Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

On the issue of the 24 children who have been refused a school place in Limerick, the stark fact is that on Thursday they are going to receive a letter telling them their application has been refused and they have no place in a secondary school in Limerick. A related factor that has been unacceptable for years, which my colleague, Deputy Quinlivan, has raised several times, is the tendency of some of the posher schools, frankly, to reject applications from people living on their doorsteps and to favour applications from people outside the city. The word I would use there is "class". There is a class distinction going on among some Limerick schools to reject local people from within the city. I call for urgent action on that issue. It is entirely unacceptable that children will not have a school place and will be told in writing that they have no school place on Thursday.

The issue of nursing home charges has come to the fore in recent days. I am calling for a debate on elder care. I do not remember Fine Gael or its sister party, Fianna Fáil, ever standing up at election time and saying they want to privatise elder care. Over the last 30 years we have gone from 80% public care to 80% private care. Some 80% of nursing homes are operating on a for-profit basis. As a trade union official I can tell the House that those nursing homes refuse to accept trade union representation. They refuse to accept workers' rights. This is not a one-off issue but one that is prevalent throughout the private nursing home sector. I do not believe the Irish people have ever been consulted about this. We need to have a serious conversation about how we can plan for elder care in the future using decent, public nursing homes. That is the future that people deserve and it is worthy of a debate. It is high time we had that debate.