The Bill represents an opportunity for a fresh start for the State's educational support services, including the school completion programme, the educational welfare service and the home school community liaison service. The SCP in particular needs to be placed on a firm footing in terms of its structure, governance and funding. What steps will the Department take to bring that about? Within what timeframe can we expect to see improvements in order to ensure consistent, structured and appropriate supports to vulner…

I am sorry I was not here for the beginning of the debate; I was on a Zoom meeting as many of us are during these times. I fully support the Bill. The census of 1926 would illuminate a lot of stuff that happened during the 15-year period when there was no census. During the formation of the new State in my part of the world, Leitrim, and in Border counties there were movements of populations to the North. In fact, some Protestant families moved North and then moved back again. A lot of information can be gleaned an…

The work that was done by the citizens' assembly is to be welcomed and its members are to be congratulated for the work they did. Sinn Féin made a lengthy submission to the citizens' assembly and some of our ideas were represented in the final report. In the justice portfolio, I come across the issue of gender inequality very regularly, sometimes in relation to people who are before the courts charged with a crime but more often, unfortunately, as victims of crime. Many women in this city and in many urban areas fe…

We will support this motion. It is European legislation which is being transposed into Irish law. The setting up by the Commission of this registry across the whole EU will be positive and will hopefully do a lot to ensure that financial services which are hiding cash, including the ill-gotten gains of criminal gangs, etc., can be found and traced. While I welcome the powers that it gives to the Criminal Assets Bureau of the Garda, it would be remiss of me not to point out that we are doing something about this at …

Our message is a simple one. We are asking the Government to acknowledge that there is a crisis in the rental sector and we want actions and not words in regard to this. Absolutely nothing was done in the budget last week for renters across the State but corporate landlords and institutions were supported. They are squeezing every last cent out of everyone who is renting. In my constituency the average increase in rents year to year has been 14.2%. I am aware that rents in Sligo, Leitrim and generally in many areas…

I thank the Minister and the Minister of State for their work on justice. I acknowledge some of the positive things in this budget with regard to the justice sector. Much of it, such as the recruitment of an additional 800 gardaí, is very welcome. We have looked for that for some time. We recognise Templemore is restrained in the numbers that can be trained in any one year. It is at its maximum, so it is welcome the recruitment has happened. There is a major problem in many parts of the country where people feel th…

In the programme for Government there is a clear commitment to integrity, high standards and transparency. In recent days, we learned that the Attorney General has been doing private work while at the same time working for the Government. That was going on for almost 18 months after his appointment. I suggest that in the interests of that commitment to integrity in the programme for Government, some regulation needs to be put in place. There should be, at a minimum, a time limit as to when the Attorney General woul…

There is certainly no inference.

I am speaking about the Government's integrity, regarding how it deals with this matter and such matters.

In the interest of transparency, it would be useful were the Government to publish and make clear what work the Attorney General was undertaking during that time, in order that there is no inference from any side as to the integrity of the Attorney General or, indeed, of the office he holds.

I thank the Ministers of State for their statements. The issue of a youth justice strategy goes to the very core of much of what has been in the media in the past couple of days and the incidents we have seen, particularly in Dublin. We have had many examples of situations where people feel afraid, violated or unable to walk the streets at night, particularly in urban areas and on public transport. A lot of it, although not all, is around young people behaving very badly and threatening and attacking people. It is …

The issues raised here today are issues that have been around for a long time. I will focus particularly on rural issues because I come from a rural place. I deal with the issues of power supply and car chargers etc. all the time. I recently wrote to the Minister about one aspect of this issue. Many tourists who drive electric cars along the Wild Atlantic Way find that there is nowhere for them to charge their vehicles. The Dutch ambassador visited Carrick-on-Shannon last week and he drove an electric car there fro…

I thank the Ceann Comhairle for calling me earlier than expected. We will support this legislation because it is appropriate that there be legislation to deal with the issue of data centres in particular, to stall the situation and to look hard at where it is going. This week, the Minister with responsibility for energy stated that he could not guarantee that there would not be blackouts this winter. Under those circumstances, it makes no sense to proceed with data centres, which are one of the main consumers of po…

I am sharing time with other Members. I thank both Ministers for their statements on the devastating situation in Afghanistan and for the people in that part of the world. There are many Afghans in Ireland who have been here for many years and who are very concerned about their family members and others whom they know in that country and how they can manage through this situation. I also pay tribute to the great number of human rights activists and workers on the ground who have done such great work over the past n…

The issue here is about capacity more than anything else, and that is the same in every hospital in the State. I am very conscious, especially in Sligo University Hospital, that we have a situation where people are waiting on wards but they cannot get in. They are being sent to a four-bed ward with six beds in it. It does not have the capacity or the staff. It is the same in the emergency department, which is overrun and has not got the staff. This issue needs to be dealt with. At the moment, in the Saolta Universi…

I commend Dr. Muldoon and his staff on the work they are doing. Poverty strikes at the heart of people's lives and is central to the issues we need to resolve in our country. Last Monday, I visited a family in my constituency whose situation is an example of the gaps that exist in the system. There are two small children in this family and the mother has a serious problem with her back that prevents her from functioning properly and leaves her unable to work. She cannot get disability benefit because, while she wor…

I am sure the Minister of State will be aware of the documentary that was aired on RTÉ over the past number of weeks on this issue. On an evening in 1985, Fr. Molloy was found dead in a bedroom in a house in Clara, County Offaly, the home of the Flynn family. They were a wealthy family with whom Fr. Molloy had both personal and business relationships, as it subsequently turned out. The issues around this are clear. We have had 36 years of cover-up and an unwillingness of the State to examine the issue. From the beg…

They are all in the public domain.

I am surprised and deeply annoyed that the Government would refuse a commission of investigation having seen what was put before the public in recent weeks in the documentary on RTÉ, which exposed the reality that there was no appropriate or full investigation, even at the time of Fr. Molloy's death. Many of the people who were at the party in the house on the evening in question were not interviewed. Many of them were never spoken to. Issues concerning the business involvement of the woman of the house and Fr. Mol…

I thank the Minister for her detailed opening remarks on this technical Bill, which will impact on a series of legislative measures, many of them dating back to well before the formation of the State, particularly in respect of Garda districts, which will now become part of Garda divisions. All of this is coming from the Commission on the Future of Policing in Ireland's recommendations on modernising the force and making it more nimble and better able to cope with the demands of modern policing and criminal justice…