First, the issues raised by Senator Craughwell are important. The enduring power of attorney system that we have is very complex. Many solicitors do not want to become involved in it because of its complexity. What we have done, in good faith, collectively as a Legislature, to improve the lot of vulnerable people and to make provision for their own lack of capacity, is, in fact, an expensive and difficult process. We should have a debate on that subject. Second, on Wednesday, I made reference to the RTÉ programme o…

It is not agreed on the basis that we do not have leaders and Whips meetings in advance anymore. I want the message to get through that that has to be reinstated. We cannot have a situation where a piece of paper appears and that is the consultation that takes place in the House. Of course there will be limited numbers of speakers if they are told that they have two minutes to speak on citizenship. Who is going to sit here for hours on end and say they have something important to say in two minutes? Nobody is going…

I welcome the Minister of State here today. I wish to make a few comments about what he has told us today is his view of this legislation. First, as the Minister of State said, citizenship is not the right to carry an Irish passport. Citizenship is not the right to move from Ireland to other countries in the EU and to reside there under EU freedom of movement provisions. Citizenship is not a purely transactional matter which arises from the fact you have been physically located on Irish territory for a certain peri…

I want to be associated with the words of condolences from everyone to my colleague, Senator Craughwell. Anyone who listened to Claire Byrne's programme this morning and who has seen the "RTÉ Investigates" programme, which has now been taken down, will appreciate that the people involved in this major controversy are credible, well-motivated and truthful citizens. I have met on a number of occasions with Luke Rochford, Detective Superintendent Brian O'Reilly, Dr. Donal Corcoran, Rose Sweeney and Alan Kearney, and I…

I note that the whole scheme of the planning Act is that exempt development proposals are considered by the Houses. It is questionable whether this House has really considered the exempt development regulations. Without debate, we sent them off to a committee. We do not know what it made of them but it reported them back to us and, without debate, we are going to adopt them. That is not what the spirit of the Act required. On behalf of the Seanad Independent Group, I express our collective gratitude to the Leas-Cha…

I welcome the Minister here. I fully accept that the Government in general terms follows the advice of the Attorney General. I also fully accept the proposition that, in general terms, the advice given to the Government by the Attorney General is first of all confidential and, second, generally not published. I have no problem with those propositions. However, I fully agree with every single word Senator Black has just spoken, and the reason I want to intervene at this point is as follows. First, I want the Ministe…

I understand there was a money message from the Taoiseach when the Bill was going through the Dáil. It is interesting to note what that message stated, "to authorise such payments out of moneys provided by the Oireachtas as are necessary to give effect to any Act of the present session to provide for compliance by the State with its international legal obligation, as identified by the International Court of Justice in its advisory opinion of 19 July 2024". In fact, the money message states that any money that has t…

While we are on the subject, I take Senator Ahearn's point. We cannot make the best the enemy of the good. On the question of services, I do not agree that there is a significant difference. As a matter of international law, "trade" covers both. I thank the Minister for her remarks about the International Criminal Court. We hold the Presidency of the EU. The American Government is sanctioning judges of the International Criminal Court and making their lives impossible by telling the likes of Visa, Mastercard and ba…

I want to make one point. It is a pity that running towards the end of this Oireachtas term, the usual thing is happening, which is the guillotine is being deployed with abandon. The length of time given to individual items in the proposed Order of Business today is inadequate. An hour and a quarter is given to the Planning and Development (Amendment) Bill 2026, of which 20 minutes is given to the Minister. The remaining time is divided between the groups in this House, with ten minutes for each group and five minu…

I welcome the Minister and acknowledge, as others have done, the central role Senator Black has played in bringing this issue before these Houses and the Irish people. It is sometimes forgotten what happened in 2018. The only reason this House passed the occupied territories Bill was because the Fianna Fáil Party was, at that stage, party to a supply and confidence agreement with Fine Gael and did not feel itself obliged to support the Government's position on the Bill that was put before the House by Senator Franc…

I was listening to the discussion on this amendment and I must say that there was an air of unreality to it in my view. Yes, Muslim women who wear particular face coverings are one category of society. So too, though, are people who congregate outside a Muslim person’s house wearing face coverings in a manner threatening to that Muslim family. One only has to look, and this is what struck me, to what the Ku Klux Klan did in America. I do not think they were concerned about their health, their religious beliefs or a…

These amendments relate to data collection. While I disagreed with Senator Higgins about face coverings, I do not want it to be understood that I disagree with her in relation to the procedure we are following today. This particular set of very elaborate legislative measures being introduced by the Minister should not be introduced for debate on Report Stage in the Seanad in circumstances such as we have now, even if they have been recommitted for discussion. I have some questions for the Minister on these provisio…

I am very grateful to the Minister for explaining that. I feel a sense of disappointment on hearing that the information is there but it cannot be used for immigration purposes or for the purposes of the verification of asylum claims. It is purely restricted to the particular cases mentioned. It strikes me that if the EU is serious – sometimes I wonder if it is – about asylum seeking as a mask for breaching immigration law right across the European Union, that in putting in the kind of safeguards the Minister has s…

I will be brief because it is probably stretching things. It has been 22 years since I was chair of the Council of justice and home affairs ministers. I will say two things to the Minister. First, he should never underestimate the extent to which the other members of the council will agree with my point of view rather than the point of view of some people in the Berlaymont building. They are much more independent spirits. Second, the Eurodac procedure is very useful for identifying somebody who applies for asylum i…

I have two comments to make about that. First, the stop and search powers that we were concerned with are not ones where the unique identifier would come into place. Under the stop and search powers, where somebody is stopped and searched and found, for instance, not to have any specified articles in their possession, there is no criminal justice follow-on from that and, therefore, there is no record of them thereafter. I fully accept the Minister's point that it is desirable that, if a person is the subject of a p…

I want to draw to the Minister's attention to the structures of the Judicial Council. In certain cases, there is provision for an elected member of the District Court and an elected member of the Circuit Court. It is also provided in law that at least one of them must be of the opposite gender to another. That means that if, for instance, the District Court elects a woman, the Circuit Court has to elect a man. That seems to be something that the Minister should reconsider. It is a bit intrusive to say to Circuit Co…

I listened carefully to what Senators O'Reilly and Ruane have said. I share their view that prison should be a punishment of last resort rather than in any circumstance a punishment that is handed down, particularly in the District Court, with a view to seeming to take a severe stance in the hope that the Circuit Court will some time later take a more moderate view of the offence. Quite often in these Houses we hear earnest demands for mandatory prison sentences for assaulting emergency workers, gardaí and so on. A…

I am going to finish this point.

I am not trying to delay things. I do, however, want to put something on record. We are not going to deal with the issues that have been raised unless we have decent, civilised circumstances. We are not going to deal with it. The Minister was asked by Senator O’Reilly to talk about Thornton Hall. He did talk about what he has done in two other locations, and that is good news. It concerned what the Minister has done in Castlerea and what he is planning to do in Clover Hill. What is needed now is for the Minister’s …

A number of things occur to me in this context. The first is that we should not suffer from collective amnesia. It is a long time ago, but not that long ago, that Don Tidey, a supermarket executive, was the subject of a kidnapping. The Provisional IRA, at that stage, looked for £5 million ransom for his return. He was hidden in a number of places but eventually in County Leitrim, in the custody of the Provisional IRA. Extensive searches were authorised by the Government at the time to find and release him and retur…