Dáil debates

Wednesday, 24 March 2021

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions

 

12:55 pm

Photo of Danny Healy-RaeDanny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I wish to ask the Government to open up construction for all those who have not been working for the past four or five months. I wish to ask the Taoiseach respectfully to increase the numbers who can go into a church for a funeral mass. I ask him to take into consideration size and height and capacity of places such as cathedrals and big churches and to increase the numbers.

Fr. Gearóid Walsh was on our local radio last week and he said that we have a professor for everything, but no professor or position has been created for a person with common sense. I sympathise and empathise with the McCarthy family from Gneeveguilla, and particularly with Mr. Jack McCarthy who lost his wonderful wife, Mary Theresa, yesterday. There are around 100 members of that family. I do not know how they are going to manage, but I do not envy the person deciding who the ten people to go to the funeral will be.

I want to go on to construction. For too long now some construction workers cannot go to work. Those involved in social housing can go to work. It is very galling for some people, when Tim can go to work, but Tom and Mike cannot go to work because they are not working in social housing. Not everyone is able to get on the social housing list and people need houses. Some people want to build their own houses and they should be allowed to finish them.

We have to recognise that English recruitment companies are looking for skilled workers of all types, including carpenters, plumbers and drivers. Flannery Plant Hire is advertising every week for 360 degree excavator drivers and drivers of dumper trucks and different vehicles to work on the HS2 rail project in England, which is the biggest job since the Channel Tunnel. If the Taoiseach does not believe me, he can get the Tánaiste, Deputy Varadkar, while he still has him, to look on Twitter - he good on Facebook - to check all that is happening in that line. Surely they should work together and see that, and they are looking for women as well in case that the Minister of State, Deputy Madigan, is listening in to us. You see-----

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