I commend and congratulate Deputy Ó Laoghaire on bringing this legislation before the House. The Deputy has spotted a requirement to sort a gap in the 2004 Act. I remember there was a protracted debate about regulating the security industry through the late 1990s and right up to that period. People understood that there needed to be regulation, proper training and proper identification of everybody involved in the security industry, be they people who provided alarms or safes in houses, or people who worked securit…

That is how lawyers make their money.

I cannot begin my contribution as I would normally begin discussion of a Bill by saying that I am delighted to have the opportunity to speak to this Bill because it is one that nobody in this House welcomes and it has been brought about by an event that is entirely damaging to this country and over which we have no control. We must mitigate that damage to the best of our ability. As the Minister has indicated, it is the second Bill of this type. On balance, the first Bill was probably the best way to approach the i…

We are addressing issues that no one would like to address, namely, the extension of emergency draconian powers that in no normal circumstances would we support. The mere fact that the Dáil is meeting in a conference venue rather than our normal home in Leinster House underscores how extraordinary these times are. The issues at the heart of the legislation have been debated and passed by the House already. The only issue at stake in this debate is that of time. I have listened to the very reasonable case put forwar…

I am happy to have an opportunity to speak, even briefly, on this Bill. Every member of the Labour Party and, I suspect, the vast majority of Members of the House have the gravest concerns about this type of legislation. If he was not in ministerial office, I believe the current Minister for Health would be among those voicing the concerns. In any normal circumstances we would not countenance laws such as this being brought before the House. However, we are not in normal circumstances. The priority of all Members i…

I believe Deputy Shortall's amendment is being taken in this group. I would have no difficulty if the Leas-Cheann Comhairle wishes to call her first.

I just thought that would make sense because that amendment was in the group. I will take my slot now that I have it and I will try to be brief. During my nine terms in this House, my approach has always been that everybody is here on their own mandate and entitled to their own views. The notion that Deputies come in here to tell other people how they should think and what is right or wrong according to their likes is not right. This is a fundamental set of amendments. Other speakers are absolutely right. This is a…

On a point of order-----

I move: That the Bill be referred to the Select Committee on Justice pursuant to Standing Orders 95(3)(a) and 178(1).

The question relates to the Cabinet committee on Europe. I listened very carefully to the statement the Taoiseach made to the House yesterday on the conclusions of the European Council meeting last week. One of the things he said intrigued me and I underlined it. It was when he said that in particular we, presumably Ireland or perhaps the Council, asked the Commission to give timely consideration to unilateral and timelined contingency measures that are in the European Union's interest. He went on to say this is an…

Will the Taoiseach share the details with the House?

Should we not debate that?

The Taoiseach raised the matter.

This was an important new announcement in the budget last week. Will the Taoiseach confirm that we are talking about additional and new money and not money that has already been allocated across Departments for Border or cross-Border projects? Is there a breakdown, even in indicative terms, of how the proposed €500 million investment will be deployed? It would be useful for us to have a debate and discussion on that. How is the fund to be administered? Is it to be entirely administered by the Taoiseach's Department…

What about oversight?

What about the EU programme body?

I want to focus very briefly on the European Council, which was the question asked. The Taoiseach touched on three outstanding issues in respect of Brexit, namely, oversight, fisheries and a level playing field. I do not have time to go into them in detail. We went through them in detail earlier today in discussions at the Joint Committee on European Union Affairs with the House of Lords' committee. Even those who were very strongly anti-Brexit were concerned about the requirements on the European Union side in reg…

Five-minute speaking slots for parties is not good enough for a Council meeting. It runs counter to the agreement after the Lisbon treaty when we had a lot of debate about why people had lost faith in it and we wanted proper debate and scrutiny of European Council meetings. I am all in favour of other Deputies being able to participate but it should not be achieved by trying to deal with a variety of important issues in five minutes. Unfortunately, I will not be able to deal with anything other than the one issue t…

It is very difficult to make a substantial contribution to a budget debate in five minutes. There was a time when Members took hours to analyse the impact of a budget and I regret this is no longer the case. As someone who has some experience of budgets, yesterday's announcement was by any measure an extraordinary one. It included the provision of €17 billion in expenditure and €20 billion in borrowing next year to add to the €20 billion borrowed this year. The consensus on the budget, from the Irish Fiscal Advisor…

I would like to amplify Deputy Smith's question. It is now almost a pro forma measure to add 50 cent or €1 to the price of cigarettes every year. Nobody objects to it because there is a compelling health issue, but smuggling is a real concern now. This does not just mean criminality. We do not know the contents of illegal cigarettes, which are extensively sold in housing estates throughout the country. There is a lot of interdiction of cigarettes but this is a really worrying issue. We need a much clearer messaging…