Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

I support this motion and thank Sinn Féin for tabling it. For too long, the hard work of carers has gone largely unrecognised, unsupported and unpaid by the State. The State and the Government have failed to care for the carers in our society. Every day, carers do crucial work supporting our most vulnerable but this and successive Governments largely view their work as a way to save money and for the State to outsource its responsibility to families, while providing those on the front line with very limited support.

The closure of respite centres and day services hit them hard in the past while, as did the previous cutbacks to these services. Despite promises, they continue to be left in limbo when it comes to pensions. Carer's allowance and carer's benefit are simply inadequate, with low income disregards and unnecessary barriers for those who are self-employed. It is very simple: they need their work to be recognised as work. They deserve a living wage for the work they do, complete with proper entitlement to a pension.

This motion also correctly condemns the actions of the Department of Health in putting together dossiers on children, as exposed by "RTÉ Investigates" last week. Why is the State creating secret dossiers on children with autism whose parents are involved in legal action with the State? Why, instead of helping these children, is the State interested in spying on them in order to try to defend itself? Which Ministers for Health were aware of this? Did they sign off on it? Did the Tánaiste, Deputy Varadkar, know of this when he was Minister for Health? Did the Taoiseach, Deputy Micheál Martin, know? How on earth can it be justified to compile private information on vulnerable children from health, education and social care professionals, in order to block or damage their legal cases, without any consent from the parents? Rather than supporting these families, the State was engaged in alarming and sinister covert surveillance. We now hear that the head of the Department has refused to address the health committee next week and that the Government is refusing to address the Dáil on this matter for weeks. This cover up will not wash and will not be accepted by people. The families who have been monitored by the Department should be notified immediately. The Ministers and senior officials who allowed it to take place should be named and made to account for themselves.

This motion also refers to the vaccine roll-out and the campaigning by family carers to get access to the vaccine as soon as possible. Obviously, this is now all up in the air in light of the Government's latest change of tack on the roll-out. What is most striking about this change of tack is the lack of public health infrastructure to be able to implement the roll-out that was previously agreed. One year into a pandemic and the Government is not able to target particular groups, which it had previously said was best practice. It is shocking.

It is also very galling to carers that while they are none the wiser about when they will get the vaccine, the head of the Beacon Hospital seems to be distributing vaccines to whomever he wants. The idea of it being left to the Beacon Hospital to hire someone to investigate what happened there is simply not good enough. The Garda should be involved to establish if a crime was committed and there should be a rapid public audit, involving the IMO and patient representatives, to see if there was other misallocation or misappropriation of public resources. The CEO of the Beacon Hospital, which is a private hospital, has been caught red-handed and he must go. He used his position of power to steal at least 20 public vaccines and use them as if they were his personal property. If a cleaner went in and robbed 20 vaccines, he would be arrested for theft. It should not be any different because it is the CEO of billionaire Denis O'Brien's private hospital. It is the same hospital, let us remember, that in January was refusing to sign up to allow its facilities to be used for surge capacity. Again and again, private hospitals have put their profits and greed before public need. This underlines the need to end the two-tier health service and bring the private hospitals into a quality, single tier national health service.

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