I move amendment No. 1: In page 11, between lines 11 and 12, to insert the following: “(a) in section 10(2), by the insertion of the following paragraph after paragraph (b): “(c) act with fiduciary responsibility to the participants in the scheme in the discharge of its functions.”,”. This amendment follows on from our discussion on Committee Stage regarding board composition and the responsibilities and profiles of members who are still on the board of the national auto-enrolment scheme authority. The Minister sai…

I am disappointed at that response. I understand the logic the Minister has put forward and I accept that the Department is doing all that it can. However, I have very real concerns that the Department and the Minister are not sufficiently prepared for this launch date. As much as they have done a promotional campaign, there are equally some unscrupulous actors equally promoting themselves to divert employers from investing in this My Future Fund on behalf of employees to other funds. The Minister seems to have don…

I thank the Minister. I genuinely welcome the clarity he will bring on the fees in the Cabinet memo next week. I also welcome the work he will be doing in regulating the allocation of funds for employees towards the right products. I would support him in bringing those regulations expeditiously, as reported in the media. I just do not agree that investment managers can be charged with the responsibilities here. This is employees' money. It is a State-mandated fund. The board has a responsibility here. I really do t…

Hear, hear.

The renewed calls for a border poll on reunification in recent months point to a definite direction of travel on the issue of a united Ireland and on that question moving from the realm of the idealistic to the practical. My party and I would welcome the opportunity to advocate for reunification and believe that a united Ireland achieved by truly informed communities North and South in a process defined by consent and deliberative consensus has the real potential to benefit the people of the entire island. However,…

I will send the Taoiseach a copy if he likes.

My question is about administration fees and charges being imposed as part of auto-enrolment. My understanding is that these fees have not been agreed or released publicly. I have some reservations more widely about whether it is still the case today that the Department and Government are sufficiently prepared when this scheme goes live, which is just a few short weeks away, as the Minister said yesterday.

I thank the Minister. I very much hope the fees will be under 0.1% of assets under management. It would be extremely concerning if they were anywhere near that. My understanding from the Minister’s answer is that the fees have not been detailed, and this goes to the heart of the question of whether the State is adequately prepared to introduce auto-enrolment on 1 January as the Minister said today he would be doing. As it stands, about €100 billion of pensions are in private occupational pension schemes. The Minist…

That goes to the heart of the question here, which is around the digital literacy of the individuals we are putting into this scheme. I am very concerned there is no plan for what we are going to guide people with in terms of the lump sum they will get at the end of the scheme. For those people in their 50s or 60s approaching retirement age who will get that lump sum, there seems to be no pathway to how they would account for the pension provision or ensure they are not taking risky decisions or making inappropriat…

I thank the Minister and his officials for creating a task force for the Fastway workers. I am conscious that we are not just talking about people who are in typical employment situations. We are talking about people who are self-employed, who are contractors and who are franchisees. According to the information I have, about 1,000 people are in that category as opposed to the 300 who were employed by Fastway directly. When we think about the self-employed provision that is available from the Department for people …

I welcome the opportunity to speak on Science Week and the importance of the sciences to our country and to humanity. I first qualified as a chemical engineer, seeking that course because of my love of the sciences and mathematics. That education gave me much understanding of our world. Interestingly, it is helping me to analyse our wastewater treatment and energy systems in my work as a TD and I am proud to be able to bring some insights to bear for my constituents. I am conscious that people with a science educat…

It has been a little over a month since the Minister for Finance and Minister for public expenditure stood in this Chamber and delivered to the country this Government's budget for 2026. We heard on that day all about the choices this Government was making - which industries it wanted to give tax breaks to, which boardrooms would be popping Champagne, and which food chains would see bumper profits next year under its watch. We heard all about the great choices this Government wanted to make while the cost of living…

I meant a year. Sorry.

I will discuss an epidemic in this country that one in five of us experiences, which is loneliness. A report recently came out from the European Commission that said that Ireland was the loneliest country in Europe. The effects of that on young men and older men are significant and have far-reaching consequences. The former US surgeon general said that loneliness was the equivalent of smoking 15 cigarettes a day. That is how damaging it is to our mental health and our social health. There is a strong correlation be…

Ten years ago this country proudly affirmed marriage equality through a referendum. The LGBTQI+ community in the United States also won equal marriage rights in that same year. I have been deeply concerned by the rising anti-LGBTQI+ sentiment there and elsewhere. One couple in my constituency were married in the United States and are particularly worried that if a state or US court invalidates their marriage they may lose legal recognition or protections in Ireland or in other countries. What happens to those coupl…

My constituency of Dublin Bay South is unique in many respects. We are standing in it right now. It stretches over approximately 10 km² in this wonderfully south-easterly corner of our capital. About 125,000 people live here, about 20,000 of whom are under the age of 18, and there are in and around 12,000 families. There is a relatively high proportion of people with no religion or a religion that is not Catholicism. I am giving all this context so the Minister of State can understand some of the unique educational…

I hope the Minister of State will relay my thanks to the officials in the Department of education for the hard work they do in the prioritisation of capital investment in developments in south Dublin city, which she has just described. My view is that education is a silver bullet. Schools should be palaces. In past centuries, we built cathedrals. I propose that our schools should be the cathedrals of the 21st century. I hope the Government shares that vision. As a son of educators, I insist on no less. I will raise…

All around the country this evening, at this very moment, there are children sitting hungry at a table in a kitchen or in a cramped hotel room of emergency accommodation. They are hungry or their parents are hungry. That is the choice for too many families. Now, as the hunger rumbles in their bellies, the heating is off and those families are cold. The tables may be bare and rickety, the curtains or bedding may be worn and too old. It is hard to do your homework on an empty stomach, nearly impossible. For 8.5% of t…

On my first day in the Dáil last year, the Taoiseach quoted the former Governor of New York Mario Cuomo, saying, “You campaign in poetry; you govern in prose.” He then went on to say, “I am not sure that there was much poetry during the recent [general election] campaign”. I saw it differently. Poetry is not always uplifting. Sometimes it recounts sorrow. It is not always magnificent; sometimes it is dark and sad. Poetry is also told in tragedy and defeat. There was poetry in Kanturk that day in November when a car…

I endorse everything my colleague Deputy Quaide said. My secondary school history teacher is a wonderful man named Mr. Burke. He ignited in me a passion for history and politics. In his class, I learned about the invention of much of the welfare state in Germany in the late 19th century. It is hard for a society to imagine what things were like in previous eras but one of the welfare state's greatest contributions to life in the past two centuries have been the lifting of the elderly from poverty. Before addressing…