What this amendment is not in line with is the Istanbul Convention on Violence Against Women and Girls and our obligation as a State to protect survivors of violence. That is my one comment on that. I do not think it is in the spirit of the case that there is not fairness when it comes to survivors being forced to sit in a room with their abuser. It is something to be cognisant of.

I understood what the Minister of State was saying but to sit in a room with your abuser, not being cross-examined by them but sitting an a room with them and being obligated to be cross-examined by the ombudsman, could be a very re-traumatising incident, especially in cases with an active protection order, of which there might be very few. We might not be seeing many on an annual or five-year basis but it is really about having that protection built in to how the process works. If someone has a protection order ag…

Last week, The Ditch reported that an Irish academic had a connection to a lobbyist group for the defence industry. The lobbying group in question, The Irish Defence and Security Association, represents international arms manufacturers, including Lockheed Martin, Saab and KNDS. It regularly appears in the lobbying register meeting with the Department of Defence, including most recently last December. While the academic is involved in this lobbying group, that individual also appears regularly in the media advocatin…

I am sharing my time with Senator Harmon.

I thank the Minister for coming to discuss this today. The point she discussed around certainty, which Senators O'Loughlin and Ahearn also raised, is important. The fact we are dealing with this motion four days before the end of the month suggests that there has not been certainty. I support the theory of the scheme but I wish it had been arranged earlier so that families were not living in a state of flux and not worrying about where they were going to live. This extension should not have been arranged at the las…

I move amendment No. 2: To insert the following after “6th March, 2025”: “: provided that this Order shall not reduce the financial contribution payable to those hosting temporary protection beneficiaries”.

I am sharing time. I thank Sinn Féin for raising this issue in the Chamber today. We all know that no child should be denied their fundamental right to education, but across Ireland we see children with additional needs who are left without school places and we are forcing families into an endless battle with the system. It is not just a failure; it is a complete disgrace. All of us in this room, regardless of political background, where we come from or where we are sitting, have had heartbreaking conversations wit…

I wish to speak today about gender-based violence, the prevalence of which is still shockingly high in Ireland, where we are still very much facing an epidemic of gender-based violence. How we respond to gender-based violence needs to be strengthened, but to truly address GBV, we need to look at the prevention angle. The online sphere is a major contributing factor to GBV. Young people are spending significant time online, where they are being exposed to extremely harmful forms of masculinity with influencers who p…

I am delighted that the Minister of State feels this is an important issue and that it requires cross-party support, a cross-departmental response and an holistic response. I agree with the message behind that. However, I push back on the idea that the content reporting systems Coimisiún na Meán is implementing work; they do not. We have heard from civil society bodies such as Women's Aid, Safe Ireland and the National Youth Council that the work it is doing with respect to the code of conduct, code of practice and…

Tomorrow my party colleagues in the Lower Chamber will bring forward a Private Members' motion that calls for a people's vote on the retention of the triple lock, which we believe is fundamental to protecting Ireland's neutrality. The triple lock is a system that has long ensured any deployment of Irish Defence Forces overseas is based on multilateralism and peacekeeping. We in the Social Democrats believe it is only right to demand a plebiscite because this decision, one which is a major shift in our foreign polic…

I will speak about something that has already come from this side of the Chamber today. It relates to what we saw this week. On Monday night, when we were all out enjoying St. Patrick's Day or returning from our celebrations, we heard that Israel had broken the fragile ceasefire in Gaza. Once again, we saw images of the complete horror of these bombings on our social media and newsfeeds. We saw the carpet bombing of men, women and children. As of this morning, the Palestinian Embassy was talking about 104, but we h…

We are talking about healthcare but it is important that we remember that this is very much a children's rights issue which was recognised by the Ombudsman for Children. As Senator Clonan explicitly pointed out in his intervention, it is a disability rights issue as well. I hope in this debate and in the eventual implementation of this Bill that there will be a framework of disability and children's rights at its core. We already heard this evening about the waiting lists. They have been going up since December and…

Not all parents have the time to get elected to the Oireachtas to advocate for their children. They do not have the capacity. They might have multiple children. They might be working several jobs. Those kids, because they do not have parents who can fight and shout for them, are falling through the gaps. When healthcare systems receive pressure from parents, and rightly so, it is the children with the quieter advocates who do not get heard. The consequences of that are often that the sickest children are left behin…

I thank the Minister of State, Deputy Richmond, for coming to the Chamber. I am delighted to see him because it is fantastic to have this dialogue with the responsible Minister. I have asked to talk about overseas development assistance, an issue I know is close to the Minister of State’s heart. The international development sector, which has been absolutely decimated by the freeze placed on USAID projects by the Trump administration, stands at a really critical moment in Ireland and globally. At the end of Februar…

I thank the Minister of State. I appreciate his commitment to human rights and humanitarian aid, and I know it has always been on the Irish Government's agenda. However, it is so important that we really use the power that we have with the US and in the EU to reinforce just how abhorrent what we are about to see is. It also goes to the survival of many Irish organisations that live in the psyche of the Irish people, like Concern, Goal and Trócaire. The vital work they are doing is being undermined. They are closing…

I thank the Minister for coming to the House for this debate. We have already heard about medical gaslighting this afternoon. I suspect most, it not all, of the women in the Chamber can speak about experiences they have had when they have not been believed. Perhaps they have had really severe migraines and been told to try yoga or drink herbal tea. I once turned up in such severe pain to see a doctor that I was vomiting. I was given diazepam for stress. It turned out I had appendicitis. From what I have heard from …

I thank the Minister of State for coming today and thank the Fine Gael Senators for bringing forward this motion. We are talking about older people and sometimes we do so as though they are a homogenous group. However, I am sure we all know lots of older people who are living their best lives, hiking and skydiving. We need to think about them as individuals and the different supports we want, beyond thinking about older people as being helpless. I broadly support today's motion, but there are some vital considerati…

I will speak today to overseas development assistance, ODA. In recent weeks, in the early days of the Trump Administration, we have seen a cutting of USAID funding by approximately 50%, which has consisted of a complete cutting of staff overnight and a complete embargo on the implementation of humanitarian projects across the world. This week in the UK, Keir Starmer has brought the ODA of the UK Government down from 0.5% to 0.3%, which, according to BBC reports, will actually be 0.15% in practice because a lot of t…

I thank the Minister of State for attending. We have heard the phrases "once in a lifetime storm" and "unprecedented extreme weather event" so many times in recent years. We know these are not isolated incidents. For children growing up today, this is just the norm and their new reality. What was once considered rare is now a frequent weather event. All of us in this room acknowledge that climate change is driving that. We have to take that into account when planning and building resiliency in communities. For chil…

I thank the Minister of State for coming to speak to us today about this issue, which has obviously been in the public psyche. As all the other speakers have already said, people across cities, towns and rural areas are feeling a greater sense of threat. I live on the Carlow-Kilkenny border and rural communities are concerned for their safety, as we have heard from others. We heard that from Senator McCarthy last week, and from Senator Ahearn. We have heard about rural communities and farming communities. This is a…