Liam Quaide (Cork East, Social Democrats)

I note that the Environmental Protection Agency received additional funding in yesterday's budget. That is welcome, but we know from recent events that it is not all about funding when it comes to its powers. It is also about the willingness of the EPA to impose serious consequences on entities or individuals that cause damage to our natural world. The Minister will be aware of the catastrophic Blackwater fish kill that occurred in early August. An estimated 42,000 fish died when they came into contact with some kind of noxious substance. That figure does not include juvenile fish and local anglers believe the actual mortalities are likely to be multiples of 42,000. It is surely the most serious ecological disaster in living memory in this country, and its consequences will be felt by local communities around the Blackwater for many years.

The degree to which a dairy co-op called North Cork Creameries based in Kanturk has been chronically in breach of environmental regulations has been laid out brilliantly by Ella McSweeney in The Irish Times, and its pattern of violations also featured strongly in an Oireachtas committee hearing last week. Despite polluting local waterways over and over it has never faced any serious consequences. Paying a few grand to a local angling club or €11,000 in fines to the EPA is, let us face it, a pittance to a company that recorded €212 million in revenue in July and a 48% increase in profits. It is clear from that Oireachtas committee hearing last week that the EPA is utterly toothless when it comes to holding companies like North Cork Creameries to account. That lack of powers, or its lack of willingness to use the powers it has, is causing devastation to our natural heritage. I urge the Minister and his colleagues, and had I engaged with the Minister of State, Deputy O'Sullivan, earlier, I would have said it to him, to really take this catastrophe seriously and give an earnest undertaking that all avenues will be exhausted to hold the culprit responsible, whoever that is. We also need to see a rapid response action plan devised as a matter of urgency by the EPA, IFI, the Marine Institute and the council in the event that this were to happen again. That is the legitimate fear of the communities around the Blackwater.

With respect to my own spokesperson area, there has been a significant increase in staffing investment in disability services. It will be important to get a clear breakdown this week of how exactly that money will be spent. That investment needs to be followed by swift recruitment campaigns involving secure contracts and posts within services that give opportunities for progression, which will improve the retention issue we have seen blight CDNTs over many years.

On the negative side it has been long recognised that having a disability comes with significant additional financial pressures, including costs of transport, equipment and therapies. Despite repeated calls from advocacy groups such as Inclusion Ireland to introduce a cost of disability payment, the Government failed to implement this measure in the budget yesterday. The Social Democrats proposed a cost of disability payment in our alternative budget that would have amounted to €1,040 per year, as well as an additional €78 per year in disability allowance. The Government has only increased disability allowance annually by €520, meaning disabled people are €1,300 per year worse off under this budget than they would have been under our proposals. That is a significant amount of money. The absence of a cost of disability payment is a glaring budget omission that leaves disabled people continuing to shoulder an unfair financial burden.

The budget was also a missed opportunity to abolish the means test for carer's allowance. Thousands of carers are either shut out of this modest financial support because they have hard-earned savings, their partner's income pushes them over the eligibility threshold, or they are living in fear of having the payment taken off them when their families' finances change even slightly. The Government should have abolished the means test this week and allowed thousands of family carers, the majority of whom are women, some peace of mind and certainty. Instead, it chose to tinker around the edges of this support and impose continued financial and administrative hardship on them.

Meanwhile the Government is pouring €20 million into outsourcing assessments of need while at the same time applying crude recruitment restrictions to the very services in primary care that could provide a more streamlined and integrated pathway of assessment and intervention for many of these children. This approach undermines the capacity of the HSE and imposes major costs on the taxpayer. Outsourcing AONs is not only costly but it compromises the quality and continuity of care for children with additional needs. It creates what is known as a perverse incentive for clinicians to leave the public service and taken on lucrative private clinical work, thereby further hollowing out HSE services and preventing them from developing.

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