Anne Rabbitte (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the TY students here this afternoon. The Minister, Deputy Chambers, is very welcome to the House and I am delighted to stand before him in support of the legislation he has brought forward. This legislation is really important, with the view of extending the numbers from 20 to 23. The key point of this is to improve cross-departmental working. When we look at the marine, we have not had a Minister of State with responsibility for the marine since 2011. Since then we have had Brexit and we need to protect our shores. It is important the industry has somebody specifically to go to who can work in tandem with the Minister who can ensure their voices and their policy needs are responded to.

It is the same situation when we talk about asylum and immigration. I worked in the Department for the last five years and I saw how hard the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, worked and what a difficulty it was to have it all embedded within childcare and disabilities. Plucking it out, making it a sole responsibility and giving it that laser attention is imperative to ensure that people who are seeking asylum and are immigrating here are addressed in a timely, orderly fashion and we do not find ourselves in the situation which Senator O'Loughlin talked about this morning of not having that go-to contact. That is really important. That responds to the community's needs as well as the individual's needs. It is about working in tandem with our local authorities. It is also about working with our justice system and our childcare system. It is about working on the whole-of-government cross-departmental piece.

Finally, the older person piece is really important. Senator Casey outlined it very well. I saw how hard the Minister of State, Deputy Butler, worked with older people. I also saw the huge need among older people for access to transport and to housing, and in terms of older people who go into respite or a nursing home but who are afraid of what will happen to their houses while in respite or in a nursing home or whether they will lose their local authority house. What are their rights? That support and having a Minister of State with a foot in both Departments is really important to bring about that policy shift and to work with the various advocacy groups and agencies to ensure the voice of the older person is heard. We have a growing demographic of older people in this country. As I get older, I would like to think there is an eye on older people to ensure our rights are protected because with dementia and capacity issues, we need to ensure that the most important thing for people, the roof over their head, is protected. Having a Minister of State for older people within the housing brief, as well as in the health brief, is really important.

That increase from 20 to 23 has been very targeted and there has been a lot of learning from the previous Government as to the key factors to delivery and ensuring all elements within society are protected. Within the Department of disability and youth, the responsible Ministers, the Minister, Deputy Foley, and the Minister of State, Deputy Naughton, can now focus solely on disabilities and on ensuring the services are funded and provided for. I thank the Minister for bringing this Bill before us. I, along with my colleagues, I am very happy to support it.