Yes, I made assertions but that is not the question.

Yes, can you answer the question though?

It is the EU corporate sustainability directive.

It was reported that Ireland is leading the charge to-----

I have no doubt that Government representatives will continue to eulogise the great history of endeavours in the field of science. That is fair enough, but we must take it with a pinch of salt. We could take it seriously if we made a start by treating the teachers of science and other key subjects with the respect they deserve by paying them an income that will allow them to live and rent homes in the places where they work. The Teachers Union of Ireland, TUI, recently polled almost 100 principals and deputy princi…

I want to recognise that 15 years ago this September we lost Bray firefighter Mark O'Shaughnessy and Bray substation officer Brian Murray. I attended a vigil for both of them at the time. Their lives were lost at a fire in the town. Our thoughts are with their families, friends and colleagues. Like others, I welcome all their colleagues to the Dáil. I went down and spent a few minutes with them earlier. I want to indicate to them that we fully support this motion from Sinn Féin and commend Deputy Brady on the work …

Last night, on Virgin Media television, the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, said that local authorities should buy up premises where evictions are taking place. A mass eviction will take place at Tathony House on Bow Lane, Dublin 8, which is in my constituency. On Monday night, Dublin City Council addressed the issue because an emergency motion was brought before it by our councillor, Ms Hazel de Nortúin. The answer the council gave was that it does not buy these premises unless they are occupied by people who ar…

There is never a block of apartments that is fully dependent on the housing list or fully private.

They are mixed.

A month ago today, the images that flashed across our screens and were transmitted on social media left us all feeling cold and anxious about what had happened and what it was all about. Looking at local people moving through rubble with their bare hands and local contractors moving in machinery and refusing to stop working until they completed the rescue operation was reminiscent of something we are familiar with seeing in Palestine, Ukraine, Yemen and during our own troubled past. They were scenes we did not get …

I will follow on from what Deputy Kenny talked about. I know him a long time and knew him when he was a young fellow doing this sort of care work. I know the pride with which he did his job and the type of people he looked after for long periods. He looked after people with whom he built up relationships. There were people who were wheelchair-bound and people who suffered with their mental health. The whole point of the type of care that was delivered, as the Deputy said, through the HSE and the public sector was t…

On Friday, young people in Fridays for Future, student organisations and Extinction Rebellion will gather outside the House as part of global action on COP27. They will not be praising the Taoiseach or the Minister for action but will be commenting on inaction. They will be carrying clocks with them to symbolise the fact we are running out of time. They are also very aware that COP27 is taking place in a venue that is mired with human rights abuses. Is the Minister aware of the grave human rights abuses against cli…

I thank the Minister. I want to mention the highest-profile political prisoner in Egypt, Alaa Abd el-Fattah. He has been on hunger strike since April. He has been languishing in jail for ten years because he was an activist and an environmentalist. Since he took over the regime, el-Sisi has built a dozen prisons in ten years. There are 60,000 activists locked up. This week many people were arrested and will probably be tortured and thrown in prison for a long period of time because they are environmentalists and cl…

The problem is, however, that the funding of human rights groups and countries that suffer the most, although it is important, will not deal with the problem of the rising CO2 levels in the atmosphere. The atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide has increased from 358 parts per million in 1994 to 415 parts per million today. The Minister and I understand this is hugely problematic and that science is telling us we must leave 80% of known fossil fuels in the ground. The Taoiseach, Deputy Micheál Martin, tweeted …

Tomorrow, it will be ten years since the tragic and avoidable death of Savita Halappanavar in an Irish hospital having been denied a life-saving operation for an abortion. Everyone will acknowledge that we have come a long way in the last ten years and her death ignited a movement that saw an end to the misogynistic anti-choice laws in this country. However, we still have a way to go. Abortion services are patchy and sometimes difficult to access. Doctors still operate under the shadow of criminalisation. The pro-c…

When the Minister, Deputy Noonan, walked in here this morning I asked him why he was here and not the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Deputy O'Brien. He said he had pulled the short straw, and indeed he has. I have noticed that the Minister, unusually, has put in an amendment to our motion. We have been listening to Private Members’ motions for months now where there has been no opposition from the Government, it does not argue against us or vote against motions, it just ignores them and lets t…

Much has been said about this issue, not because we have had plenty of time to discuss the Bill, but because we have been kicking back and saying we are not willing to forgo pre-legislative scrutiny and that we do not have enough time to discuss the detail of the Bill. This is setting a very bad precedent, in particular for the Green Party. At the first sign of the crisis, the Government essentially abandoned the mini safeguards relating to planning and development, and even climate action measures that are already…

I will speak briefly to amendments Nos. 1 to 3, inclusive. On amendment No. 1, it has already been said that it looks like we are effectively tearing up the Planning and Development Act by pushing this and scrapping environmental impact assessments and habitat directives. At the very least we need to be sure that this applies only to the existing suggested industrial power generation sites that are named here and that no blank cheque is given for the future. Amendment No. 2 seeks to include in the Bill a provision …

I move amendment No. 2: In page 4, to delete lines 21 to 25 and substitute the following: “(3) The designated development is a project not likely to have significant effects on the environment in this or another state.”.

I move amendment No. 3: In page 4, line 30, to delete ", or any other person,".