I express my sympathy and solidarity with all the families who lost loved ones and those who campaign to this day for truth and justice. My time is brief so it would be impossible to touch on all periods of the conflict in the North that cry out for answers. The British Government would have us believe that it was a neutral peacekeeping force in the North of Ireland, but we know the British Government's security services were involved in hundreds of targeted assassinations and murders of Irish citizens in a dirty w…

I want to be associated with the words of sympathy in relation to the crash on Dublin's North Earl Street. I only have a couple of minutes. I wanted to focus on the dangerous and antisocial use of scramblers on our streets and green spaces. It is nothing new, as my colleagues have said. In a lot of cases, it is young men and boys speeding around dressed in black, some of them in balaclavas, creating an extreme risk to adults, children and particularly our older neighbours in our communities. For years, colleagues h…

When is the Taoiseach going to tell us about the Garda vetting?

The answer is "No".

Emergency mental health services in this State are virtually non-existent. On any given day, more than 100 people will present at an emergency department in extreme distress and there will not be the services and facilities to support them. Emergency mental health services remain underfunded, understaffed and largely unavailable when people need them most. That failure is costing people's lives and it is unacceptable. Among the cases that have come through my office, I remember a young man coming in who produced a …

International developments is such a vague concept that it is hard to know where to start. The world is becoming increasingly chaotic and divided, with American strikes in Nigeria; the UAE arming both sides in Sudan; the shambolic ceasefire in Gaza that means that Palestinians are still dying; the ongoing conflict between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo that has displaced over a hundred thousand people into Burundi in just the past few weeks; and the ongoing war in Ukraine that grinds on. Reassuringly f…

Areas in my Dublin constituency are regularly without water for hours and days on end. Last year, in Knocklyon, over a bank holiday weekend, some areas did not have water for up to six days. Our water infrastructure simply is not up to scratch and it is down to a lack of investment. From an inability to provide water to existing homes or to provide for the thousands of future homes we desperately need, I think we all agree that the network is antiquated and dilapidated. Improvements in supply are coming too slowly …

A number of years ago, I was on a clean-up of one of the parks in my constituency. It was a beautiful day. I remember looking down to the stream and I could see all these little silver canisters. I was aware it was really young people, children, who were actually using them. I coined the phrase "silver bullets" on the basis that these kids were basically playing Russian roulette. I came up with legislation and its aim was that, like cigarettes, this would be banned. I went to the Minister for children at the time, …

The frustrating thing about this post-Council meeting discussion is that, first, there is not enough time to discuss a lot of the issues and, second, for it to work, we need to really get a sense of the Irish position in relation to what happened. The Taoiseach in his opening statement outlined what Ireland's position was on some of the issues. If we are to continue with these things, it would be really useful if we had that approach going forward. It gives us a better sense of what was actually discussed and what …

Was the relative failure of the Cyprus-Gaza maritime aid corridor discussed? Was any alternative suggested to simply shipping aid to an Israeli port to join the other thousands of tonnes of aid that has not been allowed through to Palestinian people who are living in tents? Were sanctions against Israel discussed owing to the massive increase in settler violence against Palestinian civilians, the spike in forced displacement and the annexation in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem?

The Taoiseach referred to the Horizon Europe research programme, which includes the continuation of the PEACEPLUS programme. What was the reaction on that? If the Minister of State does not have time to reply, he might send us a note on it.

I had not planned on speaking but I was listening to the debate. I would like to be associated with all the wishes of goodwill in relation to this time of year to staff and all our colleagues in the Houses. It has already been iterated that Sinn Féin's position is we are not opposing this Bill but the Minister has already indicated amendments will come. We are discussing a Bill tonight but I presume that Bill will change. I would like to think the Minister will take on board many of the concerns shared by the Oppos…

Most of us agree that blister packs are an essential and basic tool for improving medication management and safety. They can be the difference between taking medicines safely or risking missed doses, double dosing, or the all-too-familiar dangerous confusion for the recipient. We have all come across people who have been in that situation. I came across a case recently of a 94-year-old woman, where we did not know whether she had taken a double dose. The woman was distraught and upset and her family felt even worse…

This question concerns St. Thomas National School in Jobstown. I do not know if the Minister of State is aware of the challenges it is facing. There are a lot of moving parts. The latest challenge is coming from the archdiocese in looking for clarification on an undertaking from the Department about it. It relates to Jobstown Celtic Football Club at St. Thomas National School and the building of a astro pitch. The money is sitting there in an account but we cannot get agreement from the archdiocese, which is lookin…

There are a lot of moving parts with regard to this. Everyone is in favour of it - the club, the school, the community, South Dublin County Council and political representatives. The challenge is that the archdiocese wants to know who will pay for the opening and closing of the premises after the school uses the facility and who will pay for insurance and cleaning. The club is going to do all that. I can get an affidavit. The archdiocese is saying the capitation grant does not cover it so it is looking for clarific…

It is a huge advantage to the area, the pupils in the school and the wider community. It is something that can be resolved. If an affidavit from the club stating that it would cover all the costs was given, that might be enough. The capitation grant is a problem but I might talk to the Minister of State afterwards. Perhaps we can put our heads together and, with the archdiocese, come up with a commonsense solution that will resolve this problem and provide an astro pitch for the kids in this area.

The Government is helping developers with €100,000 per apartment.

I want to say hello to Cara Darmody and her family. I begin by sending my solidarity to families waiting for an assessment for their child or children. At the start of October, there were more than 8,000 children waiting on assessments of need in the CHO 7 area. Almost 1,600 of those children have been waiting more than two years to be seen. There are almost twice as many children waiting in one area alone than there have been assessments carried out State-wide so far this year. There is a long wait to access suppo…

There is going to be a lot of commonality in what we are saying here but the main message is that action is needed. I spoke at the OSCE conference in Istanbul recently about the ongoing global refugee crisis, with millions of displaced people fleeing conflict zones such as Sudan, Gaza, the Democratic Republic of Congo, DRC, and Yemen. It is a stark reminder of the consequences of the developed world allowing, and even enabling, conflicts in its zones of influence. The global powers have not only failed to prevent t…

The Minister has taken a disappointing approach. Back in 2011, I recall discussing the affordability of school uniforms in this House with Ruairi Quinn, the then Minister for Education and Skills. Unfortunately, at that time, we failed to convince him and probably more importantly, the officials at that time this was the way forward. If we cast our minds back to that period, we were in the middle of an economic crash. Families were finding it extremely difficult to try to pay for school uniforms. Despite the positi…