I raise a real issue facing real workers. As the INMO conference gets under way this week, more than 700 patients are waiting on trolleys. It is an outrageous figure, but one that has somehow become the new normal under this Government. To still have more than 700 patients waiting for beds in May, well past the peak of respiratory illnesses, is indicative of a year-round trolley crisis. Our overcrowded healthcare service has become unsuitable for both patients and workers. We hear harrowing stories from the INMO an…

First, I want to condemn the sectarian abuse of a young mother in Lurgan on Sunday, which we know about because a camera captured the footage of what happened. The report highlights how much more we have to do to achieve a lasting peace. I was unable to attend statements in the Dáil last week to mark 25 years of the Good Friday Agreement because I was in Brussels, but my colleague Deputy Howlin articulated our Labour Party views. As he said, we must recognise that the institutions created by the agreement have not …

The North has been given a temporary reprieve, we understand, for a £300 million overspend but it is reported today that Stormont officials from the Northern Ireland Fiscal Council believe that £800 million needs to be found. This is a shortfall which will be devastating for public services in Northern Ireland if this is not resolved. It demonstrates the urgent need for an Executive to be formed. It raises questions for the shared island unit. Can the Taoiseach comment on whether the unit, or, indeed, the Governmen…

I welcome the Taoiseach’s commitment to hold the gender equality referendum in November. As the Taoiseach said, this is the referendum which was recommended by the Citizens’ Assembly on Gender Equality and also recommended by our own special Committee on Gender Equality, which I had the honour of chairing. As the Taoiseach knows, in our report from December, Unfinished Democracy: Achieving Gender Equality, we recommended specific text for putting to the people by way of referendum to amend Articles 40 and 41 of the…

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this important debate. I want to begin, as other have, by welcoming our visitors in the Gallery and all of those who have worked for so long to see a properly regulatory framework in place. This includes organisations like Irish Families Through Surrogacy, Equality for Children, LGBT Ireland and Irish Gay Dads. I also want to thank all the individuals from civil society, academia and legal practice who have worked on this. I am thinking of Professor Conor O'Mahony, Annette Hick…

Indications have been given and that is welcome. Parents and families I have spoken to are anxious to see that proceed and to see the issue of judicial discretion built into that such that judges will have some discretion, which is important. The report recognises that the case of retrospective parentage declarations is separate and needs a separate and different approach to be taken. I refer to the prospective regulatory framework that is to be established through this. I entirely appreciate the need to bring thes…

This country is facing a housing disaster of epic proportions, with a shortage of homes that is exacerbating generational divides and inequality, affecting health outcomes and the education system and stifling job growth. Today, the Government is casting more money into yet another package of additional measures on housing which the Taoiseach says will deliver results but which represents the latest in a series of desperate efforts to kick some life into the Government's housing policy. It is yet another attempt to…

That is not what we think.

The Taoiseach can dress up the figures any way he likes, but we are in housing disaster of epic proportions.

There is no doubt about that. Can the Taoiseach say how many new homes will be delivered as a result of today's latest series of tweaked measures? The Taoiseach has accused the Labour Party of lacking confidence. With a fifth Fine Gael Deputy announcing earlier today that he is jumping ship, it looks like there is a lack of confidence on the opposite side of the House.

There is certainly a lack of confidence in the capacity of the Government to deliver on housing. We have seen no ambition, no sense of urgency and, to date, no results. We have seen no evidence basis for decision-making. I got figures by means of a freedom of information request last week which show that the Residential Tenancies Board data on notices to quit, which were supposed to be supplied on 10 March, were delayed for a few weeks until after debates in the Dáil on the lifting of the eviction ban and the no-co…

Following these further revelations, we in the Labour Party are also looking for the Minister of State, Deputy Niall Collins, to give a statement to the House and, further, to take questions and answers on that statement. On 2 March, prior to the most recent allegations that have emerged, the Minister of State, Deputy Collins, made a statement in a hastily-arranged slot on a Thursday afternoon, when there was no time for questions. At the time, we said that was not good enough. Clearly, it is now absolutely incumbe…

What about the coalition leaders' critique of the Minister of State?

I wish to raise with the Taoiseach the very disturbing revelations that an investigator with the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission, GSOC, apparently attended a party with Gerard Hutch on the evening of the day that the latter was acquitted by the Special Criminal Court following the prosecution arising from the Regency Hotel murder, which casts such a long shadow on those communities so badly impacted by organised crime and by the Hutch-Kinahan feud in particular. This is a really disturbing revelation about GSOC…

May I say-----

We are concerned that this is not just an isolated incident-----

-----and there may be other issues around Garda collusion with organised crime.

Seán Guerin looked at Garda files and at the way prosecutions were handled.

I move: That leave be granted to introduce a Bill entitled an Act to make further provision in relation to the office of the Attorney General. The Ministers and Secretaries (Attorney General) Bill 2023 is a Bill we prepared some months ago following the highlighting of the practice of illegal charging for older people in nursing home care and the removal of disability allowance payments from vulnerable persons in institutional care. At the time, we in the Labour Party called for a change in the law to ensure that t…

I move: "That the Bill be taken in Private Members' time."