David Cullinane

And she's had direct line contact.

So David being the, the minister in charge of health, or the, their spokesperson on health, it was better that David dealt with all that-

Yeah

... because he had the ear in on it, you know what I mean? He knew all the ins and outs of health.

David Cullinane, of course, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

And central to that conversation was the issue of drug debts a- and drug intimidation.

Actually, I, I know it being brought up in the Dáil today, even, uh, David Cullinane from Sinn Féin, uh, railing against what a scourge this is in society, and it has to be said, the Minister for Justice agreeing with him on most fronts.

Um, but on this show yesterday, it was Deborah who captured most people's attention because she got in touch with her story of drug dealers calling to her family home to collect money that her son owed to them.

Now, if you missed Deborah yesterday, here's just a little flavor of what she had to say.

Uh, well, I suppose, look, they're reluctant to get into the details at the moment because, obviously, it's an active investigation.

But the first person I actually happened upon at the scene down there was, uh, Sinn Féin TD, David Cullinane.

In tragedies like this, you often have politicians coming out and speaking.

He, he did seem genuinely shaken by the incident.

And we can have a quick word now with David Cullinane, who is Sinn Féin TD for Waterford.

And Deputy Cullinan, thank you for taking our call because this is devastating news this morning and you know this family.

I do.

And I know there is tears on that road, as you can imagine, and just people crying.

absolutely devastated and just still in shock and when you know a family and you know as i said i only met them very recently myself it just sends a shiver down your spine it's it's just so heartbreaking particularly when there's a children involved so i think that heartbreak will be felt right across the island when people hear what happened and hear of the fatalities so obviously we just have to let the emergency services do their job and Garda Síochána have to do their job and my thoughts at this point in time are obviously with all of the surviving family members and people who are very close to that family and obviously the neighbours and the community and people will pull together as communities do but this is just utterly devastating and heartbreaking beyond belief.

Thank you very much indeed, David Cullinane, Sinn Féin TD for Waterford.

We'll be back after this.

start of the year.

David Cullinane, do we need that honest conversation? Is it chronic underfunding or is this mismanagement?

Well, there is no honesty or transparency in relation to the health budget, so we are looking at a cost overload of about €600 million or €700 million for this year.

We don't know how much of the funding for this year in the budget is for new developments and for what's called existing levels of service for the health service to stand still.

consensus clearly on health spending.

And unfortunately, we will have to come back to housing and cost of living another day.

My thanks to Minister John Cummins, to Marie Sherlock, Labour TD for Dublin Central, to David Cullinane, Sinn Féin TD for Waterford and all of the guests who joined us earlier.

Martin Daly's from Galway, Roscommon.

There's, there's, um, then there's Sorcha Clarke, um, Peter Roach, and David Cullinane.

Outside of, we, oh, David Cullinane is Munster as well.

But th- there's Martin Daly, he's gonna facilitate an informal meeting on Wednesday at, around 12:30 with the Oireachtas Health Committee members.

And then he said for me, I'm, I'm to email Padraig Reidy 'cause he's chairing the Oireachtas Health Committee, and Padraig has been massively supporting this, by the way-