A letter to Minister Mary Butler, to the HSE, to the government, and to whomever may listen.  I hope your day is going well. If you have a few moments to read this letter, I would be extremely grateful for your time. Autism, ADHD, Spectrum Disorder, Sensory Disorder. These are all words that I’m sure you’ve heard before. Many of times, if these words are said we think of a young boy who struggles to sit still in class, or has to wear ear defenders to get through the fireworks on Halloween. Maybe at a push, it may be the young girl who has a special interest in horses, or has to bring her fidget toy to school with her. However, what if I were to tell you that neurodivergence is much more than that, and it doesn’t stop when you reach a certain age. What if I told you that Mia, aged 19 is being bullied in her PLC because she dared to express her special interest in a kids cartoon?  Or that Aoife, aged 26 is constantly called lazy and doesn’t know why she can’t just get out of bed and complete a task? Or that Michael, aged 30 has failed to carry out 6 attempts at a college education, because the campus is too loud and there was no where for him to go to decompress, so he just decides not to go in at all? Many individuals aged 18 and upwards have lived entire lives trying to survive in a world that wasn’t built for them. I can speak from direct experience when I say that these individuals face invisible challenges every day such as executive disfunction, time keeping, distraction, troubles around socialising, finding self esteem and experiencing invisible torture when it comes to navigating the world through sound, sight, smell, taste and touch. I could go on and on forever, and yet not nearly enough people are given support for these issues. The biggest question around lately has been “Why is there such a mental health epidemic in this country as of late?” and my answer to you is support. I would like to explain why I believe that the lack of support for individuals over the age of 18 with neurodivergent symptoms of traits could be one of the major reasons for this epidemic. Individuals 18 years or older (predominantly women) with possible Neurodivergence are turned away from Primary Care centres, Community Mental Health centres and Psychiatric Assessment wards and clinics all because of their age. This is a ridiculous and outdated practice, as neurodivergence doesn’t end once an individual has turned 18 years of age. For many people, women especially, neurodivergence is already under diagnosed or recognised in places like CAMHS because of the ignorance around the typical symptoms of neurodivergent disorders in girls and women. I would like to point out that this is a spectrum, many people mask and are left feeling inadequate, alone and isolated and later down the line told that they instead have psychiatric mood disorders such as BPD. This is so that the doctors in positions of power can fob them off and take lunch early. If neurodivergence was supported properly in this country, the knock on effect of issues such as Anxiety disorder, OCD, mental burnout and Depression etc. would decrease, as the root of the problem would be investigated, instead of the symptoms resulting from it.  This is such a major issue and if we pull together to get it sorted, adult individuals living with neurodivergence could finally find peace of mind and support that they’ve always needed in their workplaces, education and communities. If you want real change in the mental health of individuals across Ireland, listen to their concerns!!!  This is not a petition to continue labelling people. This is not a cry for attention This is a cry for support and help for those who deserve real assessment, real validation in their experience and real support without having to find €2000-€3000 just to be told something they already know.  Thank you for your time and if you agree with this letter, please sign the petition. Something has to change. Kind Regards, Sienna Reynolds A Social Care Practice Student with real life experience wanting to make a difference.

On 24th October 2011, Irish citizen and hospice worker Celia de Jesus lost her life during a major flood event in Dublin. Unable to exit her basement flat as floodwater quickly rose at her door, she was trapped and drowned. In his report, the Dublin District Coroner of the time argue that Celia de Jesus drowned “as a result of a surge of water and flooding over a short period of time following two days of heavy rain”, reaching a final verdict of “death by misadventure”. However, extensive research into the tragic event reveals that the coroner report omits several pieces of evidence clearly challenging the conclusion of the report. Two of the main pieces of evidence left out of the report are as follows: • EVIDENCE 1: Celia de Jesus’s landlord had not received planning permission to divide the basement of his property into two rental units. Celia de Jesus was therefore renting an unauthorised basement flat. Furthermore, while located in a well-known flood-prone area, the basement flat had only one means of exit, the entrance door. All windows of the flat were blocked with metal bars. When Celia de Jesus was unable to open her entrance door for unknown reasons, she had no other means of exit at her disposal and was trapped. These pieces of evidence are never explicitly mentioned in the report and never outlined as a major cause of the tragic death. Instead, the claim is made that the works to divide the basement into two rental units (“appear to”) precede the Building Control Act 1990 and that, as a result, they shall be deemed to have been permitted. However, such a legal technicality cannot justify entertaining a misleading account of the tragic death. • EVIDENCE 2: In the coroner report, a list of planning applications submitted for the property in which Celia de Jesus died, both granted and refused, is provided. However, one planning application, dated 2009 and refused, is not included in the list. In this planning application addressed to Dublin City Council, it is stated that the property in which Celia de Jesus lived and died is “not of a habitable standard” (architect report, planning application 3066/09). Despite such a concerning statement, the issue failed to be addressed, which constituted another significant enabler of the tragic event. Following the tragic event and until now, various state and local government agencies, among them Dublin City Council, South Dublin County Council and the Office of Public Works, have actively sustained the misleading account of Celia de Jesus’s death in reports and during public meetings. Instead of mentioning the planning breach and institutional failure that led to the tragic death, they consistently and unliterally blamed the flood. The misleading account was widely relayed in the local and national press and among local communities. As we are now approaching the fifteenth anniversary of the tragic death, we ask Dublin City Council, South Dublin County Council, the Office of Public Works and the Minister for Justice to take the following actions as a matter of urgency: • ACTION 1: Issue a public statement explaining the full circumstances of the death of Celia de Jesus based on all available evidence • ACTION 2: Issue a public apology for having sustained a misleading account of the tragic death • ACTION 3: Request an immediate review of the coroner report and of its final verdict Please sign the petition to support these demands and share as widely as you can thank you!

Children spend a huge proportion of their lives in classrooms. They should not have to breathe poorly ventilated, unfiltered, rebreathed air for six hours a day when practical solutions exist. COVID has not disappeared. Reinfections continue, and a proportion of children and adults (16% according HSE FADA report, 15-53% according to HIQA's review of international evidence, 16% according to Mass General Brigham study, 2026, 27% of healthcare workers according to NHS REACH-OUT study, 2026) develop Long COVID — sometimes with disabling symptoms. Due to the lack of information on long Covid in Ireland, much of this harm is going undiagnosed or is not attributed to the real cause, COVID-19 infection. The WHO, the CDC, the OECD and other international organizations continue to warn about Long COVID, including its impact on children, yet public awareness in Ireland remains remarkably low. Clean indoor air is one of the few interventions that can protect everyone without requiring individual behaviour. Good ventilation and appropriately sized HEPA filtration reduce exposure to airborne infectious particles while also helping to reduce pollutants, allergens and particulate matter. Other places are already acting. Schools in London, parts of the United States, Canada, Australia and elsewhere have introduced filtration, air-quality monitoring or wider clean-air programmes. Ireland announced €62 million for school ventilation improvements and HEPA filtration in December 2021, yet HEPA filtration is still not standard in Irish classrooms. This is also about the right to honest public-health information. Parents should be given clear, current information about airborne transmission, Long COVID, women and girls being at greater risk of Long COVID, reinfection and the potential longer-term consequences of infection so that they can make informed decisions for their families. The information vacuum on the reality of Long COVID and the huge burden it puts on the healthcare system is being filled by racist, antivax conspiracy theorists. Clean Indoor Air will save lives and improve the health and wellbeing of children today and for generations to come. The infrastructure we put in place now will protect pupils and teachers from COVID, influenza and many other airborne infections, while improving the everyday quality of the air they breathe.  Ireland entered the pandemic with the 4th highest rate of asthma in the world with 1 in 5 children suffering and as an outlier in the EU with rising deaths from asthma. It is an abomination that the government decided against making HEPA filters standard in classrooms when faced with COVID-19, and we feel it is an insult to our intelligence and an exercise in gaslighting when politicians and media discuss issues such as "alarming rates of absenteeism" and "record breaking hospital overcrowding", while completely ignoring the reality of long COVID. We know how to make indoor air cleaner. We know how to reduce airborne transmission. Parents deserve accurate information about the risks. What is missing is the political will to act. Please join us in asking the Government to make clean air and honest public-health information a basic standard for every child in Ireland.

Other people should join me in this campaigne because there has been many issues lately with the tullamore skate scene as the park is an unsafe place and the skatepark no longer feels like a fun place to learn to skate there is many skaters in tullamore and only one skatepark is no longer enough

German Shepherd dogs are known for their fantastic abilities as service dogs. They combine intelligence, trainability, physical capability and very strong bonds with their handlers. They are the most loyal dog breed. They have physical strenght to provide balance support, pulling wheelchairs, opening doors, retrieving dropped objects. German Shepherds has proved themselves as guide dogs for people with visual impairments, as medical alert and psychiatric service dogs.They are confident under pressure. Yes, they require proper training but so as any other service dog. On a personal note....Kurtin,beautiful, loyal and absolutely outstanding non official  (unfortunately and very unfairly) therapy dog has been by my special needs son's side for nearly 12 years. 

An Appointment, Not a Waiting List. This campaign is born out of my family's absolute worst nightmare. 19 months ago, we suffered the devastating, heart-breaking loss of my nephew to suicide. Today, we are living through the nightmare all over again. My niece has been diagnosed with ASD Level 1 and severe depression, yet she is currently stranded on a HSE CAMHS waiting list, denied the urgent care she needs. We know the terrifying cost of waiting. We are being pushed to the brink of crisis while the system stalls, and I refuse to sit by and watch the state fail another child. Right now, over 4,700 children across Ireland are stranded on HSE CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services) waiting lists. Hundreds of them have been waiting for more than a year. Behind these statistics are real families in despair. Parents are forced to watch their children’s mental health deteriorate day by day in a broken system. Early intervention is vital, but the HSE is tied up in recruitment bottlenecks and systemic delays. If a child is waiting too long for a physical surgery, the state steps in through the National Treatment Purchase Fund to pay for them to be seen privately. Mental health deserves the exact same urgency. We are demanding that the Minister for Health and the Minister for Mental Health establish a Mental Health Treatment Purchase Fund. Our demand is simple: If the HSE cannot provide a child with a CAMHS appointment within 3 months, the state must automatically fund alternative, accredited private or community-based therapies. Access to life-saving mental health care should be based on a child's medical need, not their parents' ability to pay hundreds of Euros in private fees. If the state cannot provide the public care in time, the state must pay for the alternative. Sign this petition to demand immediate funding relief for the thousands of children left behind by CAMHS. Our children cannot afford to wait.

Please sign my petition and support me in gaining suitable emergency accommodation supports from Donegal County Council.

For ourselves, for our children, we must get rid of these toxic algorithms on social media platforms that push harmful content at people, all for the sake of their profits. The First Interim Report of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Artificial Intelligence published last month recommended that: "Recommender systems should be switched off by default and social media companies should be banned from turning on recommender algorithms for accounts used by children." Numerous studies have shown that social media recommender algorithms are bombarding children with harmful material, including material that promotes self-harm, anorexia and suicide and toxic content that promotes misogyny, racism, homophobia and transphobia. A recent study found that 10 blank male-identified accounts of 16 and 18 year olds on 10 blank smartphones were all fed anti-feminist and other extremist content within just 23 minutes. Within three hours the vast majority of the content recommended was toxic, primarily alpha male and anti-feminist content, with Andrew Tate featuring heavily. Three-quarters of the public believe that there should be stronger regulation of social media algorithms and, in 2024, Coimisiún na Meán’s draft Online Safety Code included a recommendation to turn off recommender algorithms by default. However, this was scrapped following lobbying by the big tech companies. Social media corporations have created an immensely damaging public health and safety crisis in pursuit of profit, but the Government has failed to take any meaningful action.

Why leave and de-platform toxic and lock-in social media (such as X, Instagram, Snapchat, Tiktok) ? Black Box Algorithms: Lock-in platforms aim to show you more content that their owners like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and their paymasters want you to see, and less content that you want to see….  https://xodus.online/why#algorithms Rise of the far-right: Toxic platforms promote hate, the far-right, and interfere in elections…. https://xodus.online/why#democracy Disinformation: Toxic platforms do not support adequate fact-checking or moderation…. https://xodus.online/why#disinformation Over-consumption: Advertising-profit-platforms promote consumption patterns which are unhealthy for people and planet…. https://xodus.online/why#consumerism

The Rapid Response Vehicle (RRV) saves lives. An Advanced Paramedic should be on the RRV 24/7 - that was the promise made to the people of Roscommon. They are the ONLY personnel in the National Ambulance Service who can provide advanced life support. We need this critical service. 

Anaerobic digestion (AD) and biogas can play a positive role in Ireland’s renewable energy transition — but only when properly regulated. Unfortunately, Ireland currently lacks the basic national standards that other EU countries already require. As a result, AD plants are being proposed far too close to homes, private wells, schools, farms, rivers, Natura sites, and even busy motorways. Local authorities have no consistent guidance, and communities are left exposed to unnecessary health, safety and environmental risks. The Problem 1. No minimum setback distances Ireland has no national separation distances between AD plants and: • homes • drinking-water wells • schools • roads and motorways • protected habitats Other countries use 300–500m as standard — Ireland uses none. 2. No national odour standards Odour from digesters, waste reception, and digestate tanks can travel long distances depending on wind and elevation. Ireland has: • no odour regulations • no odour-modelling requirement • no mandatory odour-abatement technology Communities near existing plants frequently report persistent nuisance. 3. Risks to private wells and groundwater Many homes rely on private wells. AD sites store large quantities of slurry, digestate, industrial food waste, and fats/oils/grease. A spill or leak can contaminate groundwater. Ireland has no minimum distance from wells and no hydrological protection rules. 4. Proximity to motorways and road-safety concerns AD plants store methane, biogas and large waste volumes. Without national TII guidance, sites can be placed only metres from national roads and motorways — raising concerns about: • tanker traffic • vehicle fires • collision risks • gas leaks • spill containment This is a major planning gap. 5. Industrial waste accepted with little oversight Many AD plants take: • offal • dairy processing waste • food-industry by-products • fats, oils, grease (FOG) • expired packaged food These greatly increase odour, emissions, and risk. Ireland has no national limits, no composition standards, and weak monitoring. WHAT WE ARE ASKING FOR We call on the Minister for the Environment, the EPA, TII, and the Department of Housing to create national AD biogas regulations, including: ✔️ Minimum 500m setback distance From homes, schools, and private wells, unless independent scientific assessment proves otherwise. ✔️ National odour limits With mandatory odour-modelling, abatement systems, and compliance monitoring. ✔️ Groundwater and well protection Hydrological assessments, protected zones, and strict containment standards. ✔️ Rules for industrial waste Clear permitted-waste lists, composition limits, and independent monitoring. ✔️ Road-safety guidelines National TII rules for AD plants near major roads and motorways. ✔️ A full national AD planning framework Like those already existing for windfarms, quarries, and intensive agriculture — ensuring safety, consistency, and transparency. ⸻ WHY THIS MATTERS Ireland needs renewable energy — but we also need safe, responsible, and properly regulated development. Right now, communities across Ireland are being forced to fight these issues one planning application at a time, without the protection of national rules. A clear regulatory framework would protect: • public health • groundwater and private wells • road safety • rural communities • local wildlife and habitats • quality of life We urgently need the Government to act. CALL TO ACTION Sign now to demand strong national regulations for biogas AD plants — to keep our homes, water, and communities safe.

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