He did lie to the House.

May I get a correction on the record?

I want to raise a particular case with the Tánaiste that I raised with the Taoiseach on 23 September. He asked me to send him the details. I did so but I just got an acknowledgement from the Minister for Justice on 25 September and nothing more despite further contact. In simple terms, it is about an Irish citizen who fled here from Iraq after ISIS had taken over Mosul. His father and other close family members were killed. He is currently in Ireland and is now an Irish citizen but his mother is effectively in limb…

I want to speak to amendment No. 6 and in favour of the similar amendments, which attempt to fix a real problem with the Bill. I am eager to hear the Minister of State's response to this. It is very welcome that this Bill is being progressed. It deals with what was until recently referred to as revenge porn. As Women's Aid pointed out, it is not revenge or porn but it is image-based sexual abuse. We know that for too long victims have had no legal recourse against this damaging form of abuse. It is thought to affec…

I welcome the fact the Minister of State has agreed to accept amendment No. 5. It is very welcome. On the point of consent, I do not think Deputy Murnane O'Connor's amendments work. What we do need are wider public education campaigns on consent. It is vital that older generations as well as young people understand what consent means. It should include mandatory consent, anti-harassment training and policies and complaints procedures in work places and organisations. The trade unions should have a crucial role to p…

We will withdraw these amendments on the basis of the previous argumentation.

I support Deputy Howlin's amendment because it goes some way to addressing an issue with this section. However, there remains a problem with the section even after this amendment. I would like to hear the Minister of State's response in this regard. It is to do with what constitutes "grossly offensive" communications. The main thrust of the Bill, and the main commentary around it, has rightly focused on image-based sexual abuse. However, nowhere is "grossly offensive" defined in such a way as to limit it to communi…

I am not convinced by the Minister of State's explanation in terms of the general point. To give a hypothetical, but a very real hypothetical, I could go onto Twitter now and find someone calling me whatever. In theory, a judge would only have to find that what the person said was "grossly offensive", which, by any literal standard, I am sure it would be, and that it was said with the intention of causing harm. The Minister of State is relying on that to say there is a very high bar. In fact, all the person has to …

I raise with the Taoiseach the treatment of Aer Lingus workers by company management. For five months now they have been blocked by management from getting the short-time working payment to which they are entitled. Workers have been providing the relevant UP12 forms to the company with the details of the reduced hours they are on. However, the company has not been forwarding that information accurately to the Department of Social Protection. Instead, continuously and consistently, the company has put the wrong info…

The Taoiseach's attempt to ram through the CETA deal this week has been pushed back but it is reported that he will try again in January to drive through what is bad deal for workers and the climate and a charter for billionaires and big businesses. This is a deal that gives corporations the right to sue states in a parallel justice system, which only corporations and investors can access, if governments and states take actions which impede their potential profits. I will give just three examples out of approximate…

That does not mean it is right.

We do not have to sign up to investor-state dispute settlement measures to do so.

What would the Taoiseach say to investors who sue the Irish State?

The Taoiseach does not even know what it stands for.

It is clear that it will be many months, and perhaps six months or more, before we will have a full roll-out of the vaccine across the country, which will obviously be enormously welcome. There will, however, be a significant time remaining where social distancing, ventilation and handwashing and a strategy based on investment in testing and tracing, etc., will be necessary to minimise and, if possible, eliminate community transmission. In that context, I ask the Taoiseach about the increased number of cases of Cov…

How many lives?

There is a balance between lives and what?

How much?

In October, the Minister admitted to me that it is common practice for universities to require PhD researchers to do five hours of teaching per week without payment. Similar to the situation with student nurses, the Minister tried to claim this was not work but merely an upskilling programme. These are workers working in universities through lockdown, running classes and laboratories, often by themselves, while students are paying the highest fees in the EU to be there. How can the Minister and the Government justi…

In the Minister's reply, there was much reference to transferable skills. It seems to me that he and the Department are at pains to avoid referring to work as work. Instead, it is about developing transferable skills. Although there are differences, there are also parallels with the situation for student nurses. In this case, the universities are reliant on free labour from PhD researchers. Without this work, universities would not be able to continue to function. The people in question are PhD researchers who are …