I add my voice to that. Never in the history of the State have I seen a Bill that bypassed the democratic processes by so much. Some 40,000 people received fines in the past year for going about normal activities. The Taoiseach has bypassed the Dáil to go to RTÉ and make announcements, while Deputies cannot get a chance to challenge him on this. The idea that a Bill of such import would be guillotined in such a manner is absolutely wrong.

This weekend, an enormous number of young people were literally hammered from on high over their congregation in a number of public spaces in Dublin. It stands to reason this has happened because the public spaces where they would normally congregate have closed, so people have been corralled into smaller spaces.

If pubs and restaurants were open during that time, people would have had a chance to socialise in a structured fashion-----

Will the Taoiseach see to it that those pubs can open outside before the weekend so we do not have the same situation at the weekend?

I welcome the motion. I welcome the fact that the Rural Independent Group is calling for a beef regulator. The beef industry in this country is a national disgrace. We have a system built on the poverty and misery of tens of thousands of beef farmers. We have many markets that are dysfunctional. While I am thinking of housing and insurance, I am definitely thinking of the beef sector. There is an oligopoly whereby a small number of factories make hundreds of millions of euro in profit annually, much of which is tax…

The families and representatives of the victims of the Ballymurphy massacre were before the Good Friday Agreement committee yesterday. They movingly told of their experiences and what happened to them. The actions of the British in murdering its own citizens 50 years ago were those of a rogue state. The British took action to stop people finding out the truth in the intervening time and those were also the actions of a rogue state. The British are now reneging on international agreements that they have signed in th…

What about the Stormont House Agreement?

My political party, Aontú, is vehemently opposed to this Bill and I will be voting against it, as I did in its previous incarnation. I have been amazed by the lack of analysis of what has happened in this society in recent months. The political and media classes have done little analysis of what is going on. I understand we have gone through a crisis and I understand that, at times, there was a danger of the health service being overwhelmed and protections needed to be put in place to make sure that did not happen.…

I move: That leave be granted to introduce a Bill entitled an Act to establish a review group to examine the route of the electricity interconnection between the State and Northern Ireland of the project known as the North-South Interconnector, to define the review group's terms of reference and to require it to submit a report to the Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications as regards the placement of high voltage power cables on the route of the North-South Interconnector in the State, and to prov…

I move: "That the Bill be taken in Private Members' time."

First, I want to give full credit to the Regional Group and Ms Cáit Nic Amhlaoibh for developing and bringing this really important Private Members' motion to the Dáil. Water is a building block of life and the provision of adequate water infrastructure is the building block of a functional society. Wastewater treatment services are vital for nearly every part of Irish society. The political heat has obviously gone out of water since the days of the Fine Gael and Labour Party water tax but it is still incredibly re…

I move: That leave be granted to introduce a Bill entitled an Act to enable Members of the Parliament of Britain and the north of Ireland elected in respect of any part of the north of Ireland to sit, pose questions and speak in the Dáil; and to provide for related matters. Two and a half years ago, I had a conversation with Francie Brolly about building a new all-Ireland movement. We decided we wanted to build a common-sense movement that would help unite Ireland, North and South, and the people, North and South. …

I move: "That the Bill be taken in Private Members' time."

The HSE confirmed to me in recent days that approximately 750 people who caught the virus while in hospital have died. We know that 2,000 people who also died of Covid-19 in the State were nursing home residents. These are truly shocking statistics. When we add those two figures together, we learn that 56% of all the people who died of Covid in this State did so in either hospitals or nursing homes. A majority died in facilities that were either run by or regulated by the State. While many people were pointing the …

They say there are five stages of grief. It seems to me there are also five stages of Fine Gael in government: first, introduce a red carpet and a tax regime for cuckoo funds; second, invest in those same cuckoo funds; third, suffer amnesia and forget anything has happened; fourth, have a political wobble as you see your support in a key target voting market being wiped out; and, fifth, rush through half measures to seek cover. By God, there is a locked-out generation in this country at the moment. This is probably…

The recent cyberattacks on the HSE and the Department of Health are monstrous crimes. They are attacks on the most vulnerable in Irish society. Patients are already struggling with never-ending waiting lists that have been worsened by Covid and ongoing restrictions but shockingly, on top of this, key life and death treatment is again put on hold due to this odious crime. The Government has a duty of care with regard to safeguarding and protecting the health of citizens and their personal data. This responsibility i…

I prefaced my statement by saying where the responsibility lies for this attack. It lies with the criminals who were involved but the Government has a duty of care and responsibility to the patients of this country for the delivery of healthcare and protection of their data. Its duty of care is far more to this country, given that this is an island of data. Right now we have hospitals where operations are being cancelled, people are running around with paper documents and staff are acting as runners between hospita…

That is not cybersecurity funding; it is ICT.

It is reported that the Dáil is sitting here at a cost of €25,000 per day. That is a shockingly high figure considering what is happening throughout the country. It is no longer acceptable, if it ever was. A special school in my constituency no longer has the funding to provide hot meals to its children while the Dáil is spending €5,000 on a Members' restaurant here in the convention centre. We need to have a date on which we can get back to Leinster House. A large number of Members are vaccinated. There should be …

Cuirim fáilte ollmhór roimh an mbreithiúnas ón ionchoisne an tseachtain seo caite a d'aithin go raibh na daoine a maraíodh i mBaile Uí Mhurchú go hiomlán neamhchiontach. While I wholeheartedly welcome the decision made by the inquest in the North that the people in Ballymurphy who were murdered by the British army were completely innocent, I am still absolutely shocked and angered by the fact that the British establishment allowed the lie to hang in the air for 50 years. In 1971, the British forces killed ten innoc…