Well done.

Well said.

Well said.

He missed his holiday. It is done now.

I echo the call regarding the post office in Caherconlish. One of the things that amazed me as I was getting into this issue this week is that Caherconlish has doubled its population in the last decade to 1,500 people so it is hard to understand how a post office there would not be viable. It would be great if the Leader would be kind enough to write to the Minister to see what else can be done to support the people of Caherconlish. The key issue I want to speak on today is housing. I found it chilling to hear that…

Well said.

It is always good to see the Minister of State, particularly after a fine win against Laois at the weekend. This is comprehensive and complex legislation which transposes an EU directive, while also making additional changes to benefit the national competition authorities, namely, the CCPC and ComReg. The CCPC is the primary enforcement body for competition law in this State. It has the power to play an enormous role in tackling white-collar crime if it is given the correct powers and is resourced properly. The CCP…

Well said.

It is good to see the Minister of State. He is welcome. The Bill is to be welcomed for the most part. My colleagues in the Dáil have played a key role in terms of amendments to the Bill. Improving the existing legislation is long overdue. Down the years, we have heard all too often of the horror stories and treatment of whistleblowers when they came forward and spoke out. Attempts by authorities to protect their reputations have often resulted in destroying the whistleblowers' reputations. There is usually a circli…

Well said.

Well done, Senator.

I congratulate my trade union colleagues in the Labour Party on this short Bill. It has a very simple and clear purpose: to ban unpaid internships by bringing interns under the remit of minimum wage legislation. It is a progressive Bill and something we should all be able to support. I am pleased to see the Minister of State is not opposing it at this stage. I hope there is genuine consultation after this evening to see how we can progress this Bill. It is very important. It is very important to listen to the examp…

I raise the issue of the strike taking place today by the Medical Laboratory Scientists Association, MLSA. It is their second week of industrial action. These workers are essential to the health service. Unfortunately, last week, as a result of just one day of strike action, 14,000 outpatient appointments were cancelled. Now these workers have had to embark on a second week of industrial action. To be frank, I am at a complete loss as to how the Government has let this situation arise. The Minister of State knows f…

I thank the Minister of State for his response, although I have to say it is just a standard textbook response which means nothing to the workers involved in this dispute. It is quite outrageous for the Minister for Health, Deputy Stephen Donnelly, to say he is disappointed that the strike action has proceeded. With all due respect the Minister for Health, Deputy Stephen Donnelly, is completely missing the point. These workers have had 20 years of trying to get pay justice and they have been ignored at every turn. …

I salute the An Lá Dearg protest that took place in Belfast at the weekend. Anyone who watched it on television would say that it was spectacular. There must have been at least 20,000 people there. Even though my colleague, Senator Niall Ó Donnghaile, is quite a young man, I noticed that most of the people who took part were younger than him. It was such a vibrant and powerful protest. Of course, their key ask is absolutely just and it is that we see Acht na Gaeilge made law in the North. I express my solidarity an…

Well said.

The Minister of State is very welcome. It is great to see him taking a constructive approach to this Bill. Sinn Féin fully supports the Bill. We believe it is really important. I thought it might be appropriate to come in on this section because the issue of how we carry out procurement is crucial to changing our economy and our communities for the better. Sinn Féin is now very much wedded to policies of community wealth-building as it recognises its value. Procurement is central to that. The criteria could be chan…

Hear, hear.

We are discussing an interesting topic. One of the frustrations that I had as a trade union official was that we had companies winning contracts to build schools that consistently disregarded Labour Court judgments and would not pay Labour Court judgments. When I brought this matter to the attention of Departments they basically said that there is a procurement process and there is nothing they could do. So the same company, which meted out horrendous abuse, particularly to foreign nationals in terms of the non-pay…

I begin by agreeing with others on the death and the horrific circumstances around the funeral of Shireen Abu Akleh in Palestine, which I also raised last Thursday. The key ask is that we recognise and understand that we should not be treating Israel as a normal state. We should recognise and state what the whole world knows to be true, namely, that Israel is an apartheid state. We need to hear Government Ministers recognise and state that fact. In all honesty, that is the only way to go from this point onwards. We…