I thank the Minister of State for his extraordinary work on this important legislation. Tomorrow, the special Joint Committee on Gender Equality will publish its report, and it is no surprise that focusing on the issue of women in politics and public life was a key target of that committee, and of the Citizens' Assembly on Gender Equality, to find practical ways to provide help and assistance to encourage more women into politics. I acknowledge the work of Councillor Lorraine Hall of Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County C…

The Taoiseach has been the recipient of many good wishes today and I thank him for his support and that of his Government for domestic, sexual and gender-based violence initiatives over the past two and a half years. Unfortunately, the majority of murders in Ireland still have a domestic violence motivation. A total of 53% of sex crimes have a relationship aspect and most killings and sex crimes happen in a residential setting. Seven hundred and forty-four women were for sale for sex on International Women's Day th…

I wish to ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment to update the House on the progress that has been made to date with the ratification of the International Labour Organization Convention on Violence and Harassment, noting the Cabinet decision at the end of last month to progress that and the next steps in advance of ratification.

The Tánaiste's response is very welcome, particularly as it is in tandem with the implementation of the third strategy under the Department of Justice. I know the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment conducted a stakeholder consultation on it. I am interested in the tenor of some of the responses that came back and the extent to which they highlighted gender harassment and sexual harassment within the workplace. It is quite striking that the convention leads so strongly with gender-based violence and hara…

The timing of this is wonderful because the Oireachtas Committee on Gender Equality, in which the Tánaiste participated at an earlier stage, will publish its report on Thursday, 15 December on ending gender stereotyping, in particular, in Ireland. So much of this, as the convention recognises, comes from what has been an unequal gender-based power relationship for many years. I would suggest that the Department could lean into the Department of Education in respect of its programme on relationships and sex educatio…

This is to ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment if he would update the House on the forthcoming increase to the national minimum wage and make a statement on the matter.

I congratulate the Tánaiste on his period in the office he is holding at the moment and on the substantial increases he has made to the rights and conditions of workers. We have all been informed so much by Covid and the opportunities to work differently and in better ways. This is a really significant part of that. As the Tánaiste says, it is essential that work does pay and that we are incentivising work at every turn for everybody in the labour market, irrespective of what they are earning. I visited Dublin Cham…

I thank the Tánaiste. A key part of that better society is continued low unemployment, continued employment opportunities and the opportunity to derive Exchequer returns from PAYE and people paying tax. One of the key parts around incentivising people into the labour market and addressing the cost of creating jobs is looking at taxation. I would reject any attempt to increase employer's PRSI by any political party in this House. We should look at measures around temporary reductions in PRSI if that were suitable, t…

I ask the Tánaiste to report on the efforts to assist businesses with the rising energy prices.

I thank the Tánaiste. There is a huge opportunity with that. I would like to know what level of interest has been expressed to him on the State-backed guarantee scheme. I recall during Covid there was scepticism about a previous iteration of that but the number of companies taking up the opportunity of those loans was actually very high. It is something that could be kept in perpetuity as a model for financing corporates that are trying to get through difficult periods or trying to expand in particular ways. The Fa…

-----the same thing.

I tend to agree. As the Tánaiste becomes Taoiseach this weekend, I make one request of him in relation to the opportunity he identified on wind energy. I met representatives of a group of wind companies form Denmark, Norway and Ireland, which have European- and Irish-backed funds. They spoke to me about the opportunity in Ireland and said we are possibly missing the chance to realise it quickly enough because of the gaps in planning, grid and demand certainty. Even if the first round of auctions goes through and th…

With the exception of Dún Laoghaire.

It is very interesting.

It is not.

I thank the Minister of State for this far-reaching Bill and congratulate him on it. Significant work has gone into it. He has managed to go much further in the Bill than we on the justice committee expected when we did our work in this area. I congratulate him on the Bill, which I know has the opportunity to develop further through the various legislative Stages. In particular, I congratulate him on the provisions in Chapter 3 in respect of notifications, the obligation not to offer inducements, the obligation not…

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue. This was the first topic I spoke on in the Dáil. I refer to the importance of having assessors trained in coercive control and other coercive behaviours regarding section 47 reports. I also said they should have the capacity to understand manipulation, where it exists. The Oireachtas Joint Committee on Justice has just considered these points and broader questions concerning enforcement of custody and access. I refer in particular to the insidious use of our State's court …

I urge the Minister of State in particular to advance the work he is beginning on a joint agency response to crime with regard to young offenders up to the age of 24. There is a necessity to target the 5% of this group who become persistent offenders. They are an extremely vulnerable group in many ways but there are persistent offenders who slip through the very successful youth diversion programmes we have that work so very well for so many children.

On 19 January this year, this House stood collectively behind the community of Tullamore and the family of Ashling Murphy following her untimely and violent death at the hands of a man in plain sight of onlookers. The good, decent people of Ireland stood, as we stood inside this House, in every town in Ireland in solidarity, in a massive public demonstration against violence against women. Violence by men against women was a theme universally condemned in this House. The Taoiseach and Tánaiste alike said we would d…

I thank the Minister of State for his response, but on 8 March, which is International Women’s Day, there were 744 women available for sex purchase on Internet sites in this State. Somewhere between 15% and 100% of those were trafficked migrants. There remains no refuge in Dún Laoghaire. We have a massive cultural problem with this issue. It is a systemic historical cultural problem but it remains a cultural problem. Most of the women I have mentioned were killed by men they knew, men they lived with, men they were…