I commend Deputy Kerrane on bringing forward this motion. I remember five or six years ago Kathleen Funchion, the former TD for Carlow-Kilkenny, began a process of speaking to childcare providers and families around the country about this issue. It was an issue for everyone in every constituency in the country. We were meeting families who could not get childcare and when they could it was extremely expensive. Those working as early-years educators were in the very same position. They could not afford to continue t…

I commend Deputy Ward on bringing forward this motion here today. The reality is that we are here because of the light touch regulation of Government and the practices of quarries and those who developed the concrete products used through the boom across many parts of the country. In my own constituency in Sligo, we have hundreds of houses that have been affected, and it has also spread to other areas. It is not just the counties on this list. It is important to recognise there are houses outside of it and people i…

The whole world has changed so much in the past decade. Certainly, the advent of AI has been a huge advance, in one sense, in respect of all of that. I recently spoke to somebody who has developed a business in the United States in regard to the whole issue of cybersecurity and AI is central to what they do in respect of all of that. We also, of course, know that it has the ability to do repetitive tasks without ever getting fatigued or tired or lazy. It can do all those things. It can assess vast amounts of data a…

The electricity grid is out of date. It simply does not work. It is not capable of meeting the growing demand across all sectors in particular data centres which are causing huge problems. Ordinary people and small businesses are under strain to try to pay very high bills. We are told we have the highest in Europe. If you looked at it globally, we are probably among the highest. We need to look at our situation. It goes to the core of the difference between Government and Opposition. Government has continually over…

I move: That leave be granted to introduce a Bill entitled an Act to amend the Forestry Act 2014 to provide for the effective management of critical infrastructure corridors and forestry management, and to provide for related matters. As Deputies will be aware, this is a Bill to deal with the forestry situation. It is to amend the Forestry Act 2014 to provide for the effective management of critical infrastructure corridors and forestry management and related matters. We all remember Storm Éowyn and the havoc it ca…

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

There is no dispute that an office of this nature is required. International co-operation, especially in regard to electronic data is obviously something we continually need as we move into the modern age. An awful lot of criminal cases will reach for information that is being stored in the cloud somewhere and an application will have to be made to try to pull that information down. That can often cause, as the Minister is well aware, huge delays in the criminal process and in moving cases forward, so this type of …

I wish to raise a cross-Border issue with regard to the poultry industry. North of the Border, the poultry industry is an important and large industry. Of course, a byproduct of that is poultry litter. Poultry litter contains a high level of phosphates. As a result of the North already having an abundance of them, and the South having a deficit, poultry litter has traditionally always been exported South of the Border under licence from the Department of agriculture. However, the Shared Environmental Services, SES,…

I thank the Social Democrats for bringing this forward this morning. The truth is we cannot have a situation where the world stands idly by but that is what has been happening, not just in the couple of years since Israel started bombarding Gaza but for decades. For more than half a century, we have seen Israel treat the Palestinian people as not just second class but as third- and fourth-class citizens. People have been mutilated in their own homes. I am often struck by the fact that soccer and football, certainly…

I acknowledge the huge work that has been done by so many people around the country, particularly in a voluntary capacity to develop the tourism package that we offer to people. Tourists come to Ireland for a number of reasons. There is leisure tourism and activity tourism. We have a lot of that in my region with the Shannon waterway among others. We also have a lot of hill walking, etc. In addition, we have interest tourism - people who want to come to look at history and how people lived in the past or developed.…

It is a Wiffen and a Griffin.

It is now eight years since the occupied territories Bill was first proposed. Fianna Fáil said that it would support that Bill and that it wanted to see it move through the Oireachtas. For those eight years, there has been foot dragging every time the Bill has come up. The reality is that the people who live in the occupied territories continue to suffer under a cruel and harsh regime that continues to take their land and their houses from them and that allows them to be attacked by settlers with the protection of …

We recognise that so many people were suffering so much as a consequence of the fuel crisis that many of them took to the streets and expressed huge frustration about a situation that was outside their control and about which they felt the Government could do much more. We all acknowledge the Government was not able to stop the war that caused the crisis in the first place but it could certainly have done more to ensure people could get a break, particularly when it came to home heating oil. In my part of the count…

I want to raise with the Taoiseach the issue of the flotilla. As he knows, Dr. Margaret Connolly is a constituent of mine from County Sligo. She and 11 others have been detained by Israel on the open seas in international waters. Their boats were invaded and taken over by military force and people were taken by military force back to Israel. We do not know who they are, where they are, where they are being held or what is happening to them. These families are in distress. I acknowledge the Irish consulate is workin…

A trickle.

Biodiversity may sound like a buzz word but the reality is that it means all life on Earth - from the smallest micro-organism to the largest mammal and the tallest tree. It covers all ecosystems and habitats which shows how all life is connected and dependent on each other for survival, including us humans. Humans are the biggest threat to biodiversity. It is said that over 30% of habitats in Ireland are in decline. We know that agriculture is a significant contributory factor but all the blame cannot be put on far…

That mess continues to this day. The actions of the Government on the one side can often damage biodiversity on the other side.

I commend Deputy Ó Broin on bringing forward this motion. We clearly have a situation where rents and evictions are out of control in every part of the country and it is spiralling at an alarming rate. At the moment, I am dealing with a group of houses in my constituency in Enniscrone, Sonas. It is elder care accommodation beside a nursing home. Older people who live there have received eviction notices telling them they have to move out. They have nowhere to go. Some of them are on the council tenancy list, waitin…

It is welcome that the Commission has decided it wants to ban Brazilian beef and other food products coming into Europe in spite of the Mercosur trade agreement. It has come to this late in the day. Many of us have been calling out Mercosur and the situation we have with the trade agreement for decades. Deputy Carthy, as an MEP, led the charge in the European Union. At one stage Phil Hogan accepted that they hoped to see foodstuffs taken off the table with regard to the Mercosur trade agreement because of concerns …

We appreciate that there has been some progress made but we still have a situation where there is no traceability whatsoever with animals, particularly in Brazil. When a calf is born in Ireland it has to be tagged almost immediately. There have to be full checks and records of any medicine or antibiotics it receives. Everything has to be written down and accounted for. They have to meet all the standards. In fact, even the foodstuffs have to be recorded. A farmer told me recently that more records are kept on your …