Catherine Ardagh (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

To start with I will mention the Kerry babies case and the gross miscarriage of justice against Joanna Hayes and her family. Yesterday the Garda apologised to her family but we must call on the Government and the State to apologise to her and her family for what was a gross and unbelievable miscarriage of justice.

I was two at the time. I learned yesterday from various journalists who attended the tribunal how the family and Joanna were bullied by gardaí and coerced into signing statements on the matter. She was traumatised by the tribunal and by arms of the State on the matter. When she was vindicated by her blood samples which showed she was not the mother of the child, they came up with a theory of superfecundation, a word the whole country looked up yesterday. The mind boggles; it was like seeing a horror movie mixed with an episode of "Father Ted". It is time for the State to clean up its act and treat women properly. The State's treatment of women has been awful. It is something we need to look at very clearly and carefully. I hope the Government takes it on board and issues an apology to Ms Hayes and her family immediately.

The second issue I will raise is the housing crisis. We did not see an improvement over the Christmas period. There are 91,000 people on social housing lists and over 3,000 children living in homeless accommodation. The Minister is coming out with figures and changing the goalposts. He is contradicting himself left, right and centre. Every day in all of our clinics, the biggest issue we hear about is housing and homelessness. It cannot continue this way. We need to see proper action, a proper plan and a State-wide social housing programme. I call on the Government to initiate one without delay. I ask the Government to implement an ambitious, city-wide or State-wide house building programme.