The Minister of State is very welcome to the House. I thank him for taking this matter.

I thank the Minister of State for honouring the work of our councillors throughout the country, and rightly so. To begin the debate, I call Senator Paddy Burke.

The Senator's time is up.

The Senator is over time.

I must be fair to everybody by giving each speaker the same amount of time. The Senator may speak to the Minister of State after the debate.

The Senator's time is up.

That is a bit rich. This is the Parliament; it is not a street corner.

This is a mature Parliament.

I wish the Minister of State a good morning and thank him for being here. I appreciate that nobody from the Department of Health is available and I appreciate the Minister of State taking this matter. As long as he will have a meaningful reply, I will have no problem. There is in place legislation, the Public Service Pay and Pensions Act 2017, under which the Minister for Health is obliged to engage with pharmacists every three years for a review of the operation and effectiveness of the sector and the rates that a…

I thank the Minister of State. To be fair, that was a meaningful reply and I appreciate it. There are a couple of things to say in response. I welcome the acknowledgement of how vital pharmacies are. The language used by the Minister of State was better than mine. He referred to the value of pharmacists in the accessible and vital link they provide in our communities and in the whole healthcare system for our country. I value the fact there has been engagement on this issue. Where we have a little disparity is that…

It is very fitting that I follow Senator Fitzpatrick, as I will raise exactly the same issue. When walking through the Liberties in Dublin city, let us imagine the sheer volume of tourists who walk through that area, which includes Thomas Street and the Guinness Storehouse, when the pavements are literally sticky. It is that bad. I have looked into the resourcing and the increase in budget. Substantial moves have been made by Dublin City Council over the past number of years. It has a substantially larger budget bu…

Dáil Éireann passed the Representative Actions for the Protection of the Collective Interests of Consumers Bill 2023 on 21 June 2023, to which the agreement of Seanad Éireann is desired.

The Minister of State is very welcome to the Seanad. I also welcome Deputy Naughten and his guest to the Gallery. I will hand over to the Minister of State. Senator Davitt and I are in the Chamber and we are listening.

I thank the Minister of State for a comprehensive assessment of where we are and of what has been done. Much of the time, we do not realise how much the State is doing in this area. Obviously, the Minister of State is not in a position to declare and share everything but, from conversations with people in the area of defence and so on, I know that we actually have an extraordinary wealth of knowledge, ability and competence in cybersecurity at a national level and at the level of critical infrastructure. The Minist…

As no other Senators are offering I will go back to the Minister of State.

I thank the Minister of State. Will the Acting Leader indicate when it is proposed to sit again?

I bring to the House's attention the plight of workers in Iceland stores throughout the country. There is one close to me in Ballyfermot. Last March, Michael Doyle, a journalist with The Sun , brought to my attention that a small cohort of workers had approached him to say that they had not been paid following the transfer of ownership from the Iceland company in the UK to an Irish-based organisation. All of a sudden, workers were not being paid. They were being left short in their wages. I engaged with him and, as…

On many occasions during the Order of Business in recent years, specifically last year, there has been talk about Cherry Orchard. I am crying out on behalf of the people there for support from the Government and movement from it to support what is a fantastic community of people with a very tiny group that sullies its entire name. Today, I want to mention all the fantastic things that have happened. Yesterday, a presentation on the south area was made by Mr. Alan Sherry of Dublin City Council. We saw all the detail…

I have huge sympathy for the case Senator Ruane makes. It is a very coherent argument, to be fair. We have evidence regarding people in that nursing or that maternity care aspect, that a single woman giving birth beside a married woman giving birth received very different treatment. The former was treated in an abominably different way. Empathy and respect was shown to the married woman but there was none shown to the single woman. There was cruelty, including the withholding of pain medication. In fact, there was …

I was using that term ironically.