Results 5,061-5,080 of 40,330 for speaker:Leo Varadkar

Ceisteanna ar Reachtaíocht a Gealladh - Questions on Promised Legislation (25 Nov 2021)

Leo Varadkar: I am not sure what the budget for home care is, but it has increased enormously in the last few years. I believe it has increased by 40% or 50% in the past few years and has increased under this Government. It would not make sense to take a purist ideological approach and say that it should only be provided by the State, which would mean we would actually have less home care available. We...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (25 Nov 2021)

Leo Varadkar: I thank the Deputy for raising the important issue of child protection. I realise that we will debate this in the House later and that we will continue to discuss it in the weeks and months ahead. I agree that we must do more to help every child to get the start in life to which the child is entitled. For many children that is very difficult because of the circumstances of their birth or...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (25 Nov 2021)

Leo Varadkar: The Deputy is right in one of the fundamental points he made, that if we can reduce poverty and inequality in our society the number of these difficult issues that arise will be less. He will acknowledge that Ireland is a country in which poverty has been falling in the last five or six years, if not the last ten years. It is a country in which inequality has been narrowing. Some people...

Ceisteanna ar Reachtaíocht a Gealladh - Questions on Promised Legislation (25 Nov 2021)

Leo Varadkar: The objective here is to make home ownership a reality for more people, particularly young people. Over the next couple of years the Deputy will see many people who have been renting for far too long being able to get their feet on the housing ladder and to buy their first home through the shared equity scheme. For them, in many cases they will pay less on their mortgage than they are...

Ceisteanna ar Reachtaíocht a Gealladh - Questions on Promised Legislation (25 Nov 2021)

Leo Varadkar: I have not seen the report. As the Deputy said, it has only come out in the past few minutes.

Ceisteanna ar Reachtaíocht a Gealladh - Questions on Promised Legislation (25 Nov 2021)

Leo Varadkar: It is because it means that many people will be able to become homeowners for the first time-----

Ceisteanna ar Reachtaíocht a Gealladh - Questions on Promised Legislation (25 Nov 2021)

Leo Varadkar: -----and they will pay less for their mortgage than they are paying for rent.

Ceisteanna ar Reachtaíocht a Gealladh - Questions on Promised Legislation (25 Nov 2021)

Leo Varadkar: Does the Deputy want to keep them renting for life?

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (25 Nov 2021)

Leo Varadkar: That did not happen because of the Social Democrats. It happened because of policies pursued for generations in Ireland. That is not the reality for a lot of younger people in Ireland. Most of our housing policies are now orientated towards trying to increase home ownership in Ireland and make it possible for more people to buy homes. Shared equity is part of that. I have seen it work in...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (25 Nov 2021)

Leo Varadkar: I thank the Deputy. I acknowledge the simple fact that our public health service is too small for a population of 5 million people, which is also an ageing population. That is not the only reason but one of the reasons too many people have to wait too long for the health care they need. I fully acknowledge that. The Deputy asked me if I have the stomach to reverse the cuts to our health...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (25 Nov 2021)

Leo Varadkar: I believe in universal healthcare in Ireland. As I outlined to the Deputy, it is something I have tried to make a reality in the past couple of years. We continue to work on that. There is a misunderstanding sometimes about how different health service models work around the world. About 10% of people in the United Kingdom have private health insurance. In lots of European countries,...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (25 Nov 2021)

Leo Varadkar: -----with private health insurance. That is the case.

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (25 Nov 2021)

Leo Varadkar: It is not the case that nobody has private health insurance in the United Kingdom. People do. In fact, a lot of European countries have an insurance-based model and people are either required to have health insurance or there is a system of social health insurance which is run through the health system. The NHS is not the typical model across the European Union. Countries across the EU...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (25 Nov 2021)

Leo Varadkar: The problem we are facing is that we have a pandemic that is not under control and is unpredictable. We have capacity to carry out approximately 30,000 PCR tests a day in our swabbing centres and even more than that in our laboratories, but there are limits to capacity in any system, in any country. When we have a situation where, on any given day, there could be hundreds of thousands of...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (25 Nov 2021)

Leo Varadkar: That is why we have to prioritise and it is not the first time we have had to do so during the pandemic. From time to time, we have to prioritise testing those who need the test most. We are prioritising those with a GP referral and symptomatic close contacts of people who have Covid. From time to time, NPHET has had to change the testing criteria and that may be necessary again because...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (25 Nov 2021)

Leo Varadkar: We have been increasing the number of hospital beds in Ireland since 2015.

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (25 Nov 2021)

Leo Varadkar: We have 900 more beds today than we had before the pandemic began. There are 600 people with Covid in hospital.

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (25 Nov 2021)

Leo Varadkar: We have 44% more doctors in Ireland than we had ten years ago.

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (25 Nov 2021)

Leo Varadkar: There are 300 ICU beds now and we have funded for 340.

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (25 Nov 2021)

Leo Varadkar: I thank the Deputy for raising these matters. First, I am somebody who believes in home ownership. This is a Government that believes in home ownership. I am not sure that is really true for many of the people opposite or on the left of politics in Ireland. Some 70% of people in this country own their own home and we want that to be a reality for people in their 20s and 30s. A huge part...