Lisa Chambers (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I extend a warm welcome as well to Merlin College, its students and their teachers, namely, Aaron Staunton and Sinéad Ní Neachtain, whom I had the pleasure of meeting earlier. They are here at the invitation of Senator Ollie Crowe and with Councillor Cheevers as well. All the students are welcome to the Chamber. I hope they got to see a little bit of how the Seanad works. They probably viewed the Dáil as well. They are most welcome to Leinster House.

I thank all Members for their contributions to the Order of Business. The Leas-Cathaoirleach welcomed the Keeneys, who played a pivotal role at the beginning of Congressman Richard Neal’s career. As he said, your friends are few and far between starting out. Credit to them for spotting a good one and ensuring that he got there. He has been a fantastic friend to Ireland. We had the pleasure of hosting him as well not so long ago.

Senator Kyne spoke about Dexcom, a new company that announced 1,000 jobs in Athenry and 1,000 construction jobs in the building of that facility, which is fantastic news for County Galway and the region. He also spoke about the added pressure that will put on bringing the Western Rail Corridor back into use, particularly between Athenry and Claremorris. There will certainly be extra demand for services.

He also mentioned a meeting that was attended by many Oireachtas Members yesterday evening in Galway, myself included, about the need for a new cancer care centre in University Hospital Galway. There is, of course, a cancer centre currently on the site. It is very outdated. It is a ramshackle mix of prefabs that were intended to be temporary 60 years ago and are still standing – just about. The service is there and while the service and the staff are excellent, the facilities they are working out of are something from the 1950s and 1960s. They are very poor. I was struck yesterday evening when listening to one of the oncologists speak about a meeting that he and his team have every Monday morning where they sit down and go through the list of patients who need to have chemotherapy. They see how many they can fit in during the week. There are some patients who are not getting their chemotherapy when they need it. That says it all in respect of the facilities there. To attract the best doctors and keep them there, we need good facilities and, importantly, we need them for the patients.It is important to say from a Government perspective that building the cancer care centre in Galway is in the national development plan. It is the only cancer centre in the plan. We are very hopeful of getting a design team on-site in the next couple of months. We are hopeful of getting funding for that in the next week or two. It is moving. It is inching forward but it is going in the right direction. The reason I am taking an interest is that the centre in Galway serves everywhere from Galway up to Donegal. Therefore, it serves our region. Everyone in County Mayo and everywhere else between Galway and Donegal will go to Galway for their treatment.

Senator O'Loughlin spoke about the need to increase the allowance for foster carers in line with inflation. If I am correct, I think the request from the foster carers is that the allowance would go up by 20%, which is very reasonable. It would need to go up by a significant amount to meet the cost of living and the inflation that is happening in the country. She spoke as well about the need to support an organisation called Sensational Kids in setting up its services. On the school completion programme, she asked that every effort would be made to supply teachers and also to allow schools to use the funding to support kids in another way if teachers cannot be supplied.

Senator Keogan kicked off the debate around the protection of children in the context of a particular issue in Monaghan. I do not have the full details of that particular issue but I take what was said on board. It is very distressing for those two children that they could not get to school or could not get down the stairs and that there was no lift. That is just unacceptable. I am not sure how any facility thought that situation could persist for that length of time. There are serious questions to be asked there. I am glad it was discovered, seemingly by chance. Hopefully that situation has been resolved now.

The debate then turned to GAAGO and the paid-for premium subscription that the GAA and RTÉ are putting forward to citizens and to fans and supporters of the GAA. Many Senators, including Senators Wall, Burke, Dooley, Conway and Gallagher, contributed to that debate. It is fair to say it is probably the key issue being raised in the Chamber today. It speaks to the value we place on the GAA and its importance in all of our communities. That is why people are angry. If people were not angry about this issue, it would mean they do not really care about it. It shows we care. The GAA should reflect on the particular decision it has made. There are two aspects to it, the first of which is access. Many people in this country do not have access to quality broadband, which means they could not use the subscription even if they wanted to. A separate issue is that there should not be a subscription. It should be free to watch. It is our national game. The broadcaster is paid handsomely by the State and by the taxpayer to run the services. The GAA has its hand out every day of the week asking for donations from volunteers and communities around the country. We have all supported the GAA in our local communities. People already pay into the organisation and are very generous to the GAA in their communities. As Senator Dooley said, the GAA is run on volunteers. It is on that basis that it should be free. Most people in the GAA do not get paid. We should not be charging people to watch their national game. It is disgraceful and outrageous and the GAA needs to reflect on it. I have requested that the Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media, Deputy Catherine Martin, come to the Chamber to have a debate on this. I am sure the Minister would share our concerns on this issue but it would be good to have that debate nonetheless. A subscription fee of €79 is a huge amount of money. I do not know from where that particular fee was dreamt up but the anger and the views of members should go back to the GAA very clearly.

Senator Gavan spoke about four cottages in Clare. I do not have the details of that particular issue. It is a very localised issue but I take the points he raised.

The schools divestment programme, as raised by Educate Together, has been quite slow. I was very involved in the setting up of the Educate Together school in Castlebar many years ago as a councillor. It has been brilliant; the school is thriving. It is great to have that educational choice for parents. However, it is about trying to find a space. Ultimately, parents tend to drive the campaign locally. There has been very slow progress. Many parents are quite happy with the schools their children are in and do not want to move location. I know as a parent and from talking to other parents that educational choice is important in terms of the ethos of the school, but parents often just want a school that is close to home and has good teachers and good facilities. That is the priority a lot of the time. Sometimes we see the progress being slow because there is not a huge demand for it and it is not being driven that way. We have a lot of Catholic-run schools. That is just the way the system is. It is not going to change overnight. Many Catholic schools are wanted in areas as well so it is about trying to strike the right balance. Educate Together does fantastic work. It has great schools and in areas where they open, there is huge demand for them. We will see that continue to happen but across the board it is acknowledged to have been quite slow. Ultimately, much of the focus is on having a good school that is close to the house and easy to get to, and with good facilities. That seems to be the priority for parents as opposed to ethos as such. I take on board the points the Senator made around the pace at which the change is happening. As I have said, Senator Wall spoke about GAAGO. He asked for the Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media to come in on the specific issue of the abuse of officials, which has been raised and on which we had a debate very recently.

Senator Malcolm Byrne asked for a debate with the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, on pay disparities between section 38 and section 39 organisations and disability services and the difficulty in retaining staff because of those disparities. He also spoke about the artificial intelligence Act at EU level, the global agenda in respect of these emerging technologies, the need for greater debate in this country and the suggestion of some parliamentarians at EU level that a global summit should be held. The Senator made a pitch here today for Ireland to host that global summit, which is an interesting suggestion and comment. I will certainly support his efforts in that regard.

Senator Clonan spoke about the issue at Dublin Airport. I am not familiar with the details of the individual in question whose employment is to be terminated. In more general terms, the security of the airport is extremely important and it is important that we have confidence in how the airport is being run. The reluctance of management of the airport to come before the committee is regrettable. I hope that will shift. The Oireachtas Joint Committee on Transport and Communications is there to represent the views of the public. We are here to do our job and it is important that the committee is facilitated in doing its work and in asking the questions the public are asking. We need to do a little bit of work on that. To be fair to Dublin Airport, I acknowledge that, like many airports across Europe and beyond, it lost a lot of staff during the pandemic and is now trying to scale up again, which has presented challenges. When there were queues and people were missing flights, there was a big push on to get staff hired. Perhaps there are now challenges because of that. However, I believe there was never an intention to have a disruption of security levels. To be fair to the airport, it was dealing with an unprecedented situation and the challenges in scaling up staffing levels after having to let so many go and having very little air travel for a considerable period are not unique to Ireland. I wanted to put that on record.