I am more than a little surprised that I am the first today to speak to the incident outside Arnotts on Friday. I certainly hope that I am not the last to actually recognise and acknowledge that man, who was by all means alleged to have been shoplifting. I do not know what on earth can be shoplifted out of any shop that would ever result in the death of a man-----

I am speaking to the death of a man in Arnotts. That is true and it is in the papers.

I have not-----

I am going to continue because I have not accused anyone of anything.

I am stating the fact that a Congolese man is dead who went into a shop and was accused of shoplifting. That is in all of the media reports. No amount of investigations can ever explain or give any sort of reason that would be acceptable that a man would go into the shop and end up dead for suspected shoplifting. Whether there is an investigation and due process, as a country and as people we should never ever be okay that excessive force would be used by anybody where somebody ends up dead. Regardless of investiga…

All the questions have not been asked yet.

All the questions have not been asked.

I have a few more.

Over the last few years, we have heard a huge amount, including in official reports, about the abuse of stop and search among particular communities, not only around ethnicity but also in relation to particular demographics and communities. We grew up being regularly stopped and searched as children. We did not even have to have an adult present. We were stopped and searched while walking to the shop or through the park if there were more than two or three people. If we are not willing to capture that, we are not w…

I welcome many of the Minister’s comments today. Some of this stuff I have said before, but I will repeat it. The concept of prison - many people have said today that prison will always have a place in our society. I feel there is something quite defeatist about that in terms of reducing offending to the point that there are no violent crimes. That might seem naive, but my hope for humanity and how we develop as people is that we actually look at the core drivers of those most violent crimes as well so that we are …

This week and over the weekend, I was in Hungary observing and monitoring the elections, and looking back home at the fuel protests here in Ireland, I was thinking about change and how change happens. Protest, by its nature, is meant to be disruptive. If it is not disruptive, it risks becoming little more than State-sanctioned gatherings. Real protest unsettles things. It draws attention and forces people to look. At its most powerful, it directs that pressure upwards toward the State and its institutions rather th…

I think it does but there is nothing I can do about it now. We made sure everything we put forward had been discussed on Committee Stage.

I second the amendment.

I second the amendment.

Human rights concerns are constantly being raised about the use of facial recognition in any area, let alone in relation to international protection. We need to remember that other Bills also intersect with this. The digital omnibus regulation is on the way. This will completely debase not only the transparency, but also the datasets on which biometric analysis is used to train AI systems. Coming through an international protection or asylum process, a person is not really going to assert their rights to not have t…

I second the amendment.

I will be very brief and will not go over all the same ground that Senator Alice-Mary Higgins did. However, I want to make a point on deportation and the training on and understanding of health. Even without this legislation, currently in Ireland if you receive a deportation order, you will have your access to healthcare, including medication, immediately revoked. A person could be on cancer medication, antipsychotic medication or diabetes medication. When a person goes through the asylum process and receives a dep…

On a point of information, I wish to correct the record. I will not come back on everything the Minister has said. When I referred to deportations, it was not in the context of people who were not complying with deportation orders. I was referring to cases where the deportation may be scheduled for some date in the future. The justice committee heard evidence from healthcare providers about people arriving into pharmacies, etc., to receive to their medication. It is not that they have not complied; it is that there…

I propose an amendment to the Order of Business of the Seanad today, that No. 12, the Child Maintenance Bill 2026, be taken before No. 1. The Child Maintenance Bill has taken many years of work since I was elected to the House. I acknowledge the significant contribution of the Office of Parliamentary Legal Advisers in developing its provisions. A majority of female Senators have signed up to the legislation. While it is disappointing that Government Members have not formally joined at this stage, I remain hopeful i…

I move: That leave be granted to introduce a Bill entitled an Act to provide for the administrative assessment, by the Revenue Commissioners, of liabilities of certain persons to pay periodic maintenance in respect of a child; to provide for a standard methodology for making such an assessment; to provide for the enforceability of such assessments in certain circumstances; to empower the Revenue Commissioners to depart from a standard methodology for making an assessment of child maintenance in certain circumstance…