As we move towards May Day, we recognise the proud tradition of the trade union movement and all those women and men who have served, joined and organised. As working-class people, we know that every time our class, the workers, has made an advance and a gain, it is because they struggled, fought for it and stood up and were counted. I am very proud to come from Waterford, a county and a city imbued with a strong trade union tradition. I have been a member of a trade union since I was a teenager. It was Mandate fir…

Hear, hear.

As Deputy Carthy set out, Sinn Féin is not opposing this. I recognise the importance of the item before us in terms of targeting serious criminality. However, we have to be very clear that Britain is now a third country and has been since Brexit. It is very important that there are strong measures when it comes to data protection and that the regime that will underpin the sharing of data here is as strong as if not stronger than the general data protection regulation that is in force within the European Union. I sh…

The Government is sleepwalking children, families and schools into a crisis in September. It surely can see what is coming, yet for whatever reason it continues to fail children with additional needs. Across the State, children are still waiting for appropriate school places. In Waterford, I am in touch with so many parents crippled with worry, deeply angry that they are being forced to fight to secure a basic right to education. Educators are being forced to fight to protect their roles, out on protest to be allow…

Front-line youth workers are being asked to carry more and more of the burden with less and less. They are dealing every day with the real pressures facing young people, such as mental health challenges, online harm and misinformation, social isolation and increasingly visible antisocial behaviour. In Waterford, we are seeing that play out in very real terms with the lighting of fires in parts of Waterford city, and most recently in the Gallowshill area of Dungarvan, along with the growing misuse of nitrous oxide, …

I note the Minister's response and thank her for it. The difficulty is not the absence of strategy, it is the absence of delivery. We see the results of the workforce survey. There is also the workforce development strategy that is taking place at the moment. This is another case of too little too late. The issues in terms of recruitment and retention are not new. In many cases, they have always been thus. However, they have accelerated and worsened since the economic crash in 2008 and 2009 and the years of austeri…

Sixteen hill farmers on the Knockmealdown Mountains in west Waterford are facing the imposition of rent increases of 900% by a British absentee landlord. This increase will put them off the land. These are generational farmers; families who have farmed the mountains for generations and centuries. I have met them several times. Only last week, Deputy Cullinane and I were up on the mountains with them. What is happening is a stark injustice. It has echoes of darker times when absentee landlords, British aristocrats, …

The Minister of State and this Government need to make a clear intervention here. I am more than happy to say that what is happening here is wrong, that the demand of a 900% rent increase by a British absentee aristocratic landlord on Irish farmers is wrong. I would urge the Minister of State to make that statement and for his colleague, the Minister, Deputy Heydon, to make a similar statement. That would carry an awful lot of weight. To return to the farm payments issue, it is important to put on the record here a…

I attended a protest in Dungarvan on Sunday, which was one of many that took place across the State. Hauliers, farmers, fishers and rural contractors, such as agri-contractors, were present, but people from other walks of life were also there protesting against the fuel cost increases and about the need for action. There were older people who were rationing heat; families who were making the invidious choice between putting fuel in the car, paying off some of their electricity bill arrears or feeding the adults in …

It is not reflected in the-----

That is not true.

Borrowing money to get to college. For God's sake, Taoiseach.

Time is up.

You were forced into it.

How many of those cannot-----

Homeless figures.

How many children are in poverty?

Why was that?

You are embarrassing yourself.

When are Ministers-----