every four years rather than every three years. This is to achieve a balance between the timely capture of changes in the property market and the need to limit compliance costs. It also assists the regular addition of new properties into the LPT charge.

Section 21 provides that all new residential properties built between valuation dates will be retrospectively valued as if they had existed on the preceding valuation date. New properties become liable for the LPT charge at the next liability date, which is the following 1 November, and will be valued at the previous valuation date, 1 November 2021. Revenue will provide assistance to property owners to determine this value.

Section 38 implements the review group recommendation that the income thresholds for LPT deferrals be increased to €18,000 for a single owner and €30,000 for a couple. Section 37 provides for a reduction in the rate of interest on deferred LPT payments from 4% to 3%.

Currently, properties vacated by their owners due to illness may be exempt from LPT. This exemption applies to a property that was occupied by a person as his or her sole or main residence and has been vacated by the person for 12 months or more due to long-term mental or physical infirmity. An exemption may be available in situations where the property has been empty for less than 12 months if a doctor is satisfied that the person is unlikely to return to the property. In both cases, the LPT legislation currently provides that the exemption applies only where the property is not occupied by another person. I consider this to be a misaligned incen- tive with potential unintended consequences. Section 9 amends section 5 of the Finance (Local Property Tax) Act to allow a property that has been vacated by a liable person due to long-term mental or physical infirmity to be occupied by another person, who is not a liable person in respect of the property, without losing the exemption. In addition to freeing up residential

582 13 July 2021 properties for rental, this measure will also enhance the security of premises and assist with the maintenance of homes for vulnerable individuals.

Local authorities have the discretion to increase or decrease their LPT allocations via the local adjustment factor, LAF, facility by up to 15% every year. This remains unchanged under the Bill. Local authorities must notify their LAF to Revenue by 30 September if they want the adjusted rate to be effective for the following year. The review group recommended that the LAF notification to the Revenue Commissioners should occur in mid-October, except in the year that property valuations fall due for revaluation. In that instance, the LAF notification date should be 31 August at the latest to facilitate Revenue’s processing of the required notification procedure. This change is provided for in section 27 of the Bill and is in response to concerns expressed by local authorities in regard to the timing of the decision on the variation of LPT rates, which is required to be sent to Revenue on or before 30 September in the year in which the relevant liability date falls. This concern centred on the necessity to make the decision on LPT variation in isolation from other budgetary decisions.

Section 29 provides that where the qualifying conditions for exemption cease to be met during a valuation period, LPT can start to be charged based on the property’s value at the preceding valuation date. Currently, a property that is exempt on the valuation date continues to be exempt until the following valuation date, regardless of whether the qualifying conditions for the particular exemption continue to be met. I consider this situation to be anomalous and inequitable. The changes proposed will be facilitated by the availability of the Revenue valuation guidance and the publicly available property price register. The effectiveness of this change will be enhanced by having reasonably short valuation periods and regular revaluations of properties, as I have outlined.

The Bill provides for a new section 39A to be inserted into the 2012 Act to provide for the inclusion on a return to be delivered to Revenue of limited information about vacant properties. The LPT return will now contain a limited number of questions in regard to whether a property is occupied as a dwelling on 1 November 2021 and, if not occupied, whether it has been unoc- cupied for more than 12 months and why. This information, together with that obtained from other sources, will be useful in considering the case for a vacant property tax.

The Bill contains a number of other measures intended to improve the administration of the tax. It also includes amendments in the nature of minor technical adjustments. These involve minor changes to definitions and requiring exempt properties to file returns. I thank Deputies for their attention and look forward to hearing their contributions on the Bill, which I commend to the House.

13/07/2021TT00200Deputy Mairéad Farrell: I am sharing time with Deputies Guirke and Stanley. I welcome the opportunity to speak on this Bill. Sinn Féin is opposed to local property tax and the reasons for this are clear. The tax, as designed, is not only a tax on assets but a tax on debts, such that many people who are liable for it may have debts worth as much as 90% of the value of the property against which they are charged. This concern should not be readily dismissed as it is a real and immediate concern for many citizens.

On 6 July, the Joint Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage was told by Revenue that, on average, 43,000 people defer payment of the LPT every year due to inability to pay. In 2019, 50,00 homeowners deferred payment, more than 48,000 of them because they were below the income threshold. Those who do so are charged 4% interest each year for defer- 583 Dáil Éireann ral. While I acknowledge that section 37 of the Bill will reduce the annual interest rate from 4% to 3%, the fact remains that the 48,000 householders who were unable to pay in 2019 were not exempt but simply deferred payment, with interest accumulating on those deferred payments every year.

Sinn Féin unapologetically flags its concern for the workers and families who see an interest bill accumulating for tax on their home, many of whom are saddled with mortgage debt or may even find themselves in arrears or negative equity. Sinn Féin is of the view that the LPT is badly designed and unfit for purpose. Instead, we favour the introduction of a wealth tax levied against assets, not debts. The issue we have with the LPT is that it does not take account of someone’s ability to pay. It hits low and middle-income earners. A large number of pensioners have raised this issue with me on the doorsteps over the years. Many of them are still living in the home in which they raised their family and have many happy memories but they struggle to pay this tax and are very concerned about its continuation.

It is clear that this legislation is ill-conceived and ill-prepared, despite the Minister and the Government having had years to prepare for changes that have been signalled for some time. This is reflected in the serious flaws in the legislation. It is also reflected in the Minister having pressed ahead with the Bill against protocol and against the wishes and over the heads of the members of the finance committee, and despite pre-legislative scrutiny not having been completed. The motion was passed last week and the Minister probably heard my protest in that regard. I felt that flew in the face of good parliamentary practice, as no request for a waiver of pre-legislative scrutiny was made at the Business Committee.

When this issue was discussed at the finance committee, there was no agreement in that regard and nor was there any indication that the debate was in the offing. We had not undertaken the proper and thorough pre-legislative scrutiny we had hoped to undertake in respect of this Bill. That is poor parliamentary practice and undermines the role of the committee. According to the Oireachtas website, “One of the most important functions of a Dáil select committee is to consider Bills that are referred to it by Dáil Éireann”. We want to engage in debate and in scru- tinising and talking through proposed legislation. That should have been allowed to happen, but, unfortunately, we were not afforded that opportunity. Perhaps the Minister would respond to this point in his reply.

It should be noted that the introduction of a local property tax followed and coincided with a gradual squeeze on services. In that regard, the local property tax is, and always has been, intimately connected with local authority funding. Local government sources of income rely on central government transfers and own-source revenues such as commercial rates. Given that regional inequality was deepened by the financial crash and was barely recovering before the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, fiscal equalisation has been crucial for the delivery of local services. Fiscal equalisation is essential to protect financially weaker local authorities and their communities and to correct the effects of regional inequality and the unequal distribution of sources of finance. Before the introduction of a local property tax, equalisation was achieved through general purpose grants. Those grants were determined on the basis of an historical baseline of supports. As the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Eu- rope noted in 2013, “the system of distribution of grants to local governments from the Local Government Fund is not transparent and the rules have been set without consultation with local authorities”. Little changed with the introduction of the local property tax. In fact, the baseline that determines transfers from the equalisation fund is based largely on the shortfall between the tax retained locally and the old general purpose grants, with little regard given to the actual 584 13 July 2021 fiscal capacity or expenditure needs of local authorities.

I agree with Dr. Gerard Turley and Mr. Stephen McNena of the National University of Ireland Galway, NUIG, when they argue that the current regime is not fit for purpose. This legislation will coincide with local authorities retaining 100% of local property tax receipts, thereby ending redistribution of 20% of local property tax revenue through the equalisation fund. The Minister has stated that the equalisation fund will be maintained but funded through the Exchequer, with the arrangement in place over a two-year period beginning in 2023. The Minister previously stated that he will be guided by the Minister for Housing, Local Govern- ment and Heritage, Deputy Darragh O’Brien. I hope that goes well for the Minister and I wish him luck in that regard. However, this is an opportunity to redesign the equalisation model to ensure that it is fit for purpose. In 2021, 20 local authorities received equalisation payments totalling €133 million.

As stated, the current model lacks transparency and has little regard for the fiscal capacity or expenditure needs of these local authorities in the service of their communities. This has left local authorities, even those receiving transfers through the equalisation fund, underfunded in respect of the provision of local services. Local authorities constantly raise their concerns regarding funding. Galway County Council is often concerned about having sufficient funding to do all that is needed. It is essential that the current equalisation fund and how it is distributed does not simply remain the same, with funding coming from the central Exchequer rather than local property tax contributions. Indeed, we need a new model of equalisation that, in the words of Dr. Turley and Mr. McNena, “is consistent with international best practice but tailored to the specific circumstances of the home country”. We are all aware of areas badly in need of funding. Despite the impact these changes will have on local authority funding, the Government cannot tell us how equalisation will take place from 2023.

Turning to the mica redress scheme, and everything happening in respect of mica and pyrite issues, section 18 of the Bill purports to provide an exemption for those homeowners whose houses have been affected by mica and pyrite. Does it do so? It inserts a new section 10D into the Finance (Local Property Tax) Act 2012 which states that “a residential property that has been damaged as a result of the use of defective concrete blocks in its construction” will be exempt from the local property tax. However, this will only be the case if certain conditions are met. As set out in section 18, these conditions include situations where “the property has been or is being remediated” or, under section 10D(1)(a), if “a confirmation of eligibility in relation to the property has been issued”. What does “confirmation of eligibility” actually mean? Under section 10D(6), “confirmation of eligibility” has the meaning given to it by the regulations that gave effect to the current and flawed redress scheme.

In that case, applicants can only have eligibility confirmed once they have made an application to the local authority. Such applications must include an engineer’s report confirming damage caused by mica and pyrite. To spell out what that means to everyone in the Chamber and to those whose homes have been damaged by mica and pyrite, under this legislation homeowners will be required to have an engineer’s report, which costs more than €6,000, to qualify for this exemption to the local property tax. To put it another way, if homeowners whose houses are crumbling around them as a result of the mica scandal are unable to fork out €6,000 from their own pockets for an engineer’s report, they will be charged local property tax. The tax will be charged for homes that are not safe, have lost their value and will not be liveable unless a 100% redress scheme is delivered.

585 Dáil Éireann Can the Minister not see that this is a ludicrous and unworkable exemption? Does he also not see that requiring an engineer’s report to qualify for a local property tax exemption is also ludicrous, when that report costs several times more than the annual local property charge. It is completely nonsensical. Can the Minister also not see that this Bill, as it is drafted, will lead to these homeowners being charged local property tax as a result of the Government’s flawed and broken redress scheme? It is for this reason that my colleagues, Deputies Doherty and Mac Lo- chlainn, have tabled amendments on behalf of Sinn Féin so that homeowners affected by issues with mica and pyrite can apply for an exemption through a self-assessment, with the Revenue Commissioners putting guidelines in place in that regard. Once the Government has introduced a 100% redress scheme for those homeowners - which is something that Sinn Féin will continue to argue for - the Revenue Commissioners can then undertake a look-back to verify that those who applied for exemptions through self-assessment were eligible. These amendments are sen- sible and necessary to ensure that homeowners affected by mica are not charged local property tax. I urge the Minister, therefore, to accept these amendments from Sinn Féin in the interests of these homeowners. Section 18 applies with reference to the current redress scheme, which is only applicable to houses in areas administered by Donegal and Mayo county councils. This means that the legislation excludes homes affected by this issue in Clare and possibly elsewhere as well. Will the Minister confirm this is the case? If it is, then this exclusion must of course be addressed immediately.

I also raise another issue with the Minister because it concerns something close to my heart. While the local property tax will be impacting ordinary people struggling to get by, I am interested in hearing what the Government is doing to tackle the issue of vacant sites, which is plaguing many cities across the State. What is the Government going to do to make the vacant site levy a more effective tool to stop the hoarding of derelict sites in the middle of a housing crisis? One of these sites, about which I have regularly spoken in this Chamber, is close to where I live in Galway city. It is a prime example of this issue. The derelict site at the former Corrib Great Southern Hotel sits at the entrance to Galway city. It has long been an eyesore at the gateway to our city and has been the site of numerous fires and antisocial behaviour. It has been a great concern to residents for a number of years. Planning permission was given to demolish the current structure in 2010 and the site was added to the derelict sites register in 2015, which is over six years ago. Yet we are still stuck here with this eyesore in one of the most prominent locations on the east side of Galway city. We just cannot afford to leave lands lying idle in Galway when young people cannot find an affordable home and there is a crisis in student accommodation and massive housing waiting lists. While the Government is hell-bent on making ordinary people pay the local property tax, I am wondering what is being done to address the hoarding of this kind of land in areas like Galway city.

The Minister has brought forward a Bill that contains serious flaws, some of which I have spoken to this evening. These flaws must be addressed as a matter of urgency. I also note that the changes brought about by this legislation will result in an increase in bills for 36% of homeowners, while workers and families who are unable to pay will continue to see their interest bill rise on payments they must defer as a matter of necessity. I reiterate that Sinn Féin is opposed to the local property tax. It is badly designed and has failed to deliver quality local services for local communities. It is a tax that charges debt, not simply assets. Given the legislation before us and the consequences it will have, I ask the Minister to address the concerns I have raised and correct flaws in what is clearly ill-thought-out and rushed legislation.

13/07/2021VV00200Deputy Johnny Guirke: The local property tax, or the tax on the roof over people’s heads, 586 13 July 2021 was introduced eight years ago in 2013. Even people who own their home feel like they are still paying a mortgage, albeit at a lower level, and feel they are never truly finished paying for the privilege of living in their own home. The local property tax has no consideration for people’s ability to pay. People are struggling at the minute with huge mortgages that they will have for the next 20 or 30 years, and many of them are in arrears. There is no consideration given to old age pensioners, who might be asset rich but income poor. Family homes are not wealth because they do not produce revenue streams.

Local services in my area of Meath West have not improved since the local property tax was introduced. It is as simple as that. I will tell the Minister why that is. In 2014, I was a councillor on Meath County Council. That year, and every year since, the people of Meath paid €18 million in property tax. When the Minister at the time, Phil Hogan, said that the local authorities would keep 80% of tax collected, he did not tell the people that other Government grants almost totalling the same amount would be withdrawn. Between the equalisation fund of €3.5 million going to other counties and grants being taken away, the people of Meath were better off by €900,000 for their €18 million. Since 2013, the people of Meath have paid €144 million in property tax. The only difference the property tax made to the Meath people was €7.2 million, out of €144 million paid by homeowners. That is why services in my county have not improved under the local property tax. Will the same happen again? The Minister says that local authorities can keep this money but will other grants be taken away? If I had to guess, I would say they will.

13/07/2021VV00300Deputy Brian Stanley: I welcome the opportunity to speak on this Bill, at which I had a good look today. Many homeowners across my constituency of Laois-Offaly are experiencing serious financial hardship, not just with huge debts on houses but because the last 18 months of Covid have meant a huge hit on their income. For many of those families, the recent announcement by the Government regarding the local property tax has caused further distress and concern. The truth is that the local property tax is a tax on the family home, not on wealth or accumulated property. The tax does not just affect cuckoo funds, millionaires and speculators; it targets everyone, including those who have very little besides the roof over their heads.

Thanks to these proposed changes by the Government, 36% of homeowners will see an increase in their property tax. Some of them may live in a house that has a high monetary value but they may have very little income, and do not have the income to do very much with that house. These are homeowners who already paid stamp duty when they bought the house. Many of these homeowners have some of the highest mortgage interest rates in the European Union and they have huge outstanding capital sums on those mortgages. The local property tax effectively becomes a tax on debt. Some of these people also pay management charges if they live in multi-unit housing or apartment complexes, so they pay again there. These families still fork out money for privatised local services such as refuse collection and pay their taxes for the upkeep of roads, schools and everything else. People pay a lot of local charges but many of the charges they pay are privatised local charges, on top of this local property tax. If homeowners are being asked to pay an increase in property tax, they should have a right to know exactly what they are getting in return.

The Minister has confirmed that these changes will mean councils can keep all the money raised from property taxes, instead of the 80% they can currently retain. However, as one of my colleagues alluded to, this takes from one county and gives to another. Counties with low levels of commercial rates, which do not have a strong broad commercial rate base, will be left in a vulnerable position. At present, Laois and Offaly county councils receive funding from the 587 Dáil Éireann equalisation fund. What will happen to those councils after the two years’ grace is up? Will the Government commit to making up the shortfalls that many councils are certain to face through Exchequer funding? For how many years will that funding be provided?

We in Sinn Féin have argued consistently that this tax is not a wealth tax. It is a tax on the family home and on the roof over your head. In its current form it must be scrapped. We need to have a serious conversation about the best way to tax wealth and to fund local authorities. I have taken part in many discussions over the years on this subject, in the Dáil Chamber, in council chambers and in other forums through the local authorities. It is important that we do that. This tax needs to be scrapped because it is unfair as it is currently constructed.

13/07/2021VV00400Deputy Ged Nash: I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak on this important Bill. As social democrats and a social democratic, left-of-centre party, the Labour Party supports the principle of a tax on property. When it comes to taxes on assets, some who claim to be of the left cannot find it within themselves to support a modest charge on property for the running of local services. I find that position incomprehensible and indefensible. In my view, people should not get to credibly call themselves socialists or social democrats if they fail to pass this test. Taxes on wealth are a central tenet of left-wing thought on mainstream economics and whether we like it or not, all the evidence tells us that a very serious quantum of wealth in Ire- land is held in assets. It is not in cash or income from employment and enterprise but in assets, and those assets include property. It is normal everywhere for taxes to be collected against the objective valuation of the asset that people call their home. What the Irish local property tax system provides for is a relatively small charge, with compliance rates of about 95%. Opposi- tion to the principle and operation of the local property tax from the likes of Sinn Féin is just not credible when it levies, and is happy to collect, multiples of the local property tax to run what are regarded as generally good local authority services in the North. We have seen very peculiar alliances emerge on local authorities, sometimes between Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil, Sinn Féin and People Before Profit, which are parties right across the political spectrum, demanding cuts to the local property tax that would impinge on local services. More often than not, parties like the Labour Party, the Social Democrats and the Green Party acted as the adults in the room. This is a fair tax and the definition of progressive taxation in that the more the asset is worth, the more you pay. That is as it should be. There cannot be progressive taxes on wealth if property is excluded. That does not work and it does not stand up to the thinnest of scrutiny.

If the pandemic has taught us anything, it is that it is the State, working with others, to which citizens look to deal with the big issues of our time. The pandemic has also exposed some of the weaknesses and gaps in the local community services that are operated by local authorities and others. People have a better understanding of those gaps now. They have a better understanding of how local parks and services need to be improved and that all of this has to be paid for through a sustainable local income source that is democratically controlled at local level. As matters stand, less than 10% of all public spending in this country occurs at local level. This compares with an EU average of 23%. In Ireland, we famously have a centralised form of government and decision-making. Few powers are available at local government level. Until it is decided to allow local authorities to raise more revenue and take responsibility for more services, as is the case in the UK, local government will continue to be a form of local management and administration, not local government in the widely understood sense of the term.

The Bill before us is a long overdue series of reforms to the local property tax system. We in the Labour Party support the thrust of the Bill and will propose amendments to sections that we believe require some attention from the House. It is good that the post-2013 exemptions from 588 13 July 2021 the local property tax are to be removed. There is no longer any justification for that measure to continue. It is also welcome that the Bill provides for an exemption to those who are affected by the serious mica problem, similar to the exemption provided for property owners affected by pyrite. That is to be acknowledged.

It is also positive that local authorities will, from a point in the near future, retain all of the local property tax raised in their administrative area. This is an important measure to make the local property tax and the link to local services much clearer. I am glad that solidarity will continue to be shown with local councils in areas that benefited from the equalisation fund. We are one country after all and economic transfers are an important and well-established feature and instrument of public policy. The Minister made it clear earlier that there are some issues to be worked through in that regard between his Department, the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform and the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage. The legislation also provides for cases where investment funds are leasing properties to councils or approved housing bodies, AHBs, for 20 years or more. In that case, it will be the lessor which picks up the local property tax tab, not the council or the AHB. This is an important protection for local councils and voluntary housing groups and means the tenant will be protected from having to pay.

The current system of local property tax was based on self-assessment. When this Bill is enacted there will be an obligation on the liable person to make a return to Revenue. Where someone is found to have taken steps to undervalue a property and, therefore, reduce his or her local property tax liability, this should be treated as a form of tax fraud and attract serious penalties and sanctions. The ability of a liable person to defer his or her local property tax liabilities under certain defined circumstances has assisted a great many people, especially some older citizens who may, on the face of it, be asset-rich in terms of the value of their home but may in reality be cash-poor.

I note that the deferral thresholds are being amended for single liable persons and for those who are married or cohabiting. The economic picture has changed considerably since the dark days when the tax was first introduced and wages and incomes have thankfully risen since the system was first devised. My assessment is that the thresholds could be raised to a higher level. They could be raised to just below €22,000 for a single person, which would be the gross income of one worker on the hourly rate of the national minimum wage who is employed full time. Will the Minister apprise the House of how the thresholds were devised? Why is the threshold for a single person pitched at €18,000 and not €20,000 or €22,000? I note from the 2019 local property tax review that consideration was given to moving the threshold for deferral up to €20,000 for those who are aged 80 or over and live alone and those who have a long-term illness or disability and live alone.

I also ask the Minister to take another look at the position with regard to the provision around the adjustment for mortgage interest, which stands at 80%. We will propose an amendment on Committee Stage that the system should not be wound down but retained and the 80% figure should be increased to 100%. The new bands are pitched about right but more can and should be raised by adjusting the planned 0.25% levied on properties worth over €1.05 million to 0.3% and the 0.3% levied on homes worth over €1.75 million to 0.4%. Again, we have proposed an amendment in this regard and I will make the case for it on Committee Stage tomorrow. I am also wondering why the interest rate for those in receipt of the State pension who defer will be a punitive 3%, albeit down from 4%, and not the European Central Bank, ECB, lending rate, which is much lower. The deferral is only available to those who meet strict thresholds and 589 Dáil Éireann are, by any stretch of the imagination, less well-off and in many cases experiencing poverty or relative poverty.

This Bill should not be the end of the matter. We can and should deploy the tax system to raise revenue for services in a fair way and disincentivise residential property owners from sitting on properties that are vacant and not in use and watching their value go up all of the time. We need to get a clear picture of where those vacant properties are. This new legislation, and regulations around it, will allow the relevant Departments and the Revenue Commissioners to do just that. We know from previous analysis from the Business Post that large build-to-rent developments such as Clancy Quay and Capital Dock, which are not far from here, are not fully occupied. This is a scandal at any time but especially so at a time of such acute need for so many. My colleague, Senator Moynihan, and I have repeatedly made the case, as have others in the House, for a vacant homes tax. There is an urgency around this kind of reform and I hope the Minister will bring such reform to the House for a full debate as a matter of urgency. That should be his next move.

13/07/2021WW00200Deputy Richard Bruton: I welcome this Bill. It is important that a tax like this be updated regularly. We are eight years on from the original evaluation in 2013. There is never a good time to update the valuations but we saw the consequence of not doing that. The revaluation of commercial property caused untold controversy because valuations that had been set years ago on the basis of rental values were suddenly changed to try to catch up with the reality of the marketplace. That caused serious consternation. The Minister is right to move to regular revaluation of properties on a four-year cycle. It will avoid these types of problems arising.

I do not know who it was but a wise person once said, “To tax and to please, no more than to love and be wise, is not given to men.” I do not envy the Minister for Finance the task he has been given in trying to arrange a system of new valuations at lower rates. He has done the work of Solomon in trying to design a system that is as fair as possible but does not give a sudden shock to people who have been used to paying at a certain rate. A small number of people will see their property tax increase. I recognise that and that it will create a pushback but the Minister has done extraordinary work on this.

It is important that we recognise that this tax broadening measure, which was introduced some years ago, is something we should protect and keep as a viable source of revenue. So often in my career, I have seen taxes that were designed to broaden the tax base introduced and then whittled away by one allowance or another, some hard case or another special measure. As a result, we ended up losing the capacity to broaden our tax base. The Minister has done a worthwhile job for us in ensuring this can be a solid part of our tax base into the future.

I agree with the points made by Deputy Nash. We need to rethink the ways in which we tax property. I hope that the Commission on Taxation and Welfare will look at some of the anoma- lies that have given rise to poor occupancy rates. People of my vintage are often rattling around in houses that are way beyond their needs at a time when others with families are cramped into small apartments. It is difficult to make those moves because the tax system does not facilitate it. Capital acquisitions tax, deposit interest retention tax and the rules about access to the fair deal scheme, the nursing home subvention, do not encourage people to make moves that are probably good for them and for the community. If those moves were made more attractive, people would make those moves. Every night in this country, we have 2 million bedrooms empty at a time when we have a housing crisis because of the poor occupancy patterns that are way out of line with the rest of Europe. We must think beyond the Bill. I hope the Commission 590 13 July 2021 on Taxation and Welfare will take a hard look at that.

13/07/2021XX00200An Leas-Cheann Comhairle: The Deputy’s colleague is not here.

13/07/2021XX00300Deputy Richard Bruton: Did I concede too soon?

13/07/2021XX00400An Leas-Cheann Comhairle: You did. I call Deputy Quinlivan.

13/07/2021XX00500Deputy Maurice Quinlivan: We in Sinn Féin believe this is not a fair tax. We have been consistent on that position from start. It hits low- and middle-income families the hardest, as many are already struggling with negative equity and high mortgage interest payments. Also included in the tax are homes and estates that are not taken in charge and therefore get few, if any, local authority services. Council tenants who do not own their homes are included in this tax.

This tax has never delivered what it was supposed to. It has not delivered the extra local services that were promised when it was delivered. While the Bill contains proposals to increase the share that will be assigned to local areas from 2023 onwards, I remain sceptical as to how much will actually be delivered.

We all remember at its inception that the new tax was to fund local government while at the same time a similar amount of funding from central Government subvention was withdrawn and, therefore, virtually no additional local services were ever delivered. I was a council member for a number of years and remember it well. Homeowners should not be burdened with this unfair local property tax. We have seen from information recently released by the Revenue Commissioners that, on average, 43,000 people defer payments every year. This shows it is a burden too far for many home occupiers. Those who defer are charged an interest rate on the tax, as the Minister knows. That is wrong. Those who are unable pay are burdened with additional charges and if you cannot pay, your debt grows and grows. The tax does not take into account people’s ability to pay. While there are different bands depending on property valuation, for those on the lowest incomes, the tax amount is still far too much.

As I have outlined, I am opposed to this tax but in the absence of it being abolished, we must look at how it operates and the adjustments that are proposed. The adjustment to the lower property tax band is a positive step and should reduce the local property tax burden for some of our lower earners. In March, Daft.ie issued a report showing that the average asking price for a house in Limerick city and its suburbs is €225,000, which represents an increase of 11.6%. It is an amount that excludes many local people from mortgage application. How can we expect somebody who is renting on a low to medium income to be able to afford such a place without putting them under excessive stress to keep up their repayments and then saddle them with a further tax on their home? While the bands have been adjusted, tax on a home worth €225,000 is still too much, particularly when the necessary local services are not being provided. We persist with this tax that does not take account of people’s ability to pay. Many of our older citizens may own their properties but are income poor. We need a more progressive way to fund local authorities, many of which have not seen the benefits of the property tax, a tax that was introduced as part of a suite of measures to bail out the banks at the time.

I have a problem with the timing of the Bill. We are talking about much money being taken from somebody’s pocket and that is a significant responsibility we take on as elected Deputies. It is particularly important that sufficient time is afforded for us to discuss such issues. I would like to record my distaste at how this Bill is being rammed through before the end of term. The 591 Dáil Éireann Joint Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach should have been allowed to do its work and fully scrutinise the Bill but it was denied that opportunity. We are now discussing a Bill that was only published on the Oireachtas website last Friday. That is not good enough for any legislation, let alone legislation that affects people’s money.

13/07/2021XX00600Deputy Catherine Murphy: It is fair to say that how local government is funded in Ireland is so opaque that most people find it difficult to get to grips with the origin of the system. When the local property tax was introduced in 2013, it was based, as we know, on the market value of a house or apartment. It does not, however, take into account people’s ability to pay with the exception of allowing for deferral on the grounds of hardship. It does not take into account the equity. In situations where a house is in negative equity, the market value still applies. Those are significant issues for a local property tax.

The tax is not collected locally as it is in most other countries. It is instead collected by the Revenue Commissioners. A previous contributor talked about the high level of compliance and that high level exists because the tax is collected by the Revenue Commissioners. In most other countries, the tax is collected locally. In this situation, if the tax is not paid, it is a charge on the property. In circumstances where taxes are raised and collected locally, there is often a political choice about how much tax is raised and what it is intended to be spent on. This is a local tax. It is an issue that is politically defining. Left-wing governments often raise more taxes and collectively do more things. I have friends who live in France. They pay a lot of local property tax but they get childcare, elder care, summer activities, local policing and high levels of maintenance. There is a vast difference across Europe and in places such as France, taxpayers pay their tax collectively and feel they get some value in return.

We have a centralised system of decision-making and our local government is more like a system of local administration because many of the functions and decisions are taken by the Executive, the paid officials, rather than the directly-elected councillors. Long leasing of social housing from vulture funds is in the news at the moment and councillors were the last ones to know about that. It is very much a feature of our local government and administrative system.

When local property tax was introduced in 2013, we were told it would improve local amenities. According to the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage website:

Local Property Tax allocations paid from the Local Government Fund help fund essential local services such as, public parks; libraries; open spaces and leisure amenities; planning and development; fire and emergency services; maintenance and cleaning of streets and street lighting – all benefitting citizens directly.

There is no doubt but that those are all valuable services but the expectation was that there was going to be something additional when the local property tax was introduced. That was how it was sold. In fact, what happened was the local government fund, which was made up of the local tax receipts, was gradually withdrawn over a few years when the local property tax was introduced. The property was a replacement tax rather than an addition. It is not unusual for people to ask what they are getting for the taxes they pay because they have not seen the additionality they expected to see when they were paying an additional tax.

The main thrust of the legislation before us is to do a revaluation and to bring houses and apartments that were built since 2013 and were excluded from the tax until now into the local property tax. Will that mean there will be more money available to be spent at a local level?

592 13 July 2021 The issue is that it will not, necessarily. The method of distribution of the local property tax has not changed since the fund was made up from the motor tax fund. The system of distribution of the tax is broadly the same. It goes back to the needs and resources model from the year 2000. Basically, it counts the needs of a council. If, for example, a council had 1,000 staff, ten libraries and four swimming pools, the matching resources were calculated to meet those needs, hence the needs and resources model. A baseline was set for each council based on this. The problem was that not every council was starting from the same baseline and the model took no account at all of the population and shifts in population. It still does not take any account of that. Essentially, areas that did not exist in the year 2000 will have needs as a consequence of a whole new community being built. And yet, there is no provision whatsoever within those baselines. The Minister spoke about this possibly being changed in the future but I have been listening to this for a decade or more.

Staffing levels are very uneven across the country. County Meath, for example, which is a growing area, has somewhere in the region of 650 staff whereas County Kerry has 50,000 less of a population and more than 1,000 staff. It is a complete mismatch and that is for historical reasons. The whole point, however, is that we evolve that over time to create some degree of fairness. It is the same case with facilities such as swimming pools, for example. County Kildare has only two public swimming pools for a population of 220,000 people. That is for one pool for every 110,000 people whereas our standard is set at one for every 50,000 people. Our funding system has nothing to do with population density and yet the baselines take no account of that whatsoever.

Counties such as Fingal, Kildare and Meath, which have rapidly growing populations and evolving needs, never get the resources to catch up. The baseline for those areas remains stuck in time. That one-dimensional development causes a huge amount of resentment. People will say that all they get are more and more houses but not the matching facilities and services. One then must have the fundraisers and all the rest. I am not saying that is not required anyway but the resources are not there to match that. The expectation was that the local property tax could be an aspect of that. The way it is designed, however, mitigates against that with regard to the baselines.

Consider the totality of what the various councils receive. I looked at the total income for each of the local authorities because people might say that a particular county might have more in commercial rates or might get more from another source of funding. If one looks at the total income for each local authority and make some comparisons, however, it gives some sort of an understanding of how daft our system is. I will leave places like Leitrim and Dublin out because they are unique; one is a capital city and one has a very tiny population in what is geographically a fairly big area.

Let us look at counties Wicklow and Mayo, for example. Wicklow has a gross expenditure of €91 million. Mayo has a gross expenditure of €125 million. Wicklow has a population of 142,000 and Mayo has a population that is 12,000 lower, at 130,000. Wicklow has €35 million less to spend than Mayo. We might then look at what happens with the property tax in those two counties. We have already established that Mayo has €35 million more to spend and has a smaller population. Both have many towns and a big rural area so they are quite similar. In- cluded in their income is the local property tax. I am using 2017 figures because I previously made a submission on this. They have not changed much since, however. As the Minister knows, the local property tax has not changed and that is what this Bill is about. Wicklow took in €17 million in local property tax and Mayo collected €10 million. Wicklow had a benchmark 593 Dáil Éireann of just €8.5 million, however. This is going back to the needs and resources model from the year 2000. It had a benchmark that was set at €8.5 million while Mayo had a benchmark of €19.8 million.

Wicklow was, therefore, stuck in time. It did not matter that it was growing or that it had additional population and new needs. Wicklow, with a bigger population and less money, was deemed to have €13 million in excess of what was needed from the local property tax. It had to put 20% into an equalisation fund and was then restricted in what it was permitted to spend from some of the remainder of the local property tax. This is called the self-fund element and it must be spent on capital projects instead of funding being provided through central funds. This is where we really need to be paying attention regarding how local property tax is supposed to fund councils. Roads and housing are deemed to be the two areas on which councils must spend their money.

We know that Wicklow took in €17 million in local property tax and Mayo took in €10 million. Mayo, however, got €19.8 million out of the fund, even though it had a bigger income from all the collective sources. I am not saying it does not need the money and would not have the ability to spend it. The unequal nature of these baselines are highly problematic and make it very difficult to argue that this is a fair tax, even if one takes the other issues into consideration.

I received a reply to a parliamentary question from the Minister stating that the 20% equalisation fund would be phased out and councils would retain all their tax. The problem with the baselines, however, is what they now require of local authorities. If the local authorities take in a lot more money, the baselines will mitigate them having the discretion to spend that money on the things they deem to be needed in their county, even in counties with a very large growing population. They must spend it on roads or housing. Only six or eight counties fall into that particular category. Essentially, what will happen is the central Exchequer will reduce the amount of central government grants that will go to those counties, even though they are less well-off than some other counties when one looks at their total income.

People are right to ask what they are getting for this local property tax. It is a fair question. They want to see the additional services. They do not want this one-dimensional development where they see rows and rows of housing without the ability to fund parks and playgrounds, normal maintenance or things one would expect to see. We are going into a very challenging time as well. Local property tax made up between 8% and 10% of council budgets but obviously now with Covid-19, commercial rates will be very significantly hit. Welcome and justi- fied subsidies were given to the commercial rates sector in the context of Covid-19 but there will be a lot of recovery and a loss of income there in terms of the commercial rates. That will make these baselines even more problematic and those councils, which appear to be well-off, will be well-off in terms of growing populations but not with the services to match those growing populations.

On a number of other points, I believe the 3% interest should be 0% interest.

9 o’clock

We are really talking about people who are very poor and who are having to go and seek deferrals on the basis of their just not having the ability to pay. I do not understand why we would be charging interest on a deferral. It is something which would at least be of some assistance. I have seen so many pensioners who are struggling to try to pay their local property tax. I have

594 13 July 2021 told them they really should consider deferring. When you start seeing people deciding not to heat their home or not spending money on things they should be able to afford and which they need, in many cases it is because they do not want to leave a burden for their family. That is the kind of thinking here, particularly with older people. There are many different ways a local property tax system could be designed, and it can be done in a fair way. The distribution of the resources is equally important and we have go that very badly wrong; it is very unfair. The more people appreciate it is unfair and do not see a return on it, the more significant resentment builds up.

The local government system is overly centralised. It is not fit for purpose when compared with local government systems across Europe, many of which have many more functions than ours has here. We have far too much localism at a national level and not enough discretion at local government level. That must be looked at in the context of how we fund our local government system.

13/07/2021ZZ00200Deputy Jennifer Carroll MacNeill: I thank the Minister for bringing forward this legislation. It is always difficult to bring in legislation of this kind or, indeed, any tax legislation. As my colleague, Deputy Bruton, said, there is never a good time to do this.

Recognising the changes the Minister has made to the bands, rates and so on, the difficulty taxpayers in my area of Dún Laoghaire are going to face will be in the context of revaluations. It is completely understandable that there be a revaluation from 2013 values. At that time, the State was on the cusp of an International Monetary Fund, IMF, bailout and we were trying to recover our employment situation, which had been so desperately bad. The valuations which people placed on their properties at that time, and on the basis of which they have been paying tax, were comparatively low. Nearly a decade later, the value of property has jumped quite a lot. The issue in my area, as in so many others, is going to be around revaluations.

People understand the nature of this tax and the basis for it. When it was introduced, we were entirely dependent on transaction taxes and income taxes. Both of those fell of a cliff when the financial crisis occurred. There is a real need for us, as a mature state, to have a broad-based and stable revenue generation mechanism, and the property tax contributes to that. I acknowledge the different measures the Minister has taken to try to enhance the fairness of it. He has brought in the new property owners since 2013 and he is encouraging measures to reduce vacancy and to bring those properties, particularly ones understandably vacated due to illness, back into use for other people. A rebalancing and fairness measure of interest to my constituents will be the redistribution of the property tax that is collected and keeping it 100% in the locality. That will be important to people.

People in my constituency are always surprised when they hear the proportion of property tax they pay goes to other parts of the country, although it is understandable why that was so for the period. However, property values in Dún Laoghaire have gone up very considerably, which is due to the finite amount of space and the increasing number of people who want live there. People there are potentially facing higher property taxes than those in other parts of the country. They will continue to pay but it is important to acknowledge that the money they are paying to local government will stay in their area and that they will see the benefit of that. It is not sustainable for me, as a Deputy for Dún Laoghaire, to say that this should be reduced, that the people in my area should be protected or that this or that group should be protected. We are a collective in Dáil Éireann and we are trying to fund the interests of the State generally. It is true there are some constituencies where constituents are going to face higher taxes than others 595 Dáil Éireann because of property values, but we must be honest about the need to fund the State in a sustainable way. There is a dishonesty otherwise. It is simply not credible to oppose a tax of such progressivity and, in particular, for Sinn Féin to oppose it outright. There is broad consensus on this, although there are matters of detail in respect of which we will disagree. There is a progressivity to what is proposed that is genuinely fair. People want to see a sustainability to our tax base. We do not ever again need to go through the shocks we experienced before. I acknowledge that this is difficult legislation to bring in and difficult for some Deputies to accept.

13/07/2021ZZ00300Deputy Paul McAuliffe: I welcome the Minister. As Fianna Fáil spokesperson on local government, I welcome the opportunity to contribute to the debate.

In 2013, I and many of my colleagues on Dublin City Council described this as the wrong tax at the wrong time. The timing was obviously very difficult for many people but the tax was a market value-based tax rather than a site value-based one. The Bill before us defines one of the real issues with the current system, namely, it will require us to constantly review the valuations. There is much work still to be done on the local property tax and we should look at more innovative, progressive and different ways to use our local property tax. I accept, however, even with Covid and everything else, that now is the time for us to take the difficult decision to amend the valuations and to get on with doing so.

I should acknowledge that the Government has made a significant attempt to ensure that the vast majority of people will not pay more tax as a result of this Bill or the revaluations that will take place. That is a significant achievement given the significant increase in property values over that time. The second thing is, we should acknowledge that while there are some people who have not paid the local tax since 2013, they will be covered by this new scheme. That will be a significant hit for many of those people. While some might say that those people have not paid it since 2013 and the rest of us have, I acknowledge that this will be significant for people, that they will be making a payment they have not made before and that this is a very difficult time for some of them to do so.

That said, I also want to discuss how this tax is spent. There are two positives in here. One is the ending of the equalisation fund, which will ensure that 100% of the taxes raised in the local area will stay in the local area. That is really important because one of the fundamental tenets of how this tax was sold to people was that it would help fund the services in their area. Restoring 100% retention in places like Dublin and in many counties will ensure that money is spent in the local areas and councillors will welcome that. However, councillors and communities will only welcome it if it genuinely does stay in their communities. Two things must happen for that to be the case. First, we must not replace existing grants and funding streams by looking at what increased funding councils will get from this scheme and, second, we must ensure that we match the shortfall in the local government fund to ensure those counties which will now not receive that overflow are correctly funded. At the committee, I think it was estimated to be in the region of €90 million. This is a significant amount and we must start looking now at how we will address that so there is a genuine benefit to this Bill, that more money is kept locally and that where money does not come from the equalisation funds, it will be replaced by a commitment from Government.

13/07/2021AAA00100Deputy Mark Ward: The mounting debts of people deferring payment of their local property tax due to inability to pay are extremely worrying. Information revealed by the Revenue Commissioners last year indicates that, on average, 43,000 people defer their payments every year. I suspect the number has increased this year because of the unprecedented times we are 596 13 July 2021 living in. Workers and families do not defer payment lightly but do so because they cannot afford to pay. If the local property tax was truly a wealth tax, this would not happen and we would not saddle ordinary people with huge bills when they just cannot afford to pay them. I commend the Sinn Féin team on South Dublin County Council, which yesterday reduced local property tax for the council’s area by the maximum 15% allowed.

We should get one thing straight, which is that the local property tax is unfair because it is a tax on the family home. It is a yearly tax on top of increases in other costs of living. People have gone through financial hardship in the past 18 months that is unprecedented and Covid-19 has had a financial impact on families the life of which we have not seen before. The Govern- ment rammed through legislation without proper scrutiny or consultation last week. Rushed laws are bad laws.

The Government has a habit of bypassing democracy and bulldozing through legislation. This week again we will see the liberal use of such bulldozing through of legislation without adequate debate. An example is the legislation on indoor dining restrictions for unvaccinated people, which needs to be the subject of a full debate. The Government cannot rush through legislation that to all intents and purposes creates a two-tier society.

Our Whip, Deputy Mac Lochlainn, only this morning proposed that the Dáil should not go into recess this week but should rather remain sitting to deal with legislation. The latter would be preferable to the Government railroading through legislation relating to local property tax, public health restrictions and many other matters. We should take our time and give this process the responsible deliberation it needs. Public health requirements do not take a break during a pandemic and neither should the Dáil.

The local property tax is another bill that people cannot afford and it comes on top of other increases mentioned earlier. For example, only this morning I was contacted by residents in Lucan who have been hit with an 8% rent increase. If the average rent in the Lucan area is €2,000 per month, the rent will increase to €2,160. This is also a result of Government legislation that did not take on board Sinn Féin proposals for a rent freeze. The legislation had gaps that industrial landlords could exploit in order to raise rents for ordinary workers and families. It is legislation that makes things worse and not better for already struggling families.

Fine Gael is talking out of both sides of its mouth. While it is pushing through this Bill tonight, it was a Fine Gael proposal on South Dublin County Council to reduce the local property tax by 15%. It seems the party’s councillors are not falling into line with Government policy.

13/07/2021AAA00200Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett: The view of People Before Profit, as the Minister knows well, is that the property tax is an unjust, regressive and unfair tax on the family homes of large numbers of working people who have struggled to purchase a home and then have this tax imposed on them. This tax takes no account whatever of their income and their ability to pay.

When it was introduced, and contrary to some of the comments made by the Minister about the rationale for the tax, we were told that imposing this tax on the family home would lead to more funding for local government and it would also do something to dampen the property market. It was a response, if you like, to the madness of the Celtic tiger. That was the rationale put forward at the time to justify the tax. The broadening of the tax base might have been mentioned as well but the two central arguments put forward was that it would lead to more money for local government, leading to better local services, and it would do something to dampen

597 Dáil Éireann the madness of the property market. The fact is that it has done neither of these. There has not been an extra cent for local services or government as a result of the tax because it replaced central government grants. In many cases, services have declined significantly in key areas. It is self-evident that this did absolutely nothing to dampen property prices and the craziness of the property market we saw during 2006, 2007 and 2008, which led to the crash. We are seeing it again now, with property prices rocketing once more.

There is a reason the Government deferred the revaluations and is trying to put some measures in this Bill to try to limit the unfairness that would result from a revaluation in line with the original flawed and unfair tax. It must adjust it because otherwise the Government would face massive political anger arising from any change in line with the original tax. It is an acknowledgement of all the points we have made from the outset that this is a fundamentally unfair tax. Although the Government has now taken measures to try to ameliorate its unfairness, fundamentally, that unfairness remains and will continue as long as there are revaluations every four years and resulting property tax increases.

I will briefly restate the reasons this is a fundamentally unfair tax. As was stated earlier, this is in many cases a tax on a debt, as a person may be paying a huge mortgage. It is a tax that is charged at different levels based on where a person happens to live, regardless of the fact that people’s incomes may be the same as those in other areas being asked to pay less. It is a fundamental unfairness that is not addressed in this Bill and the point has never really been acknowledged or addressed by the Government. It is an unfairness we have always alleged about this tax.

I would be interested to hear the Minister respond to the following point. An additional injustice was uncovered in an email I received a while ago to our office. It relates to the interest charged for deferrals, and I note the deferral threshold has been increased to €18,000 from €15,000. I did not fully comprehend it until now. If the deferral is based on an income of less than €15,000, it means we will impose interest on people who cannot pay because they are too poor. A person will be punished by having interest imposed in respect of the deferral that will have to be paid at some time. I had not realised until this elderly woman contacted my office that this is not simple interest on the total sum over the years when a person is forced to defer because he or she is too poor to pay. It is compound interest, which is even worse, and I can go through the details of a case indicating how it makes it worse. If a person is paying €405 per year in property tax and defers because he or she is earning €15,000 or less, or now €18,000, that 4% is added annually. This means the person would owe €4,212 after ten years instead of €4,050 if the tax had been paid each year. That would be if it was simple interest, but it is not. It is compound interest. In fact, at the end of ten years €5,103 in tax will have been paid, which is €891 more than the cost of ten year’s property tax paid each year. A person will be punished for being poor by having an additional two years of property tax loaded on. For being too poor to pay the property tax for ten years a person is then forced to pay 12 year’s of property tax. That is grossly unfair.

The elderly woman who contacted us to point this out was so embarrassed by the fact that she had to defer, that her income was so low and that she was unable to pay. She was also too embarrassed to even tell her family members about her predicament and her low income. This is what the Government is doing to the elderly, to the vulnerable and to income poor people who happen to live in a property that results in a certain valuation and the imposition of a certain level of tax. This is grossly unfair and regressive. It stuns me that Deputies can say it is a progressive tax. It is not a progressive tax in that regard. 598 13 July 2021 This will also punish people in particular sectors who have lost considerable income during the Covid restrictions. These are groups I often talk about such as taxi drivers, musicians, artists, people in the performing arts and in tourism and so on. They are going to be punished. Their income will have gone down considerably over the past year and yet they are still to be landed with the same tax as somebody who might not have lost a cent, or indeed the multimillionaires and billionaires who have actually gained massively during Covid.

This brings me to my last question. What is the alternative? In our 2020 budget submission we costed in an alternative. For example, €400 million could be raised by not charging anything on a principal private residence and by charging €600 a year for a second house, €1,000 per year for a third and fourth house, and €1,500 per year for all houses in excess of four houses. That would be a genuine wealth tax and it would raise €400 million per year or, as we have proposed every year, a 2% tax could be put on the top 85,000 households that own 53% of all the household wealth and assets in the State, which this year is up to €880 billion, an increase of €37 billion on last year. The Central Bank’s quarterly report stated that this is mostly driven by an increase in investments, currency and financial rises in assets. Why not tax them 2% and raise €2 billion to €3 billion a year? That is a hell of a lot more than the Minister is getting from the property tax and a hell of a lot fairer. They would not even feel it and the Minister would not have to punish people who have little income but who have a tax imposed on them because they happen to have their own home.

13/07/2021BBB00200Deputy Paul Murphy: I am listening to this debate and some people here are in need of a history lesson, as well as perhaps a mathematical lesson in terms of what progressivity means and what it is meant to relate to, which is income and wealth. In any case, I will deal with the history lesson first.

The local property tax was first introduced in 2013 as part of the Fine Gael and the Labour Party Government’s austerity agenda to make working people pay for the economic crash and the bank bailout. It was met with a massive campaign of opposition with tens of thousands of people mobilising. I remember protesting outside this building whenever a Fine Gael Ard Fheis was taking place. People took to the streets understanding precisely what the property tax was, which was an austerity measure, and to vent their anger at the injustice of what Fine Gael and the Labour Party were doing. We know that it was ultimately run through by Revenue, through payroll deduction, despite it having no electoral mandate and despite the clearly expressed opposition of a large majority of people. It was an unfair and regressive tax on people’s family homes then and it is an unfair, regressive tax on people’s family homes today.

The new rules being introduced by the Government mean that homes built since 2013, which were previously exempt, will now have to pay the local property tax. Other exemptions are also being removed and there is a new method for calculating the tax that will increase bills for very many people. We fought the introduction of the local property tax in 2012 and in 2013. We are not ashamed to continue to fight against this unfair austerity tax and to demand that it is abolished.

We have an alternative proposal for a progressive income tax on high incomes, taxes on second homes, taxes on wealth and corporation tax, on which I will now go into a little more detail. In looking back at articles from the time of the struggle against the property tax I came across a quote from a protestor. In late March 2012, 46 year-old Brian Murray said:

It seems to me that the working-class people of this country are being asked to pay for 599 Dáil Éireann everything. All the money seems to be going down a black hole to the bankers and the bondholders. They just appear to be fleecing us and I’m very angry about it.

This summed up the sentiment of those who were protesting. It was not the people with large houses protesting for the right not to be taxed. It was people protesting against austerity. The Government’s victory in imposing the property tax against the wishes of people who mo- bilised and against the majority of the population was a pyrrhic victory. Let us remember that Fine Gael and the Labour Party got their just desserts in the election in 2016. It was the local property tax and the water charges that drove the Labour Party down from 33 seats to seven seats and Fine Gael down from 66 seats to 50 seats. It is clear, unfortunately, that the lessons have not been learned by the Government. When we consider the details of the proposals, and the impact they will have on a significant minority of households, it is clear that the Govern- ment is determined to continue on the same track.

Close to 750,000 households will face an increase in property tax bills. The Government does not want this figure to be widely known and is saying that it is a technical thing, that things are just changing around, and that most people are neither winning nor losing, and that some are winning. Almost three quarters of a million households face an increase in their local property tax. Added to this are the 100,000 households that face paying the property tax when they previously were not doing so.

Section 19 makes the owners of properties leased for more than 20 years to local authorities or to approved housing bodies, AHBs, liable to the local property tax rather than the local authorities or the AHBs being liable. It is likely, however, that the costs will simply be passed on from the funds to the local authorities or the AHBs. The only real import of this is to copper- fasten the very bad model of long-term leasing of social housing from cuckoo funds, which we remember although we do not have to remember that far back. Just last week the Government rammed through a tax break for them.

Section 22 makes the buyers of properties sold by local authorities or AHBs liable for local property tax due on the normal market value of the property rather than a reduced €90 rate available that would otherwise apply. The significance of that is it shows the Government in- tends to continue selling off social housing despite the housing crisis.

We welcome the exemption for homes affected by mica. This should continue for as long as necessary and not just for the six years provided in the Bill. As already mentioned by many other speakers, however, it is very inadequate when we consider that people have to pay for the inspections and so on themselves. Fundamentally, the builders and businesses responsible should be made to pay the full remediation costs of homes damaged by mica.

I will conclude on the alternatives. Obviously, one very big alternative is the question of a Covid wealth tax. In the context of a pandemic even the IMF has raised the question of having wealth taxes. The Government is not interested in going there. It is a fact that the wealthy have gotten much wealthier over the course of the pandemic. On an international level, Jeff Bezos has doubled his wealth from approximately $100 billion to more than $200 billion in the course of the pandemic. The same has happened in this country where the likes of Denis O’Brien massively increased his wealth. It means the increased concentration of wealth in the top households. The richest 1% of households, according to the Central Bank, all of whom are multimillionaires, own 15% of net household wealth in this country. The top 10% control more than 50% of the net household wealth in this country. A 3% wealth tax on the top 1% would 600 13 July 2021 raise €3.6 billion, many multiples of what is raised by the regressive local property tax.

I was struck by the irony of a Fine Gael speaker, Deputy Carroll MacNeill, who asked how we could be opposed to the property tax, which is a tax of such progressivity. She was as- tounded at the idea that anyone could object to it because it is progressive. Let us look at what the Government she supports is doing on corporation tax right now. For years, we have railed in this place against the tax haven status of Ireland. We have said it is immoral in terms of the robbery that takes place, in particular of people in lesser developed countries, from their public services, and from people in this country. We have talked about the immorality of it. We have also pointed out the fact that it is an unsustainable model because one cannot win a race to the bottom in corporation tax rates; it is only the corporations that win. Someone is always going to be able to come in to undercut. We saw that with Trump, bargain-basement Brexit, and various eastern European countries. It is not a sustainable model, but it is one to which the Government is committed. For years, every time that we have raised the question of corporation tax and ending Ireland’s tax haven status, the Government has said it agreed with us – of course not on Ireland being a tax haven - but that it would like to increase the amount of taxes that corporations pay. However, the important point was that it could not be an Irish or EU process; it had to be an OECD process. It must be a worldwide process. In that context, the response was that it would be great, and the Government would love to be part of it. Joe Biden came along with his extremely watered down, inadequate proposal for a minimum corporation tax rate of 15% and signed up the vast majority of countries in the world. Some 130 countries, representing 90% of global GDP, have said they are all for it, but all of a sudden the Government is not in favour of global co-operation to increase the rate of tax that corporations pay. Ireland finds itself in the corner with Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, Barbados, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines in saying that we could not possibly go along with that. Why? Because Ireland is a corporate tax haven. It is a model to which the Government is committed, despite the fact that it does not work for people in this country or for people around the world and is an utter dead end.

13/07/2021CCC00200Deputy Joe Flaherty: While the revision in the property tax bands is largely a good news story for the people of County Longford, on a personal level there is concern about the threat to future funding of Longford County Council as a result of the proposal. At present, just over 17,000 properties are registered in County Longford for the LPT and 79% of them or more than two thirds of the properties are in the lowest band, that is, bands 1 and 2. In the proposed bands, more than one third of Longford households will face a smaller LPT bill. The reality is that 99% of properties will pay the lowest LPT charge under the proposals. That in itself is welcome news but there are unnecessary consequences for Longford County Council with a sudden shortfall of €1.5 million in revenue arising from the changes.

For several years, the council has leveraged a maximum 15% increase in local property tax. This in turn has enabled it to borrow and finance an ambitious capital regeneration programme. All of that is now very much in doubt. This is an issue of major concern for the management of the council. For the council to offset the €1.5 million shortfall in LPT revenue, the county would need to see an additional 10,500 new houses in the county, which is unlikely in the extreme. I welcome an assurance from the Minister that no local authority will be worse off because of the proposed changes to the LPT. As it stands however, Longford County Council is facing a €1.5 million shortfall under these proposals.

We must also address concerns regarding equalisation funding. As much as 14% of the funding for Longford County Council arises from the LPT equalisation process. Some 11 counties, including the local authority in Longford, will be penalised if there are changes to the 601 Dáil Éireann equalisation model. I ask the Minister to have a careful look at that. At the very least, we need a commitment that hard-pressed local authorities such as Longford County Council will not have to pay an unconscionable price in the LPT revision proposals.

I wish to also address another issue that is on my mind that concerns Longford County Council. It is one of the most challenged counties in the country when it comes to its finances. Notwithstanding such a low revenue-generating base, it had an ambitious capital programme over the past six years. That bears testimony to the expertise and resolve of the local authority’s senior management team. Over that period, it has emerged as one of the fastest growing and most industrious local authorities in the country. It has more than doubled its annual expenditure from €37 million in 2006 to €77 million last year, a 115% increase. Key financial challenges however include the low value of the LPT base but also a low rates base and high vacancy rates. The loss of €1.2 million in rates as a result of the closure of the ESB power station in Lanesborough has been a major challenge. That is the equivalent of 15% of the total rates base for the county or is indicative of the financial contribution of the average 661 rate payers in the council. If the council were to set about compensating itself for this shortfall it would result in an unthinkable 15% hike in rates in the current financial climate.

I thank the Minister for Finance and his colleagues, the Ministers for Public Expenditure and Reform and Housing, Local Government and Heritage who collectively provided €1.2 million to the council this year to head off the loss in revenue. The report of the just transition commissioner, Kieran Mulvey, stated:

It would be extremely unfair in circumstances over which...[Longford County Coun- cil]...had no responsibility and for a decision which was not expected until 2027 that they should be burdened with this sudden loss.

I recommend that an urgent engagement takes place with the...[local authority and]...the funding Departments so that a suitable emergency arrangement can be agreed to alleviate the rate losses over the period 2021-2026.

I am afraid the just transition has had an unconvincing start. The Government must send a strong message of solidarity to the midlands, specifically counties Longford and Offaly. A budgetary undertaking later this year to underwrite the annual €1.2 million rates shortfall for the next five years would certainly go a long way to providing the solidarity and assurances that Longford County Council desperately needs at this time. I appreciate that I have strayed from the LPT, but I am sure the Minister will appreciate that this is a major issue for the council, and I hope he will pursue it in his budget 2022 deliberations.

13/07/2021CCC00300Deputy Chris Andrews: I take this opportunity to offer my congratulations to Deputy Bacik on her fantastic result in the recent by-election. It is a huge honour for her and her family. I look forward to working with her and her colleagues in the best interests of the constituency of Dublin Bay South.

Many homeowners are deferring payment of their local property tax because it is not affordable for them. This is worrying for homeowners who are struggling to pay, for example, a resident on Lombard Street East who is in her 80s and is a double leg amputee. She would pay if she had the money. Unfortunately, she does not. Her only income is her welfare payment. If this were a wealth tax, she would not have to worry about it because she is not wealthy, but she must pay the property tax or else defer its payment. Property tax does not take into account

602 13 July 2021 a family or individual’s ability to pay. Property tax is dependent on property prices, not the amount of money a homeowner has. If someone was ripped off when buying a home, the Gov- ernment will tax him or her more. That is what is happening in areas like Ringsend and across the inner city, where large tech companies are pushing up prices and ordinary working families must pay more because of Government policy. We in Sinn Féin have a positive alternative. We are in favour of a wealth tax as part of our progressive tax reform proposals.

This debate comes at a time when huge tech firms continue to escape proper taxation in Ireland, leaving a large hole in the Exchequer’s finances that ordinary working families have to fill. It was recently highlighted that Google had moved more than €63 billion in profits out of Ireland using the controversial double Irish tax arrangement in 2019, which was the last year it could use the loophole. Ordinary homeowners like the elderly resident on Lombard Street East do not have loopholes of which they can take advantage. They just have to pay the property tax out of their pensions and get on with it.

Another bone of contention is the lack of services provided by the council. If residents are paying a property tax, they expect to see some services. Trees are not being cut back and maintained, roots are becoming dangerous, particularly for older people, and weeds and dirt on the street are not being cleaned up. Residents groups must deal with these problems themselves. They are happy to do so, but they are not getting the assistance they need.

I am not opposed to the property tax for the sake of it. I am opposed to the property tax because it is unfair.

13/07/2021DDD00200Acting Chairman (Deputy Marc Ó Cathasaigh): I understand that Deputies Canney, Tóibín and Verona Murphy are sharing time.

13/07/2021DDD00300Deputy Seán Canney: I welcome the opportunity to speak on this review of the local property tax and the legislation that will underpin it. It is important that we support local government with proper funding.

I will take some time to speak about Galway County Council in my constituency and its pre- carious situation in terms of financial support. An expert advisory group on local government arrangements in Galway examined the prospect of amalgamating Galway city and county councils. According to its report dated 26 April 2018, “the Expert Advisory Group recommends that the existing deficiencies in respect of both the human and financial resources be expeditiously resolved as an essential prerequisite to the amalgamation process.” It made this recommendation because there was a serious lack of funding in Galway, but the reason for that remains a mystery. At every chance since entering the Dáil more than four years ago, I have tried to elicit from the Department the formula that is used for the distribution of the equalisation fund to local authorities. The announcement of the changes to the local property tax presents an opportunity to address this underfunding for Galway County Council.

I will offer some comparisons. Galway County Council is comparable to local authorities in Mayo, Donegal, Kerry and Tipperary, but it is getting the lowest budget despite having the largest population. To illustrate this point, for Galway County Council to have had the same budget in 2020 as the average between Mayo, Donegal, Kerry and Tipperary, it would have needed an additional €28 million. Using the Local Government Fund’s local property tax allocation as an alternative basis for comparison, Galway County Council would have needed an additional €10.8 million to have had the same average budget per capita as those four counties.

603 Dáil Éireann The problem with this is that it means there is a year-on-year deficiency.

Galway County Council has staff who are working overtime and on Saturdays, Sundays and bank holidays in order to meet statutory requirements because we do not have enough staff to allow people to work proper hours. We do not have an enforcement officer in the planning department in the east of the county where I live because the council cannot afford to take on one. I believe our county, which is geographically the second largest in the country, has four housing liaison officers at a time when there is a housing crisis. If someone left Clifden for Ballinasloe, he or she would only be halfway to Dublin without having left the county.

The extreme urgency of this underfunding is not to be underestimated. Roads engineering staff are out there doing work. I am fearful that because of the pressure and stress they are under, mistakes will be made. I fear for their health and safety. It is important that we support the chief executive, Mr. Jim Cullen, the directors of services and the staff in a meaningful way.

I am raising this matter with the Minister because the local property tax brings with it an opportunity to address imbalances between local authorities and ensure there is fairness for everyone. Galway in the second largest county in Ireland. We have islands, scenic areas, tourism potential and a Gaeltacht, but we also have a large number of CLÁR areas where there is underfunding and low population growth. Despite these issues, we are trying to build an economic base using Galway County Council, but we are finding it difficult to get people in place to access the funding that is available from various State agencies. We are being squeezed in whatever we try because we do not have the resources and morale is low. I am not saying this with the begging bowl out. These are simply well-documented facts.

An advisory group has examined Galway county and city councils, but we need to deal with the financial problems before we return to the agenda of amalgamation, which I support. It is important that this matter be raised at Cabinet level to ensure that Galway, which is a fine and large county, is not left without proper funding. We must ensure that we protect our workers and that councils deliver services in a safe manner that achieves the best results for the money they are given.

I ask that the Minister take this matter into account. I support the idea of reviewing the local property tax, but it presents an opportunity for the Government to address what has been a well-documented bugbear for Galway for a long time.

13/07/2021DDD00400Deputy Peadar Tóibín: It is incredible to see the Government railroading legislation of this importance through the Dáil just before the summer recess, especially during a week when most of the country’s attention is on the vaccine discrimination Bill. The LPT has the potential to increase the property tax for rural dwellers and those around the country who have been hit by the mica problem. There are a number of serious problems with this legislation. The use of the guillotine is deleting the Dáil’s democratic oversight. It is wrong and it is happening over and over again. Since its introduction in 2013, the local property tax, LPT, has been an unjust taxation measure. Many property owners are struggling to pay bills, have had their incomes cut, been hammered with decades long mortgages or hit with this blanket measure. It fails to take into account any of those personal circumstances people are in. Those who have been hit with economic hardship are less likely to be able to deal with this tax. I have opposed this LPT for years and I am unconvinced this Bill will alleviate the inequity that arises from it.

I put several questions to the Minister at the finance committee and I was surprised he was

604 13 July 2021 not in a position to answer them. He said he would forward a note to me on those questions. I have not received a note before this debate. It is disappointing because the issues I raised were important.

The first one was on the redefinition of a residential property. On that, I raised the fact many people in rural Ireland are concerned that suddenly sheds, outhouses and other buildings on their property are to be taken into the cost of the valuation of the local property tax. We did not get clarity on it then. I was asked to trust the Government on it, but if you look at the legislation now, it says a shed, outhouse, garage or another building shall be considered, for the purposes of this Act, to form part of the residential property. That means this redefinition could drive up the cost of property taxes to residential property owners in rural Ireland. People in rural Ireland are far more likely to have these types of buildings and, therefore, are likely to be hit.

Has the Minister done any estimate? Can he tell us how many people are likely to be hit under this new definition. Does he have any estimate of what the cost to families in rural Ireland will be as a result of this extra definition?

The Bill also changes the word “acre” to “hectare”. This is no small thing. It more than doubles the footprint of valuation. This will also hit farmers and rural dwellers. How many people will be hit by this, in the Minister’s estimation? What costs will they have to pay? It looks to many people that a Dublin Minister for Finance is trying to increase a sneaky tax on people in rural Ireland. That is wrong. People should know what will happen as a result of this Bill.

I also asked the Minister about the loophole in the Bill around the mica homeowners. We were told, under questioning, this Bill includes a six-year LPT exemption for mica property owners. However, the Taoiseach stood up in this Chamber not too long ago and said it would take €1 billion and ten years to deal with this crisis. There is a four-year gap in this legislation given the Taoiseach’s estimation of how long it will take to deal with homes with mica. For a Minister for Finance to be so blind to that need, just one month after mica homeowners made that trek all the way from counties Donegal and Mayo to Dublin, is wrong. There should be no time limit placed on mica property owners. The exemption should remain in place for each home until each home is fixed, which logical. Under this legislation, we have a situation in which mica homeowners whose homes are not fixed in six years’ time will be liable for LPT on their crumbling houses, which is absolutely wrong.

I also raise the issue of empty houses. One in 33 houses in this State is empty. More than 200,000 houses are empty and that does not include 60,000-odd houses considered to be holi- day homes. In the heart of a housing crisis, in which dozens of people are dying in homelessness in this country and well over 1 million people are in crisis, whether it be in homelessness, on waiting lists or paying spiralling rents and house prices, it is shocking the Minister does not include the cost of vacancy or some level of tax to encourage or mobilise empty houses into family homes.

When I asked the Minister at the finance committee what the story was, he said some research needs to be done to understand the context of these empty homes. That is like someone saying some research needs to be done on a building that is on fire before we quench the fire. The housing market is on fire. There is a crisis of massive humanitarian proportions in this State and the Minister’s response to hundreds of thousands of empty buildings is that we should look into this. That is an incredible thing to do. There is no urgency there. 605 Dáil Éireann Before I finish, the Minister needs to look into the way local authorities are funded in this State, which is wrong. There is massive inequality with regard to population distribution and local authority funding. It needs to be fixed. It has a material effect on how people live, in all aspects of their homes. In my county, we have the lowest investment per capita in the State with regard to local authority investment. That radically reduces people’s access to services they need.

13/07/2021EEE00200Deputy Verona Murphy: The introduction of the property tax and its predecessor, the household charge, has been controversial; most obviously, around the time of their respective introductions. It perhaps ranks alongside the universal social charge as the most controversial of taxation measure in recent times. Those things were introduced in a time of financial crisis. Unfortunately, we may be at the beginning of yet another financial crisis and this time as a result of our Covid-19 measures.

I understand the proposals presented before us in this Bill will lead to a reduction in property tax for some residential properties in County Wexford, while most property owners will see their tax bill remain at the same level. A property valued at €200,000 in 2012 is in the third band and the current standard rate of property tax at €312. Under the new proposed bands, a property valued at €200,000 will be in band 1 and will pay the standard rate of property tax at €90. At first glance, this may look like a significant reduction but when we take into account that a house valued at €200,000 in 2012 is now likely to be valued at more than €300,000, we can see why most people will remain at the same level.

I am concerned Department figures show that approximately 33% of property owners will see an increase of up to €100 on their property tax bill. The bill is providing for the property tax to be charged on all houses after 2013. That means a far greater number of properties will be brought into this tax than are currently in it. With that in mind, I ask the Minister to examine ways of ensuring no one sees an increase in their property tax. By bringing more properties into the tax, the money raised from it will increase anyway and there is scope to avoid people having to pay extra property tax.

This Bill also states a shed, outhouse, garage or other buildings which are usually enjoyed with a residential property in rural Ireland shall be considered to form part of the residential property tax. Yards, garden sheds or other lands, such as gardens or grounds shall be considered to form part of the residential property, up to and including 1 ha, which is 2.2 acres. We are going from valuing a house to a situation in which we are now valuing everything on the site. I have some concerns and few questions.

What is the definition of an outhouse? I know many people who have old outhouses, almost in ruins, on their properties. Will they have to be valued? Does a wooden garden shed have to be taken into account when valuing the property? These are the questions people will likely be asking and we need clear guidelines.

Most of us here would accept that Government spending, in general, is too high and this has become even worse since Covid-19 measures were put in place. When governments are in a habit of spending too much money, the consequences will inevitably fall on the back of the taxpayer, who will be expected to give up an even larger amount of his or her income to help sustain such spending levels. Unfortunately, when the State gets into financial difficulty, the burden of solving the problem is too often placed, via extra taxes, on the ordinary working people. I hope that in recovering from our current difficulties, the first port of call will not be 606 13 July 2021 to increase taxes on people.

10 o’clock

Instead, the first step should be to conduct a root and branch review of how savings can be made in Government expenditure.

Even in years gone by, when past Governments felt a need to cut back on spending, they targeted the vulnerable and easy targets. The cuts to carers’ supports is one example that springs readily to mind. It appears that money is given hand over fist to NGOs and quangos, and there appears to be no end of money available to waste in gross overspending on projects such as the children’s hospital. Members of the hospital’s board appeared before the Committee of Pub- lic Accounts this morning and it seems we cannot be told what the final cost of the children’s hospital is due to be as a result of the Department of Health taking the view that commercial sensitivity trumps public interest and accountability. The logic of this defies belief. The State is in the business of giving billions of euro to NGOs or lobby groups whose main function is to campaign to get the Government to spend even more money introducing policy changes to match whatever agenda they want to set or push. It makes no sense whatever, and this type of work should be carried on by Departments.

As we discuss this Bill to raise money via taxes, I would like to get clarity on one matter, which the Minister might address in his closing statement. Section 23 deletes section 15 of the main Act, which means the Revenue Commissioners will not accept self-assessment anymore in respect of properties valued at under €1 million. I am not sure about these self-assessments. Are they now subject to the Revenue Commissioners’ compliance regime for other self-assessment taxes? Does that mean self-assessment can now be challenged by the Revenue Commissioners? Do property owners need to get valuations from auctioneers every four years, as one does when valuing properties for stamp duty, probate and so forth? I would appreciate clarification on that.

13/07/2021FFF00200Deputy James O’Connor: I appreciate the opportunity to discuss the reforms that are coming to the local property tax. First and foremost, it is important to point out that this tax is one of the few taxes whereby people can see a tangible difference in terms of what it can do. I come from east Cork and I served as a member of Cork County Council prior to being elected to Dáil Éireann, which was a major privilege. Unfortunately, our local authority is one of the most underfunded local authorities in the country. That was recently confirmed by reports carried out on Cork County Council. I commend the work the council has done to raise this with Members of the Oireachtas. Hopefully, it will be brought to the Minister’s attention by his Fine Gael colleagues, but I am doing it here tonight with regard to the funding issues it has. The property tax is extremely important.

I want to give some feedback on some of the reforms that have been discussed. Unfortu- nately, there has been much fearmongering about what these changes will mean, but some valid issues have been raised with me regarding what is considered when calculating the property tax. I have heard some ludicrous suggestions that new formats will be found, particularly with regard to rural dwellings and relating to outhouses, garages or sheds that may be located there, when calculating the valuation of properties. I have even heard talk of redesignating what are considered to be sites of houses and farmhouses. As somebody who comes from a farming background, I can tell the Minister that it is quite hard to define these issues, so I would be very worried by any attempts made by the Department. I will resist any attempts to try to reform 607 Dáil Éireann how property tax is calculated in order to punish people living in rural Ireland. They are going through enough challenges as it is.

We have to examine how fair and equitable property tax is. It is a good tax. I believe it makes an important and positive difference to communities. It helps to fund the local authorities which provide services to citizens throughout the country. Obviously, people who are renting properties or who do not own property are not affected by property tax. It is a progressive tax. As a Fianna Fáil Deputy, I find it extraordinary that one of the main political blocs in the Dáil wants it to be abolished. I am concerned that a major party, and I do not know if I should name it, which claims to be representing ordinary people and people who are trying to earn an honest living wants to abolish it. There has just been a by-election in Dublin Bay South. Depu- ty Gould is laughing, but from my perspective the joke in the Chamber is what I am looking at. What Sinn Féin is proposing is ludicrous. How is it going to fund our local authorities and build social houses by taking away such an important revenue stream for local authorities? That must be put on the record. Undoubtedly, I will be charmed by the response we will get shortly from the Deputy from Cork North-Central. He is laughing, but that Deputy does not want to charge property tax on somebody living in a house on Shrewsbury Road. That is extraordinary. He does not want to charge property tax on people living in dwellings worth from €1 million to €20 million. That is the joke here, so I thank Deputy Gould for his laughs.

I am very concerned, as somebody who has represented Cork County Council and gone on to be elected to the Dáil, that we ensure there is equity when people pay this tax. It has been laid out quite clearly that Cork County Council is one of the lowest funded local authorities in the country, and I have to question the value that people get for paying this tax. I want the Minister and his Department to examine this issue. It is very important that this is done. I return to the central message. For people who own property it is right and just, from the perspective of those of us who wish we were in that position, that there is some equity when it comes to taxation. Many positive benefits come from people who are in that financial position. I say that as the youngest Member of Dáil Éireann.

13/07/2021FFF00300Deputy Violet-Anne Wynne: Sinn Féin is against a property tax, generally, and would dis- pose of it in favour of a wealth tax when in government. However, the fact that the Act is being amended at this time deserves some scrutiny. The local property tax was designed to pay off austerity-era banking debt and has no place in our society. It has never taken the ability to pay into account and it does not represent the type of taxation we should be considering and aiming for, which is to take money from those who will not suffer from its loss. We know from the Revenue Commissioners that 43,000 people defer payment every year. They still see interest of 3% applied to this debt. These are people who obviously cannot afford to pay. This is unacceptable. If the local property tax was a wealth tax, this would not be happening.

This ad hoc approach to governance is what has led this and many previous Governments to be extremely ineffective at delivering the social change which the people of this island are crying out for. Let us take the wool from our eyes, with which the Government has attempted to blind us, and reflect honestly on the fact that this Bill is being brought forward now only because there is a suitable distance between elections. It wants to avoid unfavourable voting. The Government has kicked this issue down the road three times because of impending elections and has chosen to introduce it now. It is seen by the people as strategic timing, if there ever was one, and self-interested.

Our citizens are struggling now more than ever. It has been announced that homeowners 608 13 July 2021 in Donegal and Mayo affected by the presence of defective blocks in their properties will be exempt from the tax for the next six years. Unfortunately, homeowners in Clare have not been afforded the same luxury. That is outrageous. The homeowners in Clare are not at all happy. Sinn Féin has tabled amendments to ensure that an engineer’s report will not be necessary to qualify for the tax exemption. The cost incurred to get the approved certified I.S. 465 reports is so expensive that most people cannot afford it, especially families who are already suffering the injustice and ambiguity around what aid the State will give them to fix their shattered homes. This should be noted.

In my constituency, the Clare Pyrite Action Group is extremely frustrated and insulted that it will not benefit from this goodwill gesture. Honestly, in the great scheme of things, it is only a small, goodwill gesture. This olive branch is still not being extended to those homeowners despite the fact that the rigorous analysis which the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage demanded be conducted to show there were defective blocks was in only a core sample of five homes tested in February this year. A further 34 homes in one estate alone are awaiting laboratory results. These figures may well be just the tip of the iceberg. We should not be saddling our people with more debt.

13/07/2021GGG00200Deputy Richard O’Donoghue: The Government has rushed this legislation for consideration before the Dáil. The Oireachtas Library and Research Service was unable to provide a full Bill digest for it due to the short timeframe between publication of the Bill and Second Stage. The Bill was not publicly available on the Oireachtas website until Friday, 9 July 2021 but it is down for a debate today.

It is a pity Deputy O’Connor has left. He said he was the youngest Deputy in the Chamber. He probably should have stayed to listen to the bit of knowledge I might be able to feed to him. If we look at property valuations today we notice that properties valued at €100,000 last year have jumped to €170,000 or €180,000 because of the lack of housing. The Minister is well aware of the cost of building because of the children’s hospital, which has quadrupled in costs. The Government cannot control them. It should probably have used a Limerick builder who would have built it on time and on schedule.

The Minister is on about the local property tax. If we look at the price of building we see a 2,000 sq. ft. house costs €330,000 plus VAT. The Government gets €44,000 on top of the cost of building the house. Now let us look at the price of a site. People go for planning permission and pay €7,000 or €8,000 to get it through. When that has gone through they need to pay for water and electricity. This brings it to €11,000 or €12,000. Guess what? They have to pay the local authority another €6,000 or €7,000 to build on their own land. The Government gets €44,000 in VAT, the local authority gets €7,000 and now the Minister is coming back for more.

The Government has now taken the person who was building a house for €200,000 and put them in the €400,000 bracket. Before we leave the €400,000 bracket we have to furnish the house. This brings the cost of a 2,000 sq. ft. house up to €500,000 by the time it is finished. God forbid if people build a garage to house the lawnmower and the children’s bicycles. They will be taxed again. Let us add on the 37% of the people who live in rural Ireland. They are now paying the most tax for emissions because they have no infrastructure. It is another tax on rural Ireland.

The Government then decided it wanted to pump water from the Shannon all the way to Dublin. I hope a meter will be put on it and the Government pays a premium price for every 609 Dáil Éireann drop of water that goes out of the Shannon to Dublin. Then it might be able to give us money back to fix the infrastructure in Limerick and let us have adequate water. Fedamore in County Limerick has been on a boil notice for 16 months and there has been not one call from Irish Water, which is spending €5.5 billion over five years. Where is the money going? There is €4.5 billion here, €1 billion there and another €1 million there in Dublin. The Government is taking every cent from towns, villages and rural areas and spending it in Dublin. I have been saying this since I came here and people are now listening to what I am saying.

This is another tax the Government is trying to sneak through the Dáil using its majority. I want everyone in Ireland to look at the Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and Green Party Deputies and when they come to their doors, which they will, I want the people of Ireland to remember how much money the Minister, Deputy Donohoe, has been asking them to pay on the back of Co- vid-19 and how much more pressure he will put their children, brothers, sisters, mothers and fathers under after Covid-19. Now the Government is coming with another sneaky tax. People are already suffering trying to pay their mortgages to the banks the Government bailed out and again left the people of Ireland to the vulture funds. Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and the Green Party did it with pensions in the years from 2007 to 2011 with Fianna Fáil and the Labour Party and again with Fine Gael in 2011. They implemented more taxes on the people in Ireland.

We commemorated 100 years of people who fought for freedom in this country and the same people who fought would turn in their graves to see that the people who said they were standing up for Ireland are now punishing Ireland. They are punishing everyone in Ireland because of their failure to manage money and finances. How dare the Minister even sit in this room on television.

I was a member of our party until I saw the light and how corrupt parties are. There are party lines. Deputies coming from Limerick are supposed to be supporting Limerick and the places where they were elected. They come up here and vote on party lines with a Dublin-based Cabinet. They were not sent from Limerick to Dublin to vote with a Dublin-based Cabinet. They were sent from Limerick to get our fair share of the taxes and the punishments the Gov- ernment is putting us under and send it back down for the infrastructure in our county. This goes for the Deputies who are representing Limerick city and county. They are elected by the people of Limerick to represent them.

I might not have gone to school for as long as the Minister did or get all of the college de- grees he has but one thing I have is education of life. I have been self-employed all my life. I have had to fight to put food on the table for my family like many other self-employed people throughout the country. A total of 51% of the business people in Ireland are in small and medium enterprises. What does the Government do? It puts on tax after tax after tax and bails out everyone. It is all for the big boys. Let us bail them out. Let us give them what they want.

The 37% of the people in rural Ireland pay the highest taxes and we have no infrastructure. We have nothing. The Government stands up here day after day telling its people in Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and the Green Party throughout the country to look at what it is doing for them. No wonder it is trying to shove everyone into the cities. It knows the game is up in the counties because the people realise how much the Government has left them down for the amount of time they have been in power.

The time is coming for change. The Government will feel that change. Everyone in the Government parties will feel the change. The people will remember how much the Govern- 610 13 July 2021 ment that was supposed to be here to protect the people of all of Ireland just looked after its buddies in the cities. Not a penny is being given to the counties. Our representatives are elected here and they cannot represent because when they come up they are told what to do. It is follow the leader. They might as well call themselves the sheep party because it is like a flock of sheep following the leader. That is all they are. They have been told what to do. There might be as well be no Deputies from those parties coming up here from Limerick because there is one person in a Dublin-based Cabinet telling them what to do.

13/07/2021HHH00200Deputy Danny Healy-Rae: I am glad to get an opportunity to talk about the property tax and the new formulas that are being brought in. It is ironic this change is being introduced just as we are emerging from a gigantic public health pandemic. People are still worried, confused and out of sorts after being isolated. They are very worried about themselves and their families and now this is another concern. People do not mind paying if they get something in return. The property tax is very unfair in that regard. In rural areas, farmers and many others get very little in return for this tax.

An example of this is the local improvement scheme list in Kerry, which numbered 697 at the start of the year. We have only got enough funding for seven roads. Deputy Griffin said we got a 5% increase, but in fact we will not be doing as many roads this year as we did last year. We got enough for just ten roads last year and only seven this year. People in rural Ireland deserve a good road to their door just as much as do the people in Dublin 4. I have consistently said that but it is not happening. The scheme was suspended for six or seven years, then a new list was looked for and the people who were waiting since 2008 are still waiting. It is not fair. These are not private roads. The criterion for applying for the local improvement scheme is that you must have two or more landholdings. It is not applicable to one private house. On many of these roads, there are 20 or 30 houses, with farmers and others living up and down the way. The roads are in a terrible state and are not in the charge of the county council. That is just one issue I need to get across. The officials in the Department of Finance need to realise these are public roads, not private roads. They are public rights of way.

Water is an essential service. In Kerry, we have a serious problem with group water schemes not going ahead because, as well as residents having to pay €8,000 or €10,000 per house along the line, Irish Water is now looking for €2,000 on top of that. This is double charging and it is not acceptable. When I think of Dublin and other cities, I do not begrudge anyone anything but the people there have all the services, including all the new buses. You might see three or four of them passing one after the other and only two or three people in each of them. We cannot get that kind of service in rural Kerry.

Then we have a scenario where a small bridge or a large culvert, as we call it in many places, will not be replaced for 12 months or a year and a half because there are so many environmen- tal and other assessments to be done. In the case of one particular bridge in Kilgarvan, Gort Bridge, the material that built it in 1880 or whatever was brought in a horse and cart. It has been closed for almost a year and a half and work on it will not be allowed to go ahead. It was the same in Gortdarrig and Headford. There was a slip on the road from the Top of Coom to Ball- ingeary and it was almost two years before it was repaired. People had to go around it. If those things happened in Dublin, Cork or any of the other cities, the repairs would be done right away.

The property tax will hit pensioners very hard, especially where there is only one pensioner in a large house. People want to stay in the house in which they gave all their lives. They are suffering hard and the increase in the property tax is going to affect them. Where there are two 611 Dáil Éireann pensioners together, they can help each other to pay the bills, but it is very hard for people on their own. The funeral grant has been abolished and people worry about being able to pay for their funeral. Every extra cent they must pay will hurt them.

The Tánaiste said that something has to be done for people with Dublin properties that are of a very high value. I suppose the reason the value of houses has gone up is because of their scarcity. If the Government went back to the traditional house building, where local authorities were given funding to buy a site and build the houses, that would be cheaper than all the schemes that are in place at present, such as the rental accommodation scheme, the housing assistance payment scheme and all these things. They are costing money and the State is finishing up with nothing to show for them.

On top of the property tax, people in rural Ireland have to contend with the price of fuel, which has gone up massively. It has not gone unnoticed by people in rural areas. The addition of the carbon tax on top of it is making fuel very expensive. Every day, you would nearly be afraid to look at the sign beside the pump because the price has gone up a couple of cent more. Where is it going to stop?

I am very worried about the inclusion of sheds and garages and land up to an acre in these provisions. That is going to hurt people in rural Ireland with farms. What is the necessity of it? It is like the fair deal scheme, which I have been very opposed to, under which the farm is assessed as well as the house. That is very wrong and it is wrong as well to include up to an acre of land under these provisions. Again, it is not fair because people in urban areas do not have an acre and do not have to pay it, but farmers and others in rural areas will. In fact, it is up to a hectare, which is 2.5 acres. That is a lot of land. What value is going to be put on it? I am very worried about this and it needs to be clarified.

Then we have the proposal that if the valuation given by the householder is not accepted, the figure the Revenue Commissioners assume the house should be valued at will come into play. It seems to me there could a lot of room for increasing the value of a house and perhaps creating an unfair valuation because the person in Revenue, or whoever it is, may be from Dublin or another urban area. If a house is situated in the middle of a farm, it is just the place where the farmer lives. It does not have the same value as a house in Dublin 4 or wherever because the farm is around and it cannot be treated the very same.

People cannot pay another cent and that is it. They have so many things to contend with, whether it is the USC, which was brought in as a temporary measure, motor tax or any of the other charges people in rural Ireland face. If you are building a new house, you have to pay lots of levies, including a road levy. A levy to assist with roads must be paid but a cent might never be spent on the road up to the new house a young fellow is building. The cost of an ESB connection is unreal, depending on the number of poles or whatever.

Turning to broadband, we do not have that service in many places in Kerry. People are trying to improvise and pay others to try to bring broadband to them. It is a different story in rural Ireland. People in rural Ireland are not getting the services that people in urban areas are getting. That should be recognised when all this is being decided. This Bill is vague, but I am concerned for the people of rural Kerry that I represent.

13/07/2021JJJ00200Deputy Emer Higgins: The expansion of the LPT was parked for several years. I am glad that we are now dealing with this issue. In June 2020, the programme for Government commit-

612 13 July 2021 ted to the introduction of legislation for a tax that put fairness at its heart. That is exactly what this legislation is doing. In the revaluation, most homeowners will face no increase in taxation. However, homes which were deemed new almost a decade ago, and which were deemed exempt on that basis, will be brought into the net. I appreciate and understand that there is no good time to make changes to the tax system, but our tax system must be fair and that must be at the heart of this legislation.

A lady in my constituency bought her home in Rathcoole in late 2012. Six other houses on her estate were bought just six months later. While that lady has paid her LPT bill every year for the past nine years, her neighbours on the same estate were paying nothing, because that was the tax code set up at the time. The change in this Bill will bring those homes into the system to ensure a more equitable and fairer system and to ensure discrepancies such as this do not continue. While the majority of homeowners will not see any increase on foot of this revaluation, it is important to remember that all money collected locally will now stay locally.

Currently, local property tax receipts are used to fund community services. The revenue collected funds amenities such as parks, footpaths, community centres, green spaces, housing repairs, playgrounds and team spaces. In my area in South Dublin County Council, it is primarily used to fund social housing, which everyone in this House agrees we need more of. Before I became a Deputy for Dublin Mid-West, I served as a councillor on South Dublin County Council for almost a decade. I witnessed first-hand how important all these services are and what they mean to people. Our community services have been hugely impacted by the pandemic over the past 18 months. With little income from commercial rates, our local authorities are in desperate need of funding. The LPT is an important funding stream for councils. The democratically-elected councillors have the job of setting the rate, based on the 30% differential variance.

Yesterday, Fine Gael councillors on South Dublin County Council voted to reduce local property tax for residents in Lucan, Clondalkin, Palmerstown, Newcastle, Rathcoole, Saggart and Brittas. Those councillors voted to reduce the local property tax by 15% when the new rate comes in. This past year and a half has given us all a brand-new appreciation for our outdoor spaces, our local facilities and our community centres. Whether through local Tidy Towns initiatives, housing repairs and-or footpaths and tree maintenance, we want to be able to continue improving our community spaces and to uphold those standards. Some people live on estates where substantial management fees are being paid for upkeep and maintenance, and it is only right that these fees should be taken into consideration when it comes to the local property tax bill. I welcome that individual local authorities will, under this new legislation, be able to provide a concession on management fees from their LPT revenue. The council will have the discretion in cases like this to provide rebates on the tax where management fees are paid. I welcome that measure because it is fair and fairness is at the heart of this legislation.

13/07/2021JJJ00300Deputy Thomas Gould: I have tabled two sets of amendments to the Bill that I strongly urge the Minister to consider. The current tax punishes people who cannot afford to pay. At the meeting of the housing committee last week, representatives of the Revenue Commissioners confirmed that 43,000 people deferred their local property tax payments last year because they could not afford to pay them. This means single people with an income of €15,000 or a couple with income of €25,000. This deferral means that every year those people cannot pay, they will pay 4% interest. The rate of interest will be reduced to 3% after this legislation is enacted, but it is still interest on an original fee that these people cannot afford. What happens then is that the debt mounts year-on-year. 613 Dáil Éireann Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael talk about this being a progressive wealth tax. That means that people are being penalised for being poor. The lowest income earners in this State will, ultimately, have to pay the most tax because of the interest incurred. It is punishing poverty, which is the answer to everything for Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil. According to www.geodirectory.ie, last year there were 92,712 vacant homes in this State. In Cork alone, there are 8,880 vacant homes lying idle that could be used to house families and individuals in desperate need during this housing crisis. With only three full-time vacant homes officers, VHOs, in the State, this Government has completely failed to tackle the issue of vacant houses.

I am proposing a tax on vacant homes of 15% for any home that has been lying idle for more than 12 months in an area where there is a housing need. The Minister has said that this Bill will help to collect information and data on vacant homes. Information and data are not what people need. They need homes. The Minister should support my vacant house tax levy. It is an insult to ordinary people to see homes lying idle every day. I refer to houses that have been bought by investment funds and cuckoo funds that are driving up the prices of houses and rents. It is about time that we started to tackle the housing crisis. The Government has tried to make life easier for landlords, investment funds, cuckoo funds and vulture funds. It has tried to line the pockets of developers and even giving tax breaks to vulture funds. The only thing that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have not yet tried is putting ordinary people and families first. This is what Sinn Féin would do in Government.

13/07/2021JJJ00400Deputy Michael Fitzmaurice: I welcome the opportunity to contribute on this legislation. I remember going onto Galway County Council in 2014. The council used to then get something like €12 million from the equalisation fund. The property tax then came in that year, and €14.5 million was collected throughout the county. Galway County Council got its €12 million of that amount, while €2.5 million went back to the Exchequer. The equalisation fund in respect of the €12 million went off to Angela Merkel to pay for the bailing out of the banks. That is what the property tax meant to the people in that county; €12 million in that county was taken from ordinary individuals.

There are things I would never have a problem paying a tax on, but I have a real problem paying a tax on a house. First, people must start off and get a mortgage for their house. I call this, basically, a bedroom tax. Many people are struggling to get a mortgage now. As referred to earlier, fees are a major problem. I have heard some Members refer to differences between the cities and the counties. There are people, especially pensioners, whom we must think of tonight, who may have inherited a house located in a large city, such as Dublin, Galway or wherever. Elderly people in such situations are living on the old age pension. To those people, their house is their home and not a major asset. They are going to hand that house to somebody else, who will pay through the nose and probably not be able to afford it.

When a person is building a house today, fees must go to the council, whether in cities or in rural areas. Large fees are being charged for what are supposed to be community services and footpaths and all these types of things. In rural areas, the community has to do these things itself. We have no footpaths to stand on and no streetlights to go out in, even though the fees are looked for. Thank God we have local group water schemes or co-ops in rural Ireland, for the simple reason that Irish Water charges a fee of €2,500 to join up to the water system.

Now the Government is talking about bringing in a bigger area in this new legislation. The Minister must remember that in farming areas there are sheds at the backs of houses that people keep their fuel in for the winter. There are sheds for cattle or someone might have built a shed 614 13 July 2021 for a car. There is a genuine worry about where we are going with all of this and what the rea- soning is.

The Government is talking about climate. I looked today at the pumps. The Government raised the carbon tax and it is intending to raise it on a continual basis. Some people in rural areas do not have the offer of a bus service. At the moment, a litre of diesel costs €1.40 at minimum and is closer to €1.44 or €1.45. Does the Minister realise that? What world are some people living in that they do not realise that diesel has gone from €1.05 or €1.10 up to €1.40? Yes, world market oil prices have gone up but there is also the carbon tax increase. The Minister can say that we are changing things and are doing this, that and the other. That is fine but what bus service do these people have? Bus services have been cut in many rural areas, including the Local Link bus that collected elderly people who might only get out one day a week to go for their pension, do a bit of shopping and meet their friends to help them with rural isolation. Damn ye, but they have stopped that now. There is a route now but some people have to go three miles to get to it. Some of these people live on their own and do not have a car. Some of them do not have anyone to bring them from A to B. Now with the new Local Link service it is one town after another. That is it. It is not like it was with the drivers in the old system, in fairness to them. The madness about this is that there are bigger buses now. Before, we had little 16-seaters or 18-seaters that were able to go up the bóithrín, turn at the gate and help people in rural isolation to go out for a day and enjoy themselves. They might only see one person all week and that was the postman if they got a letter.

I cannot fathom the mentality of what we are doing. Think of those elderly people, be they in the city or the countryside. The value of their house might have gone up but that is not worth a damn to them because they are living in the house. It is not about the house. That is where they live and they are going to hand that on like it was given to them. Their incomes are still modest in many cases. We must bear in mind that the PSO levy has gone up many times, electricity has gone up around 15% and for those in cities gas prices have gone up as well. We talk about being a compassionate society and about looking after our elderly. There are young couples who have mortgages around their necks for €400,000 or €500,000. In the likes of Dub- lin you would not get too plush of a house for that, going by the prices I have seen. Still, we want to screw more out of those people and a lot of them can ill afford it.

I just cannot understand the mentality behind some of these things. The Minister will say it is for X, Y and Z reasons and that we are going to spend more on roads or something else but why do we keep trying to knock money out of people who do not have it? Why do we keep making their lives tougher? We are charging a property tax when most people who have mortgages and young families are struggling. Middle Ireland is struggling to keep going and we are going to make them struggle more by bringing in more legislation to raise the price of what they have to pay for their house. There seems to be a fierce disconnect between what is going on in this country in reality, especially in rural areas, and what is done in here. I ask the Minister to rethink this whole situation because we are going to leave a lot of people struggling, especially our elderly who have given so much to their country.

I would like clarification on garages, sheds for turf and timber and other sheds out the back, especially in farming areas. In older houses in rural Ireland they have what they used to call cow houses - though people might not know what they were - about 40 yd or 50 yd from the house, where farmers used to go out at night to see if the cow was calving. There are hay barns and the other things as well. That issue must be clarified.

615 Dáil Éireann We have to look at the whole system, including planning and the expenses that are incurred. That is for the people in the cities as well because this is not about putting one group against the other. This affects people within cities as well. While the value of a property might go up for speculators and people who are renting out their houses like landlords, for the people who want to live in the house, whether it has one, three or ten bedrooms, that is their house. That is their home and their family. That is where they came from and that is what they intend to hand on. I cannot for the life of me understand why we are going to put those people under more pressure.

13/07/2021KKK00200Minister for Finance (Deputy Paschal Donohoe): I thank the Deputies for the different points made here this evening. I will respond to some of the questions that were asked and charges made about this tax. Speaker after speaker from Sinn Féin stood up and made the point on one hand that this tax should be abolished and then on the other hand argued that the county they represent does not get enough revenue from the tax they want to abolish. It is quite the position to hold to say they want to get rid of a tax and then also say they do not get enough from the tax as it is currently implemented. It is not at all surprising. Sinn Féin claims it wants more homes to be built and local authorities to have more power and get more money, but when there is a tax that is designed to support local authorities and make money available to them, Sinn Féin wants to abolish it.

Many Deputies also expressed their concerns regarding the affordability of this tax. Of course I understand that and appreciate that there are many people paying the local property tax at the moment for whom this is a very difficult bill to pay. It comes in at once. It is a bill that can cause a lot of concern and there are many whose income does not bear relation to the value of the home they are in.

It is exactly because of all of these concerns that we have made such changes to the local property tax regime. We have widened the bands, we have cut the rate and we have changed the entry bands of the local property tax, particularly conscious of the impact that a change in local property tax valuations can have on homes that have a lower market value. We have put all those changes in place to try to change the local property tax in a way that is as affordable for many as is possible but at the same time, preserves the tax revenue that is coming in that everybody in this House wants to spend. We need to do this because if we want to ensure that local authorities or Government have the ability to deliver more and better public services in the future, we need to have the ability to pay for them.

I heard many Deputies make the charge that the Government is trying to punish people with this tax and they have questioned the mentality that we have behind this tax. I even heard one particularly pathetic comparison between the motivation behind this tax and those who were involved in the foundation of our State. I would have thought that Deputies would be able to understand the case that if a country wants to have a certain level of public services and look after our people in the way we want, particularly our most vulnerable, we need to collect taxes to be able to pay for it. With any tax such as local property tax, making changes to it or amending it is always difficult.

We are at a point where this is a revaluation that has been deferred on three separate occasions. Were the change to be deferred for another occasion, it would mean we would end up with more homes being built that are not paying the local property tax, which means more local authorities would have to provide public services for those homes that are newly built and that we want to see more of built in the future. However, those homes are not paying the local property tax whereas the houses and apartments beside them that were built a number of years 616 13 July 2021 ago are. That is an issue we need to change. With the changes that are happening in this local property tax Bill, we will change that to ensure that as a home is built and then purchased, shortly after that it moves into the local property tax valuation net. Again, this is with the objective of raising the money that needs to be collected so that it can be spent in local communities and used to deliver the services this House is in favour of.

One particular theme which came up throughout this debate was the definition of residential property. I want to clarify exactly what is contained in the Bill. The Bill provides for the amendment of the definition of residential property. In particular, it sets out that the part of the adjoining land to be valued with the house where the land exceeds 1 acre will be specified to be that part that is most suitable for occupation with the house. The chargeable value of a residential property for local property tax is based on the following: the house itself; any associated buildings or structures, such as sheds and garages; and any adjoining outdoor areas, such as yards and gardens. However, where the area occupied by the elements other than the house exceeds 1 acre, it is only the area up to 1 acre that must be valued. This applies to all residential properties, irrespective of whether they are located in a rural or urban area. This is the position and amendments to the definition of residential property do not change this treatment. The change in the definition of residential property does not change how such areas or properties are taxed. There is a change where we are changing “area” to “hectare”. This is being done to make this definition consistent with other parts of our tax law.

Overall, this is a change that seeks to ensure that the local property tax is placed on a solid footing for years to come by ensuring that as a home is built and purchased it is moved into the local property tax base so that house or apartment can make a contribution to the funding of local services in the future. When these changes are made this tax will be raising €540 million to €560 million, which is much needed revenue, to make a contribution to the public services our citizens need.

Through changing the tax bands, the rate and the entry point into the local property tax structure, we have tried to get the balance right between broadening the tax base and generating a bill that is difficult for many but is as affordable as is possible. If this revaluation was to be deferred for a fourth time, these challenges would only get bigger and it would become even more difficult to get the balance right between affordability for individual apartment and house owners and the need to try to bring in enough revenue to make a contribution to the public services that those who own and rent these homes also deserve and want. For those reasons, I commend this important Bill to Dáil Éireann.

Question put and agreed to.

13/07/2021LLL00300Saincheisteanna Tráthúla - Topical Issue Debate

13/07/2021LLL00400Departmental Functions

13/07/2021LLL00500Deputy Joan Collins: The Department of Health has suspended the activities of the north inner city drug and alcohol task force and is putting in place its own process to appoint a chairperson and broaden its membership. The Department of Health is basing this decision on an accusation of governance shortcomings in the north inner city drug and alcohol task force. I 617 Dáil Éireann have been talking to the task force members and the task force absolutely and totally rejects this accusation. It views the actions of the Department as completely unjustified and is intent on defending the honesty, integrity and professionalism of the chairperson, directors, members and staff of the task force.

In the 25 years since the north inner city drugs and alcohol task force was established, there have been no governance shortcomings raised with the task force and the Department has made this allegation without presenting a shred of evidence. The only governance shortcoming the Department of Health refers to is a recent task force process for the appointment of a new chairperson. Contrary to what the Department is saying, the task force has complied with all the requirements set out in the drugs and alcohol task force handbook.

The task force states without reservation that the process put in place for the appointment of the chair has been collectively agreed and implemented with complete transparency by all the task force members across community, voluntary and statutory sectors. The outgoing chair has carried out his duty in this matter with honesty and integrity and through consensus. The person selected by the task force as the next chair fully complies with the requirements as outlined in the handbook, including not being connected to any of the projects funded by the task force.

Despite all of this, the Department has intervened in a process to block the task force from going ahead with the appointment of a new chair.

11 o’clock

The Department representative intervened first as a member of the north inner city programme implementation board, then changed to an intervention directly on behalf of the Department looking for a three-person interview panel to be put in place with a Department representative, a HSE representative and a drugs and alcohol task force representative. It is unprecedented in 25 years of the drugs and alcohol task force for the Department of Health or any parent Department to intervene in this way in the selection of a chair. The task force did not agree with this proposal as it is not in compliance with the handbook or company law. The action of the Department is suspending the drugs and alcohol task force for governance shortcomings has been taken in the complete absence of any procedures based on natural justice or a right to reply. It has tainted the personal and professional reputations of the directors, members and staff of the task force by presenting them as unfit and untrustworthy to carry out the work of the north inner city drugs and alcohol task force. The Department is also proposing to remove every shred of independence from the task force by taking over the appointment of the chair and members.

I am calling on the Department to withdraw its decision to suspend the task force, reinstate it immediately and set up a forum for natural justice. If the Department feels there is a problem, its representatives should talk it out with the task force members in an open and transparent way. I appeal to the Minister of State to do that. This has been the tradition of the task forces since they were set up 25 years ago to respond to the drug issues facing communities across the country. They should be respected for that.

13/07/2021MMM00200Minister of State at the Department of Health (Deputy Frankie Feighan): I thank the Deputy for raising this issue. I welcome this opportunity to update the House on the engagement with the north inner city drugs and alcohol task force on the arrangements for the selection and appointment of an independent chairperson. As Minister of State with responsibility for

618 13 July 2021 the national drugs strategy, I recognise and value the important role that drug and alcohol task forces play in co-ordinating drug and alcohol projects and services assisting individuals and families to address addiction issues in the community. The Department of Health has oversight of the task forces and their annual allocation of over €29 million. A handbook on the governance and operation of task forces has been in place since 2011. Task forces are expected to conduct their affairs in accordance with the handbook.

The Department of Health provides an annual allocation of €2.2 million for drug and alcohol services under the auspices of the north inner city drug and alcohol task force. The De- partment has worked closely with the task force in recent years, as part of the Government’s north-east inner city, NEIC, initiative. It has supported the task force to undertake a community needs analysis on drug and alcohol use and jointly hosted a seminar to present the findings in the offices of the Department of Health. Considerable additional resources have been provided to enhance drug and alcohol services in the area, both from the NEIC initiative and the Depart- ment’s budget.

As I understand it, at the start of 2021, the outgoing chairperson of the task force approached the Department to discuss the appointment of a new independent chairperson. As stated in the task force handbook, the chairperson’s independence must clearly be established and evident in the manner in which the business of the task force is conducted. In particular, there should be complete transparency in arrangements put in place for the selection process and appointment of the chairperson. The Department and the outgoing chairperson agreed a process whereby there would be a search for suitable candidates for the post, with third-party assistance, to identify a shortlist for interview. I understand that the agreed process for selecting and appoint- ing an independent chairperson was not followed. The Department wrote to the task force to highlight its concerns in April, to request that the successor chairperson was not appointed, and to meet with the task force at the earliest opportunity. There is now an impasse in the appointment of a chairperson of the task force. Unfortunately, the failure of the leadership of the task force to engage with the Department on this matter has left no alternative than to put in place a process to appoint an independent chairperson and to broaden the membership of the task force to include all stakeholders, including public representatives.

I emphasise that community projects and services under the auspices of the task force will continue and there will be no disruption in services. The employment of the two task force staff members will also continue. I have advised that the meetings and other business activities of the task force should be suspended on a temporary basis during this process. When the task force is reconstituted and an independent chairperson appointed, the task force will resume the role and responsibilities for co-ordinating drug and alcohol services in the north inner city.

The Deputy has raised an important issue. She wants consultation and I look forward to that. We will be meeting with public representatives and stakeholders tomorrow. I welcome the Deputy’s engagement. I hope that, working with all the stakeholders, we can sort out this impasse. We need a meeting with all the stakeholders as soon as possible and I look forward to it.

13/07/2021MMM00300Deputy Joan Collins: The Minister of State said he has asked Department officials to meet community representatives to explain the governance issues that the Department is alleging have arisen in the task force and also to explain the Department’s proposal to put in place a transparent process for the selection and appointment of an independent chairperson. The Min- ister of State’s statement fails to respond to the point that the Department should withdraw the suspension. It is difficult for the task force to understand how the Department could consider it 619 Dáil Éireann acceptable to invite only some of the members of the task force to a meeting when the suspension has been applied to the full task force. Members of the task force consider that disrespectful to their colleagues and until the suspension is lifted, they do not consider it appropriate for them to meet the officials.

When considering an action as serious and unprecedented as suspension, an action that has never been taken by any Minister in 25 years across the 24 task forces, it is an absolute requirement of good governance and proper procedure to put the alleged shortcomings to the members of the task force in advance of such a decision so that there is a right to reply in line with the principles of natural justice. The very fact that community representatives are now being asked to meet Department officials after the task force has been publicly suspended shows that no attempt has been made by the Department to raise the governance shortcomings with the task force in advance of its suspension.

The Minister of State stated that the existing members of the task force will be consulted about the process of selection to appoint an independent chair and that the approval of that appointment will be a decision for the collective membership of the task force. That completely ignores the fact that the decision on the appointment of the new chair has already been taken by the collective membership of the task force in accordance with the drugs and alcohol task force handbook guidelines. I thank the Minister of State for his stated intention to meet public representatives but the key here is to talk to the task force. I welcome the meeting to which the Minister of State has referred. I will attend and look forward to it. However, the main thing is for the Department and the Minister of State to talk directly to the members of the task force about the issues.

13/07/2021MMM00400Deputy Frankie Feighan: There are a few points from the debate and media statements that I want to clarify. No accusations were made against any individual associated with the task force. I have not raised any issues about the honesty and integrity of the individuals involved, nor suggested in any way that they are unfit or untrustworthy.

The Deputy suggested that we talk to the full task force and I will take that on board because it is helpful. I hope we can come to some agreement and in the next few days will be able to discuss the matter.

The front-line drug and alcohol services under the task force umbrella continue to be funded and provided. The staff members directly employed by the task force will continue to do their work. Departmental officials have been and are available to meet with members of the task force to explain the governance issues that have arisen and to outline the Department’s proposal to put in place a transparent process for the selection and appointment of an independent chairperson for the organisation. Members of the task force will be consulted about the process to select and appoint an independent chairperson. They will also confirm the appointment of the independent chairperson following the transparent selection process.

I ask for the co-operation of all stakeholders in putting in place good governance procedures. It is important that task forces are open and transparent in how they appoint their officers and do their business. Good governance will build confidence in the task force to continue its important work in co-ordinating drug and alcohol services in the north inner city and in contributing to make this area a better place to live for young people, families and the whole community. I thank the Deputy for her helpful observations and look forward to meeting with all the stakeholder in the coming days. 620 13 July 2021

13/07/2021NNN00300Covid-19 Pandemic

13/07/2021NNN00400Deputy Jennifer Whitmore: I am disappointed the Minister, Deputy Donnelly, is not here today because my questions relate specifically to an interview he gave on Newstalk radio on 21 June with Kieran Cuddihy in which he stated very firmly and categorically that by the end of that day, there would be uniformity in how Covid restrictions were applied across the maternity hospitals. In particular, he said women would be able to have their partners with them during full labour, including from being induced right the way through. He was very clear when he said “full labour”.

Unfortunately, that is not the case. Women are still being met with having to be 3 cm or 4 cm dilated before their partners are allowed in. There may be some misunderstanding as to what that actually means. Anyone who has had a baby certainly knows what those internal exams mean for them. In order for a woman to have her partner with her, she needs to undergo an internal vaginal exam to ascertain exactly what dilation she is at. She must, therefore, prove she is 3 cm or 4 cm dilated before she can have her partner in. Many women do not want to have that exam. It is uncomfortable. If a woman has been abused, she certainly would not want that exam to happen and it is her right not to have that exam. At the moment, however, the only way she can have support with her is for that exam to happen and that is just not right.

The Minister also said in the interview that within a number of weeks - so by now - emergency cases would also be catered for. That would mean women would not be going through miscarriages alone. That has not happened. Women are going through caesarean sections and do not have the support of their partners after the procedure. IVF treatment is happening where women cannot have their support partners with them. I seek some clarity on the comments made by the Minister and on exactly what is happening across maternity hospitals.

13/07/2021NNN00500Deputy David Cullinane: I support the calls made by Deputy Whitmore. She is right about that interview given by the Minister, Deputy Donnelly, on 21 June on Newstalk. What he did was raise expectations. In fact, those of us in opposition commended and supported the stance he took. It was exactly what campaigners had been calling for, which is that all restrictions would be lifted for the full labour and not what was called active labour, and all the caveats that had previously been attached. Yet, it has not happened. There is no uniformity.

Questions are rightly being asked about who is in charge. We are being told by the Chief Medical Officer, CMO, that there is no clinical medical reason as to why these restrictions should remain in place. We were told by others in the HSE, including the national clinical director, that, again, there is no reason these restrictions should be in place. The Minister, Deputy Donnelly, said he supports an easing of restrictions. He went on national radio and said the restrictions will, by and large, be gone and the emergency situations would be dealt with in a couple of weeks. Yet, none of that has been done. It is the same for prenatal and postnatal appointments. Restrictions are in place in all those areas. Women cannot understand why these restrictions are still in place when everything else is opening up.

The partners of expectant mothers are not visitors. They cannot be seen in the same category as visitors; they are partners. When women go through a pregnancy, they deserve to have their partners with them for all scans and for the full birth. While there may have been some justification for these restrictions in the past, there is no justification now. The Minister, therefore, needs to get his act together, stamp his authority, take charge and deal with this once and for all. 621 Dáil Éireann

13/07/2021NNN00600Deputy Frankie Feighan: I thank the Deputies for raising this important issue. I welcome the opportunity to discuss this topic on behalf of the Minister, Deputy Donnelly, on the floor of the House today. I begin by again assuring the House and the Deputies present that I completely understand the difficulties posed by the restrictions in our maternity services for expectant mums, partners and families over the course of this pandemic.

As we are all acutely aware, however, Covid-19 has been and still is prevalent throughout our communities. As a result, it has been necessary to introduce measures right across the health system to curtail the virus. Regrettably, restrictions implemented in our maternity hospitals have impacted access for partners, and I fully appreciate the anxiety and concern that has caused.

It is important, however, we bear in mind that restrictions were put in place to protect the women, babies and staff in our maternity hospitals. It is worth remembering also that some of the most vulnerable members of our society are cared for in our maternity hospitals, including fragile infants at the very extremes of prematurity and the sickest of newborns with very complex needs.

We are now seeing some of those restrictions being relaxed, and national guidance was issued to maternity services covering attendance while a woman is in the labour ward, daily visits by partners, 20-week anomaly scans and visits by parents to the neonatal intensive care unit. This guidance also covered visits where there might be communication that is particularly significant.

The HSE has advised that all 19 maternity hospitals are fully complying with this guidance since 21 June. In addition, building on the guidance around planned attendances, the HSE has advised that updated guidance was issued to maternity services on 24 June. This relates to unplanned attendances such as emergency presentations, attendance at early pregnancy assessment units and visits by women considered to have higher-risk pregnancies.

With regard to this updated guidance, the HSE has advised it engaged last week with the six hospital groups to seek confirmation of compliance across the 19 maternity services. The response received this week indicates 18 of the 19 units are fully compliant with partners being allowed at early assessment units, 12 of the 19 are fully compliant with high-risk pregnancy visits and 15 of the 19 are fully compliant with emergency presentation visits. The HSE has advised it is engaging with the individual services to set out a plan to provide access for partners in line with the guidance. My Department has asked for a detailed report on the matter to include timelines for its implementation.

I again assure the House that we are working hard to do everything we can to ensure the restrictions are reversed as quickly as possible, insofar as it is safe to do so. The advice, however, remains that the potential for Covid-19 to spread in maternity services is very real. I am, however, glad of the progress we are making and I hope this progress can continue.

13/07/2021NNN00800Deputy Jennifer Whitmore: The Minister of State’s response contradicts what the CMO, the HSE and the Minister himself said that there were no health and safety reasons these restrictions should be in place. I know the Minister said he understands what women are going through but that these rules are in place to protect women. We need to stop treating women like children.

In a week where we are debating the vaccine certificate, it is beyond belief that when a 622 13 July 2021 woman is vaccinated, and when her partner is vaccinated, she would still have go through an emergency or a miscarriage on her own. That is unacceptable. The House is rising for the summer and I have a real fear this will not be sorted for women over the coming weeks or months and they will be left behind again. For some reason, when comes to women’s healthcare, women are always left behind and must fight for every last piece of rights. We are last in the queue all the time. We are behind hairdressers, pubs and restaurants. It is not acceptable that women have to face miscarriages alone. All the women and their partners I have heard from over the past couple of weeks and months are all scared and terrified. Many of them have already gone through this process and cannot go through it again. I ask, therefore, that the Minister of State makes sure this is resolved before the recess.

13/07/2021NNN00900Deputy David Cullinane: The Minister of State’s speech was peppered with words like “reports” and “timelines”. It was full of caveats and, to be quite frank and straight, excuses, and there are no excuses. As the previous speaker said, we have been told time and again that the same public health experts, whom the Government is saying we must hang our coats on for with everything else, are wrong when it comes to maternity restrictions. It is not good enough. The Minister and the Government need to get their act together. The Government has not gotten anything right in recent times. We have emergency legislation we will debate tomorrow, which it has made a complete mess of. We have the national maternity hospital, which it is making a complete mess of. Time and again we have come in here in good faith, trying to get clarity and trying to get progress for women and their partners. While the Government says it is listening, it is hearing and that it cares, it is not solving the problem. The Government should do its job. The Minister must do his job, get off his backside and sort this out once and for all and not have us having to come back in September with this still being a problem.

13/07/2021OOO00200Deputy Frankie Feighan: I thank the Deputies. Again they have articulated and acknowledged the difficulties and the anxieties the restrictions in our maternity services have placed on women and their partners during the pandemic. Such a deviation from normal practices in our maternity hospitals is of course a cause for concern and something that is deeply regrettable. However, as I noted, these measures were necessary to protect mums, babies and partners, as well as those whose job it is to care for them. I have also mentioned the potential for Covid-19 to spread in our maternity services is still very real and the challenge of protecting everyone, whether they are receiving or providing care, remains. Thankfully, we are making progress and I welcome the efforts made to strike a balance between those important goals. Our maternity services are working hard to ensure as much access can be provided to partners as possible, while keeping everyone safe. The House will agree staff in these services have performed ad- mirably in what have been difficult and unprecedented circumstances. I look forward to when restrictions can be relaxed further and to when mums, partners and their families can once again experience these joyous moments without worry or concern. Hopefully, in the next few weeks we will be in a better place but I will bring the Deputies’ concerns to the Minister. Their concerns are valid. They articulated them well and I hope in a few weeks, women will not have to go through this difficult situation.

13/07/2021OOO00250Driver Test

13/07/2021OOO00300Deputy Dara Calleary: I thank the Ceann Comhairle for choosing this issue and the Minis- ter of State, Deputy Naughton, for being here this evening. The latest figure I have is that there are 119,253 people waiting for a driver theory test. There are nearly another 100,000 people 623 Dáil Éireann waiting for the actual old-style driver test but tonight I am going to focus on the theory test. For the past number of weeks my office, as I assume the office of every Deputy has been, has been inundated with complaints from people who cannot get detail, who have had test cancelled four, five, six, and on one occasion, seven times, who cannot get jobs because they cannot get on the driver licence waiting list and who cannot get information from either Prometric or the Road Safety Agency, RSA, about what is going on. Surely as a Government committed to a digital strategy we can put this online for a much greater number of people than we are currently doing. Third-level colleges and fourth-level institutions are doing exams online with appropriate supervision. We can do driver theory tests online with appropriate supervision. I have also had many complaints from people who are getting emails on the morning of the test, or even when they are outside the centre, informing them their test is cancelled. The backlog due to Covid is one thing, but the manner in which people, and young drivers in particular, are being treated is unacceptable. The House is going into recess and we have no other way of knowing how this is going to be dealt with. I insist we have a response this evening.

13/07/2021OOO00400Deputy Emer Higgins: I have been engaging with driving instructors across Lucan, Clondalkin, Palmerstown, Newcastle, Saggart and Rathcoole since the beginning of the year. I have been using their feedback to help shape my requests to the Department of Transport. I thank the Minister of State for taking action on some of the suggestions I have made on their behalf, in particular the move to online driver theory tests. Young people have suffered greatly during this pandemic. They have had to sacrifice an awful lot for the common good and getting on the road and learning to drive is a rite of passage for young people, which has been almost completely taken away from them since the beginning of this pandemic. The backlog of tests created by the pandemic has made getting on the road an even more difficult task than usual. I have been contacted by so many frustrated young people who have had their theory tests cancelled and rescheduled more times than they can count this past year. There are young people who purchased their 12 essential driver theory lessons from a driving instructor more than 15 months ago and who have not been able to sit behind the wheel for their first lesson yet. The Minister of State can imagine how disappointing this is for these young people who see driving as the first big step towards independence. What assurance can she give them and our driving instructors that the backlogs will be cleared?

13/07/2021OOO00500Deputy Joe McHugh: I concur with my colleagues regarding young drivers, in the main, who are looking for driver theory tests. I speak tonight on behalf of one young gentleman, Mr. Liam Mooney from Malin Head. He is a 19-year-old man who applied for his driver theory test in September 2020. It has been cancelled five times. He is a young man with a disability. Once he gets the driver theory test he is going to have to wait for the test itself and then apply for a primary medical certificate and go through further assessment and delay. On behalf of young people with disabilities who have been through the mill with the delays, the bureaucracy and who have had their expectations knocked so many times, I ask the Minister of State to ask the officials to look not just at this individual case but at those of all young people with disabilities to see how we can try to enable them to get through this process. It is an elongated process and an exhausting one for them, so I am asking for a special intervention here in respect of young Liam Mooney from Malin Head, County Donegal.

13/07/2021OOO00600Minister of State at the Department of Transport (Deputy Hildegarde Naughton): I thank all the Deputies for raising this important matter. Delivery of the driving test and the driver theory test, DTT, service are the statutory responsibility of the RSA and I have no power to intervene in individual cases.

624 13 July 2021 The gradual reopening of in-person driver theory test centres commenced on 8 June. The SRA reopened test centres and introduced capacity to increase the number of tests from an average of 15,000 tests in normal pre-Covid times to 25,000 tests monthly to tackle the backlog and shorten waiting times. The test centres have extensive Covid-19 measures in place to protect both customers and staff and to ensure the safe delivery of the service. The Department is working to increase capacity to 50,000 tests per month over time, if public health guidance permits. The service provider has sourced an additional 40 temporary team members to support the expected increase in capacity to 50,000 in-person test appointments. A pilot online driver theory test has been running for truck and bus categories and has been extended to include car and motorbike tests. The new offering saw 4,000 theory tests available for all categories of vehicles during June. The RSA has increased this by a further 6,000, bringing the total to 10,000 online tests that will be conducted during July. Tests are on a first-come, first-served basis with the new online service becoming more widely available later in the year.

The current number of confirmed bookings on the system is 116,024 scheduled tests. Dur- ing the five weeks up to 5 July, 37,303 theory tests were scheduled to take place, 28,945 tests were taken and, of those, 22,603 were passed. The number of people who failed to pass was 6,342. It is clear that the service is back up and running.

However, I am concerned at the number of applicants who do not show up for their test. The no-show figure is notable at 5,351. It is hugely disappointing that nearly 15% of candidates for the theory test are no-shows on the day, especially when there has been such high demand for the service. This puts an unnecessary strain on the service and further complicates matters for the many people awaiting a test and who will ultimately be delayed as a result. I know the Road Safety Authority, RSA, is concerned about this too and I understand it is looking at com- munications and reminders in order to reduce this number.

Due to the suspension of driving testing services in the initial pandemic response, along with the health protocols required since the resumption of services, a significant backlog has developed. Driving tests for essential workers continue to be a priority for the driving testing service. However, in line with the gradual reopening of services, driving tests for all those who are eligible to take the test and have been waiting longest have recommenced in a limited fashion since the end of May. The further reopening of driving testing services will be the subject of discussions between the Department of Transport and the RSA in the coming weeks.

The RSA driver testers are undertaking driving tests in extremely difficult conditions in an enclosed space where physical distancing is very difficult. They are using vehicles provided by the test candidates, which are not controllable environments. An additional 40 temporary testers were recruited in the second quarter of the year and 18 of the new recruits have completed training and been live testing since the week commencing 7 June. There are 21 more who have successfully completed training and began live testing yesterday, 12 July. Sanction was recently received for a further 40 temporary testers.

13/07/2021PPP00200Deputy Dara Calleary: I thank the Minister of State for the detail. When is it intended to get to 50,000 tests per month? I know the RSA has statutory responsibility for this but will the Minister of State address the service matters and the lack of service with the authority? Is there any way we can put up numbers regularly on the RSA website of how many people are awaiting tests and how many are being done? The Minister of State indicates there were 28,945 tests done in June and the start of July and that number should be more widely available instead of having to be sought in the Chamber. We will not be able to seek it here from next week but such 625 Dáil Éireann numbers could start building confidence that the backlog is being addressed.

Are there any plans to increase the number of tests available for people for reasons of employment or other urgent reasons, such as family support? Deputy McHugh referred to one case and we have heard similar cases. I urge the Minister of State to take a very strong hand with the Road Safety Authority on this issue.

13/07/2021PPP00300Deputy Emer Higgins: I thank the Minister of State for the reply and I am really glad there is such progress being made for prospective drivers, with the acceleration of theory tests from 15,000 per month to 25,000 per month being a huge help, especially when combined with the 10,000 online theory tests. It is great to hear plans to accelerate that further to 50,000 tests per month. The fact that one in every six theory test applicants is a no-show is certainly not helping matters. I encourage anyone who cannot make the theory test appointment to cancel it in advance.

I am particularly pleased the move to the online theory test is working well. This was a key recommendation in the proposal I sent to the Minister of State’s Department based on feedback from local driving instructors in my area in Clondalkin, Lucan, Palmerstown, Newcastle and Rathcoole. Getting a driving licence is a rite of passage for many young people and we must do what we can to get them motoring.

13/07/2021PPP00400Deputy Joe McHugh: I appreciate that the Minister of State cannot make individual interventions but I reiterate my request to make a special case for people with disabilities who have been waiting or who have been let down. They have to go through a longer process than others because they have to go for the primary certificates as well. I am making this intervention on behalf of a cohort of people rather than an individual, and it emphasises the importance of this for young people with disabilities. They had to spend so much time at home in lockdown, like others, but the difference is this cohort must go through a longer process. The least we can do is look at a policy to highlight the important point that there is a cohort of people who have been let down and have had to go through a longer process. We should give them priority. It would not require much imagination but rather a policy intervention on the part of the Minister.

13/07/2021PPP00500Deputy Hildegarde Naughton: I thank the Deputies for raising the matter. I completely understand the frustration and concerns, particularly with young people who want to get on the road, get driving and through the theory test.

In my opening remarks I highlighted that the online service is up to 10,000 tests per month but the real way to expedite the processing of the backlog is through in-person theory tests in testing centres. That capacity pre-Covid was 15,000 tests and it is now 25,000 tests per month. Deputy Calleary asked about the timeline for increasing this to 50,000 tests per month and it will be based on public health directions. I know the Department of Transport is working with the RSA on that. There are 116,000 scheduled theory tests so once 50,000 tests per month are allowed, it will get through the theory test backlog pretty swiftly.

Deputy McHugh highlighted a case and I know it is very frustrating for many young people who are trying to access services. Special cases are operational matters for the RSA but I know the driver theory test provider makes special arrangements on the day for people with special needs. Concerns were also raised around the closure of some centres and I can follow up in order to get details for the Deputy.

There is progress in the online theory test process. The fastest way to get through the back- 626 13 July 2021 log is by using the in-person theory tests in centres, and the RSA has said the operator will supply extra staff in order to try to get through the backlog as quickly as possible. The Deputies can rest assured that I completely understand their frustrations and the Department is working in conjunction with the RSA on whatever we can do to expedite the matter.

13/07/2021PPP00600Olympic Games

13/07/2021PPP00700Deputy James Lawless: The Tokyo Olympics commence on 23 July, which is in a couple of weeks, with 103 Irish athletes setting sail today. I believe the Minister of State was part of the team sending them off and well done to her for doing it. We wish them every success. It is Team Ireland and we hope they do us proud.

One sport will not be represented at the games. Despite securing qualification in June 2019 at an event in Germany, the Irish dressage team will not send a team to compete. The team qualified but for various reasons the original team members could not partake in the games after they were delayed. Rather than sending a replacement team, Horse Sport Ireland and the coach decided to send no team at all. It is not that the team did not want or was not able to go but it was prevented from going, which is a real travesty.

We know what this sport can give all of us as a nation when we get behind the flag. The Irish football team gave us much joy and success over many years and decades, even when it did not qualify for international tournaments. Katie Taylor has done us proud on many occasions in the boxing ring, as have many other boxers. Annalise Murphy did much for the sport of sailing when she qualified in 2012 and secured a silver medal at the 2016 Olympics. It is a sport, no more than dressage, that enjoyed an elevated status because of her success.

A sport also gets a lift from participation. Tennis clubs around the country report great interest during the Wimbledon tournament every year and a sport in the spotlight showcases talents and abilities. People watch and follow it, taking an interest. Dressage is a small sport at national level but it is very important, with a cohort of committed participants. It is also a sport that is very inclusive and both my daughters ride dressage. They reminded me on the way up this evening that it is a gender-neutral sport because there is no separate class for men and women. Both compete at the same levels and classes. It is also a sport where people of all ages can compete. It is accessible and disability-friendly, with many riders participating despite having disabilities.

This was a chance to showcase Irish sport, horses and riders across the world. As a Kildare representative, I am acutely aware of the importance of the horse industry to Ireland and Kildare, which is its heart. The participants are important but the industry is vital for related industries, including breeders, farmers, trainers, farriers and other suppliers. The whole mix is contingent on international success. This is a team that qualified. After 32 years of trying we got a place there. We had secured our place and had our pass. Yet, the plane left today with those empty seats because of a decision that I am still struggling to comprehend, which was not to send the team and not to send a replacement team. There are all kinds of question marks around that decision and I might come back to this in replies.

Ultimately, Ireland qualified and had a place and we decided not to send the alternative team. The decision was announced on the day of the deadline and it was too late to turn it around. I am told that the coach is based in California and has been selecting participants by Zoom calls. 627 Dáil Éireann A standard had been set of 68% criteria, but 66% is the international normal metric. There are many questions that surround that process. The bottom line is that there are three empty seats in the Tokyo Olympics. When the eyes of the world turn to the dressage arena during those games there will be no Irish flag in the arena. That is a crying shame for Irish participants, for dressage riders and for Ireland. It is too late unfortunately because the team has gone. I really believe that this needs to be followed up and investigated as to why this was allowed to happen, and to prevent any recurrence.

13/07/2021QQQ00200Minister of State at the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media (Deputy Jack Chambers): I thank the Deputy for raising this important matter. I fully understand and acknowledge the disappointment of Dressage Ireland and individual riders at the decision not to send a dressage team to the upcoming Olympic Games in Tokyo.

I know that it is very frustrating for those riders who had secured a place at the Olympics to accept the decision that was made by Horse Sport Ireland not to send a team. I absolutely acknowledge how difficult this has been for those individual riders, as the Deputy has outlined.

My role and the role of my Department is in developing policy for sport. The national governing bodies, NGBs, develop and deliver their sport, working with their club networks, affiliates and sponsors. This includes the effective operation of their sport, hosting, sanctioning and delivery of events, and the selection of teams for international competition. I do not have a role in these operational matters of NGBs and it would not be correct for me to get involved in such matters. The situation that has arisen in this case is that an Olympic place had been secured by dressage riders but Horse Sport Ireland made a decision not to send a team. The decision of the NGB has been made and the appeals processes has been outlined also. That is entirely a matter for Horse Sport Ireland and it is important that I respect their autonomy in this matter.

The selection process for all Olympic athletes and teams is managed through the national governing bodies of sport and the Olympic Federation of Ireland. The relevant national governing body for equestrian sport is Horse Sport Ireland. As part of the process, the national governing bodies agree a comprehensive selection policy with the Olympic Federation of Ireland in advance of the games. Neither I nor Sport Ireland has any role in the Olympic team selection process. All national governing bodies of sport, including Horse Sport Ireland, are independent autonomous bodies and are responsible for their own governance procedures, competition rules for their sports and team selection procedures.

I understand that the decision of Horse Sport Ireland not to select a dressage team was appealed through Horse Sport Ireland’s internal process and through an independent dispute resolution mechanism and that the decision of Horse Sport Ireland was upheld in both instances. It would be inappropriate for me to intervene in any individual dispute regarding team selection or to comment on whether any individual sport is or is not represented at the games. The Minister with responsibility for sport of the day coming in and picking a team for a sporting event more broadly could be problematic for obvious reasons. Nor would it be appropriate for the Minister of the day to intervene in controversial rule changes that may take place from time to time.

Last week, the Olympic Federation of Ireland announced the equestrian team to represent Ireland in Tokyo. Ireland will be represented by one individual dressage rider, Heike Holstein. Heike has previously represented Ireland at three Olympic Games as an individual. I wish her and all of the other members of the equestrian team every success at the games and I am sure that they will do their sport and Ireland proud. 628 13 July 2021 The Deputy will be aware that the Olympic Games commence on 23 July with the Paralym- pic Games following on from 24 August. Currently, 103 athletes have qualified for the Olympic Games, with 26 slots qualified for the Paralympic Games. This will be Ireland’s largest ever team at the games. This will be an unusual Olympics as the events will be taking place with no spectators, due to the latest state of emergency announced in Tokyo. Many of our athletes have already arrived in Japan and the vast majority - over 90% - of the Irish team, including support staff, will be vaccinated before travelling. This is an exciting team for all our athletes heading to Tokyo. While these Olympic and Paralympic Games might be different from what we are used to, I know that every member of Team Ireland will give their absolute best. I hope that they will all enjoy the experience and I have no doubt that they will do Ireland proud and will be excellent ambassadors for our country at the games.

I would like to take the opportunity to inform the House that the Sport Ireland high performance strategy was launched on the 24 of June. This strategy defines Ireland’s high performance ambitions for the next decade. It spans three Olympiads, out to 2032.

13/07/2021QQQ00300Deputy James Lawless: I thank the Minister of State. I listened with interest to his reply. This is a taxpayer-funded sport, and certainly the governing body is taxpayer funded. The selection process and the Olympic Games delegation would receive similar taxpayer funding. The coach, who is a resident of California I am told, is taxpayer funded. I am not sure how appropriate it is for someone who has not set foot in the State for 18 months to be selecting a team where the nominations closed a few weeks ago. I also appreciate that the Minister of State cannot pick the teams, but perhaps the Minister of State could have mandated that a team be sent, provided that the team met certain criteria, which I am told they had. I would not expect any Government Minister or official to get involved in the who or what within that. Not sending a team at all, however, is outrageous and is a national scandal. The Minister of State was quite correct that Heike Holstein will be competing at individual level and I wish her every success. Ms Holstein is an accomplished rider and would have been part of the team had the whole team been able to be sent and had there been a team entry, which there is not.

I do not want to get into apportioning blame but I must ask a number of questions that have been put to me about the appeals process. I have already highlighted that the coach is overseas. The decision appears to have been made on the final day and when it was announced it was almost too late to appeal. There were a couple of appeals, one of which was given only partial information. One of the riders, James Connor was not apparently informed that having already engaged with Horse Sport Ireland prior to that he had actually secured Olympic accreditation. This may have influenced the decision. A number of questions have to be asked.

There is another point to be made, which I appreciate might be hearsay but it came out in the appeals process that a phrase was used where the back-up team were described as opportunistic. I am quite shocked that would be thrown out as some kind of apparently derogatory term. Any- body in sport, in life, in politics and in business should be opportunistic. It is called ambition. We had a by-election candidate, a fine new Teachta Dála, Deputy Bacik, elected into this House today because another Member had stood aside and created a vacancy. That is what is done to succeed, stepping forward when the door opens and taking the chance. Our riders tried to do that in this case but were prevented from doing that. It is outrageous to dismiss them for having the temerity to try to represent their country.

13/07/2021QQQ00400Deputy Jack Chambers: As I said in my initial remarks I accept and acknowledge that it is very frustrating for the riders who had secured a place to accept the decision made by Horse 629 Dáil Éireann Sport Ireland and how difficult that is. The role specific to national governing bodies is that they deliver and develop their sport, working with their club networks, affiliates and partners. Obviously, that involves structures and rules, selection policies and performance targets.

On the Olympic Games, the selection process is managed directly through the national governing bodies of sport, with the Olympic Federation of Ireland. That is a comprehensive selection policy developed prior to the games. Each national governing body is an independent and autonomous body responsible for their own governance, procedures, competition rules for their sport and team selection procedures. I understand that the decision of Horse Sport Ireland was appealed through their own processes, and externally appealed through the independent dispute resolution mechanism. That underpins any decision made by the relevant national governing body.

The Deputy might have specific issues, as he referenced, with how that operated. It would then be a matter for the riders themselves to present particular information to Horse Sport Ire- land. Obviously there are independent mechanisms they have tried to avail of regarding their own specific appeal. As the Deputy has acknowledged, it would be inappropriate for me to intervene in any individual dispute regarding team selection or to decide who should and should not be represented specifically at the games.

The Dáil adjourned at 11.50 p.m. until 9.15 a.m. on Wednesday, 14 July 2021.

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