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Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Thursday, 22 Mar 2018

Vol. 966 No. 9

Leaders' Questions

I start by commending and acknowledging the bravery, professionalism and efficiency of the Dublin Fire Brigade members who dealt with the fire in the Metro Hotel in Ballymun last night. Many of them are still onsite this morning. The dangerous and rapid fire was dealt with by eight units of the fire brigade. The fire started in one of the apartments on the top floor. Units from Finglas, Swords, Tara Street, North Strand, Blanchardstown, Phibsborough and Tallaght were in attendance with over 60 firefighters fighting what could have been a serious blaze.

All of us are grateful and thankful that no one was killed or injured. It shows the fantastic work Dublin Fire Brigade and its firefighters do as well as those from the stations in Skerries and Balbriggan, the retained firefighters, who were brought in to provide cover. We will return to this issue because lessons will need to be learned from this, in particular in the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government. Today is not the day to raise those issues but I and my party colleagues will be putting questions to the Minister, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, at the appropriate time.

This morning I raise the question of passports which I have raised on a number of occasions. I refer to the service our citizens are receiving. Last year, as the Tánaiste will know, over 800,000 passports were issued. That was a record. I think all of us expect that will be exceeded this year. That is coming at a price. The increase in passport application numbers is affecting the service the paying public is receiving. I commend the work of the staff in the passport service. However, the reality is that turnaround times have greatly lengthened. The passport service website says 16 working days but it is not. It is 21 working days and longer.

All of us in this House will know of and have received numerous complaints about the service being received by people and over the last number of weeks, in particular.

Already this year, from 1 January to 16 February, there were 129,000 applications. That is a 16% increase on the same period last year, and not in the holiday period itself. Normally, temporary staff are employed to tackle the increased demand and the number of applications and we have discussed this before. However, the Government has not dealt with this.

I refer to the increase year round and from Brexit, in particular. There seems to be a detached approach. The Government seems to be satisfied to allow the applicants to wait longer than the normal 15 day turnaround time. Does the Tánaiste accept that these delays in the normal turnaround time are now the norm? Why is the Government not planning to deal with increased demand by increasing staff numbers for the year round increased demand in the passport service?

That was a long three minutes from Deputy Darragh O'Brien.

I gave Deputy Darragh O'Brien three minutes and the Tánaiste has three minutes.

He was only asking.

(Interruptions).

Three minutes listening to the Tánaiste would be a lot.

I was not making any accusations.

Sorry, this is a serious business.

The Tánaiste was not making any accusations.

The Tánaiste does not know minutes from hours.

It is nothing to do with the strategic communications unit anyway.

The clock is ticking. The Tánaiste has three minutes.

I join with my colleagues on both sides of this House in thanking the emergency responders who responded to a significant and extensive fire in the Metro Hotel and apartment building in Ballymun last night. There were 11 units of Dublin Fire Brigade, eight fire engines, two aerial appliances and the incident command unit, comprising 60 firefighters, involved in managing that blaze. The professionalism that resulted in the evacuation of 150 people from the building and no loss of life should be recognised in this House. Nobody was injured-----

Praise the Lord.

-----but it could have been a very different and tragic scene. However, it was not. That is a reflection on the professionalism of our emergency services and first responders. Today, the Garda Síochána has the scene cordoned off. There will be an extensive investigation to understand what happened. As Deputy Darragh O'Brien has done, I thank those involved for their professionalism. We will come back to this issue when we have more clarity on what happened and on why and how it unfolded.

On the passports issue, the service has been under pressure, in particular over the last two weeks. A number of Members know that because they have come to me about individual cases. We have tried to put extra resources into my office over the last number of weeks to try to deal with that. We anticipate increased numbers this year on last year in respect of passport applications and renewals. Last year there was a big increase on the year before. There is a big demand for Irish passports now. The real problem in recent weeks was actually the extreme weather.

We had to close services down because staff could not get into the passport office for a number of days. As a result, our passport teams worked over the bank holiday when other people were not working in an effort to try to catch up and get back to the turnaround times we created last year which were a significant improvement on the past. Whether it is online or post applications, we are endeavouring, with some success, to get back to where we were in January and the back end of last year in respect of getting turnaround times down to roughly three weeks for the postal service and two weeks for an online application.

However, that is taking some time. This week online applications are back to the acceptable benchmark. We are working overtime to make sure we get back to that from a postal service perspective as well. However, people have to understand that many services in the country have been impacted by severe weather and this is one of them.

With all due respect, that is a non-answer. We know bad weather events and Storm Emma occurred. It shows that the system is not robust. If the reason given for the backlog and people waiting five or six weeks for passport renewals is Storm Emma, that is not true. The reality is that resourcing within the service has been decreased year-on-year. In 2012, there were 306 full-time staff in the service. In 2016, there were 269. There was a 12% reduction. I asked the Tánaiste specifically if he has plans to increase the number of staff in the service to deal with the backlog? We are nowhere near it.

The website says 16 days for a renewal but it is not 16 days. I encourage people to use the online renewal service as well. However, first-time applicants and under 18s cannot do so. People are missing trips, holidays, business trips and big events because the resources are not there. Saying it is down to the weather is not really acceptable.

That is not what I said.

That is what the Tánaiste said. What is his plan to deal with this? This should not come as a surprise to him because I have raised it repeatedly. We are seeing peaks because of Brexit and we have seen increases since 2016. What has the Tánaiste done and what is he is planning to do to improve the service that the citizens of the country deserve and are paying for?

I am not sure the Deputy has raised it time and again with me.

I have. The Tánaiste should check the record.

The facts are-----

I have put down written parliamentary questions to the Department on numerous occasions.

Let me deal with the Deputy's questions.

Do not make a charge like that.

The Deputy has raised it before now but it has not been time and again.

This has been a particular problem over the past several weeks. Changes have ensured passport services have improved dramatically in the past year. We must deal with the facts. The processing time for passport express renewal applications is now 16 days again. This was reduced from 23 days two weeks ago for the reasons I outlined.

Allow the Tánaiste to continue.

There are always exceptions with passports with which we have been dealing. With respect, my office has been accommodating to many Members on this issue for several weeks.

That is appreciated.

It is true that extra staff come in on a seasonal basis as passport applications spike, as they always do, in the build-up to the summer.

We have also sanctioned overtime to deal with the backlog because of the difficulties caused by the recent bad weather. The Deputy can see the evidence of that in that two weeks ago passport express applications were taking three days but today they are taking 16 days.

I did not get an answer.

I commend the speedy response and bravery of the men and women of the Dublin Fire Brigade in dealing with last night's hotel fire in Ballymun. It is thanks to them, the Garda and other emergency and council staff, as well as the staff of the hotel and the adjoining building, that there were neither injuries nor fatalities. They deserve all of our thanks.

This day two months ago, the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, announced his affordable homes initiative. Describing the measures as initiatives was a bit of a stretch. They were more like threadbare promises. He re-announced the €25 million fund for local authorities to deliver affordable homes but there were no details, no timelines and certainly no targets. He re-announced the long-promised but not yet delivered cost rental project. Again, there were no details, no timelines and certainly no targets. The only concrete proposal was for a revised local authority first-time buyer's loan scheme. Clearly, the Minister was under pressure. He needed to give the impression that he was doing something. That was because on Fine Gael's watch, the affordable housing crisis has spiralled out of control.

Thousands, if not tens of thousands, of individuals and couples are unable to access affordable homes to rent or to buy. The Government's housing plan has no targets for the delivery of affordable homes. The Minister, possibly with the overpriced advice of the strategic communications unit, cobbled together the so-called initiative to make it look like he had a plan. In response to the revised council loan scheme, Sinn Féin raised the following concerns. It did not address the core problem, namely, the undersupply of affordable housing. It risked burdening modest-income families with unsustainable loans to purchase overpriced houses. It breached the Central Bank's mortgage lending rules. While the scheme will help some families and the fixed-interest rate is attractive, it demonstrates the Government has not yet grasped the scale, or indeed the source, of the affordable housing crisis.

When I made these points at the time, the Minister dismissed my concerns. However, this morning, RTÉ reporter, Louise Byrne, revealed on "Morning Ireland" that the Department of Finance shared exactly the same concerns. In a written response to the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government, the Department of Finance said the rationale for the measure was unclear, it involved significant risk of exposure to the State and would do nothing to increase housing supply at a time when supply not demand was the problem. Despite this, the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, ignored these concerns. The information obtained by RTÉ also revealed that, even though its concerns were not met, the Department of Finance withdrew its objections, leading to speculation that the final decision was a political one, made in full knowledge of the shortcomings and problems with the scheme.

Will the Tánaiste tell the House why the Government ignored the opinion of the Department of Finance? Will he tell us why Rebuilding Ireland contains no targets for affordable rental or purchase homes? Will he confirm that not a single affordable home will be delivered this year by any central government scheme?

As usual, the Deputy sees conspiracies around every corner.

It is hard not to when the Tánaiste is in charge.

The Rebuilding Ireland home loan scheme was a measure which was discussed between the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government and the Department of Finance, as any scheme would be when significant moneys are involved. In this case it was a €200 million fund and, of course, there was back and forth, questioning its merits. The truth is that at the end of that discussion, the two Departments agreed to move forward with it. That is what the record shows. Is anybody who has been in government surprised by the fact that initially the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform would raise robust questions to test the merits of this approach? There is always a robust exchange when the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government goes to the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform with a new idea and asks it what it thinks. At the end of that, there is an agreement on a way forward which is what happened in this case.

It is a success story so far. It has been only launched several months and we get weekly reports about the level of interest in it. Last week, there were 323 calls, of which 319 were answered. There is a significant interest as one would expect in Dublin. Up to 26% of the calls received were from Dublin and 16% from Cork.

Does the Tánaiste believe phone calls will solve the crisis?

They will not. The Deputy is like the Member who raised questions yesterday, expecting a silver bullet to solve the affordable housing problem. That is not going happen.

Nothing is happening. No affordable homes are being provided.

It has been going on for the past seven years.

The Deputy does not like to hear what is happening because it is starting to work.

Where? What planet is the Tánaiste on?

This has been in place since 2014 and nothing has happened.

There is a broad range of measures to reduce rental inflation and to increase the number of affordable homes which are available.

It is not working.

In the past several weeks, the Minister has been speaking to the European Investment Bank, EIB, on funding new proposals and cost rental, another concept which the Government is developing.

This has been going on since 2014.

Will Deputy Ó Broin stop interrupting the Tánaiste?

There is a specific category of person who cannot simply get access to the financial resources and lending to be able to buy homes at affordable prices.

That is what this loan scheme is going to respond to. We are getting significant interest in it which is showing that it is working.

It will not be solved by phone calls.

I understand why the Tánaiste is so sensitive on this issue because Rebuilding Ireland was his plan. He signed off on a document which contained not a single target over its six years for a single purchase for a rental affordable unit. As everybody knows, phone calls will not solve the affordable housing crisis. Affordable homes will.

I will ask the question again. How many affordable homes will be delivered this year funded through central government schemes? We know the answer, which is why he would not give it. It is zero.

The real issue is that all the measures, which the Tánaiste and the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government continually repeat, will not deliver homes at genuinely affordable prices, namely, between €170,000 and €225,000. That is real affordability. Will the Tánaiste not finally accept that the measures which the Government is funding, at great cost to the taxpayer, are not delivering affordable homes? Will he agree the time has come to fund local authorities in an ambitious programme to deliver genuinely affordable rental and purchase homes on public land?

It is good to hear the Deputy is no longer talking about social housing targets because we are actually starting to meet them now.

I am talking about affordable housing.

(Interruptions).

This year we will deliver over 4,000 and last year it was 2,000.

(Interruptions).

When the targets are so low, it is easy.

Even the Minister is smiling at that claim.

The Deputy does not like the answers to the questions.

I would like the Tánaiste to answer the questions.

Will the Deputy now allow me to give the figures on affordable housing? Through the serviced sites initiative, as well as a combination of money and land, we now have a target figure of 3,000 units.

When will this be met?

We will be getting the figures back from local authorities.

Will it be 2019, 2020 or 2021?

In the time it takes to build the houses.

It has been six years already.

We will move on. I have called Deputy Howlin.

This is the usual problem with Deputy Ó Broin. When one provides the data and the answers he requests, he tries to talk one down. He just does not want to listen.

(Interruptions).

We will move on. I have called Deputy Howlin.

The truth is Rebuilding Ireland is now starting to gain traction and is working. The Deputy, however, does not like to hear the facts.

The plan has failed.

There are more homeless persons.

It is semi-detached government.

On behalf of the Labour Party, I, too, commend the men and women of Dublin Fire Brigade for their efficient, speedy and life saving response to the fire in Ballymun last night. There will be an opportunity for us to look in detail at the lessons to be learned about evacuation procedures and so on, but they worked well last night and nobody was injured or died, which is an incredible tribute to the emergency services. It is important the House acknowledges that.

There was a landmark decision yesterday at the Workplace Relations Commission when the national broadcaster, RTÉ, was found to have discriminated against a former employee, Ms Valerie Cox, on age grounds and ordered to pay her €50,000. The reason she took the case was concerns about ageism in employment. As people, thankfully, are living longer and healthier lives, many will want to look work longer. The age of retirement in qualification for the State pension has risen to 66 years and will rise again. However, many employment contracts provide for compulsory retirement when a person reaches the age of 65 years, as a consequence of which many older people will find themselves on temporary or uncertain contracts if they continue to work after that age. We have seen the creeping rise in the level of precarious work and it is essential that it be tackled for all workers in order that older workers who wish to continue to work beyond the age of 65 years will not be exploited. We will see more and more such cases. My former colleague Anne Ferris introduced a Bill in the Dáil in 2014 to bring to an end the compulsory retirement age in the public service. The Government is catching up and plans to address the issue with legislation, the heads of which were approved in December. There are many working in the public sector who, for many reasons, do not wish to retire at 65 years and who are more than capable of continuing to be valuable public servants and make a contribution for years to come. The public service is growing and recruiting again and important institutional knowledge should be retained. It will provide important benefits for our society as the population ages if older people can continue, if they so choose and it their wish, to work. It is important to stress that it would be voluntary. The legislation should be progressed as quickly as possible to provide certainty for those workers who are approaching the compulsory retirement age. Many are anxious and contacting all of us in the House. The current arrangements which are being implemented on an interim ad hoc basis, pending the passage of legislation, are neither attractive nor rewarding. I have two questions. When will the Government publish the legislation to abolish the mandatory retirement age for public sector workers? Will the legislation also end the use of compulsory or mandatory retirement provisions in the contract of workers?

Like the Deputy, I welcome the judgment of the Workplace Relations Commission and hope it sends a signal to the many people who find themselves in similar circumstances to Ms Valerie Cox. As the Deputy noted, the Government has agreed to increase the compulsory retirement age from 65 years to 70 for public servants who were recruited before 1 April 2004. It has also approved the scheme of a Bill to give effect to this policy change which is now to be treated as a priority. The Attorney General has requested the prioritising of the drafting of the legislation in order that the new compulsory retirement age will become effective as soon as possible. The drafting process is under way and an initial draft Bill is being prepared. The Bill is on the list of priority legislation for publication in the spring-summer session. It is not possible to determine the length of time it will take for it to be drafted and passed through both Houses, given the need for meticulous drafting, ongoing detailed policy considerations and the scheduling requirements of the Houses of the Oireachtas. However, as the Deputy noted, the Government has approved interim arrangements which will apply to public servants who reach the age of 65 years in the time between the Government decision and the commencement of the necessary legislation. I accept that is not ideal. People have come to me, as I suspect they have to the Deputy, who are coming up to the age threshold. We need to get on and deal with the legislation quickly. We appeal to other parties in the House to help us to do this quickly. It is a priority to turn what is a clear policy decision, with which I think everybody agrees, into legislation to bring clarity in order that people will not have to rely on what are not perfect interim measures but which are necessary to carry us over until the legislation is concluded.

I thank the Tánaiste for the clarity of his response. It is a view that is shared broadly across the House. Sinn Féin has also introduced legislation in this area, which I acknowledge. In truth, there are people who will miss the deadline and be forced out. Can we not have consensus that the legislation will be introduced this side of the summer recess and implemented with goodwill across the House? The Workplace Relations Commission has published a code of practice on the issue of longer working which is to inform best practice for employers. However, a code of practice is not enough; it will need legislative underpinning. Certainly, for those who are anxious, for example, those who might be in second relationships, have longer term mortgages or financial commitments about which they are very anxious, and capable of working for many years to come, they should not be forced out the door. I dealt recently with one case in which a driving instructor simply wanted to continue to work. Although there is a huge backlog and we are still trying to recruit and train driving instructors, he was forced out the door. That policy makes no sense. It should not be mandatory for the State and its agencies to push people out the door when they want to continue to work and are capable of working and the State needs their services.

We all know former civil servants in their late 60s who would be well capable of doing a really good job, but we are losing their expertise, knowledge and experience at a time when there is competition for skill sets in the economy and it is sometimes difficult to fill posts with persons with the skill sets we need. This is the right thing to do on many levels. It arises in a context where people want to work longer and have the capacity to do so, are healthy for longer and the State needs their services. In so many areas, because we can afford to do so, we are increasing numbers in the public sector. My Department is a good example in that we are dramatically increasing numbers in expanding our global footprint, opening new embassies and so on. We want people to stay longer and need to get legislation in place as quickly as possible to underpin that decision. I will reflect this commitment at the Cabinet meeting next week and we will try to accelerate it as quickly as we can.

I concur with previous speakers in commending the emergency services for tackling the fire in Ballymun which, thankfully, did not lead to a loss of life.

I will speak about elder care or, I should say, the complete lack of it throughout the country, including the constituency I represent, Cork South-West. The elderly built this country. Now, when they need help from the State, they have to fight every inch of the way to receive care. Proof of this is the way the Government stands idly by as hundreds of the elderly are forced to travel to Belfast for cataract operations. For them, it is simply a case of travel Belfast or go blind. That is just one issue. Elder care services needs to be scrutinised by all of us in the Dáil. Years of empty promises have yielded nothing. The home help service being delivered is as bad as it was two years ago when I first raised the issue with the then Taoiseach, Deputy Enda Kenny, who said the Government would turn things around. Home helps go beyond the call of duty, but the joy they get from their jobs is diminishing quickly as visits are cut to 30 and 45 minutes, which means that they are in and out the door, thus preventing them from providing the necessary care and giving the eldery person the attention and respect he or she deserves. In many cases, home helps who have voluntarily done hours of extra work for the person receiving the service are being refused extra hours by the HSE, while it funds many private companies with questionable guidelines which have taken on staff from all over the world.

In the programme for Government, it was recognised that home help should be increased to seven days per week to include weekends and bank holidays where possible. According to what families have been telling me, though, that is not the reality in my constituency. Many elderly people have been forced into long-term care and put through the so-called fair deal scheme, which robs them of their savings, homes and, in many cases, burial money.

More than 55,000 people have been diagnosed with dementia, 4,000 of whom are in County Cork. Many of these are looked after in their own homes by members of their families. There are a number of Alzheimer's patients whose behaviour is challenging, but neither the community hospitals nor nursing homes have the staffing or resources to provide respite care for them, leaving exhausted families to care for them. There are only two dedicated respite beds for these challenging patients in the entirety of west Cork, those being in Clonakilty Community Hospital, which can largely only service the Clonakilty area. West Cork has the largest elderly population, as shown in the census statistics.

I call on the Tánaiste to set in motion immediately a study to provide extra respite beds in community hospitals and nursing homes across west Cork for patients with dementia. I also call on him to instruct the HSE to start investing proper resources in the excellent home help service that is in place on the ground and whose carers have saved the State millions of euro over the years with little thanks. He should examine the issue of the respite service for the elderly in west Cork, which has been non-existent in many cases. Elderly care in west Cork leaves much to be desired.

There were a lot of questions there, so let me try to revert with answers on some of them. The Deputy has raised the cataracts issue with me in the House previously. I am sure that he has raised it with the Taoiseach as well. The National Treatment Purchase Fund, NTPF, is about trying to get operations done for people - maybe not locally, but certainly on this island - to ensure that we can deal with backlogs. The February NTPF figure confirms that the number of patients waiting for inpatient or day case procedures is down 1,165-----

All done in the North.

-----from the previous month and 4,764 from the same period last year. It is taking effect and making a difference. It is having an impact on procedures, with which we are familiar. Between July 2017 and the end of last year, there was a reduction of more than 2,000 people waiting for cataract appointments, 200 fewer people waiting for hip operations and a series of other improvements in terms of knees, tonsils, gall bladders and so on. We are not claiming that the job is done, but significant progress is being made.

Budget 2018 allocated an additional €18 million to home support services. The additional resources have brought the resources for the direct provision of home support services to €408 million, delivering more than 17 million home support hours to approximately 50,000 people, many of them in west Cork. This is an increase on last year's figure. In addition, 235 intensive home care packages will provide 360,000 home support hours for people with complex needs, some of whom are also in west Cork.

I hear what the Deputy is saying on behalf of his constituents but, now that we can afford to spend significantly more money, we as a Government are responding by way of home help, home care, increasing the carer's allowance and pensions, and a series of other measures through which we are respecting and supporting elderly people living at home. However, it takes time to make significant differences, particularly in terms of waiting lists and putting localised services in place that people can access. In the meantime, considerable progress has been made through the NTPF.

I thank the Tánaiste for his reply. He mentioned numbers dropping, but they are dropping because people are going to Belfast as quickly as they can for operations that should be carried out locally. He also referred to cataract operations. Those should be taking place in Bantry, Mallow and elsewhere in west Cork. They are 20 minute procedures. The Government has failed in its duty to look after our elderly. It will let them go blind before it will look after them.

The Tánaiste stated that money was being invested in elder care, but I question that. The simplest way of approaching this is by speaking to those who need that care. I will outline a sample of the crisis that we are experiencing in west Cork. Last night, I spoke to someone from the Bandon-Kinsale area, one of whose parents was suffering severe dementia. She has been trying in recent weeks to get long-term care for her loved one, but no beds are available. In Skibbereen, another person who is desperately seeking respite care for a family member with dementia has been unable to do so, as community hospitals are not equipped to take such patients. An elderly lady who looks after two elderly family members in their homes in Skibbereen and Bantry needs extra home help for just one day per week to go shopping, but she has been refused it. The stunning new Bandon Community Hospital opened just a few short weeks ago, but while those essential works were under way for up to a year and a half, the family of a lady of 90 years of age could not get respite care. Now her family members hear that there were 12 to 14 beds available in Clonakilty Community Hospital that are currently being designated as step-down beds.

This is not made up. This is the reality on the ground for our elderly, who feel let down by the State.

I thank the Deputy. The Tánaiste to respond.

I am glad that the Deputy referred to a brand new hospital in Bandon. Indeed, other hospitals will be funded under the new capital programmes that we announced a few weeks ago, some of them in Cork. There are constant challenges to improving health care provision and infrastructure throughout the country. We have just come through-----

-----what was virtually a ten-year period of capital underinvestment in health care. We are now making up for that and will spend significant amounts of capital on health care infrastructure and provision in the coming years. In the meantime, most in the House would accept that, while people are not getting locally some of the complex operations they need, they are able to access those operations under the NTPF instead of staying on waiting lists for years.

This is a process of incremental improvement year-on-year as the Government spends more and insists on better management and more efficiency to ensure that, regardless of whether people live on the Beara Peninsula or in Dublin city centre, they can access the services they need, especially if they are elderly persons who need the State's support through health care facilities.

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