I express my solidarity with the women of Ukraine who have been forced to vacate their homes, communities and country. Ireland stands with them as a voice for peace, demilitarisation, freedom and democracy. I am proud to serve on the Joint Committee on Gender Equality, which is united in purpose and clear on the message that there can be no delay in the implementation of the recommendations of the Citizens' Assembly on gender equality. It is clear also about the work on constitutional change that we will deal with,…

Hear, hear.

I want to commend what two artists have done in recent weeks. Brian Teeling and Emma Roche have both instructed the National Gallery of Ireland to remove their works from the walls of the gallery. By doing so, they have put their practices at considerable risk to protest the fact that the National Gallery of Ireland has contracted the US company Aramark to take over the café on Merrion Square. I was absolutely dismayed at the decision by a leading cultural institution to offer its café to a company that profits fro…

I welcome the Minister of State to the House. The guests in the Public Gallery are also very welcome. I commend Senators Ruane, Flynn, Black and Higgins for bringing forward this motion, which is a welcome opportunity to discuss housing outside the confines of legislation, which many of us do often. I thank them for tabling this motion. I wish to address two items in the motion, that is, vacant homes and child and family homelessness. I also want to pick up on the right to housing issue that was mentioned by Senato…

When is it proposed to sit again?

I welcome the Palestinian ambassador to the House. I also welcome Mr. Tim Hanley from Amnesty International and all our visitors in the Public Gallery. I commend Amnesty International on its work on this report. It very much interrogates the record of the Israeli state in its treatment of the Palestinian people. It is a stark document that records a litany of crimes against humanity and it is a damning indictment of an apartheid state that is intent on the oppression and complete domination of the Palestinian peopl…

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Butler, to the House. I get the impression every time she attends the House that she is very passionate about this topic, which is quite refreshing. I wish her well. People speak about mental health and it may well be too black and white to say it is a generational issue; it is certainly not but people are now so open about whether they go to therapy. It is refreshing. It has been clear for some time that mental health services in this country are over-stretched. The publicat…

I note the tireless determination of the families. It is an honour to have them here in the Chamber. They are very welcome here. These are their Houses. I am also very proud to call Senator Boylan a colleague. I commend her on her work, and I am proud to co-sign this legislation. As Senator Boylan stated, the Bill involves a basic amendment to the Coroners Act 1962 to deal with the transparent process of jury selection, as we have in criminal court cases. More than 20 years ago - it is hard to imagine that 2000 is …

When is it proposed to take Committee Stage?

Is that agreed? Agreed.

When is it proposed to sit again?

I welcome the Minister to the House. It is a source of significant frustration that she has yet to publish the Future of Media Commission's report. The co-operation and synergy between the commission and the new regulator were core issues for the joint committee when debating this Bill. Here we are discussing the dissolution of the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland, yet the Parliament does not have to hand a report from the commission, which was set up by the Government at a cost to taxpayers in the State of €400,0…

We marked Seanad 100 this week. It is three years since the Seanad reform implementation group gave its report to the Department of the Taoiseach. The committee was set up by the then Taoiseach, Deputy Varadkar. Many Senators here served on it and Deputies as well. Some of the points proposed by Sinn Féin that were in the final report related to the following: a greater gender balance across the Chamber, something that is being discussed by the gender-equality committee; universal franchise for citizens in the Nort…

It is fair to say that things take longer when a fire is not lit under an issue or the Government. There is a fire under every one of us; the planet is on fire and people are impatient for change because they have been calling for it for so long. The Minister of State can come in and say the Government has started this, probably with thanks to the Green Party and the programme for Government, but communities, activists and my party have been calling for this for many years. The Bill is important and I will not dela…

I welcome the Minister. It is great to see visitors back in the Public Gallery once again. People who have engaged in and led the campaign relating to this Bill have filled the Gallery. It is a relief to see citizens back in their Parliament. It is glaring that there are no Government amendments to the Bill. There should always be an onus on Government to proactively engage in respect of Private Member's Bills, particularly in view of the fact that they represent the opportunity for citizens and parliamentarians br…

I thank Senator Malcolm Byrne for proposing the Bill. As I have read it, and as I understand it from listening to the debate, it seeks to allow councillors to use fixed CCTV, mobile CCTV and drones for relevant offences specified under the Waste Management Act 1996 and the Litter Pollution Act 1997, and to allow processing of data as per the Data Protection Act, ensuring that the surveillance is necessary, proportionate and specific in its purpose. There has been some conversation about that. It seems there are eno…

I welcome the Minister to the House. I also welcome Deputy Keogh. The report was published last January following a series of sessions of the education committee with children's rights groups, students, teachers' unions and student unions. Many of the recommendations centre around providing additional funding to schools for Covid safety measures and to allow students to catch up on missed time when schools were closed in 2020. The report predated the additional school closures from January to March 2021. Many vulne…

This is an amendment we had submitted previously and I thank Senators Boyhan and Higgins for putting it forward now. A legal challenge in a judicial review is not on the substance of the planning application. It is not returning to whether it is a good or a bad application. It is being appealed on a point of law or a point of process. If the environmental impact assessment directive requires certain assessment studies to be done in making a decision on a planning application and they have not been done, then the pr…

I second the amendment.

I will not take the full four minutes if it allows the Acting Chairman to make a contribution if he so wishes.