Precisely, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle.

I am glad we have had the opportunity to come back to this. It was quite rushed the last night. We were somewhat under pressure. The events that were happening the very night we were here debating the Bill brought into very sharp focus what all of this is about and the issues involved. All of us are of common mind in our determination to find a way to ensure that the people who engage in this kind of people smuggling are held to account and punished for the heinous crime they set out to commit. We are also aware th…

I understand the position the Minister of State is putting forward. He gave the example of a person from Libya or another such country coming here and being able to make the defence that he or she had been working for a humanitarian organisation, a defence that cannot be verified. Consider the case of a family from Africa who have been in Ireland for several years and learn of a relative in danger in their home country. It could be a child in danger of female genital mutilation. Let us say the family try to assist …

On the Minister of State's assertion that the old legislation failed or did not work, it was not a failure of conviction; it was a failure of detection. I expect very few people were ever actually detected, arrested or charged with smuggling persons into the country in the first place. It is very unlikely in such circumstances that any legislation is going to work unless we are able to detect and capture these people, or have a hope of doing that. The Minister of State put forward the scenario that the reason we ha…

How many charges have been brought?

We welcome the Bill, which is long overdue. We will support its main thrust. I understand some quarters put a spin on this, but the reality is that it is about workers' rights and it is a workers' rights issue. Legislators, as Members of the House, are responsible for many things. One of the things for which we are responsible is workers' rights. We have to stand up for the staff we employ, because if we do not do that, who will? At the end of the day, the secretarial assistants working in our staff and constituenc…

The issue across the entire hospital group is capacity more than anything else. We hit it all the time and the number of people on trolleys and on waiting lists comes up in the Chamber regularly. The staffing issues in Sligo University Hospital, particularly in the emergency department, have been at crisis point for the past number of months. We met the management of the hospital who told us that new nurses were being recruited and that 14 were to be in place before the end of November. The hospital has got some of…

The Minister of State referred to the recruitment of staff as being impossible. We need to drill down on the reasons for that. The reason is that the HSE is trying to recruit staff into a chaotic situation where they are required to work in an understaffed ward with one person having to take on all the responsibilities which should be shared among three or four people. As a result of that people do not want to stay in the HSE system and are therefore emigrating to other countries where they can at least make progre…

I ask the Minister for Justice if she or the Government has any plans to establish a transport police service and if she will make a statement on the matter. For many years now, this has been called for by the travelling public, particularly those in urban areas where there is much antisocial behaviour on trains, the DART and the Luas, as well as at depots and stations, and people may feel threatened. It is also a major problem for staff and we know trade unions have called for this as well. Will the Minister enlig…

I echo that sentiment; we must commend the Garda on the work done in respect of this. However, the reality is that many passengers feel abandoned and unsafe when they travel on our public transport systems. The National Bus and Rail Union has basically stated this type of service must be provided and spoken about taking industrial action if something is not done because it believes that many of its members are often under threat and many have received physical injuries as a result. It is the same position with the …

I am disappointed that no consideration is being given to establishing a dedicated transport police service. Most other countries across Europe and many places throughout the world have that in place and it works very well. We also know millions of euro are being spent every year on private security firms doing this kind of work and they only deal with aspects of the issue. They do not deal with the broad range that An Garda Síochána could deal with because of its remit. We are now at a stage where we are encouragi…

What supports or assistance did the Department give to the holding of the Garda Representative Association, GRA, conference in 2020? As we know, the event took place during the pandemic when practically nothing was happening anywhere in the country. I have a letter to the Minister from Jim Mulligan, the former president of the GRA, in which he expressed concerns that unofficial lobbying had been done by some members of the GRA's central executive committee to have a conference take place. By everyone's standards, t…

The issues here go beyond the conference. All of us understand that there are issues with the Garda Representative Association, particularly in its governance. Individual members of An Garda Síochána to whom I have spoken are concerned at the way things are run and operated. We know there were difficulties in the past in that regard. On 15 December 2020, the Minister received a letter from Jim Mulligan, the former president of the GRA, regarding concerns he had about unauthorised lobbying of politicians and Departm…

I understand the Minister's reluctance to get involved. It is probably appropriate on one level but, as she said, ordinary members of An Garda Síochána do magnificent work and deserve to be properly represented. We all agree on that. In January 2018, or perhaps before that, the management consultancy firm, Ampersand, made a number of recommendations in respect of a whole range of issues that needed to be dealt with. That was more than three years ago. In its research into what was going on and in the work it did, A…

In this Planning and Development (Amendment) (Large-scale Residential Development) Bill there is a welcome move to rebalance the situation. We all recognise that. It brings the local authorities back into play, which was one of the big criticisms everyone had of the strategic housing development process, which was the previous arrangement in place. Local communities everywhere want to be able to at least have a say in what is happening in their community. This is not to say that they should be blocking or stopping …

The Deputy and his colleagues supported it for five years.

We have had this debate for years. Even in the last Dáil we had similar debates about mother and baby institutions. I use the word "institutions" because they certainly were not homes for the women who ended up there. This week, I spoke to a woman who told me about her mother who, as a 15-year-old, was bought by her father and the parish priest in a horse and trap to one of these institutions. After she had the baby, she was not allowed home and she went to England. Her child was adopted, ended up in America and th…

As has been said, this legislation, along with the movement towards rectifying the difficulties due to the judgment, is welcome and needs to be progressed as quickly as possible. However, there are other serious issues that we all need to consider. When we think of Ireland as an island nation, the large territorial waters we have around our island and our maritime tradition, and the fact the investigation board that is in place is part-time, poorly funded, with an ad hoc structure and without the same level of comm…

At the core of this is the notion that there are decent, genuine, generous people who want to help in these situations. As has been said, some of them are members of various humanitarian organisations but they are also individuals who sometimes risk a great deal to help people. We know that happened recently in Afghanistan when people had to be got out of there and there were individuals who risked a great deal to get them out and try to get them to a safe place. We know there are also economic migrants who want to…

I want to raise the issue of Catalonia and the Spanish Government’s continued pursual of politicians who led the Catalan referendum on independence. Spain continues to seek the arrests and prosecutions on political grounds, including that of Carles Puigdemont who is now an elected Member of the European Parliament. The decision of the Spanish Government in June of this year to pardon nine Catalan independence leaders was welcome but it is not the general amnesty for participation in the referendum for which many ha…