Confidence in the Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade: Motion
Dail Éireann — 2025-10-15
============================================================

Maeve O'Connell (FG), Dublin Rathdown

I am delighted to stand here today and say I have great confidence in the Tánaiste, Simon Harris. Before I was elected, which was only last year, I was a lecturer in TU Dublin and I saw at first hand the work he did to transform that sector when he was the first Minister for higher education.
I saw him raise the status of apprenticeships. I saw the pride of those students increase when they could walk around campus and feel more equal to all the other students. In particular, I saw the work he did to enable students with intellectual disabilities access college and third level places. Again, I saw those students transformed, contribute more to class, and to their classmates and making a greater contribution to society overall, and most importantly, as fully valued members of society. For those reasons I fully support the Tánaiste.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2025-10-15/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:13+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-10-15