Help create the jobs. It is a two-way street.

I will focus on Part 7 of the Bill, which contains provisions on the retirement age of our uniformed services. The Bill will potentially set a concerning precedent, where the retirement age of our uniformed servicemen and women is left to the whim of the relevant Minister of the day without any explicit obligation to consult the workers it impacts or their representative bodies. Consultation is key. I thank colleagues in SIPTU for facilitating us in the Labour Party in recent days with a greater understanding of th…

A headline in The Irish Times states FEMPI rules have been unwound. That is what the public expenditure Minister said in his annual report on the operation of the 2009 FEMPI legislation, which he laid before the Oireachtas in recent days. Someone should really tell practising criminal barristers that the FEMPI cuts have been unwound because, in their professional lives, they clearly state they have not been. It is a matter of fact that they have not. If the era of FEMPI is truly over, it has to be concluded with no…

Other independent contractors have had their FEMPI-related cuts fully reversed. Barristers have been uniquely singled out for what has been described as extremely shabby treatment. In some ways, the Minister is answering a question that no one actually asked. No one has asked her about the review of the free legal aid system. I view that as entirely separate based on a commitment that the Government gave to involve itself in the creation of a mechanism that would independently assess the free structure. The Bar Cou…

Dereliction is a disease. It is insidious. It destroys communities. Nothing saps the confidence of a town like dilapidated, derelict, dangerous buildings. Vacancy unchecked is the gateway to dereliction. There are nearly 2,000 derelict sites in Ireland, and they are just the ones that have been recorded and have made it onto the derelict sites register. There is an acute situation in my home town of Drogheda. Just three weeks ago, an important 18th century building was about to fall down. The street has since been …

Derelict sites are the low-hanging fruit in terms of addressing the housing crisis that we have. I know the Tánaiste visited Drogheda briefly during the local and European election campaigns, but he did not walk down a street in Drogheda called Narrow West Street. Had he done so, he would have seen a case study of dereliction and things that can go wrong. He talks about resourcing local authorities and making sure they do the job they are required to do under the Derelict Sites Act. That is all well and good, but t…

I welcome the opportunity to have a debate, if we can describe it as such, in this Chamber on a highly significant report from the Commission on Taxation and Welfare. Quite frankly, if the Committee on Budgetary Oversight had not decided to examine the recommendations of the report, which was published in September 2022, I do not believe we would be having a debate in this Chamber at all. Government parties, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil representatives especially - with all due respect to colleagues in the Green Party…

I congratulate Deputy Michael McGrath on his appointment. I thank him for his service in this House over many years and for his kindness to me when shadowing him as I was the Labour Party Opposition spokesperson over the last few years. I congratulate the Deputy but I must also warn him, as the leader of Sinn Féin did, that this House and the Irish people will not stand by the Government and him, as Commissioner, in supporting the reappointment of Ursula von der Leyen as President of the Commission. That is plainly…

In 2021, the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, set up a review of the Derelict Sites Act. In my view, the Act is being brought into disrepute on a daily basis. It is a charter for rogue property owners to evade their social responsibilities. Three years on, we are still waiting for the Minister, Deputy O’Brien’s, review to be published. While we wait for that report, the cancer of dereliction - that is what it is - is destroying places like Drogheda. It is an insidious thing occurring all around the town. Pro-prope…

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this motion. We in the Labour Party support it wholeheartedly. After a sustained period of record rises, electricity prices are starting to fall but remain at around double what we might term "normal levels". Citizens are really suffering. They are struggling. I have lost count of the number of occasions during the last two years where people have presented me with their electricity bills or grocery bills expressing their concern about the impact it is having on them and their …

I am pleased to speak on the motion and we will not oppose it. Any day we debate a sincerely tabled motion in this Chamber to protect and support enterprise is a good one. I recall only too well debates on jobs and business in this Chamber, which were held in very different circumstances when I first entered this House 13 years ago. The fiscal crash meant we had an unemployment rate of 16% and businesses were closing at unprecedented rates. We had one job and that job, as far as I was concerned, was to get people b…

I will pick up from where Deputy Ó Murchú left off. I am sure the Minister of State and the Chair will indulge me in referring to the proposal, or at least the contemplation, of another round of redundancies at PayPal Ireland. Those prospective redundancies will impact on staff who were originally located at the PayPal facility in our home county of Louth, in Dundalk town, and it will also impact on those who work at the operation in Dublin. Many of those who work in Dundalk are now working remotely but they live i…

When will the health service recruitment ban be lifted? It is affecting real people, especially the over-75s. It is June, yet, yesterday morning 33 people were on trolleys in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, Drogheda. That number, unfortunately, has repeated itself today. There are 43 in Cork today and 34 in Galway, which is unprecedented for June. This is because these hospitals are not allowed to recruit the nurses who have actually been cleared to take up roles in hospitals such as Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital. The…

If the Cathaoirleach Gníomhach will indulge me for a moment, tributes were paid to our usher and good friend, Martin, by the Ceann Comhairle and others during Leaders’ Questions. I wish him well in his retirement after 25 years of outstanding service in the Oireachtas. I thank him for looking after all of us and our interests. It has been a pleasure to work with him. He always showed good humour in his work and that is always welcome, especially during anxious times for some of us in here. We appreciate his service…

I, too, join Members in praising Deputy Ó Cathasaigh for his farsightedness in developing and introducing this important legislation. If I have one regret, it is that I did not have the opportunity to do that myself. The Bill relates to an area I have been considering very closely in recent years. I have always taken an interest in the approach taken by our comrades in the Welsh Assembly and Government. The Welsh legislation was initiated by colleagues in the Labour Party in Wales. Several people in the Visitors Ga…

Making the case for the current ones too.

The Irish economy is in rude health, which is something we can all be very proud of. Anybody who is proud of this country will be proud of our economic performance and the fact that 2.7 million people are now in work. This is a record. There were 90,000 new net jobs in quarter 3 of 2023. That trend has continued into 2024. VAT receipts are up 6.3% so far this year. There are at least three interest rate cuts due that will benefit aggregate demand and businesses. Business failures in 2023 were 27 per 10,000. The fig…

They lowered the property tax.

The Taoiseach was in Drogheda last Friday and, among others, he met with the Love Drogheda Business Improvement District, BID, scheme group. It represents more than 1,500 ratepayers in the town. The group provided the Taoiseach with new and robust economic research data that show the full impact on the local economy and local jobs of the loss of the D Hotel in Drogheda to the tourism sector. The evidence is now in black and white and it is quite stark and concerning. There will be a direct annual loss or impact on …

When will the Taoiseach agree to meet the team from the Love Drogheda BID scheme?