Today marks World Hearing Day with the World Health Organization focusing on prevention of hearing loss and ear care for children. Almost 14,000 children are waiting on HSE hearing loss assessments alongside more than 13,000 adults, some of whom have been waiting for over a year. One deaf working couple, James and Ruth, have spoken about having to pay €10,000 for essential hearing aids every five to seven years. Their income makes them ineligible for a medical card. In 2024, the Government established a working group to develop a national hearing care plan. The working group has yet to deliver a report while those waiting lists continue to grow. When will we see a national hearing care plan? When will it be implemented? What is the Government doing today to ensure that children are prioritised for hearing loss prevention and ear care?

I acknowledge that there are challenges with delays here. I will discuss this with the Minister. We had a meeting of the Cabinet subcommittee on health yesterday. A lot of progress has been made on waiting times and on health in general. Some very significant progress has been made. There is a lot of investment yet to come in terms of capacity on the current side and on the infrastructure side. However, we acknowledge that there are issues here and we need to get these waiting times down.

I want to raise the serious issue of Irish citizens currently stranded in the Middle East. Since the weekend's events, I have been contacted by constituents who are on holiday or working in the region and find themselves trapped. Airports are closed and flight paths are suspended. People are in a frightening and volatile situation through no fault of their own. I commend the Minister, Deputy McEntee, and her team on working around the clock to provide consular assistance to those people. However, the reality is extremely worrying for those citizens and their families in Ireland, at least 14 of whom are in my own county of Laois. At present there are no recommended evacuation routes from the Gulf countries. If this conflict continues, is the Government prepared to implement an evacuation plan for the Irish citizens in the affected region? Those people deserve clarity, reassurance and the full protection of the State.

The advice is very clear: to shelter in place and to register with the relevant embassy for the country in which they are based so that there can be clear communication between our embassies and Irish citizens. All options are being, and will be, pursued to help our citizens. The immediate situation is very challenging because it is unsafe. Emirates and Etihad got opportunities yesterday; they got short time windows to get some planes out. Those were mostly towards the east. We would hope that there might be opportunities in the coming week if that could happen. In the meantime, we are pursuing all options, including co-ordinating with our European partners on any potential evacuation. For the immediate days ahead, the advice is to stay in shelter and register. We will do everything we can with the authorities in the respective countries in the Gulf to support our citizens.

Every day I am contacted by a member of my community who says either they, themselves, or a member of their family have attended the accident and emergency department in Beaumont Hospital. They invariably describe it as being like a war zone. That department is bursting at the seams with elderly people left on trolleys and on chairs while staff have to try to care for patients in an overcrowded and overrun emergency department. We are a wealthy modern country and there is no excuse for people in their most vulnerable moments to be forced to endure war zone conditions in their local hospital. We urgently need the redevelopment of the emergency department at Beaumont and the construction of a new critical care unit. I welcome that the Government has committed over €24 million to the hospital but we need to know timelines for when this work will commence and be finalised.

As the Deputy said, €24 million was allocated for this facility in the capital plan. We need to work through the design. Under the acceleration of critical infrastructure, we hope that they will follow through on the work the Minister, Deputy Chambers, has done on fast-tracking these developments. Yesterday, I met with the HSE chief executive along with the Minister at the Cabinet subcommittee on health. The north east is the best area in the country with the lowest number of people on trolleys for any length of time. It is in the green zone a lot more than others. Overall, notwithstanding the experiences that some of the Deputy's constituents have articulated to him, a lot more progress is happening in the north east than in some other parts of the country in the accident and emergency story overall. I will talk to the HSE in respect of timelines at that accident and emergency department. We are conscious that HSE infrastructure takes longer than other infrastructure.