That is meaningless.

You voted against it.

An unborn child is a living individual human being. He or she is as human as the Minister of State, as alive as him and as individual as him, and that is according to science. Under the Government, however, late-term abortions are being carried out on unborn children and pain relief is not being used. On any level, humanitarian basis and understanding of society, how can the Minister of State stand by this? When we put amendments to the Bill when it was rushed through in 2018, Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, the Labour Par…

The Minister of State is reading a script but he has an individual responsibility over what he says in this Chamber and what is happening. The hundreds of words that he spoke add up to nothing. They mean business as usual. It means that a boy or girl who survives abortion, who is a citizen of this country at this stage, is allowed to expire, potentially, with no palliative care whatsoever or no effort to protect his or her life. For the Minister of State to come in and give that complete non-answer to such a shocki…

In March, the then Minister for Health, Deputy Harris, made a promise to student nurses and midwives. Now he is in the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, but he still has influence in this regard. Let us call a spade a spade: when he made that promise, it was nothing but a PR stunt. It was incredible to see that following the announcement, the Minister was trending on Twitter because hundreds, if not thousands, of students were delighted that he had made this promise. What…

Like most people, I hope that we have a safe, ethically produced and effective vaccine that will help the country to get back to normal. However, I am very concerned by reports that the Government has indemnified the private companies producing these vaccines. I am concerned that this has happened in secret, with no political discussion or scrutiny. Furthermore, when the Government indemnifies private companies, it takes away the economic imperative for those companies to make sure that their product is 100% safe a…

For how much?

How much?

The subtext of what the Minister has articulated is very Dublin-centric. It is important to realise that Ireland's development is radically lopsided. In European terms, Ireland is an outlier with regard to the size of its capital city in comparison with the rest of the country. Even in Britain, where London is considered too big for the British economy, London has half as much dominance as Dublin has here. To split up this country, literally a third of the population lives in the overheated capital city. Another th…

I wish to say a few words in support of this amendment. Today Inner City Helping the Homeless was outside Leinster House to raise awareness of the fact that 56 people who are homeless have died in this city so far this year. That figure is far higher than last year's or the figure the year before, even though this year is not out and December is a cruel month for people who are homeless. This is happening for a number of reasons. The Minister has stated he will hold an investigation into this. I tabled a parliament…

Covid is a real illness and we must do our best to try to reduce its incidence in the State. I do not envy the task the Minister and Cabinet have at times in trying to work out where the balance and proportion lie with regard to restrictions. I am of the view that the country has been overly aggressive when it comes to restrictions. We have the second lowest level of Covid in the European Union. That is partially because we have had the sixth strictest regime on the planet in recent months. That would be fine if th…

The approach of Dublin City Council in dealing with the provision of restart grants for barristers is creating great difficulties. Some 497 barristers received approval only to subsequently get letters stating that this approval had been cancelled. This means that the money they had factored into their budgets for the year has been withdrawn. This is a big mistake in anyone's book and a massive imposition on anybody who is dependent on this funding. I do not know how Dublin City Council can justify this. Will the M…

I have no doubt that this is a serious issue, but every week, hundreds of serious issues are brought to this Chamber in promised legislation. For weeks, they have got no airing at all because all of promised legislation's time is being taken up by these battles. There has to be a system by which Deputies can bring questions on promised legislation to the floor of the Dáil on the weekly basis. It is not happening now. This is a farce.

Fair play to the Minister for staying this long into the debate. Often we see Ministers run before parties such as ours get to contribute, in fairness to her. The prospect of the pension age being raised to 67 was widely touted before the election and hammered the appeal of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael among the bracket of voters who were affected. Before the election, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael decided to put the pin back in the grenade and oppose in that election the pension age being raised. However, like so many of…

Everybody listening to this debate at home will be familiar with the recruitment process for a job and most will have been through some type of recruitment process in their own work. Everybody understands that a recruitment process should be fair, open and transparent and that the person with the best knowledge, experience, character and skill should be selected for the job. We live in a meritocracy and merit is the basis for the selection for any position in this country. That should apply from the bottom of socie…

We are not being given any qualitative criteria because there are none. It is as simple as that. It is not difficult to understand at all. How many candidates did the Minister consider for the role?

There were three lists. I wanted to ask how many candidates the Minister considered for the role because we want to bring transparency to this process and if we do not know how many candidates were considered, it is not transparent. The Minister mentioned people who expressed an interest. Outside of them, there was another list of judges who are available and have the experience to do the job. How many candidates were considered for the role?

It is not practice to have clarity on this process and one of the reasons we are here is to change that practice. The Minister said on our local radio station recently that she was only asked to fill one Supreme Court position. Who asked her to do that?

The Chief Justice asked the Minister to only fill one particular role on the court. Is that correct? Given that there are thousands of cases in the system, increasing by the year, and that the courts system is underpowered as regards judges, it is very hard to understand why, with multiple applicants and access to different lists, the Minister would not fill more than one position on the Supreme Court. The view of people around the country is that since we have a rotating Taoiseach, we will also have rotating nomin…

The Minister's response contradicts the behaviour of the Chief Justice and other Supreme Court judges previously who have gone to the Government demanding that it fill positions within the Judiciary. It is not feasible for the Minister to say that she was not asked to fill a role. The Minister is driving the Department. It is the Minister's decision and responsibly to fill that role and nobody else's. He or she, therefore, needs to have a criterion to leave a gaping vacancy within that. The only criterion for that …