Results 61-80 of 361 for long speaker:Bríd Smith

Dublin City Safety Initiatives and Other Services: Statements (17 Nov 2022)

Bríd Smith: ...companies do good recruitment campaigns. They do recruit but they cannot retain workers. There is a plethora of reasons for this. The crucial one is the conditions for workers who drive buses. Long and antisocial shifts do not allow for a decent work-life balance. They also start on unequal pay. People have to be in the job at least four to six years before they begin to catch up...

Retained Firefighters: Motion [Private Members] (15 Nov 2022)

Bríd Smith: ...and been allowed to degenerate so far is beyond me. I cannot personalise it to the Minister; he has only been the Minister for two and a half years but he is of a party that has been in power for a long time and his colleagues in power, Fine Gael, were in power when he was not in power. The buck has to stop somewhere and perhaps it is the Department or it is the Minister and his...

Ceisteanna Eile - Other Questions: Human Rights (8 Nov 2022)

Bríd Smith: ...over the regime, el-Sisi has built a dozen prisons in ten years. There are 60,000 activists locked up. This week many people were arrested and will probably be tortured and thrown in prison for a long period of time because they are environmentalists and climate activists. It is worth quoting Alaa Abd el-Fattah's sister, who has said that those who attend COP27 do not realise their best...

Home Care: Motion (Resumed) [Private Members] (8 Nov 2022)

Bríd Smith: I will follow on from what Deputy Kenny talked about. I know him a long time and knew him when he was a young fellow doing this sort of care work. I know the pride with which he did his job and the type of people he looked after for long periods. He looked after people with whom he built up relationships. There were people who were wheelchair-bound and people who suffered with their...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport: Provision of Bus Services in Dublin: Discussion (8 Nov 2022)

Bríd Smith: ...just to Ms Graham or the NTA. At the core of this issue is the question of privatisation. If we were not forcing two companies to compete with each other in a tendering process that is often stressful, long, competitive and so forth; and forcing their drivers to work longer shifts in order for the companies to be competitive; with lower and very low wages in the Go-Ahead Ireland company;...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport: Provision of Bus Services in Dublin: Discussion (8 Nov 2022)

Bríd Smith: For people waiting at bus stops for hours and hours and not having any guarantee of when a service is coming; a week is a long time, never mind a month or two months, which Ms Graham is looking for.

Ceisteanna ar Pholasaí nó ar Reachtaíocht - Questions on Policy or Legislation (27 Oct 2022)

Bríd Smith: ...ten years since the tragic and avoidable death of Savita Halappanavar in an Irish hospital having been denied a life-saving operation for an abortion. Everyone will acknowledge that we have come a long way in the last ten years and her death ignited a movement that saw an end to the misogynistic anti-choice laws in this country. However, we still have a way to go. Abortion services are...

Written Answers — Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment: Emergency Services (27 Oct 2022)

Bríd Smith: 152. To ask the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment the number of times that the ECAS call system has been down in the past five years and when did these happen; and for how long for each occasion. [53986/22]

Social and Affordable Housing Supply: Motion [Private Members] (26 Oct 2022)

Bríd Smith: ...paragraphs in our motion describing what Deputies Boyd Barrett and Murphy just outlined as to what we think should be a beginning of a solution to the housing crisis. The Minister responded with 50 long paragraphs. This place would drive you to drink to be honest because yesterday the same thing happened at the Committee on Environment and Climate Action. When I asked was there any...

Public Transport: Motion [Private Members] (25 Oct 2022)

Bríd Smith: ...this Chamber today about what is wrong with Go-Ahead. There is a lot wrong with the NTA. What it has done with BusConnects is very interesting. From the time BusConnects was announced, as a councillor, along with other People Before Profit councillors, I engaged very strongly with the organisation. BusConnects will confirm that we had the representatives driven mad. We went to all the...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: General Scheme of the Health (Termination of Pregnancy Services (Safe Access Zones)) Bill 2022: Discussion (19 Oct 2022)

Bríd Smith: ...free sex education in schools so that as a whole package, the need for intervention in crisis pregnancy will be undermined but crisis pregnancy will also be able to be dealt with. Four years is a long time to have something that was shadowed in the legislation, that is, the provision of safe access zones, not even being close to being passed yet. This has been said by many Deputies and...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: General Scheme of the Health (Termination of Pregnancy Services (Safe Access Zones)) Bill 2022: Discussion (19 Oct 2022)

Bríd Smith: ...what they are doing, not to stand somewhere and to move on. If the people concerned do not do so, they can then be arrested under the auspices of that Act. It cannot be so complex that it has taken us so long to do this. I will finish with that comment, and by repeating, as others have done, that there is an urgency for this legislation to come through. It sends out such a bad signal...

Ceisteanna ar Sonraíodh Uain Dóibh - Priority Questions: Disability Services (13 Oct 2022)

Bríd Smith: ...2015. When former Deputy Finian McGrath was Minister of State, he made the same commitment in 2018 that the Minister is making here today. That is four years ago. Four years might not seem a long time to a Deputy or a Minister, but it is a long time in the life of somebody who has to live with a crippling and often crucifyingly painful disability, and who is not getting the services...

Disability Services: Motion [Private Members] (11 Oct 2022)

Bríd Smith: ...national averages decreased; and - people with disabilities face poverty rates three to five times higher than the national average, and the at-risk of poverty rate for those not at work due to a long-standing health condition (disability) for 2021 was 39.1 per cent;" B. To insert the following after "ratify the Optional Protocol to the UNCRPD": "- increase the Disability Allowance,...

Written Answers — Department of Health: Covid-19 Pandemic (29 Sep 2022)

Bríd Smith: 239. To ask the Minister for Health if his attention has been drawn to the lack of specialist, multidisciplinary treatment and care for children with long-Covid; the reason there are currently no long-Covid clinics for children in Ireland, given those affected are being treated by general paediatricians and general practitioners without the necessary level of expertise to manage this...

Written Answers — Department of Housing, Planning, and Local Government: Housing Schemes (21 Sep 2022)

Bríd Smith: 53. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government further to Parliamentary Question No. 217 of 14 September 2022, the way that the twin goals of sustainable communities and long term tenancies are advanced in the case of a tenant who has resided in a council home for over 30 years and who has recently married, yet now finds that they are barred and delayed from availing of...

Written Answers — Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection: Social Welfare Payments (13 Jul 2022)

Bríd Smith: ...into fuel poverty; the reason that some fuel allowance applicants are having to chase up and question their eligibility; the reason that waiting times to establish eligibility are particularly long when the impact is so devastating for families who are experiencing real poverty especially with the spiralling cost of living; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [38223/22]

Ceisteanna Eile - Other Questions: Childcare Services (7 Jul 2022)

Bríd Smith: ...accepting the provisions that the Minister has allowed for and encouraged them to take up in the context of this scheme. The parents are being left high and dry in that type of situation. In the long term, what is needed is a national early learning and childcare scheme. We would not put up with this fragmented, privatised and dysfunctional system for our national or secondary schools....

Autism Bill 2022: Second Stage [Private Members] (29 Jun 2022)

Bríd Smith: ...I am always hesitant when it comes to announcing more strategies, documents and reviews when what we actually need is action and investment, this Bill would be an important step forward. For too long, the needs of autistic people and their families have been ignored. They have been seen and not heard but, more and more, they are speaking up through groups such as AsIAm and the Irish...