I welcome the opportunity to raise the issue of the maintenance of social housing in Dún Laoghaire and Rathdown. I am a TD for the Rathdown constituency and there is often an assumption it is an affluent area only. I have to say I have made it my business to make sure those living in deprivation in my constituency know I will represent them in Dáil Éireann as the only Opposition TD and a new TD in the constituency, because many people in the community are simply forgotten. My team and I have got a huge number of qu…

I thank the Minister of State for those details. I appreciate that funding is important but I assure him that the €31 million is not reaching some of the families that I am speaking to. I want to emphasise, as I did in my initial contribution, that this is not just about funding. The way in which some of these families are being treated is also an issue. There are complex ways in which people arrive into situations of deprivation and poverty. They do not want to be in arrears and for them to then be penalised for b…

Over the weekend, violent Israeli settlers rampaged through the West Bank. They blazed a trail of devastation, burning down homes and public buildings and injuring dozens of Palestinians. In a separate attack last week, masked settlers sexually assaulted a Palestinian man in front of his family. They beat him with clubs, tied him up, stripped him naked and zip-tied his genitals. That attack was so horrific that it finally hit the international press but only because two human rights activists, an American and a Por…

I just want an answer. I do not claim to have a monopoly.

When the war in Ukraine broke out four years ago, one of the few pieces of hope and light in that time was the warmth, the generosity and the solidarity many people showed to those fleeing. They opened up their homes and provided those who had lost everything with somewhere they could feel safe. We talk about integration in this country and this scheme is a brilliant example of it. It formed the basis of bonds, friendships and involvement in communities in every corner of this country. These bonds meant that just l…

I will use my time today celebrating International Women's Day, to celebrate a specific group. That is single mums. We are actually closer to Single Parents Day, which falls on Saturday, 21 March, than we are to women's day, which was a couple of weeks ago. I realise there are also single dads. I put that on the record straight away but 85% of one-parent families are headed by women. The experience of one-parent families in Irish society is very much a women's issue. For my daughter's entire upbringing, I brought h…

I too extend a welcome to the McCracken family. I do not think there is a musician in Wexford who will not have visited the Dáil by the end of this term. It is lovely to have them here for International Women's Day. I wish to start by addressing the consular response. My colleague our spokesperson for foreign affairs, Senator Stephenson, spoke about her disappointment that for many people in these regions, the first contact they received was a link to a PayPal account asking for payment of €800 for a flight. Unfort…

I am very grateful for the opportunity to raise the issue of the closure and liquidation of the Southside Traveller Action Group, STAG. STAG has provided support to the Traveller community in my constituency and neighbouring constituencies for four decades. It provides support for some of the most marginalised people in our country, through periods when Travellers have faced horrific racism and abuse, a structural lack of support from the State and unimaginable tragedies such as the Carrickmines fire in which ten p…

I thank the Minister of State. The Minister of State mentioned the governance issues that have arisen. This organisation has operated for 40 years and the governance and running of the organisation was done very well during that time. I have worked with many of these groups and it is against all odds sometimes that they survive with very little funding, a lot of volunteer power, and community spirit driving them forward. The has been operating and functioning well as an organisation for many decades. It is crucial …

I have always felt that technology is a positive force in society. My career has been shaped by how technology can be harnessed for social good. Back in 1997, I did my undergraduate dissertation on the impact of the information revolution on the development of socialism, would you believe. That was back when we called it the information revolution and back when I called myself more openly a socialist. I come at this as a tech enthusiast. I love technology and I see that social media is incredibly positive in our wo…

Over the past ten years, Ireland has seen the closure of more than 257 post offices. In my own constituency, the Mount Merrion post office closed in 2021 and the Kilmacud post office closed just a few weeks ago on 11 February. Residents now face up to 40 minutes of a commute to reach a basic amenity. Both of those post offices closed as a result of An Post being unable to recruit new postmasters to keep the services running. Unfortunately, this issue has been developing for some time across the country. The fact is…

As we have heard, the implications of the illegal attack of the US and Israel on Iran and the retaliatory attacks are far reaching in terms of citizen safety abroad, energy prices and international law. We need a debate on this issue this week. The Taoiseach has just said we have not debated Iran enough, so please make time for this and debate these pressing issues.

Ar an gcéad dul síos, gabhaim buíochas le Sinn Féin as ucht an tairiscint seo a tabhairt chun na Dála anocht. Is léir ón méid atá tarlaithe ó thaobh líon na gcainteoirí laethúla sa Ghaeltacht le blianta anuas go bhfuil ag teip go huile is go hiomlán ar an Rialtas lena chuid iarrachtaí deireadh a chur le meath na Gaeltachta. Le gach daonáireamh, tá níos lú cainteoirí laethúla sa Ghaeltacht. Le blianta, tá muid ag caint faoin ghéarchéim tithíochta sa Ghaeltacht agus an tionchar atá aici ar an teanga. Muna bhfuil an p…

We know that while everyone feels the pressure of the housing crisis, there are particular groups who face the most brutal aspects of it. The crisis really has seeped into the life of every Irish person, but some people feel it worse than others. Those individuals are more likely to become homeless. They then struggle to get out of homelessness. I am talking about Travellers, migrants, those suffering with addiction, those with disabilities, the elderly and children. Today, however, I want to talk about one particu…

I thank the Minister of State for her contribution today and thank all of my colleagues from the committee. I also thank Deputy O'Rourke for allowing me to go first. I have a constituency event so I really appreciate that. I have really enjoyed the work of the AI committee to date. I am a new TD and I am on three committees. I have to say, the AI committee has been the most divisive in a lot of ways. The polarised views of the Government and the Opposition on AI are so clear. There is a real emphasis on enterprise,…

I welcome that the Government will not oppose this motion. I want to recap Sláintecare for a moment, which my party is really proud of, and the work that Róisín Shortall did and her legacy. Sláintecare was about cross-party co-operation and longitudinal vision for a transformation of our healthcare system from a two-tier to a single-tier system. This Government downgraded it from where it should have been situated in the Department of the Taoiseach to the Department of Health, where it could never fulfil its vision…

According to the annual report of PDD Holdings - the company that owns Temu, a discount e-commerce platform that I am sure the Minister is familiar with - its jurisdiction of incorporation is the Cayman Islands. On the same form, it is stated that the company's principal executive office is here in Ireland. A company incorporated in a foreign jurisdiction and managed from Ireland is tax resident here. The subsidiary which operates Temu, namely Whaleco Technology Limited, is also Irish registered. We need clarity ab…

What about the broader picture?

I will start local and then widen it out to the broader vision of inclusive education. Locally, we have been affected by this most recent debacle. Clíona O’Keeffe, who is the principal of Our Lady’s Boys National School in Ballinteer, made multiple media contributions in which she put it perfectly. She said that as a wealthy European country, surely we have enough money in our budget to pay for enough SNAs per school. Her school was told that its allocation would be cut from five to two, prompting waves of anxiety …

I support Deputy Gannon on this amendment. It is incredibly sad that we are moving towards this system of detention not just in Ireland but also across Europe through the EU migration and asylum pact, particularly because it took the State so long to untangle international protection from pursuing people through arrest. The courts had to achieve that through a series of cases to eventually try to meet our commitments under the EU reception directive. The worst part is that we have never done international protectio…