Michael Collins: Calls for Adequate Staffing and Transparency

I give support to the hosts of the Oireachtas Bill, of course, because I suppose you have to look at the work and the amount of work that staff do on a daily basis for Dáil TDs and for Ministers and for Senators and for everybody here elected. I have to pay tribute to my own staff who work extremely hard, and to those of independent Ireland staff as well, that have been very strong workers with us down through the years. But I heard Deputy O'Keefe speaking there a while ago in relation to having a staff member up here, there is a huge need for that, but also to be in a situation where you have a constituency office and one person on his own is leaving me very much stretched because they are busy. Look, in fairness, that is our job. People are coming in on a daily basis with issues of serious concern, and they need, in fairness, we need to be adequately staffed and to be wrong on me to stand up here. I know there will be people out there saying, oh, sure, what do you need staff for? We do need staff. A lot of my staff, and I have paid tribute to Ellen, and Paddy, and Valerie, and so many more. They work not alone by day, they work by night. They take calls by night. I do not ask them to do that, but they do that voluntarily. They take calls during the weekend. They work way beyond the hours that they are paid for, because they are dedicated 100 per cent. I was lucky to have people like Margaret and Peters and others that were so dedicated to their job and done through the years and have really given everything they got. That goes for all politicians. If you are doing your job right, you are going to be busy. You need the staffing levels that we have, and they need to be adequately funded. We obviously need transparency. That is very, very important. That is something that we, as politicians, need to be aware of. We have not had transparency in relation to a lot of issues here that are causing quite a lot of upset to the public out there. We could go on. I know people have mentioned it, maybe burning the years up, people like the white shade, the children's hospital security, mobile phone poachers. People are very frustrated that that is not transparency as far as they are concerned. That is a lot of waste that must be looked at and must be investigated. With businesses closing all over the country, more and more people will question what kind of monies are we spending and where is the money going. You have to listen to that with the COVID-19 rate. A lot of them businesses are in dire trouble. It is so much so, Minister, that it is very important for these businesses to have the few days that they have, that they can open their doors, that the doors to make profit are not impeded. A lot of business people from Kinsale are very, very annoyed that on Saturday in November now there is going to be a power outage for the whole day. That is a massive loss to the businesses at Kinsale. Each and every one of them are opposing that. They are saying, no, there is no problem, whatever. Power works have to be carried out, let them be carried out on Monday and Tuesday, when most doors are shut now. The only days that they can really open is Friday, Saturday or Sunday to close it down, because of a need that works with power lines there, it puts businesses in a far difficult position. In fairness, I am not going to hold up here, because my colleague will want to speak on it. I certainly will support this here, because I think the working staff both here, ushers and all the staff here do a great job, and in any way, shape or form that we should support them, and ourselves as well, because we can't deliver for the people. We get all sorts of issues, so we are not sure how to deliver them, but we can't do that if we have a low level of staff, and if they are not adequately paid and adequately looked after. I certainly will support this Minister.