The Debenhams workers will organise socially distanced pickets and protests across the country next Monday outside their stores to mark and celebrate International Women's Day and to mark day 333 of their dispute. In Cork they will be joined by Arcadia workers. These two groups of women workers will speak with one voice when they ask the Government where the legislation it promised to protect workers' rights in liquidations is. Perhaps the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, might tell them tonight. Across the world the iss…

This shared equity scheme is good news for builders, developers, banks and land hoarders and is bad news for people who need affordable homes. Pumping up the demand when the supply stays more or less the same is a recipe for higher house prices. A similar scheme was introduced in England and Wales in 2013. The house price inflation for new houses, over the second-hand ones that were excluded from the scheme, was 3% per annum. The London School of Economics looked at the situation in London and said the scheme led t…

I have three questions for the Minister. She is not a supporter of a policy of open access to third level education, but does she think it fair to force students to compete against each other for limited college places in a pandemic year? For two years in a row, the State has been unable to organise a traditional leaving certificate. Given that this exam is out of date, unacceptably stressful and biased against students from lower-income backgrounds, does she not think it is time to abolish the leaving certificate …

The Minister, Deputy Donohoe, is a Minister for the rich in a Government for the rich. He is a Minister for the fat cats in a Government for the fat cats. He is a Minister in a Government which does not give a damn about working people. Ulster Bank put 2,800 jobs in jeopardy but there was no action from him. Bank of Ireland axed 88 branches and is driving for 1,400 redundancies but there is no action from him. He has taken no action despite the fact that he, as Minister for Finance, is a very significant shareholde…

There are significant concerns among members of the public regarding international travel and new variants. People can see clearly that it does not make sense to make significant sacrifices in their lives to drive down the infection levels in the State while leaving the back door largely open. A point was raised earlier and it has not been properly addressed. I refer to the fact that a debate about quarantine should not be a debate about non-essential travel. It should be a debate about essential travel. Non-essent…

The mother and baby homes commission was ostensibly established to seek out truths and it should have been a help to survivors. To be clear, if the Government shoots down this motion and if it closes down the commission in four days' time, it will be doing it in the teeth of opposition from the very survivors the commission was meant to be helping. Sitting around the Cabinet table today discussing plans to defeat this motion and to finish the work of the commission in four days' time are Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael M…

Twenty-five people died at the CareChoice Nursing Home Ballynoe, White's Cross, Cork, in January and February. The death toll is one of the highest in the country since the pandemic started. This morning's edition of the Irish Examiner tells us that five of the families are seeking a group inquest. These relatives are deeply unhappy with the way they and their loved ones were treated and have many questions that demand answers. These questions include: why was a relative told that a loved one had Covid when they di…

I believe there should be a fully qualified social worker allocated to every nursing home in this country for the duration of the pandemic. Will the Taoiseach support that call, "Yes" or "No"? Such a social worker could act as a liaison officer with relatives, ensuring regular professional contact and arranging compassionate visits. The social worker would also act has a valuable pair of eyes and ears, observing what happens in these institutions behind closed doors. What happened in Ballynoe Nursing Home is comple…

Is the Taoiseach aware that the garda who fired the shot that killed George Nkencho has not been suspended from An Garda Síochána pending investigation and, it would seem, has not yet been interviewed by the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission, GSOC?

In that case I will take a different path with this. Is the Taoiseach aware that correspondence sent by the chairperson of GSOC to the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, ICCL, dated 22 January refers to the challenge faced by an oversight body with fewer than 40 investigators in dealing with a Garda service of approximately 15,000 members? The under-resourcing of GSOC and the glacial pace of the Nkencho investigation raised the spectre that the murder of a gangland boss might be investigated more quickly now than t…

Last year, with the return of the Stormont Executive, we were promised a new decade, a new approach. It has been a turbulent year but what is the verdict one year on? Last week, the BBC Northern Ireland "Spotlight" programme focused on the level of reliance on food banks by many in Northern Ireland, particularly young workers. It shone a spotlight on the number of people who are really struggling during this pandemic. The show said that the Stormont draft budget was a slap in the face for those young people and oth…

The Government relented to the retail and hospitality lobby and opened up in the run-up to Christmas. This created a perfect storm for the virus with deadly consequences. We need a radically different approach to that of bending to the will of business interests. Instead, we need an approach that will put the interests of public health first. We need to go after this virus and repress it to single digit cases, speed up the vaccine programme, roll out mass testing and repress it further, thereby avoiding the need fo…

Next Tuesday morning there will be a protest outside Topshop on Opera Lane in Cork city centre. The protest is being organised by ex-Arcadia workers. They are angry at their former employer because they have been cheated out of the two week's pay for every two years' service redundancy agreement they had in place with the company. They are not just angry with the company, however. They are very critical of the Government as well. They saw the Clerys workers being told that they were the last ones who would be force…

I am sharing time with Deputy Paul Murphy. We are discussing the new Land Development Agency Bill 2021, which will open the door to privatisation of public land. Arguably, this may open the door to the largest privatisation in the history of the State. The only example I can think of that might rival it, and time will tell, is the National Asset Management Agency, NAMA, where there was a €43 billion sell-off. The Tánaiste said some time ago that the launch of the Land Development Agency was comparable to the launch…

More than 8,000 Covid cases between the middle of November and the first week of February involve students aged 16 and over. That is higher than any other section of the population with the exception of healthcare workers. On health and safety grounds there is now a strong case that leaving certificate students should be the last students back into the classroom. Despite this, there are diehard supporters of the traditional leaving certificate who want to force students back to school next week, and if not next wee…

I wish to register a point in the discussion of the Order of Business. We are operating on the basis of the Dáil sitting two days per week. I, along with my group, favour three sittings per week at this stage. If the schedule is to remain at two sittings per week, then two things must change. First, is the issue of Taoiseach's Questions. Taoiseach's Questions is an important forum for questioning the Taoiseach and holding him and the Government to account on a range of key issues. There has not been a Taoiseach's Q…

Last night, I received a message from a Cork mother who is fearful that her son is so stressed by the leaving certificate carry-on that he could come to harm. She said it is at the point where she is sitting on his bedroom floor every night while he sleeps, just to keep an eye on him. Meanwhile, the Minister for Education is telling the media she hopes to be able to outline to the Cabinet on Tuesday next an alternative option to the leaving certificate. There will be six more nights of watch and anguish for this mo…

I want to put on the record my serious concern about the impact of the leaving certificate crisis on the mental health of the nation's 17- and 18-year-olds. The leaving cert is stressful in normal times, which is one of the reasons I am in favour of the abolition of the exam. We are told that 50% of teens normally feel nervous when they think about exams and 25% feel physically unwell. However, with Covid, things move into a higher gear altogether. Some students have experienced Covid directly. Students have had fa…

The Dáil is debating the issue of fuel poverty. From time to time the Dáil has debates of this kind. Usually, they do not generate much passion or many column inches in the newspapers, which is perhaps not surprising because very few Deputies and few enough journalists suffer from fuel poverty. That is not the case, however, for many people living in this State. It is a scandal that in 2021, in one of the richest countries on earth, one in six suffers from fuel poverty. The State does not take enough action to tack…

Yesterday, the Tánaiste told leaving certificate students that clarity on the exams will be provided within the next few weeks. This comment went down like a lead balloon among students who are already feeling a real strain on their mental health. This strain on 17 and 18-year-olds is being caused by both the continuing uncertainty and the continuing threat of a forced leaving certificate examination. The Tánaiste’s comments indicate to me that the Government is both out of touch and out of the loop when it comes t…