Ms Colette Bennett:

I may pass to my colleague in a moment. Deputy Paul Donnelly mentioned the digital divide. I live quite near Ms Lennon in rural Ireland and during the pandemic, we could not move for the broadband trucks moving up country roads. It was a real sticking point because we suddenly realised just how bad things were. While things have certainly improved, there are households which are still struggling in that regard, particularly when we disaggregate the data and look at the ages of those concerned. We are seeing very basic or low levels of digital literacy among our adult population. We now have an e-health strategy and are looking at e-public services. The people who cannot keep up are going to miss out on essential and critical services. Our education system is becoming more digitised. It starts there. It starts young. There were great moves, which we very much welcomed, on the subsidisation of primary school books in budget 2023. However, there needs to be more to satisfy the digital needs of students and older people. We need more targeted supports in that regard.

There are two elements to the consideration of access to medical cards. We have for a long time been calling for the individualisation of welfare support so that it is not based on household income but on what an individual needs. We know, for example, that not every household is happy and homogenous, works together and shares everything. We know there are difficulties and those difficulties need to be addressed. Based on studies at an international level, we are the only country that does not have universal access to primary care. We have been calling for some time for what are now community healthcare networks and primary care networks. We welcomed the 2016 publication of Sláintecare but we have only seen the infrastructure investment once, which was during the Covid-19 pandemic when the €500 million that was committed to every year for six years was allocated. That needs to be ramped up. Those numbers are out of date and that needs to be addressed. We need access across the board so there are no dips or areas we all know of where someone can be a fiver over his or her assessment.

On the quality education side and DEIS+, there are still issues in DEIS schools in terms of competing with peers in non-DEIS schools. Particularly since the massive increases in inflation, we are seeing much more disadvantage in what were mainstream schools. We are seeing kids coming to school with inadequate lunches and unable to concentrate. There has been an explosion in child mental health issues. We welcomed a recent announcement that there would be an increase for psychological supports at primary level. However, that needs to happen immediately because we know there are inadequate special needs assistant, SNA, hours. We know there are children who are not getting full hours in school because they are on short days. That is not addressing the problem of leaving people behind. Those people are our most vulnerable and they are being completely left behind. We certainly need additional supports at a mainstream level to ensure that people with additional needs are getting them so they can thrive.

Waste management brings a much bigger issue into focus. The Deputy was present when we launched our socioeconomic review, SER, in the audiovisual room recently. The issue of privatisation came up again and again. This is part of that. When it was a municipal offering and service that was provided as a public good, people got on with it. They did their jobs with pride. However, once you start tendering for it and privatising it, the role you privatise for becomes what was contained in your tender. Anything that was not contained in that is left behind. That is why you have these disparities and areas that are not getting their green or brown bins collected, or do not have brown bins at all. I do not think I have a brown bin. In that way, you start to constrict what you can actually get and that leaves gaps. I walked from Heuston Station this morning and there are bins left, right and centre in Dublin city centre. That has a knock-on impact on everything else. That is just one area of privatisation. This is a far more systemic problem.