Results 501-520 of 704 for speaker:John Kelly

Seanad: Adjournment Matters: Medical Card Eligibility (7 May 2014)

John Kelly: I appreciate that the Minister of State is taking this matter on behalf of another Minister of State and that this is a written response from the HSE for that Minister of State to read out. I have already pointed out the failings in some of its answers. It receives material which is then lost. It would be better to lift the moratorium and recruit staff than to bring in a foreign company to...

Seanad: Order of Business (8 May 2014)

John Kelly: I wish to support my colleague, Senator Landy, in welcoming the terms of reference that were issued by the expert group regarding the issue of overhead pylons versus the placing underground of cables. I also urge the expert panel to take submissions from all the community groups nationwide that have invested a great deal of time and money in fighting the pylon issue. It has been interesting...

Seanad: Order of Business (Resumed) (13 May 2014)

John Kelly: I call on the Leader for a debate on the rental assistance scheme operated by the local authorities. While it is a good scheme, it is not the panacea we all thought it was going to be because it has its flaws. A lady in my area worked for years in a service industry and was never unemployed but for the last couple of years. She has a 16 year old son who is being bullied at school and who...

Seanad: Order of Business (Resumed) (13 May 2014)

John Kelly: I am almost finished. The only option that is open to her, as has been advised to her by the local authority, is to present as homeless in Galway as she would be put into a homeless shelter. That is not appropriate for a mother and her 16 year old son, who is in school. She is effectively caught in an unemployment trap that she cannot get out of. This is why I am calling for a debate. We...

Seanad: Order of Business (27 May 2014)

John Kelly: I pay tribute to our leader, the Tánaiste, Deputy Gilmore, on how decisively he acted as a result of the disastrous election results we faced. Sometimes the players take the brunt of people's anger, which happened with our county councillors. On this occasion, the manager is the casualty. It is a shame it had to come to this but I pay tribute to him.

Seanad: Order of Business (27 May 2014)

John Kelly: Following on from Senator O'Donnell's contribution, the reason for the anti-Government sentiment is purely because of what is perceived as a disconnect between the Government and ordinary people in rural Ireland and in our cities. When we went into government, people were willing to pay so much to address the finances of this country, but I do not think they have the capacity to pay for...

Seanad: Order of Business (27 May 2014)

John Kelly: In respect of the disconnection that I have mentioned, I have seen Deputy Flanagan speak in the Dáil on numerous occasions. On one occasion he explained how dirty and undrinkable the water in Roscommon is. I saw Ministers looking down their noses at him, sneering at him. There were other such incidents.

Seanad: Order of Business (27 May 2014)

John Kelly: These Ministers were not sneering at Deputy Flanagan. They were sneering at the people of Roscommon and south Leitrim and in many other counties. That is why Deputy Flanagan was elected to the European Parliament. As an elected Member of the Dáil he was not treated with any respect.

Seanad: Order of Business (27 May 2014)

John Kelly: I would not suggest for one moment that he was not most respectful himself. There has been such a disconnection at a senior level that these things happen in government.

Seanad: Youth Guarantee and Rent Supplement: Statements (28 May 2014)

John Kelly: I welcome the Minister to the House and I have a number of issues to raise regarding rent caps and housing in general. I hope when she becomes leader of the Labour Party, she might address all of these with her Cabinet colleagues. There are some counties where the rent caps are far too low and as a result, many people cannot acquire proper accommodation, ending up either in substandard...

Seanad: Order of Business (Resumed) (5 Jun 2014)

John Kelly: I agree with Senator Ó Clochartaigh about the debacle over the review of medical cards and the taking of discretionary medical cards from people. It is amusing that people are standing up and listening to Ombudsman reporting on this, while in the past three years I have repeatedly highlighted the issue of files going missing between Clontarf and Finglas. It is time to review and...

Seanad: Order of Business (Resumed) (5 Jun 2014)

John Kelly: May I speak?

Seanad: Order of Business (Resumed) (5 Jun 2014)

John Kelly: I wrote on numerous occasions to the then Minister for Heath and Children, Mary Harney, and I asked that medical cards be made available to cancer patients. Repeatedly she refused, pointing out that there was very little discretion-----

Seanad: Order of Business (Resumed) (5 Jun 2014)

John Kelly: -----and that one had to abide by the guidelines.

Seanad: Order of Business (Resumed) (5 Jun 2014)

John Kelly: The previous speaker did not have a question for the Leader. Let me conclude with this point. My representations to the Minister were followed a year later by representations from her to me on behalf of a woman who had an underactive thyroid. She could not believe a medical card had not been made available as a matter of course because this person had an underactive thyroid.

Seanad: Order of Business (Resumed) (5 Jun 2014)

John Kelly: But she was forgetting about the people who had cancer. These are the people we are talking about today. These people are suffering as their medical cards have been withdrawn-----

Seanad: Order of Business (Resumed) (5 Jun 2014)

John Kelly: -----but the Fianna Fáil Party did exactly the same thing when it was in Government.

Seanad: Adjournment Matters: Road Traffic Offences (10 Jun 2014)

John Kelly: I thank the Minister of State for taking this Adjournment debate regarding fines where people go into court and claim they received summonses in regard to fines they were not aware had been issued. It has been brought to my attention that this has happened on numerous occasions. The matter has been well aired in the media as well. I refer to reports of court cases where people receive a...

Seanad: Adjournment Matters: Road Traffic Offences (10 Jun 2014)

John Kelly: We must acknowledge that mistakes are made and that some people do not receive these fines. I notice from the answer prepared for the Minister of State, by the Department's officials, that it was assumed that people had received their fines. There is nothing definitive about the matter. In the response it stated that, in some cases, people "would seek to avoid service by declining to accept...

Seanad: Order of Business (18 Jun 2014)

John Kelly: I welcome the Government's move to address the discretionary medical card issue. As Senator MacSharry rightly pointed out, I have spent two years highlighting the matter in the House with various Ministers, but to no avail. All I ever received in response was the claim that we did not have the money. In itself, this was an acknowledgement that the Government was aware of what was...