On the back of years of campaigning, principally by the International Transport Workers Federation, ITF, the situation for non-European migrant fishers working on Irish-flagged fishing vessels has improved in recent months. A highly restrictive atypical work permit scheme has been abolished and all documented fishers and a significant cohort of undocumented fishers have obtained stamp 4 visas, giving them full labour market access. Those who choose to remain in fishing ought now to be able to earn a share of the ca…

Is it not an embarrassment to the State that the ITF's fisheries representative in Ireland has to go to his colleagues in Spain, which has ratified ILO 188, and the flag state, Germany, to work on having questions of unpaid wages and illicit double contracts acted upon? One cannot help but draw the conclusion that there is a greater premium being placed on fish stocks in our territorial waters than the rights and welfare of human beings. Let us be clear, this is an incursion of slave-wage conditions onto the shores…

I send my sympathy and solidarity to the peoples of Kurdistan, Türkiye and Syria. If you go online, open the newspaper or turn on the radio, you cannot do any of those things these days without reading or hearing about the far right. They have come to prominence through their organisational support for anti-refugee protests, but who are they? The largest such party is the National Party. It is described by the Far Right Observatory as being anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ+, and white nationalist. Its leader has attended…

I can assure the Taoiseach I am very careful in what I say and I am very clear on my message that refugees are welcome here - all refugees - including the 130 people that this State deported in the past month alone. Does the housing crisis add to the crisis of racism in Irish society? Without any question, it does. Of course, they will blame everything. However, the housing crisis is a gift to them, which is why I have no faith in the Government to sort this issue. My faith is in the ordinary people. We need a mass…

I never make excuses for them.

Well said.

Barnardos is telling us that in January 2022, one household in 25 was forced to go to a food bank, but by November that figure had risen to one in ten. The situation seems set to worsen. Kantar told us yesterday that the average household will spend nearly an extra €1,200 on groceries in 2023. Why then is the Government considering the scrapping of at least some of the cost-of-living supports for householders at the end of this month? The crisis remains; the supports should remain too. The Government and the State …

The progress being made on closing the gender pay gap globally is glacial. At the current rate, it will take 257 years to close this gap fully. In his contribution at the start, the Taoiseach said a gender pay gap in Ireland of 11.2% compared with an EU average of 13% showed this State was doing better. I put it to the Taoiseach that a better way to phrase that would be to say that in this country we are doing less badly than the EU. There should be no pats on the back here. There is a long way to go. In this count…

What we need here, and I will conclude on this, is a totally new approach. We need to treat childcare and early learning like primary and secondary education, being universal, public and free at the point of use.

The nursing home charges scandal is the latest in a long line of aggressive legal strategies employed by the State to deny justice to vulnerable people. It must now be added to a list that includes the CervicalCheck women, the hepatitis C women, the denial of disability payments for those in long-term care, the denial of redress to a large cohort of mother and baby homes survivors, and many others. The Attorney General’s report defends a policy that was cold, callous and calculated. I see the leader the Labour Part…

The Saudi state is trying to persuade many European universities to set up campuses in the new King Abdullah Economic City. In June last year representatives of the city met those of several Irish universities and of Enterprise Ireland to this end. The meeting came just three months after the Saudi state executed 81 prisoners, mainly by beheading, in one day. Many were political prisoners and many had been imprisoned for the crime of being a member of a religious minority. According to the European Saudi Organisati…

Matthew Healy was killed in a violent attack in Mercy University Hospital in Cork in the early hours of Sunday morning. I want to extend sympathy to his family and friends. In the past five years, there have been more than 50,000 assaults on staff alone in our hospitals according to the HSE, of which 274 were sexual assaults. The last time there was a security audit across the hospital system was seven years ago in 2016. I am calling for a security audit to be organised across the hospital service now. I am also ca…

I want to see a constitutional referendum on the right to housing, not because it will resolve the housing crisis, which it will not do, and not because it is a substitute for our housing campaigns or housing protest, which it is not. I want to see it because it would improve, at least somewhat, the rights of those who need housing and add, at least somewhat, to pressure on the State to deliver it. We are hearing reports that the Housing Commission is due to report relatively soon with a recommendation on this matt…

I ask the Taoiseach to comment on two pieces of climate news we have received since the start of the year. The first is on the issue of climate criminals. We have now learned that ExxonMobil scientists in the 1970s mapped out with extraordinary exactitude what would happen if we continued using fossil fuels with respect to global temperatures. This information, however, was not released to the public. It was covered up and that company was involved in climate denialism for a long period after that. I seek the Taois…

The Tánaiste that told the Dáil that the situation in our child and adolescent mental health services was unacceptable. A couple of weeks ago the Taoiseach pronounced that the situation in our emergency departments was unacceptable. I put it to him that it is time for him and his Government to own their mistakes and disasters. They are not bystanders casually viewing these crises from another planet or from afar. Can the Taoiseach outline the steps he intends to take to stop further harm being done to vulnerable yo…

Minister, you may well have put-----

The Minister is talking down the clock and I wish to speak. The Minister may well have put a new phrase into the Irish political lexicon this afternoon, which is the "inadvertent" corporate donation. To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune but to lose both looks like carelessness. I wonder what the bould Oscar might say about this debate tonight. To fail to disclose election donations and spending once might, at best, be said to be carelessness. What exactly is it when it is done twice? Did the Minister …

Did the Minister inform the Taoiseach before his appointment?

But you knew there was a controversy brewing.

You accepted a Minister's position without informing the Taoiseach.