I want to raise the issue of CervicalCheck again. I am getting really frustrated with the Government's stonewalling of my questions. The CervicalCheck scandal broke in 2018. It involved among other things smear test slides that were misread. Women sued and received apologies and payments. The Taoiseach issued a State apology. The courts and the Government have conceded that these women were wronged and the slides were misread. However, when the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists review was announced …

These are misread slides.

The courts said they were misread.

You apologised for it in here. What did you apologise for?

No.

What was the apology for?

There is a saying that the past is a foreign country but for many people in Ireland today, this Dáil is becoming a foreign country - a Dáil that they no longer recognise as representing their own views. This Dáil is the most draconian Dáil in generations. Unfortunately, there is an authoritarian streak running through the political establishment in Ireland and it is shocking citizens across the country. The Government is trying to implement a number of Bills which are significantly reducing people's human and democ…

General Eoin O’Duffy had the same views.

It is appalling.

That is incitement to violence. It is illegal already.

Incitement to violence is illegal.

I take this opportunity to invite everyone in the House to join me at a vigil tomorrow that Aontú is organising to remember the more than 400 homeless people who have died in Dublin since 2018. Every party is organising this vigil. It is not a political event. It is simply a vigil to remember the shocking human tragedy that is unfolding on the streets of our capital city. Fr. Peter McVerry and family members of some of those who have died will be attending outside the gates tomorrow at 6 p.m. Documents released to …

Meath is a great county with great communities but it is suffering significantly from a wave of crime and antisocial behaviour. Shockingly, Meath has the highest number of burglaries in the country. Some 8,000 families have been devastated by burglary in Meath in just the last ten years. That is equivalent of every home in Dunboyne, a town in the Minister's constituency, being burgled in that period of time. When is the Government going to get serious about Garda numbers nationally and when is Meath going to get th…

In fairness, gardaí do not want the Minister's commendation; they want support. That is what they want every day. The number of gardaí in the State has fallen every year Deputy McEntee has been Minister for Justice. That is some record. She says she has no role in the allocation of gardaí in County Meath but she could set out policy that ties the number of gardaí to population, within reason. That policy would have to be followed by An Garda Síochána. There is anger and fear in County Meath with regard to this issu…

I do not want to sound rude but I want to communicate the level of anger in County Meath at the fact that Meath is on the bottom rung with regard to the number of gardaí. Ireland has the second lowest number of police per capita in the whole of the European Union. Ireland is one of the worst countries in terms of policing and Meath is the worst in that country. Outside of rhetoric, I have not heard anything that has actually been delivered. Garda numbers, Garda morale and Garda safety are on the floor. We have one …

Those are expressions of interest. They are not people joining An Garda Síochána.

Many farmers are seriously concerned that meat, which is being exported from Ireland and stamped with the Irish logo and brand, is not actually Irish meat at all. I will give some of the statistics on it. Each year, approximately 56,000 tonnes of sheepmeat is exported from this country. Since 2018, €1.8 billion worth of sheepmeat has been exported. All of that is categorised as being of Irish origin. Since 2018, nearly 9,000 head of live sheep have been exported to countries such as France, Belgium, Germany, Italy,…

There is little point in Deputies waiting here until 10.15 p.m. to listen to a scripted response from a Minister of State on a question. The purpose of these oral discussions is that points will be raised during the discussion to which the relevant Minister can then respond. In this case, I might as well have just stuck in a written question to the Minister because all I am getting back is a written response. It is important that Ministers who have the authority, who have background and who are from the Departments…

The more I reflect on the various State apologies issued, the more I become convinced that the Government does not mean a word of it. Tomorrow we debate the amendments to the mother and baby homes Bill. The Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, snuck in a number of amendments in the Seanad. In my reading, amendments Nos. 4, 5 and 6 would exclude countless women from the redress scheme who were sent to mother and baby homes to give birth, and had their babies there, but were not held in those mother and baby homes. We know of …

I want to raise the issue of emergency call answering service, ECAS, operators in Navan. Emergency call answering services are critical services. This is a front-line health service. These operators deal professionally with people who are often in the worst crises of their lives. It is a stressful job of great importance. The ECAS workers in Meath have been involved in a longstanding dispute with the company that has the State contracts, namely British Telecom. Workers have made serious allegations of historic bull…