I welcome to Dáil Éireann almost 30 retired nurses who devoted their lives to working in hospitals and caring for the sick, and I commend them on the service they gave. I remind the Taoiseach that these are the very people who came back to help during the Covid period, in 2021 and 2022.

The Government is now taking and demanding money out of their pensions. The Government is abating the pensions of these very people, by €2,700, €5,000 and €25,000 for a man who had a high dependency job. These are the people the Government is trying to tax. That is what Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and the Green Party are doing to these grand people who are here.

I also want to ask the Taoiseach about the embargo in Kerry. Up to 120 posts have not been filled for many months. The Taoiseach says there is no embargo. There has been an embargo since last November. A girl came back from Australia or somewhere else last March and the Government will not give her job back. That is the gospel truth. There are beds closed and empty in all our hospitals - the district hospital and University Hospital Kerry - because they have no one to man them.

Respite care for the elderly and for those with physical and intellectual disabilities need to be greatly enhanced because it is almost non-existent. The means test for carer's allowance needs to be abolished now. Waiting times for procedures and surgeries need to be reduced. Waiting for assessments for children with autism, ADHD and mental health issues has to be dealt with urgently as early intervention is paramount for these children. Yesterday, I received a response to a parliamentary question I sent to the Minister for Health, Deputy Donnelly, stating that the current waiting time is 30 months. God almighty, is that what the Taoiseach is presiding over? Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and the Green Party are joined together. The Taoiseach told people in Kerry during his speedy trip around it that he had a way out of this and he would appoint another Minister instead of Deputy Donnelly when the election was over. Do not laugh. I could bring the man the Taoiseach told here. It would be no bother in the world.

Ambulance cover needs to be increased, not reduced. The Government closed down the only eye clinic we had in Kerry, in Tralee, five or six months ago. At the same time, it reduced the reimbursement I was getting for taking people to Belfast to save their eyes. This is what the Government has been at-----

Thank you, Deputy. We will move on.

-----and what the Taoiseach is presiding over. No matter how much they try to disentangle from each other, Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and the Green Party are one crowd. They might as well rename themselves and get a new party because that is what they are. The Taoiseach does not want to take on the Greens because they get ministerial posts and the posts of Taoiseach and Tánaiste for themselves. That is what they are doing.

Thank you, Deputy.

They liked that Deputy. I was in Kerry and there was nothing speedy about it actually. I was there for most of the day.

You did not stay long

Sorry now, hang on a second. The Deputy has to give me a bit of a chance. I was there and indeed when was I driving by on the road, I saw this very large portacabin-type thing - I do not know what it was - with Deputy Healy-Rae's face emblazoned across it asking people to vote-----

It is a lorry.

-----so he is clearly ready for battle.

It was a lorry.

No, it was not a lorry I saw. The Deputy is clearly ready for battle.

We know what it is.

Please, Deputy.

There was probably no planning permission for it.

We will check that.

It did not cost €326,000. You put more bicycles in here than in the bicycle shed.

I welcome the retired nurses from Kerry and thank them for their service in the health service. I will certainly have a word with them in a moment about some of the issues the Deputy has raised. I am not across the detail of that and it does not tally with my information but I will have a word with them in a moment.

When it comes to the health service, I accept of course that it has to live within an allocation and the allocation is larger than it has ever been. It is a hell of a lot larger than when I was Minister for Health. It has now gone from about €16 billion to about €25 billion. The truth also matters. We have funding in place now to hire thousands more people to work in the health service under the leadership of the Minister, Deputy Donnelly. As of September 2024, there were 27,744 more staff working in the health service than there were when this Government of Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and the Green Party came into office. That is a 23% increase. There are 9,185 more nurses and midwives, 4,160 more health and social care professionals and 3,479 more doctors and dentists. I will get the Deputy the figures but I have no doubt that in Kerry hospital this means more staff, nurses and doctors than there were only a few years ago.

I accept we need to continue to grow those numbers to support our front-line health services. That is why we have funding for approximately 7,000 more people between now and the end of this year and next year.

The Deputy mentioned the issue of carers and I am glad he did. The means test is mean, and we need to overhaul and reform it. That is why my colleague, the Minister, Deputy Humphreys, has a piece of work that will be concluded by the end of the year relating to the means testing of our carers.

You will be gone then.

All of us, including the Deputy and everybody else in this House, will have a chance to put forward proposals to carers in the days ahead as to what we would do to support them over the next number of years. I am proud of a number of the measures we have taken, under the leadership of the Minister, Deputy Humphreys, in providing additional payments before Christmas to our carers, as well as the double child benefit payment being provided today, the double pension payment provided last week, the fuel allowance lump sum payment that will be provided this week, and many more measures that I know make a real difference to people in County Kerry. I met them in Kerry. I met them in Listowel, Tralee and Killarney. I met them with a good man called Billy O'Shea.

The Deputy is right that we need to make more progress on assessment of needs. The Labour Party brought forward a proposal based on the advocacy of Cara Dermody, the young girl from County Tipperary, to utilise capacity in the private sector while building up capacity in the public sector. That is what we have done, and that has seen more than 1,000 additional children with special needs get access to assessments of need this year. I accept that is a model we need to continue.