Rhun ap Iorwerth: ...with energy costs, and the Wales fuel support scheme came to an end in February. Now, I note of course the extra funding for the discretionary assistance fund, the excellent scheme to provide free school meals in order to tackle the issue of families living in poverty, but will the Minister provide an assurance that everything possible will be done by the Government to ensure that support...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: ...all of the services available through pharmacies and so on. I'd like to hear from the Minister about the kind of investment that the Government is making or considering in order to tackle that educational challenge, which clearly needs to be overcome, because it's only if people understand the different ways that they can access health services will they start to take advantage of those...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: .... A balanced and healthy diet can be very expensive, unfortunately, even more so during a cost-of-living crisis. Now, one in every four children is obese or overweight when starting in primary school, and almost half of those are, indeed, obese. And we are fully aware of the link between children living in poverty and obesity. There's nothing new in that. But, in looking at the figures,...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: ...see the statement coming last night. I've shared that on my social media, in my constituency, and I'm sure other Members are doing likewise, and the information is being provided to parents through schools. But what's the communication plan as we move forward? I think it's important that we understand that there is a communications plan in place in order to ensure that information is...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: ...retention is perhaps more challenging than recruitment, but we have to ensure that we maintain all the tools needed to bring nurses into the profession, and remember many come not straight from school, but perhaps a little later in life and having to give up another job. They need the backing of that bursary at the current level. On the pay negotiations, Government has to come to the...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: ...contribution to the response to stroke in Wales. There is no information available anywhere as to whether it exists and who is a member of that board, so I'm looking forward greatly to the Minister educating us on that. But it does say to us that where action is being taken, the Welsh Government should explain that. Even charities couldn't tell us what that board was. I'll listen very...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: ..., it is treated like any other short-term illness, but it's more than that. The truth is that migraine is a neurological condition that can have serious consequences in the long term on a child's educational performance, never mind their self-confidence and their social lives. Children who suffer migraine can miss up to three months of school per year—we see that in statistics. We need...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: ...ganu', incidentally, works very well in Welsh, as a well-known phrase describing us as a nation when we're really in full voice. Since 2010, the SEACAMS and SEACAMS2 projects at Bangor University's School of Ocean Sciences have been responsible for undertaking the most expansive sea bed mapping study ever undertaken in Welsh territorial waters. High-resolution multibeam sonar surveys,...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: ...and community settings. But still, we wait. When will the Welsh Government commit to valuing our nursing workforce in this way? I understand that the chief nursing officer has written to Health Education and Improvement Wales regarding the all-Wales nurse staffing programme, and indicated that she is not going to publish the principles for mental health or health visiting. Now, that...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: ...is taking money without asking towards military aid. I'm not making a comment on what that money's being spent on, but the fact that it is being taken without consultation from health budgets, education budgets and climate change budgets, when Welsh taxes have already contributed to the UK's defence spending. We want to innovate in renewable energy, but Westminster Ministers deny us the...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: ...isn’t enough. You need funding, you need radical policy, too, and thanks to the co-operation agreement, preventative interventions that are crucial and radical are being implemented, such as free school meals for all primary school children, and the provision of childcare has been expanded. That’s been prioritised, at last. Yes, they’re expensive, but we will as a nation benefit from...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: I wasn't looking for division here today; I was looking for consensus, frankly. Having a daughter in Paris currently, a graduate of the London School of Economics and Political Science, having lived in Italy myself, having spent time living in London myself—. We're not about closing the doors for our young people and telling them not to leave, but the truth of the matter is that too many do...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: ...their academic potential. So, how does the First Minister intend to take action in these areas to prevent the brain drain, because financial factors are very real factors in locking people out of education and thereby preventing them from reaching their full potential?
Rhun ap Iorwerth: ...25. It's a critical stage for young people, because of the neurological, biological and cognitive changes of adolescence to young adulthood. It's a time of big change in their lives, reaching major educational milestones. We often talk, don't we, about the need for early intervention to avoid mental health issues deteriorating. Plaid Cymru's long championed early intervention, including in...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: .... We'll support the motion today. We agree with regard to the impact that the pandemic had on the mental health of children and young people. It was an unprecedented period of anxiety about missing school work, of loneliness, of missing out on those experiences that are so important to young people, of losing support networks and so on. I'm a father to three children, and I saw that for...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: ..., we need to identify the blockages. We need to identify what prevents the Government from truly operating in an integrated manner and bringing all of the elements of governance—housing, health, education, socioeconomic issues, all of those—together, and the solutions to those don't exist within a framework of this kind, although the objectives are there. So, the one question is: does...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: ...told, by now. I'm pleased that the evidence, not so much the testing now, but the ONS evidence and the wastewater evidence—does suggest that the situation is improving. The first question is on schools and colleges, which I think see the greatest changes here given that face coverings are no longer a requirement. Can the Minister tell us how she wants to see ventilation and carbon...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: ...I hope is going to push this agenda forward, drive this change of culture, but there's a great deal more that we need to do, and one of the things that we do need to see happening now is even more education for people—us included—about how to change the way that we think about our health services. The Government has invested in the communication plans about the change coming into force...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: Another appeal to speed up the visa process. There is a community on Anglesey that is ready to welcome a mother and daughter; the school uniform is ready to go. It is now nine days since the family on Anglesey began going through the visa application process—doing it themselves, rather than leaving it to the mother and daughter, because it's in English only and they don't have good English,...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: ...it should be, but there is a significant increase, as the First Minister said, in the number of those who are catching the virus at present. I'm hearing about staffing issues in health and care, schools sending children home, one further education college with almost a quarter of the students with COVID at the moment, and a nursery having to limit the children who could attend there for...
