The Tánaiste will recall the House yesterday approved a motion developed by the Labour Party and formally supported by Sinn Féin, the Social Democrats, the Green Party and others, mandating the Government to call for a special General Assembly of the United Nations to promote and instigate certain collective measures in respect of Gaza. Given the motion has effectively been adopted, how does the Government plan to implement it?

It is important that the motion be implemented and that the will of the House be accepted by the Government and implemented at every opportunity. We have used the opportunity of the special General Assembly well. In recent times, we called for the upgrading of Palestine's status in the context of the UN General Assembly and the UN more generally, which is to be welcomed. Ireland has led the way internationally on Gaza. There are no two ways about it. This time last year, we took the decision to recognise the State …

I absolutely would. A window is now opening because we have seen a step change in the UK, France and Canada over the past week or ten days in respect of their perspective on Gaza, the genocide, what is happening there and what needs to happen. We have also seen a step change in Germany, especially in our sister party of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, SDP. The Chancellor has made interesting remarks about the completely unacceptable behaviour of the Israeli regime and state. Ireland will be chairing one of …

I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time." I will be sharing time with my colleague Deputy Bacik. I am pleased to speak on the Competition and Consumer Protection (Unfair Prices) Bill 2023. When I introduced this legislation on First Stage two years ago, the rate of inflation was at levels not seen in decades. A confluence of grim circumstances, some of which were the consequence of Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine, saw the price of basic staples, such as bread, eggs, butter, pasta and so on, rise in pr…

Was it during one of Ivana's lectures?

Exactly

I thank the Minister of State for his response. Both he and I live in the real world. Who we are and where we come from insists we do. We shop in the same places and in the same supermarkets and we see what is going on. We are connected into that and the concerns of the working families we all represent. The Bill itself is a modest proposal. I am not suggesting and never did at any point, despite the public clamour a couple of years ago, that we should, for example, introduce price controls, because they have inadv…

Where one stands on the genocide in Gaza is the moral question of our time. For the vast majority of us, the only action we can take is to attend a protest, write to our TD or boycott goods and services. However, there are 174 of us in here who have greater agency, 15 of us who have an extra special responsibility, the Tánaiste included. Members of Government must show the moral leadership cruelly absent across the world, with some notable exceptions, a cowardice that has allowed tens of thousands of children to be…

Given the state of relations between Ireland and Israel at this moment in time are at an all-time low and for very good reason, it is a rather perverse irony that Ireland is regarded as Israel's home country for the purpose of facilitating the sale of its war bonds in the EU. I note the Minister's assessment of the Bill but the truth remains. We are a cog in this wheel. Israel's bonds - the Minister is correct - are not listed for sale on the Irish Stock Exchange. That is true but is only half the story. Owing to a…

I hope the House will join me in wishing all working people across the country a happy May Day. However, delaying the living wage is no way to mark International Workers' Day. It has been 25 years since the minimum wage was introduced and ten years since the Low Pay Commission, which I established, made its first annual recommendation on an appropriate rate for the national minimum wage. This is a really important legacy to protect the interests of low-paid people. The Minister is now publicly instructing the Low P…

Speaking earlier on the radio, the Minister said he makes decisions based on evidence. There is no evidence anywhere in the world to suggest that modest incremental increases to rates of national minimum wages impact employment rates or competitiveness. The Minister talks a lot about competitiveness but by delaying the introduction of the living wage, he is owning up to the problems the Government has created. If it wanted to deal with competitiveness, it would deal with the cost of energy, deal with renewables and…

The Minister also failed to understand and accept that there has always been churn in the retail and hospitality sectors. There were enormous net job gains in the retail and hospitality sectors in recent years, sectors which, quite rightly, were protected during the pandemic but which have continued to be protected with significant subsidies that have no conditions whatsoever attached to them in terms of job quality, retention or pay. What the Minister is doing in respect of the living wage is virtue signalling. Th…

Hear, hear.

Hear, hear.

I will focus my comments on the recruitment and allocation of SNAs. I recently submitted a parliamentary question on behalf of a local school in my hometown of Drogheda. Despite a clear recommendation from the local SENO to increase its SNA allocation, new posts were denied. That is because of some invisible and arbitrary national cap, an effective recruitment ban that is not a recruitment ban. This is Orwellian stuff, quite frankly. The answer I received from the Minister was certainly long and detailed. It went o…

Trump’s trade tantrum is having a real world impact, just one week after that bizarre event in the White House Rose Garden where an American President held up what looked like a bookmaker’s betting board as he gambled away the world economy in service of his own ego. It is quite bizarre that the country that has done the most to design the current global world economic order is now set on destroying it. The country that has benefited the most from it is upending that very order itself. It would be comical if it was…

Will the Minister provide an update on the Government's plans, as contained in the programme for Government, for updated ethics legislation? He will be well aware that we have been waiting a number of years to see the enactment of legislation that was committed to in the 2020 programme for Government. In fact, it first took draft legislative form in Brendan Howlin's Public Sector Standards Bill in 2015.

I hope the Minister will agree that the standard for this legislation, for want of a better description, was set in the 2015 legislation developed by Brendan Howlin, my then colleague and one of the Minister's predecessors. It has been a considerable number of years since the commitment was made. We have had three Governments since the 2015 legislation was introduced. We have had the review, to which I contributed. I think there were merely ten submissions to that particular process. Whether the Minister likes it o…

There was a commitment in the previous programme for Government. The Deputy spent time as Minister for public expenditure and reform in that-----

The Minister has clarified that. I am happy to accept that. I hope then he will bring some renewed vigour, if I can describe it as such, to this particular process. This is fundamental. Parliamentary democracy is a fragile flower. We have seen across the world how bad actors can exploit situations of corruption or perceived corruption. The consequences of that are happening across the world. It is happening on our screens all the time and is having real impacts in the context of the election of populist right-wing …