I thank the Minister of State for her response and I wonder if I could get it in writing. The meeting between Oireachtas Members and representatives of Kildare County Council will go ahead in the morning and I will try to raise this matter. Will the Department also put on a bit of pressure and stress the importance of the infrastructure that will be required for this proposed site in Celbridge? I know the other Teachtaí Dála who are not here know how important this matter is. I urge everybody to make this happen an…

I will speak on the Sinn Féin amendment to address fuel poverty. It is a real and growing issue, especially with the financial hardship caused by Covid-19. Fuel poverty is real poverty and it is causing suffering for real people in the run-up to Christmas. Fuel poverty sees them dreading the new year. All of us here will be able to go home tonight and put the heating on. We will not have to go to bed early because it is cold. We will not have to watch our children shivering as they try to do their homework with a d…

Historically, the State is all about secrets. We have had mother and baby homes, industrial schools, Magdalen laundries and the hush-hush trips to England. Domestic violence is one of the last unmentionable secrets. Men get hammered too, but for them it is usually even more secret. It is mostly women who get and take their beatings, and the threats, the kicks, the punches, the burning, the taunting and the raping. As I stated here last month, women lie on the floor grateful that if himself is laying into them, he i…

It is mystifying that Covid-19 has not been a notifiable disease from the outset. I commend my comrade, Deputy Louise O'Reilly, for bringing forward the Bill. Deputy O'Reilly has been on the case since early summer, when we first realised this had been overlooked by the Government. We are nine months into this pandemic, long enough to have conceived and given birth to a baby, yet testing and tracing is still not optimal and public health doctors are so badly treated that they have had to threaten to go on strike. L…

I commend my comrade, Deputy Mark Ward. He is truly passionate about his portfolio and about attaining parity of esteem for mental health and physical health so that they would be treated equally. For many, when it comes to our mental health and physical health, it is not just a question of what is wrong with us but of what happened to us. The psychologists say that if we cannot tell the story of what happened to us, it will tell itself anyway in our lives. Looking across this city and State we see people living wi…

Power and influence are the two things that define governments and access to them. We recently had a vivid reminder of how it works, with the favour sought and given in the ever-decreasing circles around the Taoiseach, the most powerful office in this State. The man who now holds the office declared full confidence in the man who used to hold the office, who leaked confidential Government information. It seems that Government formation is an elite game to be played by elite players, decided on and chosen by themsel…

Slapping and kicking, stabbing with kitchen knives, penknives and scissors, burning with gas jets and cigarette lighters and belting with open hands, electronic equipment or furniture, whatever happens to be handy, are just part of what women and children face in circumstances of domestic violence. Men are also victims of such behaviour but, for the most part, it is women and their children who experience or witness it. It is one of the greatest perversions of domestic violence that women, as they lie on the floor …

I begin by acknowledging the experience of our third level students this year. It has been an extremely difficult time in their young lives, when what should be their first taste of freedom is being spent locked away from the social life and contact they normally would have. The vast majority of them are behaving brilliantly and doing their bit. They are a credit to themselves and their families. Unfortunately, they do not get any credit from those who hold their nose and criticise young people while enjoying coffe…

I take this opportunity to acknowledge the community gardaí in north Kildare for their magnificent work during the Covid crisis. Together with volunteers and community groups, they got the shopping done, prescriptions and meals delivered, and cups of teas offered and drunk in the garden. It was top-class community policing and social action, just as was seen when the local community garda was so helpful to us when we were setting up the Maynooth community first responders. In many ways, our community gardaí are the…

The programme for Government states that protecting citizens is the founding duty of the State and, in particular, it mentions victims of sexual abuse. I wish to raise the matter of waiting lists in St. Louise's unit in Our Lady's Children's Hospital Crumlin, where children reporting sexual abuse are interviewed. I have a constituent aged six who reported in early March that she had been sexually abused but she has still not been interviewed. She cannot get counselling before the interview occurs. This is a long ti…

I thank the Ceann Comhairle for choosing this Topical Issue matter and the Minister of State, Deputy Brophy, for taking the place of the Minister for Defence. Our search and rescue operators are the people who go out in all weathers, conditions and days of the year to bring us safely home. They are there when boats go missing, swimmers get lost, climbers fall, walkers go astray and when people on the edge take their own lives. I pay my respects to the men and women of the State who have lost their lives in the serv…

Unlike the Minister of State, I will ignore the snide remarks. The Government must listen to the experts in our Defence Forces. These are the people whose first loyalty is to the State and its people - it is not to fund managers, bankers and brokers. The Air Corps does not want to see any further privatisation of our Defence Forces. The issue is not just the fact that the State is paying for aircraft that could be based in the UK, or the dismissal of our own loyal Air Corps, its officers and their concerns about mi…

Today is Armistice Day and I want to think about what unites us as Europeans, and what unites us on these two islands, in the commemoration of all who fought and died in World Wars, in all the theatres of battles, be it for king or kaiser, or for the small nation of Belgium or for the hope of freedom here at home in Ireland, or simply for wages to put food on the table. Leaving the EU will be a time of realisation and adjustment for Britain, not alone in how long it can or will remain united as a kingdom, but equal…

I welcome the reversal to the cuts to the pandemic unemployment payment and the wage subsidy scheme which Sinn Féin had been seeking. On behalf of my constituents in north Kildare, I am raising overarching concerns about the Government's financial priorities in this tricky time ahead. Covid-19 leaves the world in uncharted waters. I am worried that with this Government it is the poor and the barely hanging on who will be cast adrift first. I am especially worried because these are people who do not have an in with …

What is wrong with this State that it wants to put away now the records of the women it put away before? What is wrong with this State that it will add public insult to the personal injury it inflicted on thousands of girls, women and their babies? Its pursuit of decency, morality and respectability resulted in the persecution of the poor, the innocent and their children. What is wrong with this State that to this day, in 2020, it is still suspicious of poor women? It will scrutinise them for a few quid while it gi…

Businesses in north Kildare were just accommodating the prospect of Brexit when the coronavirus hit Ireland. Now they face the double whammy of a novel virus, about which little is known, and a British Government that is novel about Brexit in ways that some never imagined. However, what is imaginable and reachable now is a united Ireland in the broader context of Brexit. My party leader, Deputy McDonald, is quite right when she says that a united Ireland is everybody's business now, not only North and South, but al…

Government politicians do not just dine out on their arts; some of them feast on them. Hardly a speech has been made by a Taoiseach or Uachtarán that has not featured lines from Yeats, Heaney or Beckett. In their quiet times away from the camera, it seems some politicians believe such artists should go out and get a real job. This is usually latent but lately it has been blatant. It is as if years of learning, practice, discipline and finally performing as a musician, dancer, comedian or actor is not work. We know …

Does the Minister not wish to answer?

I wish to raise the case of a young constituent of mine in north Kildare. Céilí lives in Naas and she is not doing well with Covid-19. She is three years old and profoundly deaf. As a result of a heart condition, she cannot be fitted with cochlear implants, so she relies on two hearing aids instead. Without them, the only sounds she can hear are vacuum cleaners and lawnmowers. As she is young, her hearing aids need to be adjusted regularly and her hearing needs to be tested regularly. The moulds must be snug in her…

Seamus Heaney wrote "Some day I will go to Aarhus". After reading this Bill, many of us feel the need to follow him there. The appeals process outlined here, to which we in Sinn Féin have proposed many amendments, seems in many ways to be contrary to the Aarhus Convention's provisions on the citizen's access to justice. The appeals process outlined is unnecessarily closed, patriarchal and internally focused. It is exclusive instead of inclusive. It is a remnant of the old politics, carried out over the heads of the…