€25,000 per day for Convention Centre Dáil While Special School Hot Dinner Funding is Cancelled. - Tóibín
Aontú Leader and Meath West TD Peadar Tóibín has strongly criticised the continued use of he Convention Centre at what he termed an “eye watering cost to the taxpayer”. He stated;
“It is still hard to believe that the Dáil is paying €25,000 a day for the use Convention Centre. Especially so since many of the TDs have already been vaccinated and Covid has subsided to such low levels in Hospital and ICU. The vast majority of the time there is no more than a half a dozen TDs sitting in the 2,000 seater convention centre. Block votes where all the TDs are present last for, tops one hour a week”.
“This largesse by the political establishment is in sharp contrast the experience of St Mary's Special School in Navan, who now will no longer be able to provide hot meals at lunchtime to their students. St Mary’s Special School is a wonderful school that providing a great service to children with special needs all around Co Meath. Many children get on the school bus at 7.30am and don’t return home until 4pm. It’s a seriously long day for a child not to have a substantial hot meal provided to them. Yet the CE scheme that provided the catering staff has been withdrawn and the school has been refused funding from the Dept of Social Protection”.
“Currently taxpayers are paying €5,000 a day to supplement the fine food at the Convention Centre restaurant for TDs and Ministers. Again the contrast between the experience of children with special needs and phenomenally well paid TDs and Ministers is astounding. That the political class is not mortified by these gaps in Irish society is incredible”.
“Aontú is calling for practical steps, such as the vaccination of the rest of the TDs to be taken now to get the Leinster House back up and running fully and for this waste to be stopped. We are also calling on the Dept of Social Protection to include Special Schools in their Hot Meal funding”.
