And to this House.

Will the Taoiseach support the Bill?

We are talking about money in Ireland.

The Russian ambassador is not going to help.

Some were saying that.

I want to raise an issue of most urgency, that is, the need to enact this week in this House the Proceeds of Crime (Gross Human Rights Abuses) Bill 2020, which has been passed on Second Stage. It would expand our proceeds of crime legislation, which established the Criminal Assets Bureau, CAB, to capture the ill-gotten goods of oligarchs, officials and anybody else involved in human rights abuses. It is a signal that this House should give. I ask that the Taoiseach reflect on that and provide time so that all parti…

This is the week for it.

No.

It is nonsense.

Could we return to the practice of distributing the speeches of Ministers? It is such a facility for Members.

I thank the Leas-Cheann Comhairle. The Labour Party strongly and warmly welcomes this resolution. I thank the Government for responding to last week's request from our leader, Deputy Kelly, for this motion in order that the House could act together and the voice of elected representatives of the people could be very clearly heard. The last six days have been among the most momentous and frightening in Europe since the end of the Second World War. The settlement we Europeans thought existed, one that underpinned pea…

The Labour Party will support this motion. I commend Sinn Féin on providing the House with the opportunity to address this very important issue. Any Deputy working in any constituency office is acutely aware of the pressure that is building up now. The figures set out are truly shocking. While the Covid pandemic, understandably, dominated the health focus for the past two years, the general level of our health service waiting lists is truly depressing. I am glad the Minister has acknowledged this and wants to set i…

Before I start, I extend my sympathies to the family, friends and colleagues of the Democratic Unionist Party MLA, Christopher Stalford, who died suddenly at the weekend. The Dáil is once again addressing one of the most poisonous legacies of the Troubles, the historic allegations of collusion in the commission of criminal acts and, as we have already heard, including murder, collusion between state security forces and paramilitaries. This comes with the publication of the report by the police ombudsman into invest…

I, too, acknowledge the presence of and welcome the Ukrainian ambassador to our debate. The actions of the Russian Government this week, in recognising the already occupied territories of Luhansk and Donetsk and moving its military forces across legally recognised international borders, are the most serious threat to European peace since the end of the Cold War. Extensive diplomatic efforts involving an array of European leaders, Macron, Scholz and Johnson among them, together with the Organization for Security and…

The Minister previously described this report as a "watershed". It certainly is a time for honest and open debate and, I hope and I believe, clear decision-making. Since the Second World War and the establishment of the principle of Ireland's neutrality, successive Governments have felt that being neutral meant we did not need or, perhaps, want a military with the real capacity to protect our country from foreign aggression. Throughout those decades, we had many other priorities and calls on our money and we still …

We are finally, as a whole of society, shining a light into the very structure of our society and, in particular, on the role of women and how women are treated here. Decades of campaigning for equality, during which incremental hard-won steps were made on that journey, still leave us a long way to travel. This House reflected the shared outrage of the Irish people at the brutal murder of Ashling Murphy recently. Many more incidents of assault and harassment have come into the public domain since those statements w…

As the Taoiseach will recall, a rise in the pension age was a major issue in the last general election. Immediately after the election the Government set up a Commission on Pensions which published its report last October. The trade union-led campaign, STOP67, was successful in the interim and the proposed increase was stopped. The commission report proposed to freeze the pension age until 2028 and then to begin phased increases by increments of three months to reach 67 by 2031 and then to rise by three months ever…

Yes, or tax changes.

Oh yes.

I meant to take the opportunity on my first contribution to sympathise with the family of the late Mr. Noel Treacy, with whom I had the privilege of working in this House. The Taoiseach is right. I have served in government in the past and this is a difficult decision. It is not an easy decision but the fact that an all-party committee looked at this and came up with solutions that are fiscally sound is something that must carry weight in this House. Covid has changed the way we look at work and our attitudes to wo…