The Minister for Defence, Deputy Coveney, has stated there is a good chance Ireland will be involved in the European rapid reaction force due to be operational by 2025. I say to him and his Government colleagues that there is no chance this will happen without major opposition in Irish society. It will not be the fortunate sons and daughters of Ministers who will be sent out to die in the interests of French and German capitalism. It will be the sons and daughters of the working class and that will not be allowed t…

Centrica made profits of £948 million, which is more than €1 billion, last year. Centrica is the parent company of Bord Gáis Energy, which in turn made profits of €70 million between 2020 and 2021. This is the company that wants to hike people's gas bills by 39% and electricity bills by 27% from next month. Is the war on Ukraine to blame for energy price rises? Yes, but let us be clear; capitalist interests closer to home are very much part of the equation. Their profiteering is being covered up by the Government b…

What measures will the Minister take to ensure that refugees from Ukraine will be able to have access to social protection entitlements? Will the Department adapt the usual rules that would require the furnishing of documentation to prove eligibility for certain payments such as medical records or training and employment records given the difficulty of obtaining them from Ukraine? Will she recognise the accrual of social insurance payments in Ukraine towards eligibility for benefits here as is the case with those c…

When Ukrainian refugees get work here, what happens if and when some of them lose their jobs and seek to make a regular claim for benefits and face understandable difficulties providing documentation etc.? Similarly, if they are around retirement age and wish to claim a pension, will the full State pension be provided or will their pension be based on their work record in the European Union, which would result in a very low pension despite their perhaps having worked their whole lives? The same question applies to …

Last week we saw P&O Ferries sacking 800 workers and replacing them with migrant labour at £1.82 per hour. The Tánaiste has said that could not happen here within the law but the urge of unscrupulous employers to maximise profit by exploiting vulnerable workers does not know any borders. There are mushroom farms not too far from the Minister's own bailiwick that prove the case. The minimum wage is set at such a low rate that employers can exploit vulnerable workers to drive down wages while still acting within the …

Is the Minister saying she has never come across a case-----

------of a worker being exploited on a Monaghan mushroom farm?

That is incredible. It is an incredible statement.

We need to look ahead a little as well.

Bringing 100,000 Ukrainian people to Ireland and helping them start new lives is not an easy task for any government. It is much tougher, of course, for the refugees and it is the responsibility of the Government to remove unnecessary obstacles they may face. What steps will the Government take to ensure their qualifications are recognised and they can work here at a level for which they are qualified? What steps will it take to ensure their social insurance contributions can be taken into account here, given the d…

The Minister of State is very jumpy this morning.

The Government's remote working Bill is the flimsiest workers' rights legislation ever brought before this Dáil. The Tánaiste likes to present it as part of a package showing that Fine Gael is fighting for workers' rights, is introducing remote working and sick pay rights, has increased the national minimum wage, is tackling low pay and so on. Let us look at a real situation, though. A new order for contract cleaners is coming into effect on 1 April and will increase their wages from €11 an hour to €11.55. In April…

The excise duty cuts are welcome, but they are a sticking plaster on a wound when we look at the overall cost of living crisis that is now impacting working people and their well-being. The Department of Finance wrote to Deputy Boyd Barrett last week and estimated that the Russian invasion of Ukraine will add 4% to the rate of inflation in this State. That clearly raises the spectre of inflation reaching 10% or more. Does the Taoiseach agree that inflation may now reach 10%? An inflation rate of 10% indicates to me…

What about 10% inflation?

Inflation of 10%?

The European leaders will meet in Versailles on Thursday and Friday. They will discuss the Russian invasion as it impacts on the economy and on energy supply. No doubt they will also discuss military matters. Of course they will. Perhaps no official decisions will be made in this regard but a process will be got under way without a doubt. Yet there are no statements on that meeting in the House this week. There should be statements on this issue in the House this week. When there is a meeting of the European Counci…

The Taoiseach says this is an informal meeting. Let us have an informal debate. When the European Council meets, we have pre-meeting statements and post-meeting statements. This meeting is more important than 95% or even 99% of the European Council meetings held in recent times but there are to be no statements. Why not? I propose a special meeting of the Business Committee this afternoon to arrange such a debate. Will the House agree to that?

The German Chancellor has decided to triple military spending and to rearm Germany. Presumably, he will attend the meeting of European leaders in Versailles this week and, no doubt, will encourage other European leaders to follow his example. Who will provide a voice of sanity at this gathering and say, "No"? Europe should not engage in a massive arms race. The Continent should not be divided into armed camps. Will anyone dare to point out that a German rearmament, an arms race and increased co-operation with the U…

The Provision of Objective Sex Education Bill 2018 is being blocked by the Taoiseach under Article 17.2° through a money message. The Bill would remove the issue of a school's ethos as grounds for not fully teaching objective sex education. In the aftermath of the killing of Ashling Murphy I suspect there is massive support in society for a range of legislative changes, including the passing of such a Bill. One in five detected sex crimes reported to gardaí involved people aged under 18 as victim and perpetrator. I…

I want to salute the role of working women everywhere. In the pandemic, so many women were, and are, key front-line workers in health, education and retail. In many countries during the pandemic, it was women who carried the banner for workers' rights. In this country, they did so at Debenhams. Hundreds of thousands of people turned out to express their grief and anger at the shadow pandemic of gender-based violence after the killing of Ashling Murphy. I say to Government Ministers that they should respect that gri…