The number one issue that comes across for me in my constituency of Dublin Central is community safety. Large portions of the constituency are not represented on the community safety partnership. Cabra, Drumcondra and Glasnevin do not have a Garda superintendent. The purpose of my question is to ask the Minister about the structure of the community safety partnerships.

It was not just councillors; TDs were also eligible to go to the joint policing committee structure. I was a regular attender at meetings of my local joint policing committee. Here is my issue. We constantly hear about a large Garda presence in the city centre. This is something the Minister has championed. I will possibly discuss that again later. However, I will give the example of communities like Cabra or even Drumcondra, which is actually covered by Ballymun Garda station. In Cabra last week, a constituent of …

No more than the Minister, I cannot speak for a member of a party that is not my own. I do not doubt for a second that when I walk outside Leinster House, I will see a number of gardaí. When I leave RTÉ if I am doing an interview in the morning, I see a lot of gardaí in the Donnybrook area. I cannot escape the fact that when I am walking around my constituency, certainly the parts of it outside the O'Connell Street area, it is very difficult to find gardaí. This comes up constantly. I attended a residents' associat…

I will start with a simple premise which I imagine will be repeated by other speakers today - eight years ago, Irish people voted overwhelmingly to repeal the eighth amendment. One of the central promises of that campaign, a promise that moved many people, was that women would no longer have to travel abroad when they received a devastating diagnosis of fatal foetal abnormality. Today, eight years later, many women still have to make that traumatic journey. That is a starting point for this debate; it is not about …

I will be supporting this amendment and a similar one tabled by Deputy Kelly. We all appreciate that An Garda needs tools to investigate serious crime, find missing people of people and protect the public. Nobody on this side of the House will ever dispute that. However, our job is to make sure that when we hand these tools over we do so in a way that is legally sound. The Bill introduces a new concept of biometric analysis which is defined across three limbs in section 43A. The first allows gardaí to automatically…

I should say that we are not raising these issues to obstruct. We are raising the issues because there is the potential for quite clear legal vulnerabilities here. The Bill, as it is presented to us and as we can see before us, has brought suggestions from some organisations that there are some violations of the AI Act and EU regulations. We can only scrutinise what is in front of us as it is presented to us. With regard to the use of this technology, particularly in some of the cases the Minister outlined of the m…

We in the Social Democrats welcome today's statement and the scoping exercise into Michael Shine's abuse. I thank the Minister for Health for providing time for this dedicated debate. Michael Shine is one of the most notorious and prolific paedophiles in Irish history and a full public inquiry into his abuse is long overdue and must finally be delivered. His abuse was carried out on an industrial scale and went unchecked for far too long – dating as far back as the 1960s and continuing throughout the 1970s, 1980s a…

I listened to the Minister of State's contribution earlier. My only hope is that he did not write it himself because I cannot describe it as anything other than obnoxious. It was a gaslighting of communities, some of which I am sure are in the Gallery this evening and are living in conditions nothing short of inhumane. The response from Government was "carry on" because things are good and it will get there in due course. However, due course has health implications for the people living in those flat complexes. The…

-----listened to me about the cry I am getting from flat complexes the length and breadth of this city, which is that the State should just do its job. With Dublin City Council or any other local authority, it is the State that is the overarching landlord of conditions that were found by European courts to be inhumane. The Minister of State cannot tell me we are a rich country when we are a slum landlord. The calls in this motion are minuscule but the demand from the people living in these flat complexes the length…

When the shouting stops.

The Tánaiste leads a party that identifies itself as the party of law and order. Fine Gael's website says, "Fine Gael is the party of law and order" and "We are the party that will ensure your family, your community, and our country is secure from crime". After 15 years of Fine Gael in government, for 14 of which his party held the justice portfolio, could he stand in Ballymun today and tell those he meets there that his party has ensured that their community and the families who live there are secure from crime? A…

What happened in Ballymun on Tuesday was absolutely shocking but I chose in my opening remarks to widen it beyond simply Ballymun because I recognise the pattern. There will be an incident that captures public attention in a particular area, and then we will talk solely about that one community as if this is happening in isolation. I am not sure if anyone in Fine Gael reads the Irish Farmers' Journal anymore-----

-----but in March, for example, farmers were forced to sell cattle to pay drug debts amid rising rural crime. What is happening in this State with drugs, drug-related intimidation and the exploitation and coercion of children into that crime is an absolute failure of this Republic. It will not simply be addressed by Fine Gael stating it is a party of law and order on its website. It must look into the underlying causes of the crime, the cycle that brings children into criminality and into the prison systems and to …

I support this motion and Deputy Gibney's proposed amendment. At its core, it is about something very simple and that is whether justice in our family courts is visible, whether it is accountable, and most important of all, whether it is fair to the people who depend upon it the most. Right now, those who have depended upon it and been failed by the system are very clearly telling us that it is not. We have built a system that operates behind closed doors justified in the name of privacy, but what the research and …

I notice the Tánaiste has been spending a bit of time in Dublin city over the past few weeks-----

I have to ask: does he feel any shame for what Fine Gael’s time in government has done to our capital city? I know that is a difficult charge but I want to illustrate the point so I will talk about just one street in central Dublin. That street is Gardiner Street. I am not sure if the Tánaiste is familiar with Gardiner Street but it is just one street over from the GPO where a mere 18 months ago, he stood and made a pre-election commitment to the people of Dublin. Does he remember that commitment? While launching t…

The Tánaiste mentioned real progress has been made by the Dublin city task force. If I capture a bit of the timeline, I will show the fallacy of that statement. The Tánaiste first announced the establishment of the city centre task force in May 2023. That was commissioned later that year. Nothing happened in between the delivery of the report by David McRedmond which came 18 months ago. It sat on the Tánaiste’s desk for four months before that. In the 18 months sinc,e the Tánaiste has talked about an SPV that is un…

The Tánaiste promised 1,000.

I move: That Dáil Éireann; notes that: — energy prices in Ireland are already among the highest in Europe and prices are continuing to rise rapidly; — the cost of home heating oil rose by nearly 70 per cent last month alone, the largest month-on-month increase ever recorded; — kerosene is the main heating fuel for 700,000 households across the country; — the prices of petrol and diesel have exponentially increased in recent weeks, putting huge pressure on commuters as well as the transport and agricultural sectors;…

It is a shame the Government will not be supporting this Social Democrats' motion that provides solutions both immediately and for the future. I assure the Minister of State we will not be supporting the Government amendment. In three pages of testimony, basically, it is just telling us we will just continue as we are. Continuing on as we are is not acceptable any more. People are hurting too much. It is palpable. Government needs to listen, intervene and act. As part of our motion we talked about an enhanced suppl…