Like others, my thoughts are with the young girl who was the victim of an alleged sexual assault in Saggart last night and her family. While there are issues regarding security around IPAS centres and asylum policy in general - issues I will continue to follow up on - we must, of course, let the gardaí take their investigation through the process. However, there are also questions for Tusla. I note the Taoiseach stated that the national review panel would investigate the circumstances surrounding the child abscondi…

We are waiting to see whether Deputy Fitzmaurice comes in or whether we can use his time allocated in our slot. My colleague tells me we can use the time. Deputy Lawless got to use some of it and I will use some as well, with the permission of the Acting Chair. This is another chance to talk about the budget overall, although we are looking at the specific measures in the Bill itself. I support the calls by the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council, as I have before, that we need to start tightening up a little bit because…

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Ar an gcéad dul síos, ba mhaith liom a rá gur poblachtánach mé, cosúil le gach duine eile anseo. Ach deir roinnt daoine gur féidir linn a bheith réalaíoch freisin. Mar sin, ba mhaith liom Éire aontaithe a fheiceáil a luaithe agus is féidir linn ach ní féidir é seo a dhéanamh gan cúpla rud - toil na gceardchumann, mar shampla. We only have four minutes each to speak on this and we cannot say a lot. First, I thank Sinn Féin for putting this motion down. I agree that we need to plan for a united Ireland if we are to e…

I have tabled this question as I have long been an advocate of multiuse school buildings. I want to get an update from the Minister on a response I received from the Department on how to repurpose the design of buildings so they can be used in a safe way so we can educate schoolchildren and have a creche on one side, a meeting room for community events later and enough space for full-sized pitches that can be used during the day for organisations such as Cumann na mBunscoil and at night by the community. That is on…

I thank the Minister of State. In relation to the situation at Citywest, I thank him for his comments. I want to add that residents who may have been in fear because of some incidents of antisocial behaviour in the community by a very small minority of residents at the IPAS centre are now in fear of rioters. Property was damaged tonight. Implements were taken out of people's gardens and used as weapons against gardaí. I thank the Minister of State for sharing my condemnation. On the response to this Topical Issue, …

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this Bill. Let us be positive starting off. We know the Bill is going to unlock the €1.5 billion announced in the budget for the tertiary education sector over the period mentioned, up to 2030. That is welcome and you have to commend the investment. I welcome that it is continually updating previous schemes. Ostensibly, it is trying to modernise the system. I have some criticisms which I will go into in a while but I want to focus on the positives too. It is also a positive tha…

I express my solidarity and thanks to Deputy Ward for bringing the motion before the House. He has done exactly what he said he would do. He is the 100% Redress Party representative, and he is using every opportunity he can to get 100% redress. It is great to see other Members, from the west and north west, in particular, showing support and solidarity today. As someone who is Dublin-based, I have met people who had families broken up because of the situation, who are living in uncertainty and who have been financi…

Increasingly, I have had constituents get on to me about multiple bus lane violations and pedestrian traffic light violations where kids are crossing and cars continue to go through the lights. There are fewer members of the Garda Síochána per head of population since 2008, although the numbers have been increasing. We have a Garda National Roads Policing Bureau, formerly the traffic corps. However, at this stage we need a dedicated traffic and parking enforcement agency, separate to An Garda Síochána, which would …

In the spirit of my predecessor, I am also going to play the ball and not the man. This is an issue about scoliosis and spina bifida treatment. It is about what we learned yesterday at the presentation organised by Senator Tom Clonan, the heartbreak that was caused by the systemic failure of successive Governments and Children's Health Ireland, but also before the existence of Children's Health Ireland. The way families were treated was absolutely inhumane and shocking. I cannot even imagine what it was like becaus…

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this legislation. As others have said, it is a little bit of tweaking to keep us going until next year. As the Minister said, it will allow sufficient headroom to continue lending to mid-2026, after which there could be a new national housing plan and a new national development plan. We know that the €13.5 billion threshold is a holding position. Like the speakers from all the other groupings so far, I will support it - it is extra money - while emphasising that we still need t…

Today Senator Tom Clonan hosted a briefing on the challenges still facing children with scoliosis and spinal bifida. While we look at this area again in its own right, I reiterate my support for a full public inquiry on the whole scandal regarding the treatment of children awaiting scoliosis operations and related treatments, covering the entire lifespan of Children's Health Ireland but also going back to the years preceding its establishment. We need to shine a light on this shameful period and learn from the mist…

The most recent time I raised this matter last June, I criticised the current state of Ireland's family court system and highlighted delays, poor facilities and, in particular, a lack of transparency due to the in camera rule. In response, the Minister acknowledged the widespread public frustration with the family law processes. He said that the full removal of the in camera rule was unlikely due to the need to protect children's identities, but that reform was on the way via the family law implementation group wor…

We need to shine more light on these situations. In family disputes involving children, people will sometimes attempt to alienate the kids. The Minister referred to reports. In relation to section 32 and section 47 reports, we have had cases where people have almost treated parental alienation as a proven case when it is not. It is almost like a cult. Immersion therapy is recommended, where children are taken away from their mother for months on end. This is often used as a form of coercive control by a partner who…

I believe it is important to keep the pressure on and to keep working on this issue. In many instances, these so-called experts are not actually qualified, and in many instances they are actually being paid by one parent to produce the report because the other parent cannot afford to have a similar report. It is not a fair situation and the more the media are able to shed light on the situation and the more scrutiny put on it, the less likely it will be that these types of cases will occur in future.

Yesterday evening I spoke about the macro situation and how the Fiscal Advisory Council had urged a cooling down, because the corporation tax receipts were not going to last forever and that this budget, in one sense because it came after a giveaway election budget, had shades of 2007. Now I want to move on to some of the specific measures in the budget. During the votes last night I got to talk about the apartment VAT recommendation, which I fundamentally disagree with. That €250 million could be spent in other ar…

I welcome the opportunity to speak on budget 2026. In this contribution, I would like to mainly focus on the macro issues and some of the key measures announced, while in my slot tomorrow I hope to go more into individual measures in terms of what is welcome, what is unwelcome and what is a missed opportunity. There are plenty of missed opportunities both day to day and strategic. First, and I do not think too many people have, we need to look at the context. This budget has echoes of 2007. In the budget before the…

I particularly want to speak to resolution No. 4. However, I welcome No. 3 and the continuation of the 9% rate of VAT for electricity. While in some people's view it does not do so entirely, it does in some way mitigate the removal of the measures to help people pay their bills. I agree with others that maybe it should have been continued for another year. I note the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council's advice that if we take out the corporation tax receipts, which were very tight, we are possibly spending beyond our me…

I did not get the opportunity to speak yesterday so, first, I wish to acknowledge the humanitarian work being done by the volunteers on the flotilla, trying to get food and medicine directly to the people of Gaza in the face of starvation, violence and ongoing oppression from the Israeli state. I acknowledge that many of those participating are Irish citizens, as others have said, including our own Senator Chris Andrews and Deputy Barry Heneghan, whom I was honoured to be asked to facilitate by means of providing a…