I am sorry to come back in so quickly but, as the debate has been going on, I have received a message on my phone from a person who is well advised and well informed in respect of these institutions. I will not read out the name of the company but this person has given me the name of a company, one of the largest companies in the countries and one that is highly successful and highly profitable. There are echoes of "The Shawshank Redemption" here. People were brought out and forced to labour for this highly profita…

We spoke about statutory obligations. I have just received a message from one person on the mother and baby homes medical card who sought physiotherapy and was told to go private because of the long waiting list. Where is the statutory obligation there? How does that person overcome that? I fully appreciate the Minister's officials will have informed her of the answers that she is delivering to us today but how does this person get into physiotherapy if the waiting lists are so long? The person is being advised by …

With respect to supports for people living outside the State, I cannot understand why a specific figure was ring-fenced. As somebody who goes to a couple of consultants every year, €3,000 will not take one very far in this world. There should be an expense scheme based on returned receipts such that any time survivors seek medical help, providing it is in accordance with what they went through while resident in an institution, they should simply be able to send the State an expense receipt and be fully reimbursed. …

I turn to amendment No. 19. We learned from the military side of the world that there is a thing called moral injury. They say moral injury transitions three generations. To be honest, I cannot see a massive rush for PhDs, Masters degrees or whatever else from the former victims of the institutions, but there will be a requirement for education. Can we spread the education allowances to the families of those who were victims in institutions? Education, as we know, lifts all families. Families benefit from education…

Following on from what Senator Ruane said about decoupling redress from justice, redress schemes are generally brought in to expedite the quick settlement, as it were, of an injustice. In a lot of cases, the people we are talking about opt for a redress scheme. They have been keeping this secret all their lives and they do not want their personal lives in the High Court, so there is an opportunity to resolve the matter, as best they can, through a redress scheme. We need to be very careful about trying to make just…

The issue of the contributory pension for those who were in institutions has to be investigated. If they were employed and somebody got money for the labour they gave, that labour should have been covered under social insurance stamps back in the day, or PRSI. If companies in this country had the use of slave labour from these institutions and the institutions received money for it, then we have to find a way to enhance their social insurance contributions and provide the contributory pension they would be legally …

I, too, commend Senator Tully for tabling the amendment. The wording it contains is important. The Senator talked about measures being commensurate with compensation from the religious. Driving through any village or town in Ireland, the largest building you will find will be the church. I agree with what Senator Boyhan said in that I have known many good churchmen. I have known churchmen who got out of bed at night to help families in distress. They were not all bad eggs, but the problem is that the institutions a…

On Saturday I was fortunate enough to have a ticket to the rugby match. On my way back, as I was walking through Dublin city I was struck by the number of houses that were locked up with nobody living in them. On my drive home through Rathfarnham, I found an entire block of apartments empty. Close to Stillorgan, I saw another entire block of apartments empty. When I looked a little bit further into it, I found there are 81,000 addresses in Ireland that are unoccupied. Some of them are owned by AIB, some of them are…

On Tuesday, I made a statement with respect to the Crotty case in Limerick. The point I made was that senior politicians rushed to condemn all the members of the Defence Forces. I also made the point that a young officer, a commissioned officer of this country, went to court because he was obliged to do so, and gave a report on Crotty's military record. Somehow or other, my friend and colleague Senator Rabbitte misconstrued that as me supporting Crotty and his thuggish behaviour. I have no time for those who commit…

Hear, hear.

I acknowledge my friend and colleague Victor Boyhan, who laid details of his private life not just before the House but also the country in order to advocate on behalf of those he lived with and those he had lived experience of. He is one of the great heroes of this entire debacle. I also acknowledge the ladies in the Visitors' Gallery who quietly advocated outside the gates of Leinster House in wet and cold weather. Your bicycles outside the gate, your teddy bears on the wall, all of that brought the message home …

I hear lots of talk about the current situation in the Air Corps in particular, but also in the wider Defence Forces. The Taoiseach recently said the crisis in the Air Corps was a matter for military management. I want to put on the record of this House that military management has no funding of its own. It is at the total behest of the Department of Defence. We find ourselves in a situation where the Tánaiste had to bring to Cabinet today a special memo for the introduction of a bonus scheme to retain air traffic …

Hear, hear.

Will the Senator put on the kettle?

Senator Clonan and I are facing into many weeks of talking about the triple lock. My view is that it was a ridiculous thing to introduce in the first place but it is a red herring. We are spending weeks talking about the triple lock when the Air Corps operations are now closed at weekends and at 8 p.m. every night, meaning aircraft cannot take off or land during those times. We are heading into the Presidency of the European Union and prime ministers visiting this country will not be able to land their aircraft at …

This morning I noticed the Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, Deputy Simon Harris, made some very strong statements regarding what is going on in Kyiv. We talk about the genocide in Gaza and the war criminality of the likes of Netanyahu. We should be aware that Putin is equally a war criminal. Donald Trump told us during the election campaign that if he was elected, he would have the war ended within 24 hours. We are three months in and there is no sign of that war ending. We need to be aware and …

Frequently, we talk about, and I know the Deputy Leader does as much as I do, members of the Defence Forces, especially in places of danger, such as the service in Lebanon. Rarely do we ever talk about members of our public service who put their lives at risk for their fellow man, such as what we saw yesterday in the firing of shots over the heads of Irish diplomats. Feilim McLaughlin and his crew were out in Palestine on the West Bank. It is abhorrent that the Israelis would feel that they could intimidate diploma…

I welcome the Minister of State to the House. This is my first time to address her as the Minister of State. I congratulate her on her elevation. I wish her the best of luck. The Minister of State said at the outset that she was responsible for the purchase of everything from major projects down to toilet rolls for national schools. That is a massive undertaking for any Department to have oversight of. Central procurement is all fine and dandy but, when it comes to schools, I am not sure how it operates now but pri…

There are two men in Iran today, Behrouz Ehsani and Mehdi Hassani, both of whom are political prisoners, both of whom have been turned down for a judicial review for the third time and both of whom will be executed by the regime in Iran. Iran has murdered 1,100 political prisoners since the summer of last year. That tendency is beginning to increase. Iran is at the heart of supporting organisations such as Hezbollah and the other group in Gaza, Hamas. It is time that we followed the example of the House of Lords an…

I too am horrified by what is going on in Gaza. I am also horrified by the Israelis targeting members of our Defence Forces. In the previous conflict they parked tanks alongside one of our outposts to make the outpost a target. Recently they have been sighting members of the Irish Defence Forces, guys from Galway who are serving out there, using laser sights. I hate to bring it up in the context of Gaza but we are talking about the triple lock and the very people who are supporting Netanyahu are the people who can …