I welcome the Bill. We support it fully but intend to table some amendments on Committee Stage which we think will strengthen it. In my constituency, particularly in the north-inner city, and in a number of other constituencies in Ireland, there is a heartbreaking sight that many of us have grown accustomed to: young people, children, teenagers, kids on scramblers, kids hanging around corners with nothing to do, kids being used - I mean that word very deliberately - as runners in drug networks, carrying out drop-of…

I will raise an issue about a local school. In normal circumstances, I would not expect for one second the Taoiseach to have intimate details about a school in my constituency. The school is Gaelscoil Choláiste Mhuire on Parnell Square. There was a moment during the last Dáil term when the name of that school was on all our lips because of the tragedy that befell the community there. Gaelscoil Choláiste Mhuire was promised a school building would be delivered and completed. It found out earlier this week that this …

Yes.

It does not know if it is going to go into litigation.

It does not. I promise.

It is important to speak today on this motion concerning new regulations under section 64 of the Data Protection Act. We are told these regulations do not introduce new restrictions but simply tighten up existing rules to make them better aligned with Article 23 of the GDPR Act. That is fine - indeed, it is welcome - but we should always be careful with motions like this to ensure that public oversight is maintained and that we are not opening the door to unintended consequences. This is not some abstract debate ab…

It appears that every single day we wake up to another horrifying headline. Every single week, women in this country read the worst imaginable stories, imagining that it could happen to them. This week, we have once again heard the name Jennifer Poole. Jennifer was 24 when she was brutally stabbed to death in her home in Finglas. She was killed by a man with a long history of violence against women, who had already been jailed for assaulting a previous partner. Jennifer was of course neither a rare nor isolated cas…

I cannot believe I am about to say this, but right now on Dominick Street, in the heart of Dublin city centre, stands a half-built school that should be opening its doors in September. A Gaelscoil that was promised, planned and funded now lies idle behind hoardings. What is worse is the silence. This is not a new school project. The project is a result of a 23-year struggle by parents, educators and children who fought year after year for a proper building. The community built the school from scratch in 1988 and ha…

I listened to the Minister of State's reply intently. I was hoping to get answers to some of the questions. The Cathal Brugha Street site the school is moving into is barely suitable, if even that, for a school community, but it is expected to move in there in September. The contract on that school Gaelscoil Choláiste Mhuire has been given is to June 2027. The Minister of State has just told me some complications can be expected in a city-centre site. It is really important that we get the outcome of the conciliati…

I thank the Minister of State for her contribution. There were certainly some standout parts in her speech and I will pick out a few of them, if I may. To provide the context in which a motion such as this is brought to the Chamber, and I appreciate the Government understands the motivation of the Social Democrats for doing so, we should reiterate that throughout Ireland parents are skipping meals so their children do not go hungry. That is not a trend that started this year; it has been ongoing and captured by a n…

Yes, I appreciate that but the point remains. I appreciate a local shop does not have a €10 million turnover but it comes to the same thing. We are not asking for this burden to be placed on the local shop in any town; we are asking for it to be placed on the big retailers that we know have profiteered on the very basics that people need in their presses. I do not accept the justifications given in the contribution of the Minister of State. I appreciate that her motivation is not in any way to undermine, but this c…

I want to raise the concerns that I raised at Tuesday’s meeting of the justice committee. What we are being asked to debate today amounts to a significant reshaping of Ireland's approach to international protection and asylum, yet the Oireachtas and its justice committee have not had an appropriate opportunity to properly scrutinise what is proposed before it has been brought here. We are facing three major EU motions, and we are being given no detailed pre-legislative scrutiny, no committee hearings with legal exp…

Every day without fail when we turn on our televisions or open our social media accounts, we are met by death on a horrific industrial scale, inflicted by the IDF on the people of Gaza, including on children, healthcare workers and UN workers. There is no line it has not crossed or hospital it has not bombed. The Irish State has been stronger than most. It has verbalised our horror, tried to enact change at an EU level - only recently but it is no less welcome - and is now moving towards enacting some parts of the …

Once again, I will table an amendment today to retain juries. They are vital in defamation cases in the High Court. I want to be clear about why I think they are important. There is a lot in this Bill that deserves support, such as the anti-SLAPP measures, which are welcome and necessary. Protecting people who speak out in the public interest is a step in the right direction, but a provision in Part 3 is very serious, namely, the decision to scrap juries in defamation trials entirely. Section 4 removes the right to…

I listened intently to the Minister's contribution in response to the points made by the speaker to my left, Deputy Carthy, and the speaker behind me, Deputy Mattie McGrath, but I did not hear him refer to what happened following the Higgins case. I have a simple question: why is he proceeding with the abolition when the law on which the proposal is based has subsequently been swept away by the Supreme Court in the Higgins case and replaced with guidelines on damages, which we clearly know are working? There have b…

I thank Sinn Féin for bringing this timely, welcome and debate-worthy motion to the Chamber. The motion asks us to do something that successive governments have failed to do, namely, treat the GPO and Moore Street as if they matter. I am not just referring to this Government but the previous one and the one before that. Going back to the 50th anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising, the GPO played very little part in the celebrations, and Moore Street none at all. I understand there have been plans and court cases bu…

-----does not believe that public memory, public space or the ideals of the Republic should be entrusted to the people. They believe in markets, mixed-use developments and PR exercises. However, there are those of us who believe in something bigger, something more and something more truthful than that. I believe the GPO and Moore Street can be the centre of a living Republic, not one frozen in bronze-----

I will finish by saying we should build something grander - something bigger that is a true reflection of the Republic.

I will return to the issue of the GPO and the Government's plans, as outlined a couple of days ago, to turn it into a cultural space with retail units and office space. Does that plan not lack ambition? On O'Connell Street and the surrounding streets, we have retail space. We have office space aplenty. Of course, the GPO has historical significance. It also provides a huge opportunity for the city and for the country to have a proper civic museum with a monument to everything that happened there. What the Governmen…

I thank the Minister for the opportunity to debate the Criminal Justice (Terrorist Offences) (Amendment) Bill 2025, which is important legislation. I want to be clear from the outset that we support the Bill's objectives broadly. We live in a world where terrorist threats evolve quickly. We have a responsibility to ensure our laws evolve with them. I accept that measures to address cross-border terrorist activity - training and facilitating travel for terrorist ends - are both necessary and prudent. However, I will…