A Cheann Comhairle, would you speak to him, please?

Would you ask the Minister of State to have a small bit of respect for me and for the people I represent in my city? The Minister of State spoke about drives for Garda recruitment, which is all very welcome, but those gardaí have to be supported by the Government. We continually see gardaí leaving the force and going to work in Eli Lilly, Abtran or one of these businesses because it is safer for them and because they do not feel that they are being supported. It is not their fellow gardaí but they are not getting s…

I am speaking, please. You had your time.

The ASBOs brought out in the nineties, championed by Fianna Fáil at the time, have not worked. Gardaí do not have the time to go and check on young men and young women with ASBOs to see if they are in their houses. We have to look at the best practice and standards of Iceland, which introduced a curfew.

I hope the Tánaiste will join with me in welcoming Don José González Carballo and his wife, Justa García Toro, on their visit to Leinster House. Don José is a professor of history who is studying in Ireland at the moment. On 3 July, ComReg activated the SMS sender ID protection register, which is a great idea. It is meant to stop the scam texts we are all receiving. More than 360,000 of them have been received to date by people who have reported it. As we know, €100 million has been lost due to scam texts. Having s…

I have now been seven months in this House. This is another important debate that is going on in this House, but let us have a look at the benches. There is not one member of Fine Gael or Fianna Fáil on the backbenches. Not even the senior Minister bothered to turn up. Instead, we are left with the Minister of State. With all due respect to him, and I appreciate him coming to the House, we do not have the senior Minister here. Instead, we have the Minister of State for housing and older people, when we are talking …

I commend both the Minister and the Minister of State, who have committed to meeting me regularly. I have met the Minister of State in particular about this. As has been highlighted, the application is not in but I am very grateful for the €30,000 that was secured by me and colleagues for the scoping exercises to find the right site for Ballyvolane. I am acutely aware of the recent visit by the Minister of State, who committed to getting the project over the line and agreed it is overdue. He is dedicated to Cork, i…

Last week in the House, I raised with the Minister, Deputy Chambers, the urgent need to extend legal aid to whistleblowers who step forward not for personal gain, but to protect the public interest. In that exchange, the Minister expressed his willingness to meet me and the whistleblowers in question. I accepted the offer in writing but have received no reply as yet from the Minister. There is plenty of time for that. We all recall the case of Garda Maurice McCabe, a man falsely accused of the most heinous of crime…

I thank the Tánaiste for his response but, with the greatest of respect, they are only words. We are talking about a man whose life has been left in a legal limbo for over half a decade and who has been defamed, isolated, ignored and ricocheted from one Department to another. Two senior Ministers, officials, and the chair and CEO of Tusla knew about this, and nothing has been done. I am asking the Tánaiste, not just as Tánaiste but as a senior officer of the State: Will he with meet me and will he meet with the whi…

He has been there and there has been no investigation since.

The Irish people are resilient, but resilience should not be mistaken for indifference, nor should the quiet dignity of the Irish people and their endurance be used as an excuse for Government inaction. We are over three years into the cost-of-living crisis and it has touched every home, every dinner table and every shopping list. I speak regularly to parents who are cutting corners and going to bed hungry themselves so their children can eat. I see older people counting coins at tills. I see working families doing…

I would like to be associated with the words of welcome. I assure the Taoiseach that I will be shouting for Cork and I always shout for Cork in this House. Yesterday's Courts Service reports reveal a 13.6% increase in new sexual offences cases, a figure that all of us in this House should be deeply concerned about. Ireland's population at approximately 5.4 million, almost a decade ahead of the earlier demographic projections, shows that our justice system remains starkly opaque. We do not publish anonymised data on…

Can you not publish?

Will you publish the data?

Will you publish the data and prove me wrong?

Prove me wrong.

Publish the data then. Why not publish it?

Like everybody else in this House, I am slightly baffled that we are amending something that has not been enacted as of yet. While I rise to support the Bill and while I believe the Government is taking some steps, it is certainly not taking the steps that need to be taken in this House when it comes to planning. Everybody in this House, left, right and centre, has pointed out the inadequacy of our planning laws. For instance, people talked about community objections, and I accept them, but I do not accept a guy in…

On behalf of Independent Ireland, I add my sympathies to those made yesterday to the family of Brother Kevin Crowley. The European Commission has now issued a formal notice to the State demanding that we implement the so-called hate speech laws under the threat of infringement proceedings. Once again, I see indications from the Government of the bending of the knee. It is willing to compromise the constitutional freedoms of the Irish people to appease the European institutions and digital outrage merchants. Let me …

Could we have one person speaking in the Dáil, please? If we are to pass this legislation, we must ask ourselves, "What comes next?" Will quoting scripture become a punishable act, something that fines the teaching of exclusionism? Will religious observations be branded as hateful if they conflict with the views of the public? Will the right to express a moral belief, if it is found to be uncomfortable, not be accepted? Ireland already has hate speech laws in place. These deal with genuine hate speech, which is abo…