I move amendment No. 16: In page 23, to delete lines 25 to 31.

I move amendment No. 33: In page 56, between lines 26 and 27, to insert the following: “ Prohibition of advertising 67 . (1) A person shall not advertise gambling, or cause gambling to be advertised. (2) A person who contravenes subsection (1) is guilty of an offence and is liable— (a) on summary conviction, to a class A fine, or imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months, or both, or (b) on conviction on indictment, to a fine not exceeding €250,000 or imprisonment for a term not exceeding three years, or bot…

It was amendment No. 33.

Yes.

The truth shall set you free, or so they say. What we heard last Thursday was, indeed, the truth. We can only pray that the truth has begun to set the families of the 48 free – free from the campaigning, the meetings, the closed doors, the trauma, the criticism and the lies, free from 43 years of seeking the truth, free from the disgusting suspicion that the phrase “probable arson” hung around the entirety of north Dublin for two generations, free in the knowledge that the souls of the 48, or 49 including Caroline …

The Minister made a move towards addressing knife crime last week. Has she considered introducing an amnesty in this regard?

I am interested in what the Minister of State said. I am aware of an instance in the UK where a knife amnesty was initiated. A family member of someone who carries a knife or someone who is aware of a knife in a household avails of an opportunity to drop the knife into a box, be it in a community centre, a police station or somewhere else that is safe. This takes some knives out of circulation and also, in part, just adds to the general conversation about knife crime. There is the practical part, namely, the demons…

I am not hung up on the idea of a knife amnesty. It was just something I wanted to tease out. We need a change in culture among young and not so young people to ensure the carrying of a knife is simply not acceptable in our society, is not needed and leads to harm. I am interested in listening to public awareness campaigns. I spoke to the Minister in a committee meeting earlier about a public awareness campaign around the migration pact. We cannot have a public awareness campaign about everything, but if young peop…

In the public sphere, the Minister has restated her commitment to hate crime legislation. In light of rumblings from Government backbenches and from the Opposition and of people abandoning their previous commitments to supporting hate crime legislation, will she now take the opportunity to speak to her own commitment to pass hate crime legislation?

I am reassured by that and I thank the Minister for her response. A Croatian man was beaten to death a couple of weeks ago because he did not speak English. We have had 23 arson attacks on accommodation centres over the last number of years. Members of the LGBTQ+ community and their families know what it is like to feel afraid that they will be assaulted for who they are. We are behind every other European country when it comes to legislation in this regard. I am aghast at Government backbenchers who, in the wake o…

Again, I am encouraged by the Minister's words but I want to be sure that this legislation can be enacted before a general election. This is the type of legislation that can define a Minister and a Government; indeed, it can define the body politic. How much are we going to risk to enact legislation to protect those who are powerless? To my mind, this is an indication of how serious we are about law and order in Irish politics. This legislation is also a test of how serious the Minister is about pushing back agains…

I have won the oral questions lottery this week. This question relates to the issue of Garda resignations, which I have raised a number of times. There were 147 resignations from An Garda Síochána last year, which was unprecedented. The Minister decided not to attend the Garda Representative Association, GRA, conference. That was an unsurprising move in the absence of an invitation to the Garda Commissioner. That being said, low morale and other issues within An Garda Síochána would have been raised with her there.…

What gardaí are telling me is that it is not the job it used to be and that it is harder to do the job. There are people doing it now who want to leave and clearly the statistics back up what I am saying. There are also people who, in previous generations, would have wanted to enter the profession but do not want to do so now. We can see that in the difficulties we have had with recruitment. I understand the Garda Commissioner suggested 18,000 gardaí are needed to effectively police the State because of the populat…

We did have a motion of no confidence in the Garda Commissioner, which I did not think was a good move by the GRA but it happened. We did have a threat of work to rule, effectively, for the month of October, which did not happen but overhung the whole month until it was resolved. The Garda Commissioner has not been invited to the GRA conference and the Minister has already decided not to attend. These issues of morale are real and the statistics I gave the Minister on resignations are real. The Minister did not ans…

How many community gardaí are there in the Dublin region compared with in 2019, pre-pandemic?

Okay. We were one minute and 50 seconds into the answer and I was just waiting for the statistics. The Minister of State does not have the 2019 figure, which is a disappointment because I am trying to assess where we are now versus where we were pre-pandemic. In any event, the Policing Authority published an assessment of policing performance today and indicated cuts to community policing are a matter of genuine concern. It stated: While there is a strong trust and confidence in the Garda Síochána within local comm…

There is no more important garda than the community garda in breaking down antisocial behaviour, fostering relationships, breaking down intergenerational distrust and breaking down the distrust that young people and migrant communities tend to have of An Garda Síochána. The Policing Authority spoke today about cuts in community policing. The Minister of State cannot provide me with the figures now. He will get them for me, which is fine, but if a Deputy submits a blunt oral question comparing today with 2019, the a…

Road safety is an issue that is seemingly spiralling out of control. This year is currently on course to prove the most lethal for traffic fatalities in 15 years, with all the good work that has been done in the years gone by completely erased. So far this year, 63 people have died on the roads, with the death toll climbing by an alarming 31% compared with the same period in 2023. In February, we debated the Road Traffic Bill. My colleague Deputy Duncan Smith highlighted that we had 21 deaths at the time of those s…

I congratulate the Minister of State, Deputy Naughton, on her appointment to the Department of Education. Will the Department support the introduction of a Dublin allowance for teachers to help to address the crisis in teacher retention in the Dublin area?

I thank the Minister for her kind words. It is very much appreciated by my family, to whom education means the world, that the Minister for Education mentioned my daughter on the floor of the House. Her sister Anna is very excited. On the matter at hand, the INTO has spoken at its recent conference about 2,000 long-term vacancies within the primary school sector, as the Minister knows. It predicted this last November. The reason I keep mentioning the potential of the Dublin allowance is that there has been pay weig…