I wonder how many workers might resign their jobs in the next year. A survey was carried out recently, namely, the Workhuman fall 2021 international survey report. It surveyed workers across a range of countries. It found that 42% of workers in Ireland would consider resigning their jobs. The key issues the survey identified were the need for better pay and the need for greater flexibility. This is an international phenomenon. It is being described now as the great resignation. Four million workers in the US recent…

Covid-19 will be with us forever; so said the Tánaiste last week. Does the Government, therefore, want the Covid emergency powers to be with us forever too? Serious civil liberties issues were involved in the introduction of these powers in the first place, and that was why I voiced my opposition in the first Dáil debate on them. Today, there are serious civil liberties issues in rolling the powers over every three months, as the Minister seems intent on doing. To take just one example, we were told the requirement…

The best protest placard of the year outside Dáil Éireann was held by a student nurse today. It stated, "Why are nurses priceless but penniless?" It is a brilliant placard. The Minister has left the room but he needed to read the room because he has got it wrong on student nurses' pay. He must stop, look and listen and he needs to make some changes. Students are going back into hospitals, working in Covid-19 wards and other wards with Covid-19 patients. The numbers in intensive care units and hospitals will increas…

I will start by making a point on hospitality and the situation we will have tomorrow. In the past 24 to 48 hours, we have heard from the hotel industry, the restaurateurs and the publicans. The group we have not heard from very much in the media, and I challenge the media on this, is the workers in the hospitality industry. In some ways this is not surprising. Those workers are generally not organised. They are in non-union workplaces. Many of them are in anti-union workplaces. Some of them will be going back to w…

The Government kicked to touch in budget week on the issue of a Covid bonus for front-line workers but it cannot keep kicking to touch every week. Did the Taoiseach note The Irish Times /MRBI poll last week which showed 79% support for paying the bonus to public sector front-line workers and majority support for making a payment to private sector front-line workers too? What steps does the Government intend to take to make private sector employers reward their staff? How long is the Government going to make our lon…

Yesterday Maynooth University published a report into the experience of non-EEA workers in the Irish fishing industry. This includes workers from countries such as Egypt, the Philippines and Ghana. Many who were surveyed were paid below our national minimum wage. Many reported work days of 15 hours and up to 20 hours. More than 50% of the workers surveyed had experienced racial verbal abuse. The International Transport Workers' Federation, ITF, referred this morning to the "severe exploitation" revealed by the repo…

I will start by saying a few words about femicide. In Northern Ireland, 11 women have been murdered since the lockdown in March 2020. Imagine if there had been 11 sectarian murders in the same period. It would be all over the news and, having been all over the news, the whole island would be talking about it. If it was because of which community you came from, it would be a significant news item, but when it is because of your gender, it is a different story. There is talk about violence against women being the sha…

I am most definitely not Deputy Alan Kelly.

I just want to put that on the record. When will the European Council set aside time to discuss an action plan to combat femicide? In Ireland, the death toll mounts. I refer to Nadine Lott, Anne Colomines and many others, including Katrina Rainey who was burned alive in her car in Derry last week. In Europe, in just 20 countries more than 1,000 femicides took place in 2018. There is a shadow pandemic of violence against women. How many femicides will Europe count when 2021 is done? Action is being taken, but it is …

Nadim Hussain is a 34-year-old man from India. He is from a Muslim background. In 2018, both of his parents were killed in anti-Muslim violence. Nadim came to Ireland. He currently lives in Cork city, at the Kinsale Road direct provision centre. Nadim worked all the way through the pandemic. He worked in a hospital as a security worker. He paid his taxes. Last month, Nadim received a letter from the International Protection Appeals Tribunal, which affirmed a recommendation of the international protection officer, w…

I want to restate the basic point that this man is on the sixth day of a hunger strike. Tomorrow is day seven of this hunger strike. The man's GP has expressed some serious concerns about the effect of this on him, particularly on his kidneys. He is not talking in terms of weeks but about the next number of days. I have requested that the Minister of State would contact the man directly or have a senior official in his Department do so. The Minister of State has not replied to that question and I ask that he do so.…

The Taoiseach told the Dáil today that new rent caps are on the way. The way things are going, the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, will end up with more caps than Robbie Keane. First of all, it was a 0% cap, which was okay, then it was a 4% cap, then the cap was the rate of inflation, and now it will be something else again. Let me spell it out for the Minister of State and I ask him to please bring word back to the Cabinet. A 3%, 2% or 1% cap will not be acceptable. A rent freeze might be acce…

What did the Government do this afternoon? It tweaked the system a little bit. It gave a few crumbs from the table but the rich will stay rich and the poor will stay poor. Many will die preventable deaths frozen in their homes this winter. Let us start with that. An extra €5 on the fuel allowance, which is payable for 28 weeks, means a total increase of €140. We know that, because of market madness, energy costs are due to rise very sharply. They are already rising. They are to rise by €500 or perhaps €1,000 over a…

I see the former Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine was comparing the Tánaiste's policies to my policies at the Fine Gael parliamentary party meeting yesterday. I hope the Tánaiste will take him outside and have a quiet word and get that knocked on the head. The Tánaiste will get me into terrible trouble with my comrades. Under this Government, thousands of students are literally surviving on rations of dry toast, dry cereal, a cup of coffee and skip dinner. How could it be otherwise when we have the hig…

I want to make a few brief points about wages at Aer Lingus. The company saved €188 million last year on employee costs, which is a 46% reduction on 2019. Perhaps we should expect nothing less in a global pandemic. However, this was the largest percentage cut in any airline in the International Airlines Group, IAG. Interestingly, Aer Lingus represents approximately 6% of that group but, historically, has contributed more than 20% of its profits. All of this goes to show that the demand for further wage cuts at Aer …

I am acutely aware that when we discuss this topic we are talking about matters of life and death. If the Government continues to refuse to intervene boldly to protect people from energy price rises, not only will that severely eat into the budgets of large numbers of households but people will die. That is not hyperbole from these benches. There is such a thing as excess winter deaths. I have been trying to get my head around the concept of excess winter deaths in preparation for this debate. As I understand it, i…

I express my solidarity with the Women of Honour. Their bravery has forced this review. Action should have been taken long before now. Sexual abuse in the Defence Forces was highlighted by Dr. Tom Clonan more than 20 years ago. He has since said: These problems I demonstrated were systemic. In 21 years, I have never been approached by anybody from the Department of Defence. Deputy Coveney was Minister for Defence between 2014 and 2016 when this systemic abuse was far from being a secret. No real action was taken th…

Retired company quartermaster sergeant Karina Molloy says, "it is absolutely systemic". It is not a case of a few bad apples, but systemic. Of course, misogyny is part of the DNA of armies and police forces in all capitalist societies. While that is not to say all members of those forces are sexist, it is to say that sexism is part of the culture. Wayne Couzens, the killer of Sarah Everard, was said to have indecently exposed himself on more than one occasion and was nicknamed "the rapist" by colleagues. His brand …

Last night the Dáil voted on a Social Democrats motion calling for a moratorium on data centres pending an environmental impact assessment. Given data centres now consume 11% of Irish electricity output, as opposed to a global average of 2% to 3%, this was a very modest proposal. It was, for example, significantly less strong than the People Before Profit-Solidarity Bill that goes before the House tonight, which calls for a ban on new data centres until such time as the climate emergency has passed. The modest prop…

Leona and Glenn have been really brave and articulate in telling their story. I want to ask the Minister about the other 17 families. He said they were contacted in mid-May of 2020. They received registered letters and were offered a meeting. When those registered letters were sent, were those families told their babies' organs and tissue had been sent to Belgium with medical waste for incineration? Were those families given that information?