I will be voting against the extension of mandatory hotel quarantine. I share the opposition of Deputy Paul Murphy to the privatised model of mandatory hotel quarantine that the Government has introduced. I also share his opposition to this quarantine system which has no human rights oversight, certainly none worth talking about. Even if these issues were to be addressed, I would still oppose the extension as I opposed the introduction of the regime earlier in the year. Mandatory hotel quarantine is a form of deten…

On Monday, the trial begins of 47 Hong Kong election candidates who dared to put their names forward for election primaries last year despite the election being banned under the repressive new national security laws. The 47 people involved include Leung Kwok-hung, also known as Long Hair, the veteran democracy campaigner and left activist who spent more than 15 years in the Hong Kong legislature. They have been refused bail and face jail sentences of up to life imprisonment if found guilty of the trumped-up charge …

We often talk in this House about sectarian division. I want to say a few words about the exact opposite. Some weeks ago, workers at the Hovis bakery in Belfast decided to take industrial action over the fact that they have been offered less than 2% of a wage increase this year. Catholics and Protestants stood united on the picket lines for the 12 days of the strike, after which they won an 8% increase over two years, despite the fact that they had received pressure from the PSNI to disperse on the grounds of Covid…

Monday's report from the Office of the Ombudsman for Children on conditions at a Traveller halting site in Cork city found that 66 children at the site were forced to live in conditions that were filthy, overcrowded, damp and rat-infested. The report, undertaken on foot of a complaint submitted by the Cork Traveller Women's Network and the Cork Traveller Visibility Group as a last resort after years of campaigning, concluded that Cork City Council had failed to comply with the minimum requirements of the law, had a…

I find myself with a little extra time, which is always enjoyable. I will focus on the issue of emergency powers and the right to protest. If I have time, and I probably do, I will make some points about mandatory hotel quarantine. When these powers were introduced last year I spoke out against them. I made the point that in a capitalist society the State would use these powers to curb the right to protest, and that has proven correct. Taxi drivers who planned to protest in Dublin were threatened with fines of €2,0…

Today is the third anniversary of the historic vote to repeal the eighth amendment. That huge pro-woman, pro-civil rights vote was a vote for choice and an end to hypocritical Irish solutions to Irish problems. There are many outstanding issues with the subsequent legislation, including the fact that only one in ten GPs and only half the maternity hospitals are providing for abortion while at least one pregnant person a day is still being forced to travel. However, the key outstanding issue is who will own the new …

What the Minister has just said is different from what has been said by representatives of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. To date, they have failed to give an absolute guarantee that this hospital will be 100% owned by the State and that abortion services will be fully and freely available to women there. The Minister is at odds with what his Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael colleagues are saying. I suspect foot-dragging here on the part of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. Both parties have a long, sorry and shameful tradition of f…

Some 200 workers at Aer Lingus in Cork Airport will go to bed tonight fearful for the future of their jobs. Having been kept on the company books for the entire duration of the global pandemic, these workers have now been told that they will be laid off for a ten-week period between September and November when runway repairs are to be carried out. These workers have been forced to live on a fraction of their wages for the duration of this pandemic. They now ask the following questions. If the Minister would care to…

We now have a ceasefire in the Middle East but there is no cessation of occupation, no cessation of oppression and no cessation of the forcible denial of the rights of the Palestinian people. In the past week, the Palestinian people will have clearly seen their allies and their enemies. The most obvious enemy is the Israeli capitalist state and its ruling class, which implement an oppressive regime of occupation, siege, racism and apartheid. Then there are the major capitalist and imperialist powers, led by the Uni…

Last week, I asked the Government to pass the Control of Economic Activity (Occupied Territories) Bill 2018 and organise the boycott of goods produced in occupied Palestinian territories. These are goods stained with the blood of the Palestinian people. However, the Government has doubled down in opposition to taking such a step. It falls, therefore, to the organised workers' movement to take the initiative. I call on them to do so. The Irish Congress of Trade Unions should build on the historic example of the Dunn…

When the OECD said recently that Ireland should reintroduce water charges, the Taoiseach was very quick out of the traps to say he ruled it out categorically. He did that for a couple of reasons. First, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael had their fingers badly burned in the past decade when there was a mass movement against water charges. Second, I believe and hope there is an understanding that the reintroduction of water charges in the 2020s would make what happened in the past decade look like a tea party. However, I wi…

Twenty years ago, Amnesty Ireland carried out what might have been the first large-scale survey of Ireland's black and ethnic minority communities. Some 54% polled said that they did not feel confident to report a racist incident to a garda. Twenty years on, how much has changed? The recent survey by Youth Against Racism and Inequality interviewed people of colour and Travellers. Some 35% said they had the experience of being stopped by a garda for no apparent reason and 45% reported feeling humiliation and 42% rep…

"A home is a home, whether it is an apartment or a house," said Ciarán Cuffe, MEP, of the Green Party. The only pity is that the Green Party says that but does not vote along the line that would follow from that. It is hot air. The Green Party has a chance to show us tonight that it can vote according to what was said. We will keep a close eye on that. What a concession the Taoiseach has made to the vulture funds by excluding apartments entirely from the legislation. That is where the big money is. Some €7 billion …

Last night in Limerick more than 70 gardaí, including 20 members of the public order unit, were mobilised to try to help strike-breakers to pass picket lines organised by Debenhams workers. The gardaí sealed off two entire blocks of the city centre street and unsuccessfully attempted to kettle the workers and their supporters. They also pulled a worker with more than 40 years of service towards this, treating him like a criminal. I am delighted to report that the workers and their supporters mobilised in such numbe…

A young man left mandatory hotel quarantine in Dublin yesterday. He is an Irish student at the University of Pittsburgh. He got a second vaccination in the US on Monday, 3 May, but was taken into quarantine when he arrived home to Ireland on Thursday, 6 May. He was told by the authorities that he should have waited seven days after his second vaccination before travelling. This means that he would have been free to travel here on Monday, 10 May, but the State decided to quarantine him for much longer than that, unt…

"His apology means nothing, we need him to go back to the MoD and tell them to tell the truth, tell our legal team the names of the soldiers who murdered our loved ones and ask them why." These are the words of Briege Voyle, whose mother, Joan Connolly, was murdered in Ballymurphy. She spoke in the immediate aftermath of the coroner's verdict, which made it clear that these were civilians who posed no threat and were unarmed. At least nine of the ten were certainly shot by the British army. She spoke at the same ti…

I wish to address the emergency legislation that will be considered tonight by the Cabinet. The Irish Times has posted a report that the Cabinet is considering the idea of increasing stamp duty to 10% on multiple purchases and that multiple purchases would be defined as the purchase of more than ten houses. In the case of a €250,000 house, the ordinary house buyer would pay stamp duty of €2,500 whereas the investment fund would pay stamp duty of €25,000. We can set that against a recent comment in the Business Post…

Palestine is burning. There are 72 people dead now in Gaza, at least 16 of whom are children, and the death count is rising. This follows on from the mass expulsion of Palestinians in east Jerusalem, which amounted to ethnic cleansing, the brutal assault on the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and the far-right lynch mobs now roaming the streets of Israeli cities looking for Palestinians to attack. We have a situation where young people in Gaza, where 50% of the population is under the age of 18, have now experienced four military …

The Tánaiste is like a Kerryman. When a question is asked of him, he asks a question back. I will take the opportunity, then, to give a reply before posing my questions again. The Palestinian people are an oppressed people and have a right to organise their self-defence, including armed self-defence. They have the right to fight for their own national and social liberation. The firing of rockets into Israel by Hamas is something that I do not support. It has resulted in the deaths of seven people, including a five-…

Extraordinary powers have been given to the State during this pandemic. Young people up and down the country, but especially in working class communities, are reporting an increased level of harassment by members of the Garda. In a recent report, the Policing Authority states: "Young people were reported as believing that COVID-19 [has] been used by ... Gardaí as an excuse to conduct more stops". The same report stated that student groups described policing in this State as intimidating and negative. It is a fact t…