Results 981-1,000 of 1,013 for speaker:Colette Kelleher

Seanad: Corporate Manslaughter (No. 2) Bill 2016: Second Stage (26 Oct 2016)

Colette Kelleher: I support Senator Mark Daly's Corporate Manslaughter (No. 2) Bill. Eleven years later, it will close a serious legal gap identified by the Law Reform Commission in its 2005 report on corporate killing. Above all, it will act in a preventive way. I speak as a recently stepped down senior manager for an organisation which employed 1,000 staff. I was responsible for providing services and...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Justice, Defence and Equality: Recognition of Traveller Ethnicity: Discussion (26 Oct 2016)

Colette Kelleher: I am not known to be.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Justice, Defence and Equality: Recognition of Traveller Ethnicity: Discussion (26 Oct 2016)

Colette Kelleher: I thank the Chairman. I thank the witnesses for their wonderful presentation and kind words. I went to the Traveller Counselling Service conference in Dublin Castle last week, which was really well attended and included two Ministers. I was struck by the positivity of the conference even in the face of adversity. There were people there who in recent weeks had lost young men to suicide,...

Seanad: Order of Business (19 Oct 2016)

Colette Kelleher: I call for a debate in the House on Ireland's response to the Syrian crisis and in particular our plans to help the child refugees who are fleeing Syria alone. This issue has been raised by other Members of the House, including by Senator Ray Butler last week. Night after night on television we watch helplessly the heartache of ordinary people. These people are like us and we wonder what...

Seanad: Fire Safety in Traveller Accommodation: Statements (19 Oct 2016)

Colette Kelleher: I thank the Leader for arranging this debate and the Minister for taking time to come to the House for this debate. I extend a warm welcome to the visitors in the Gallery who have travelled especially to be present. Some of them live with the daily reality of what we are discussing. On 27 September, on the Order of Business, I read out the names of the ten people who tragically died in the...

Seanad: Children and Youth Affairs: Statements (18 Oct 2016)

Colette Kelleher: In a previous life, I worked in the UK for ten years as a child care campaigner turned politician and, therefore, the Minister and I may share common ground. The budget breakthrough in 2017 was phenomenal and only somebody who has worked in the sector and who has seen what happens behind the scenes could judge that. I commend the breakthrough because, as Senator Higgins said, child care is...

Seanad: Commencement Matters: Neuro-Rehabilitation Services (12 Oct 2016)

Colette Kelleher: I welcome the Minister of State at the Department of Health, Deputy Finian McGrath. I also welcome the increased health spending announced in yesterday's budget, particularly provisions for home-care services and people with disabilities. With more money, the major challenge now is to ensure that the announcement translates into the much-needed services and supports for people who need...

Seanad: Commencement Matters: Neuro-Rehabilitation Services (12 Oct 2016)

Colette Kelleher: I take the point. It is a great policy but it was meant to run to 2015 and we are now in 2016. There is an implementation plan, a framework, a steering group and reconfiguration. When will all these translate into inpatient beds and community teams, and when will the developments in the hospital be completed? Is there enough in the budget this year to do all of this? Should we see it...

Seanad: Rent Certainty (No. 2) Bill 2016: Second Stage (12 Oct 2016)

Colette Kelleher: I am delighted to support this Bill. I believe the proposal to link any increase or decrease in rent, arising from a rent review, to the consumer price index as set by the Central Statistics Office to be a modest and sensible proposal that will go some way to providing stability in a very volatile and often broken housing market. This call for full rent certainty is supported by a range of...

Seanad: Rent Certainty (No. 2) Bill 2016: Second Stage (12 Oct 2016)

Colette Kelleher: Just as one sets rules for young children about the number of sweets they can eat on a Sunday, unstable markets require regulations to operate properly. This includes regulations on quality and standards in people's homes, which the previous Senator mentioned. Standards and expectations rightly rise. For the first year of my life, I lived in a house with an outside toilet. Nobody would...

Seanad: Rent Certainty (No. 2) Bill 2016: Second Stage (12 Oct 2016)

Colette Kelleher: The rent stability measures introduced in 2015 have not had the desired effect of slowing down the market and off-setting rising rents. The Simon Communities' report "Locked Out Of The Market V: The Gap between Rent Supplement/HAP Limits and Market Rents", published last week, showed that in the year to the second quarter of 2016, rents increased by 18.2% in Cork city; 10% in Dublin city...

Seanad: Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement: Motion (5 Oct 2016)

Colette Kelleher: CETA is unlike any trade agreement that we have signed before and must be considered cautiously and carefully. The so-called negative list in CETA, that my colleagues have mentioned, means that all public sector areas are included in the agreement unless explicitly ruled out by the Government at the start of negotiations - a first for an EU trade agreement. Ireland has added very few areas...

Select Committee on the Future of Healthcare: Citizen-Centred Health Care: Civil Engagement (5 Oct 2016)

Colette Kelleher: I thank the Chair for the invitation to present to the committee. I fully support the aim of this committee to set out a ten-year, cross-party vision for the future of Irish health care. I have been following the work of the committee closely, trying to keep up with all of the papers presented thus far, which is a challenge, as well as preparing my submission. Before I get into the...

Select Committee on the Future of Healthcare: Citizen-Centred Health Care: Civil Engagement (5 Oct 2016)

Colette Kelleher: I have worked for charities both in Ireland and in the UK. Charities have stepped into the breach when the State has failed, but very often the State needs to take up where the charities began. Very often they have had to carry on and carry the can because the State has not been able to step in or take up its role. Charities have a great role to play in advocacy and innovation, but whether...

Select Committee on the Future of Healthcare: Citizen-Centred Health Care: Civil Engagement (5 Oct 2016)

Colette Kelleher: Yes, absolutely, but the true role of charities is advocacy and innovation. They are things the State may not always be willing to do. If more charities could be in that space, there would be a healthy tension between the citizen and the State rather than the State becoming a service provider by default because there is nothing else out there. In terms of area planning, we could spend...

Select Committee on the Future of Healthcare: Citizen-Centred Health Care: Civil Engagement (5 Oct 2016)

Colette Kelleher: I am talking about both and about any other methods we might need. One of the good things about the national dementia strategy is that there are people with dementia actively participating in it. We need to see that in all these forums because people are able to articulate their needs and indicate their preferences. There needs to be new ways of working in order that those kinds of...

Select Committee on the Future of Healthcare: Citizen-Centred Health Care: Civil Engagement (5 Oct 2016)

Colette Kelleher: Unfortunately, it is both. The organisation and culture issues cannot be underestimated and neither can the inflexibility of the systems. Expenditure on social care services for people with disabilities is €1.5 billion but it is very tied up. If people say they want services delivered differently, it is extraordinarily difficult to do that in response to them. We might have the...

Select Committee on the Future of Healthcare: Citizen-Centred Health Care: Civil Engagement (5 Oct 2016)

Colette Kelleher: The local health forums suggested in my submission are a way into that. As well as the commissioners, which are the HSE, and citizens, one has the organisations that are concerned or involved. They could be advocacy or service delivery organisations and sometimes they are both. The Cork city homeless forum was a brilliant example of that in the noughties. The HSE, Cork City Council and...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Update on Health Issues: Minister for Health (29 Sep 2016)

Colette Kelleher: I am here representing Senator John Dolan and I will be asking a question he particularly wanted me to ask. I also have a couple of questions of my own. One concerns the area of social care in general. I have worked for Cork Simon Community, Cope Foundation and the Alzheimer Society of Ireland and I am a social worker by trade. As far as I can see, social care is the Cinderella of the...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Update on Health Issues: Minister for Health (29 Sep 2016)

Colette Kelleher: It needs to be included in the Estimates because there will be costs.