But the cut-off-----

I have raised this many times previously but the water quality in Clew Bay, County Mayo is being massively damaged at the moment. Raw sewage from Newport town is collected and stored in containers. When the high tide comes in to Clew Bay, it washes raw sewage on to the shoreline. Everyone is in agreement that a water treatment plant is needed for the town and it has been in the planning process for decades. There are significant issues in relation to the Maritime Area Regulatory Authority, MARA, which is not meetin…

I want to raise concerns about the Supreme Court ruling in Britain on religious education and collective worship in the North of Ireland. Aontú is a pluralist republican party. I believe it is really important that all parents can choose the ethos of the school they wish to send their children to. Catholic schools played a significant role in the lives of nationalist families. They were a safe place for Catholics in the North and promoted the Irish language and games.

Will the Taoiseach engage with his counterpart-----

-----in Britain to ensure we can retain our Catholic schools in the North? Schools can be an inclusive-----

-----place and a religious place.

I very much welcome the opportunity to speak on this today. It is almost four years since the invasion occurred. It is important that we acknowledge in the House the role Ireland has played over the four years. In particular, I commend the Irish citizens and communities who have worked so hard on integrating people from Ukraine and supporting them, right across my constituency and right across Ireland. What is happening is utterly barbaric and the loss of life is really difficult to comprehend. I spoke to a Ukraini…

That is where it came from.

I urge the Government to remember where this triple lock came from.

I will not interrupt the Minister of State and I would appreciate the opportunity to finish. The triple lock is under threat from this Government. That is the case. It is a vital safeguard to protect neutrality. Removing the triple lock would remove the third arm of the lock and would allow the Government, which is effectively the Cabinet, to act. As Deputy John McGuinness said here not so long ago, the Government is increasingly becoming a small number of individuals. It is not simply the Cabinet but the leaders o…

Let the Irish people decide what their view is on the triple lock and neutrality in this country.

I welcome the farming organisations this evening and thank Sinn Féin for bringing forward this motion. Last week, the Climate Change Advisory Council of Ireland outlined that if we continue on our current trajectory around carbon emissions, this country will face up to €26 billion of fines by 2030. It is an incredible sum of money - €26 billion. At the same time that our European institutions, and indeed our Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael Governments, have signed us up to these fines, they are also about to sign us up t…

Ah come on. It is not the Department, it is the Government.

Who runs the Department?

Who runs the Government?

You cannot be biased on-----

I congratulate President Catherine Connolly on her remarkable success and wish her well as Uachtarán na hÉireann. However, there has been a crisis of democracy - a huge democratic deficit in democracy - in this election. Three hundred and seventeen thousand people either spoiled their votes or voted for a withdrawn candidate. In some constituencies, the proportion of spoiled votes was north of 20%. Many boxes across the country showed that the number of spoiled votes was actually higher than the number of votes rec…

I welcome the auto-enrolment scheme. It is a significant step forward for an estimated 800,000 employees across this country. There have been significant false starts and delays with the scheme. The Department must do a huge body of work in terms of advertising and communicating with people about the scheme and to ensure that people across Ireland can make an informed decision about entering into the scheme or potentially opting out. However, I have significant concerns about small businesses. Employers are facing …

I condemn the horrible attacks that happened on the IPAS centre in Drogheda. I welcome the fact that the Government has done such a U-turn on immigration and its rhetoric. It is quite incredible to be sitting here listening to an immigration debate with comments by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael TDs that they would have been called racist just a year ago. Where was the critical thinking then? Where was the independent thought a year or two years ago? It is amazing to hear Government Members raising concerns and talking …

I welcome the Bill and thank my colleagues in Sinn Féin for bringing it forward. We will support the Bill because it is about simplicity. The more simple we keep uniforms and the whole back-to-school experience, the cheaper it will become for families. In Mayo, as throughout the country, families are struggling. September brings significant financial fear due to all the costs associated with going back to school, including the cost of uniforms, shoes, warm coats, schoolbooks and, increasingly, IT equipment. I spoke…