Why not?

Has the co-ordination committee discussed the issue of ventilation? Last September, during Leaders' Questions, I said, "One crucial, immediate issue is that of ventilation." Since then, I and People Before Profit have consistently pushed for serious energy and effort to be given to ventilation in workplaces to help to combat Covid. It is ten months on from then. Last week, when I questioned the Tánaiste at the enterprise committee, he admitted that there are still no legally enforceable standards for ventilation. T…

In response to Deputy Barry on the issue of JobBridge 2.0, the Taoiseach was coy about what he described as the pathways to work scheme. The language he used in respect of activating people who are unemployed, in particular young people, was strikingly reminiscent of the language used around JobBridge. Let us remind ourselves what "scambridge" was about. It involved tens of thousands of workers being grossly exploited. They were compelled to work for free for nine months in fear of losing their social welfare benef…

The situation of domestic abuse calls to the Garda being ignored is a major scandal. It is not a scandal that should be ended with an apology and a promise to do better. In just one shocking case a woman phoned 999 three times in one hour begging for help for her and her children. In her first call she reported she was being assaulted, in her second call she explained her partner was threatening her children, and when she did not hear back she phoned a third time to plead for help. All three calls were ignored; she…

I thank Mr. Zalewski and his legal team for pursuing this case and laying bare the fantasy that operates in relation to third-party arbitration and industrial relations in this country. That fantasy is that we have, as the Government insists on saying over and over again, a voluntarist system, that is, a system whereby that employers and employees are equal and agree freely to enter or not to enter into contracts or employment. Behind the technical definitions, legal interpretations and judgment in the Zalewski cas…

It is on the public record. I will quote one paragraph from a magazine article. It does not name any individuals or anything like that.

He said: [T]he proper work of the labour inspectorate in ensuring that employers in low-pay sectors of the economy comply with the state’s most basic employment rights legislation is being deliberately undermined by a management that sees its [primary] function as facilitating some employers in circumventing the very legislation they are supposed to be enforcing thereby leaving vulnerable workers at the mercy of unscrupulous employers. This is something to which the Government has not responded properly. The indivi…

It has been 13 years since the 2007-08 crisis, a crisis for which people paid a significant price and at the very centre of which in Ireland and around the world were the banks and private banking. However, it seems that almost no fundamental lessons have been learned because in the aftermath of that crisis, as well as massive austerity being heaped onto ordinary working-class people, the banks were bailed out and nationalised in order to save them. Since then, we have been on a road back to private ownership of th…

I pay tribute to Deputy Bríd Smith and the People Before Profit activists involved in working on this Bill. In particular, I pay tribute to the organisations of retired workers that have campaigned and fought on this issue and sought change. There is an extremely long list of them that is too long to read out. There is a crucial context to the Bill, which is often apparent in the Dáil. That context can only be described as a war on pensions. It has been going on for a number of decades. Defined benefit scheme after…

We have all heard about the undocumented Irish living in the United States. Less commented upon are the approximately 20,000 undocumented people from outside the EU who are living in Ireland, including 2,000 to 3,000 children. It has been reported that almost a quarter of those people are earning below the minimum wage, with nearly half of them working more than 40 hours a week. They are facing extra exploitation due to their immigration status. They also face issues like lack of proper healthcare for themselves an…

We did not get any answers.

As I listened to the Taoiseach's press statement yesterday when he spoke about us being in a race between the vaccine and the variant, I was reminded of something I said in the Dáil on 27 May last: We are, therefore, in a race against time to complete two doses of vaccines before the Indian variant becomes dominant here. It is a race we are likely to lose unless we take action, and it is very simple. We need to follow the advice that is being given to implement mandatory hotel quarantine at airports and ports for t…

The continued refusal of the EU to back the TRIPS waiver of intellectual property on Covid vaccines is an absolute scandal. It is a clear example of profit before people. It is about protecting the intellectual property and rights of the big pharmaceutical companies. It is about doing that now so they can profit from the Covid vaccines in the future. More fundamentally, it is about protecting their intellectual property and their rights to intellectual property in future because they fear conceding at this point on…

I believe this to be a very poor approach by the Government. There is something quite undemocratic about an approach that takes a Bill to do with licensing, outdoor drinking and so on and that includes in that Bill an increase in the number of High Court judges. It means that it is not the focal point of the debate and discussion. Something that is not urgent and which should be part of a proper discussion is being stuck into urgent legislation. It is a very poor approach by the Government. On the thrust and the ma…

I also want to deal with the question of Bank of Ireland. The Minister for Finance described it as a phased exit from the State’s stake in the bank. What that translates as is a process of full privatisation. After having bailed out the banks when they were in difficulty, fattened them up with public funds and returned them to profitability, we now propose to hand them back fully over to the private market which crashed them and caused the crisis in the first place. It is a disastrous decision from the point of vie…

-----a public utility in the interests of society, used for example to provide credit for people in terms of the housing crisis.

The Government tells us we are to have an outdoor summer, which is very important for wellness, but over a year into a pandemic the outdoor public facilities are still entirely inadequate. I will give an example. In the South Dublin County Council area there are many beautiful parks, but the bins are overflowing, there are very few spaces for people to sit with friends and family and there are almost no toilets. People are suffering from an underinvestment in facilities and in staff to take care of them. Last year,…

I am not sure whether the Taoiseach saw the footage from ITV in Britain last week relating to the practices of Amazon. In its fulfilment centres in that country, the company is destroying up to 200,000 products, and an average of 124,000 to 130,000, per week. Those products are in perfectly good condition, from toasters to televisions to face masks. They could be used but are instead being destroyed in an effort to maximise Amazon's profits. In January next year, the company will open its first fulfilment centre in…

I start by quoting from James Geoghegan, the Fine Gael by-election candidate in Dublin Bay South. On 28 May he released a press statement which stated, "I am alarmed by the revelation today that tenants in the rental accommodation sector could potentially face a double rent increase of 8% when measures providing for a temporary ban on evictions and a rent freeze that were implemented during Covid-19 are due to end in July." Of course, he did not mention that his Government is responsible for the legal situation whe…

The Irish Council for Civil Liberties, ICCL, has described this Act as "the single biggest denial of fair trial rights in our legal system". It is completely correct and that is why People Before Profit will be opposing this, as we have consistently done. I would urge other parties to join us in opposing this, particularly the Green Party and Sinn Féin, which previously also opposed the extension. The UN Human Rights Committee, Amnesty International and even former President Mary Robinson have all spoken out about …