On behalf of People Before Profit, I would like to express our condolences to the families of both Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh and Tommie Gorman. They both had a significant impact on public life over decades in different ways. Has the Taoiseach reflected on the High Court's decision on Friday last to the effect that the Standards in Public Office Commission, SIPO, did not provide adequate reasoning for its failure to start a preliminary investigation into my complaint against Deputy Varadkar. This complaint, which I …

International mining companies, including a subsidiary of the world's largest lithium producer, Ganfeng Lithium Corporation, are on the Taoiseach's doorstep in west Wicklow. They are prospecting for lithium and mapping for a mine at Moylisha Hill. Local people and campaigners I met are very worried about the impact this will have on the Wicklow Way, on biodiversity and on water quality. An aquifer that runs underneath Moylisha Hill supplies all local bore holes and rises at streams that feed into the Barrow and Sla…

People should be concerned about how easily, quickly and smoothly this House passes severe restrictions on people's civil liberties year after year, extending supposed emergency powers and denying people basic human rights. There are two and a bit hours of debate, a couple of votes and off we go for another year until we repeat this farce again. We should identify what this debate is about. It is about denying the right of people to have jury trials. Under the Constitution, this is a fundamental right and an aspect…

It is hard to know where to start, such is the scale of the horrific abuse of horses revealed in the "RTÉ Investigates" programme broadcast last week. The first thing to do is to thank the makers of the programme and the whistleblowers who spoke to them, and acknowledge the investment of resources and so on undertaken by RTÉ to reveal what is taking place in this massively publicly-funded industry, namely, the horrendous abuse of horses. I also thank those campaigners from organisations such as My Lovely Horse Resc…

Unfortunately, I do not believe the Minister of State that no stone will be left unturned, as we have been here before. There have been similar revelations in the past, yet the situation continued. There is an industry that is politically influential and powerful. Every time I raise the matter with the Minister, he spends his time talking about how great the industry is and so on. It is why we give it almost €100 million per year. What flows from trying to make profit out of animals without proper regulation, for e…

This is a huge issue affecting hundreds of thousands of people in this country. One in three mortgage holders is paying at least €3,000 more per year than they were just one year ago. One in five is paying almost €6,000 extra a year. This is a huge cost-of-living crisis which has its roots in the same profiteering that lies behind the rising cost of rents, food and fuel. All of them are caused by profiteering corporations and a Government which refuses to do anything about any of these crises. The reason it gives, …

Around 15,000 young people in this country are legally paid less than the minimum wage. They are discriminated against for no reason other than their age. Some of those who represent those workers in Mandate are in the Gallery now. There will be a protest by those affected at 1 p.m. outside the Dáil. We have a national minimum wage of €12.70 an hour. It is an amount that is clearly inadequate given the cost-of-living and housing crises. However, 19-year-olds are legally allowed to be paid 90% of that, or €11.43 an …

I am quite struck by the Minister’s answer. I was asking about 17-year-olds getting paid €8.89 an hour - poverty wages - and she spent probably three quarters of her answer talking about all the supports for businesses that Fine Gael is going to provide. There is legalised super-exploitation of young workers taking place right now. The Government has a commission report which looked into all the things she spoke about. It looked into the impact on employment and said there is no real impact on employment. It looked…

I want to raise the issue of Palestinian third level students who are going to be here as a consequence of the genocide that their families are experiencing in Gaza. Perhaps they are able to flee, have already fled or are going to be fleeing here over the next period. I was in touch with the Taoiseach and his office previously when he was Minister for higher education regarding a particular case that is still ongoing and is illustrative of the issue. Amir is a 19-year-old Gaza man who is studying at TU Dublin. He a…

Who is being elevated?

The minimum essential standard of living report was published today and it is pretty damning. It shows that social welfare is lagging behind basic needs. In more than three quarters of the cases at which the report looked, people had an inadequate income. In 43% of cases, people had a deeply inadequate income. It found that the costs of a minimum essential standard of living, that is, the very basics one needs to have the basics of a decent life, have gone up by nearly 17% since 2020. Food has gone up by more than …

I had a look again through the programme for Government. I was struck by the number of commitments to improve animal welfare standards. There is even a reference to prioritising equine welfare based on a robust traceability system, which would certainly raise eyebrows after last weeks RTÉ's "Prime Time Investigates" programme. I will focus on Dublin Zoo, an issue I raised previously. There is evidence to suggest that the zoo continues to fall below appropriate animal welfare standards. There have been protected dis…

There has been so much scaremongering about the nature restoration law over the past couple of years that you would have thought it is a powerful law that will drive farmers off their land. The truth is it is anything but. We have another EU proposal that has been gutted again and again by right wing parties in Europe, egged on by the big agribusiness and big farmer lobby. To top it off, it has not even been passed by the Council of Ministers yet and, given the swing to the right in the European elections, it is qu…

I, too, wish to raise the issue of Lough Neagh. People will remember the horrific scenes they saw last year with the toxic algae on the lake, mirrored to a slightly lesser degree in many other lakes right across this island, North and South. We know it is not a North-only issue. We know it is not an issue that respects any border. We know also from this morning's EPA report that water quality is not getting any better in the South. On some measures, it is getting worse. The quality of water has improved in 187 wate…

I ask the Taoiseach to condemn in the strongest possible terms the massacre and slaughter of civilians at the Nuseirat refugee camp in Gaza. Under the guise of rescuing hostages, of whom four were rescued but another three killed, almost 300 people were killed. It seems clear that war crimes were committed here, including the war crime of perfidy. Soldiers hiding in a supposedly humanitarian truck is obviously a war crime precisely because it places other humanitarian aid workers in danger as it gives rise to the t…

Also on the issue of housing, I am not sure if the Taoiseach saw it but there was a Central Bank report yesterday that projected that more than one quarter of Dublin office space could be vacant over the next two years. This is a potential game-changer as regards the housing crisis. The accommodation in question is a significant untapped resource. Total office space in Dublin was estimated at 3.9 million sq. m back in 2020. A quarter of that is enough space for more than 20,000 apartments in Dublin. We know it can …

They were moved yesterday with nowhere to go.

I thank all the People Before Profit activists who stood for election and campaigned for our candidates and all those people who voted for us. We plan to use our increased council representation to fight for working class people across this country. Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil are looking pretty pleased with themselves today. I think the Taoiseach said that Fine Gael did better in these elections. Pride comes before a fall.

One crucial fact that should be mentioned is that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael combined had the lowest percentage vote in the history of the State in local elections. Their vote share dropped. They did not have a better election. They had a worse election. Their parties are still deeply unpopular.

A general election will focus the minds. If a clear left alternative is on offer and there is a chance to end the rule of 100 years of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, which are responsible for the housing crisis, the health crisis, the lack of action on the cost of living, and the disgraceful situation facing families with kids with additional needs, I think many people will take that chance and a much greater number of people will turn out to do that. We will see. In this election, we saw a cynical attempt by the Gover…