It seems to me that what has happened is effectively a corporate or partially corporate capture of our research programme. If it continues, this is going to be to the detriment of all of us and the detriment of our education system and society, which will lose out on research that does not have an immediate commercial application and, therefore, is not being prioritised under the new strategy. The petitioners emphasise that there was a lack of participatory process in the development of this strategy. It was not ba…

Just to confirm, the Minister is saying that he is open to changes continuing to take place to this strategy. That would obviously be welcome. I ask the Minister to commit to prioritising research that is for the public good. "Research on economic inequities, democratic participation, mental health, housing injustices, climate justice, education, and the full range of human experiences and societal processes must be valued on its own terms". That is a quote from the petition, which I think is very important. The cu…

The number one reform that would make the most difference is ensuring that apprentices at least get the national minimum wage from the start. That is not a radical demand. I was previously on the committee and this came up with everybody we spoke to - apprentices having to pay loads of money for tools and so on and not even getting the minimum wage. At the very least, let us give apprentices the minimum wage.

That is a bit of a hard case to make to young people who are looking at their options and see that they will be getting paid €7.67 an hour in the first year, or just over half the national minimum wage. I am in favour of an increased student grant and so on, but the difference is that these people are working. They are creating value for their employers. It is a real obstacle. According to Mr. Ben Friel, who was at the Joint Committee on Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science when I was a me…

An apprentice - a first-year motor mechanic - contacted me after we introduced the Bill. He said: I am currently working a 40-hour week at €6.20 an hour. I am expected to pay for my own tools. To be fair, the employer I am with gives a tool allowance of €250 but that would barely get you much. To even get into an apprenticeship in Ireland it is a minimum requirement across most trades you must be able to drive and hold a licence. As a first year, I am expected to pay the extortionate prices of insurance on top of l…

I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time." It is an honour to finally be moving this at Second Stage after the Animal Health and Welfare (Ban on Hare Coursing) Bill was first introduced in 2020. It has been a long road getting to this point. This section of the road will finish next Wednesday with a vote. I will start and finish with an appeal to the public to get on to their TDs and demand they reflect the big majority opinion in this country that we should take this opportunity to ban hare coursing. This …

Even Elon Musk?

I cannot call Elon Musk a psychopath.

If you cannot say that, what can you say?

Thank you. I will keep going. For anyone concerned about biodiversity, the impact of coursing on the Irish hare population should be a major concern. A National Parks and Wildlife Service study indicates an eight times lower survival rate for hares after they are released from coursing. That is a significant additional stressor on wild hare populations, which are already in decline, along with most of our other native species. Those involved in the practice of coursing and capturing the hares each year know that. E…

Yes.

I thank all the Deputies who participated in the debate. I will start on the point about hare coursing being highly regulated, and that we do not give that more credit to that and to the idea that animal welfare is a top priority. Let us consider what hare coursing is in essence. You can regulate it all you like - and we are in favour of more regulation - but the essence of it involves going into the wild and capturing hares who are out there living their lives. They might sometimes be brutally short lives because …

That is all it is.

That is all it is for you. As long as we are not in NATO we are neutral.

I did not. Check the record.

Today is 30 June. It should go down as the day of the bonfire of our climate targets. In this one swift afternoon, we will make real the Minister's softly saying just after Christmas this year that we would not reach our energy targets. What does that look like in reality? It looks like ramming through measures, with no parliamentary oversight, no proper debate and, in the case of the next Bill we will discuss, no economic impact assessment, which will mean we are not coming close to meeting our climate targets bec…

I will try to be swift, so we can move on. We have heard the same speech from Deputy Danny Healy-Rae on a number of occasions, effectively denying human-caused climate change by saying we have had storms and extreme weather events in the past. Yes, we have had storms and extreme weather events in the past. That is not evidence against human-created climate change. The evidence is very clear. There is a clear scientific consensus. Deputy Healy-Rae says he has heard that some paper exists that proves the climatologis…

I am less concerned about that. It is fine. The main thing I have a problem with is that we have a Government that did not really make an effort there to object to the climate denialism but will, on occasion, object to climate denialism and will say it recognises the science. We have a Government that says climate change is real and accepts that climate change is caused by fossil fuels. It accepts that climate change is a consequence of the greenhouse gas emissions. It says we are going to sign up to legally bindin…

The Minister was not here when I spoke earlier on the LNG Bill, so I will make the point to him now. What the Minister is doing tonight is disgraceful. This is, in six hours, a bonfire of our climate commitments. What we are seeing in action is the Minister's abandonment of targets that we were told many times were legally binding and, therefore, we did not need to worry and the Government would do everything. This is what this means. It is what the Minister has done in terms of LNG. It is what the Minister is doin…

Being honest, I did not intend to speak on these amendments - I was going to wait until later - but when a substantial debate, which should go on for a long period in a committee room, is squeezed into two hours, it invariably turns into Second Stage speeches because it is our last chance to have a say on it. For me, this is the third leg of a bonfire. I know bonfires do not have legs but I am referring to whatever the wooden structures are that go around a serious bonfire. This is the third one we have had in one …