The economic impact of Covid has been shouldered overwhelmingly by ordinary workers and young people, lower paid workers in particular, while a tiny elite of billionaires have actually profited greatly. New figures from Forbes show that the wealth of billionaires increased by more than 60% during the pandemic. Denis O'Brien, owner of the Beacon Hospital and much more, is now €1.4 billion richer than a year ago. His wealth has increased by €4 million every day in the last year but we still have no wealth tax on mill…

What we had in the Dáil this afternoon was political theatre. This was shown most obviously and blatantly by the climate change denial group which was scaremongering about things that are not in the Bill for some cheap publicity and presumably, hopefully, for some votes down the line. This ignores the fact that it is the small farmers who they claim to stand up for and defend who will be impacted hard by the kind of climate crisis that is coming down the road if the world does not enact a very sharp turn and change…

Two days ago, public health officials requested that the USA, Germany and 41 other countries be added to the list for mandatory hotel quarantine. This is in order to prevent dangerous Covid variants from entering the country. We still have not heard if or when this is going to happen. Instead, we have the corporate lobbyists, IBEC, out pushing for this public health advice to be ignored because of its impact from a "business and investment reputational perspective". It seems those in IBEC believe the desire of bill…

I move: That leave be granted to introduce a Bill entitled an Act to provide for the protection of certain foreign nationals in employment in the State and for that purpose to amend the Employment Permits Act 2003, the Employment Permits Act 2006, the Protection of Employees (Employers' Insolvency) Act 1984 and the Employment Permits Regulations 2017 and to provide for related matters. I thank SIPTU and Migrant Rights Centre Ireland for their support for this Bill and for their work, along with others, in exposing …

I support this motion and thank Sinn Féin for tabling it. For too long, the hard work of carers has gone largely unrecognised, unsupported and unpaid by the State. The State and the Government have failed to care for the carers in our society. Every day, carers do crucial work supporting our most vulnerable but this and successive Governments largely view their work as a way to save money and for the State to outsource its responsibility to families, while providing those on the front line with very limited support…

In countries that followed a zero Covid strategy, the schools were largely able to stay open after the first lockdown. The same could have been done here last summer, but instead the Government decided on a yo-yo lockdown strategy that has seen schools having to close repeatedly. There is hope and the target of opening schools fully again, but with case numbers so high and the risk of a fourth wave that is underlined by NPHET, there are serious doubts and concerns. In the next ten days before schools are due to reo…

It is okay.

There is no problem. My jaw almost hit the floor during the Taoiseach's response when he said the meat plants have been dealt with. Tell that to the six meat factory workers currently hospitalised with Covid-19. Tell that to the meat factory workers in the two plants that have been added to the list of outbreaks in the latest weekly statistics. There are now open outbreaks in 27 of 56 meat plants that have supposedly been dealt with. In towns with meat plants, such as Tullamore, the rates of incidence are five time…

The CEO of Beacon private hospital was caught red-handed essentially stealing public vaccines, treating them as his personal property. He should not get any special treatment just because he is the boss at Denis O'Brien's private hospital and part of the golden circle. The Taoiseach says it was wrong and a gross breach of trust. I agree. The question is whether there will be any consequences. Does the Taoiseach agree his actions should be criminally investigated by the Garda? Does he agree there should be an indepe…

Last year, we launched a Bill to implement a complete ban on evictions and rent increases during the pandemic. The Government rejected that and instead adopted a piecemeal approach of banning evictions under certain conditions while the 5 km limit persisted. Now we have the potential lifting of the limit, which poses the possibility of opening the floodgates on a large number of evictions. Even worse, the Government's Bill that will be before the House today proposes to water down the protections for tenants who fa…

I am sharing time with Deputy Barry. We are now one quarter of the way through 2021 and this country has fully vaccinated less than 4% of the population. It is a similar picture in most countries in the EU because the issue we face at this stage is primarily one of supply. The immediate cause of this is the problems with AstraZeneca, which certainly seems to have sold its supply twice, to the EU and the UK, and then chosen to fulfil the ones it makes more money from, through its contract with the UK. The Taoiseach'…

I pay tribute to the Extend Maternity Leave 2020 campaign, which drove a grassroots campaign last year to extend paid maternity leave during the pandemic. More than 30,000 people signed a petition in support of that and the issue was debated in the Dáil. Unfortunately, because of the long and many delays before this comes into effect, the majority of those people who were campaigning then will not be able to benefit from it. They also correctly view this as the Government saying it is doing this in response to thei…

When I read the Government's amendment to our motion earlier, I thought that George Orwell had been resurrected and put to work. I am sure he would not want to be writing Government amendments. In Nineteen Eighty-Four , the slogan of the regime famously was "War is peace; freedom is slavery; ignorance is strength." The Government's amendment suggests that what are the highest fees in the EU are free fees. The free-fees scheme that is lauded in the Government's amendment ignores the reality as has been pointed out o…

This matter arises from a meeting we had with community drug project managers last week. The meeting represented a cry for help and an appeal for help to the Minister of State and the Government in respect of the projects in Tallaght and Whitechurch and, I am sure, throughout the city and country. There is a new drugs crisis in our communities. Widespread crack cocaine use is devastating families. They are paying drug debts, unable to afford food or to heat their homes or pay for electricity, going to the local sho…

The Minister of State's response really sums up the problem. That is not personal but the problem is summed up in the fact that it is the Minister of State, Deputy James Browne, giving the response rather than the Minister of State, Deputy Feighan, and the fact that the major thrust of the answer relates to justice, gardaí, extra resources and so on. This approach is not working. The crisis is getting worse. Those on the front line, who are playing a crucial role in helping a great many individuals with their probl…

The so-called Climate Action and Low-Carbon Development (Amendment) Bill 2020, or at least the first version of it, amounted to vague promises but no plan for real action. One important area that raises concern is the statement that "the means of achieving a climate neutral economy ... may evolve over time through innovation, evolving scientific consensus and emerging technologies". This amounts to kicking the can down the road and hoping for some technological fix to solve our problems. Will that be removed from t…

I have no problem with, or objection to, using technology in respect of electrification, better battery storage and better and more efficient renewable energy. The question relates to what is being spoken about here and whether this can be used for relying on technological sequestration solutions - the idea of carbon capture. It is the idea that in the future, a person will invent something we can use to suck all of the carbon out of the air, and basically we do not have to worry about it. The Minister knows that t…

If this is the Bill that is going to be published, and I would like to know when we are going to see the next version of it, then the Minister is going to provide a big escape clause for those who have to take action now, by implying that there will be big technological solutions in respect of carbon capture in the future. It is most problematic. The main carbon capture that we know of relates to forests and grass. They are things that we know and understand today. We cannot rely on these kind of miracle fixes for …

Workers have been treated appallingly during the pandemic. I refer to the front-line health workers, student nurses, Debenhams workers, Arcadia workers, taxi drivers and artists. The list could go on and on but among all the cases of abuses of groups of workers the treatment of workers in meat plants stands out as particularly shocking. They are low paid and highly exploited and are often migrant workers. They work in workplaces where a regime of fear and intimidation often exists, where almost 50% of workers say t…

If it is a populist conspiracy theory that the Government represents the interests of the beef barons and not the interests of the workers, why, ten months after this issue was first raised in the Dáil, has the Tánaiste not acted to introduce sick pay for beef factory workers? It is a very simple question. If the Government does not represent the interests of the beef barons, who had sales of €5 billion in 2018, which is huge money, why has serial testing been reduced at the plants? If the Government does not repre…