When the film "La Haine" was released, then French Prime Minister, Alain Juppé, organised a special screening and instructed his cabinet to attend so that they might learn something about alienation in the Parisian suburbs. Will the Taoiseach organise a special screening for his Cabinet of the new film documentary, "406 Days", which premieres at the Dublin International Film Festival this Saturday night and deals with the outrageous treatment of workers in this country by a multinational company? The company in que…

Next week will be the 100th anniversary of four massacres that took place during the Civil War in County Kerry. The first was carried out by anti-treaty IRA troops at Knocknagashel on 6 March resulting in five people dead. The other three were carried out by the Free State army at Ballyseedy, Killarney and near Cahirsiveen on 7, 8 and 12 March. In total, 17 prisoners of the Free State were killed in those three atrocities. At Ballyseedy, the Free State army tied prisoners to each other and tied them to a barricade …

Europe is rearming and the world is rearming. The International Defence Exhibition and Conference, IDEX, took place in Abu Dhabi from 17 February to 21 February. Arms manufacturers from all over the world participated and big money was made from selling the machinery of death and destruction. The United Arab Emirates signed deals there worth $6 billion. A strong Israeli presence was reported. Russia's deputy premier was there and a Russian company displayed armoured vehicles, attack helicopters and anti-aircraft mi…

Some 10 million people living with AIDS do not have access to lifesaving treatment. Not a single monkey pox vaccine has been sent to Nigeria or the Democratic Republic of Congo, where monkey pox has been endemic for more than 50 years. There are still huge global inequities around access to Covid vaccines. The World Health Organization pandemic treaty is being drafted to address the massive inequities in the global distribution of life-saving medicines exposed by the Covid crisis. The Government played a shameful r…

Local authority water assets and staff were due to be transferred over to Irish Water, Uisce Éireann, on 1 January. It is now 28 February and this has not happened. This is something worthy of public comment, in my opinion. What happened? Water workers across the country rebelled against the framework document which outlined the path to the transfer. The four trade unions that represent water workers have now opposed the document, throwing everything up in the air. Workers will not transfer over until two condition…

I want to pick up on the point at which Deputy Smith left off. More than 500 paramedics in the National Ambulance Service have chosen to join the National Ambulance Service Representative Association to represent them. NASRA is a branch of the Psychiatric Nurses Association, the PNA, which is a recognised trade union with a negotiating licence. The HSE continues to refuse to recognise the PNA and to allow it to negotiate on behalf of its ambulance membership. It refuses to recognise it for purposes of negotiations …

I will start by asking a simple question. Do eviction bans work? We have some evidence from this State in the past couple of years which might help us to answer that question. Bear with me while I give a couple of statistics. The first eviction ban we had came in at the start of Covid. In March 2020, the number of people who were forced to live in emergency accommodation in this State, often described, completely incorrectly, as the number of homeless in the State - it is a small fraction of the numbers who are hom…

We have to put them in three days before.

There are approximately 20,000 community employment scheme workers in the State. They do valuable work in community centres, in sports grounds, with meals on wheels and much more besides. These men and women work a minimum of 19.5 hours per week and in return they receive basic pay of €247.50, which is less than €30 a week more than the basic dole or an additional €1.50 an hour. The State's community employment scheme workers constitute a little army of low-paid workers providing valuable labour in our communities.…

The big hoteliers will be popping the champagne corks tonight and no doubt toasting the Minister for Finance, Deputy McGrath. Meanwhile, ordinary householders will be forced to work out which items they will now have to drop from the weekly shop. A €225 million gift for the hospitality industry and a bimonthly €200 electricity credit cut for the others. At the same time, prices are rising. We need a full debate on this. There will be a vigorous debate when these issues come before the House.

Kay McShane grew up on Spike Island in Cork Harbour. She survived polio in her youth and went on to win a silver medal for Ireland in the marathon at the 1984 Paralympics, and two bronze medals in 1988 as well. She died aged 70 in 2019. The Cork County Council-owned Spike Island Development Company planned an exhibition on her extraordinary life and achievements for this summer but the exhibition is now in jeopardy because Kay's family quite rightly refused to facilitate an event that would have excluded Kay and ot…

Hear, hear.

A 16-year-old transgender girl, Brianna Ghey, was stabbed to death in Warrington in England on 11 February. Huge crowds attended vigils for her, including on this island, in Belfast, Derry, Cork, Dublin, Limerick, Kilkenny and elsewhere. I express my sympathy and solidarity with her family and friends, the trans community and all who feel less safe after her tragic murder. Two 15-year-olds have been arrested. Brianna experienced transphobic bullying and harassment before her death. Transphobia is now being investig…

It was hugely successful.

Adult education tutors are public servants employed by the education and training boards, ETBs. There are more than 3,000 of these workers employed across 16 ETBs, many of whom are fully qualified and registered teachers, but they are paid the unregistered teacher rate. Their hours are capped at 22 hours of class contact time per week and they are not paid for any preparation, research or work they do to prepare lesson plans. They are unpaid during holidays, meaning many are forced to sign on to the dole during sum…

Tens of thousands of people took to the streets on Saturday to say that racism and fascism are not wanted in this country. It was an important start to building the militant anti-racist movement we need. Why did gardaí harass anti-racist campaigners as the march began to assemble in Parnell Square? Why were attempts made to prevent members of the Socialist Party handing out placards? Those placards stated simply, "Government and system to blame, not refugees." Why were leaflets confiscated from members of People Be…

"It felt like they were treating us like animals. It didn't feel fair. It felt like they were violating our privacy." Workers at JD Sports in Patrick's Street in Cork have, in the last week, highlighted the fact that they are regularly asked to lift their tops and show their bare stomach area to store managers. The store says the policy is part of its campaign against shop lifting. It already has the right to search bags and jackets when workers leave the shop. There is a real power imbalance here. On the one hand,…

The crackdown on asylum seekers announced at the EU summit last week was based solely on the narrative of the far right. These are not my words or the words of any radical socialist; instead, they are the words of a colleague of the Taoiseach, Fianna Fáil MEP, Barry Andrews, and he is right. When I made the point in this House last week that the Government's failures on housing were a gift to the far right, the Taoiseach urged me to consider my language. The next day he flew to Brussels and said that the EU needed …

The Daft.ie report published yesterday shows that it now costs way more than €20,000 to rent for a year in Cork city. A generation that could not afford to buy its own homes now cannot afford to rent. After the publication of the report, Ronan Lyons said that "among the worst affected cohorts are younger adults, with the median adult age of leaving the parental home having grown almost 50% in the last decade." In other words, since shortly after Fine Gael came to power, if the median average age was 18, it is now c…

The cost-of-living crisis continues to bear down hard on working people and their families. Barnardos told us last week that one in ten of those surveyed had been forced to go to a food bank in order to provide. Nearly three in ten were skipping meals to ensure their children could eat. The following day, we were told by Kantar that grocery bills are set to rise by nearly €1,200, on average, per household this year. Gas has increased 140% in the past two years and electricity by 115% in the same period, yet when fa…