This Government is going backwards with climate change. I commend Deputy Ahern on this motion and his commitment to bringing home to all the people of Ireland the impact that data centres are having not only on our climate but also on their household bills and the cost-of-living crisis. The UN has referenced us as a cautionary tale. Yet, does Ireland listen? No. When the tech bros call, this Irish Government jumps and asks, “How high?” Its amendment to the motion is absolutely embarrassing. It opens with the point …

I just want to say that the Member did not speak to our motion.

I want to raise school places in my constituency, specifically in Portmarnock. It is two months to the day since I stood in this Chamber and requested an urgent meeting with the Minister for Education and Youth on the severe deficit of school places in Portmarnock. I have had no official response to that meeting request and I have followed up with the Department a number of times. It is not good enough. It is not what the parents and the children deserve. The parliamentary questions I have tabled are getting the sa…

It is long overdue for the Government to enact some changes to ensure that the implementation and enforcement of relevant Department circulars is put on a statutory footing. In doing so, the Bill takes some steps that are tentatively welcome but significant concerns remain that the legislation may make it increasingly difficult for those who should be entitled to access social housing to do so by increasing and complicating the criteria they have to meet. The Bill suggests an unreality in which the existing situati…

I acknowledge the presence and work of Senator Frances Black. It requires some degree of fortitude to deliver a Bill from the Opposition or as Independents in the Seanad and to see it through to this point, eight years later, in the Dáil. I offer my heartfelt commendation to the Senator on getting the Bill this far, although it is clear that this is not the Bill she wrote. She is, however, the impetus and the source behind it. I also acknowledge to the Minister that two Thursdays ago in the Dáil, I accused her of m…

We are reeling from the report of the Kenneally commission, which was released this morning. There are a number of serious outcomes from that. Will the Taoiseach give serious consideration to a debate on one particular aspect, the absence of an offence of misconduct in public offence, an issue outlined in the commission's report? It is not the only thing to come out of the report but is an issue of ethics in public office that this Government has been dragging its heels on.

I thank and commend Sinn Féin and Deputy Byrne, in particular, on bringing this motion forward. There is another motion being brought forward tomorrow by the Social Democrats and I am thankful it is being brought forward as well. Football is like no other sport. It is the world's game. It is the global game. It cuts through class, identity and borders like no other. It unites people. It has a long history of expression and political expression, whether it is the troops in the fields of Flanders in 1914 or the numer…

The Labour Party will be supporting this motion, as it has supported similar motions at six-month intervals going back to 2021, to allow continued outdoor seating and socialising in our towns and cities. It was born out of a necessity during the Covid period but it has ushered in and accelerated a positive culture of dining and drinking in this country. I have seen at first hand the impacts of good policy when it comes to outside dining in my constituency. In Malahide, the pedestrianisation of New Street, where I h…

The Taoiseach is making a charge of some kind of economic illiteracy in opposition in terms of the implications of the occupied territories Bill when he knows that during pre-legislative scrutiny last summer we had a number of chapters interrogating the economic impact of the occupied territories Bill. Still, there was cross-party Government and Opposition consensus on that committee to bring forward the occupied territories Bill with goods and services yet the Government is bringing forward this watered-down, unac…

I ask for the Government to follow what it did in the Autumn in relation to the flotilla. We have 12 Irish citizens kidnapped, including the President's sister and Luke McMenamin, from my own constituency. This Government provided time in the past to have a debate on the flotilla. We need to do it again. Some 12 citizens and maybe three more, have been kidnapped by the Israeli state. That is not acceptable.

I am sorry but I do not believe that the Minister is committed to progressing the occupied territories Bill; I just do not. She said, quite rightly, that it was June 2025 when it went through pre-legislative scrutiny. It is now May 2026 and there is no sign of it. Deputy Boyd Barrett, Deputy Gibney and I, and others, ask every Thursday at the Oireachtas Business Committee about the occupied territories Bill but there is no answer. We get silence or "we do not know". We know where the Government's emphasis lies beca…

No, I am sorry.

I am sorry but until I see the Minister standing there delivering a Second Stage speech on that Bill, I will believe in my heart that it has been abandoned because that is how it feels.

I find this totally improper. A couple of months ago, the Minister launched the maritime strategy, a very substantial document. It is the way we should be going. There are a number of issues with it but we should be debating this in the context of a defence amendment Bill. With these amendments, we are amending the Defence Act 1954 in three substantial ways: helping to protect and defend our territorial seas and internal waters and protect the sovereign rights of the State and our exclusive economic zone; making pr…

We have had three Leaders' Questions in relation to the National Ambulance Service strike. Given the gravity of this industrial relations dispute, we need to have a debate in the Dáil on this matter.

A couple of weeks ago, I raised with the Taoiseach the need to repair the swimming pool at Portmarnock Sports and Leisure Club, PSLC. The PSLC is a vital piece of local infrastructure across Fingal and 90% of its users are not-for-profit community pool or non-members of the leisure centre. Fingal County Council has stepped up to the tune of €500,000 towards the overall cost of repair, which is approximately €1 million. The Government has not yet committed funding. There is talk of about €100,000 coming from central…

Yes.

Portmarnock Sports and Leisure Club. We have spoken about it before. It is the pool there.

I thank the Taoiseach.

We await with bated breath the occupied territories Bill being progressed. Will the Taoiseach make it a primary objective of our Presidency of the EU for this country to advocate on behalf of the Palestinian state? Will he place that front and centre with our EU partners? Does the Taoiseach think our underinvestment in Garda resources is going to come back to bite the Government during the course our Presidency? I have a letter from Garda HQ which states that the development of new Garda stations in the Swords and …