Captured by civil servants-----

The Labour Party will amend the Bill on Committee Stage. I can assure the House that we will not amend it on the basis that we want to see what is a modest charge on properties abolished. It is extraordinary that every time we debate the principle of the property tax in this House there are parties who purport to be on the left in Irish politics which say they oppose it. They oppose it for their own reasons, and I respect that. In my view, parties are not entitled to refer to themselves as a social democratic or so…

I will be sharing time with my colleague Deputy Lawlor. We are in an incredible situation in this country and in the Middle East at present. For the first time, two weeks ago, in response to a Labour Party motion and a Sinn Féin Bill two weeks ago on Israeli bonds, a significant statement was made by senior Government representatives in this House. Finally, a senior Government figure in the State said unequivocally that Israel is carrying out a genocide against the people of Gaza. The Genocide Convention, dare I ex…

Will the Minister elaborate on the staffing composition of the new infrastructure division within his Department and on what he views as the key responsibilities and deliverables for the division in 2025? This is a key objective of the Minister and is contained in the programme for Government. Will he inform the House as to what the priorities are for the rest of this year?

That is not an insignificant number of staff. Can the Minister confirm that those from State agencies who will be working in the division will continue to be paid by their parent agencies? I assume that will be the case. The Minister was quoted in T he Irish Times yesterday as saying that the acid test will be delivery. I assume the action plan on infrastructure delivery the Minister referred to will be published side by side with the review of the national development plan in July. That would make a lot of sense. …

Will the Minister consider finding a way to include people with international experience from outside this jurisdiction in the division? I do not know the identities of the people involved and, in some ways, it is none of my business. I wish them well, because if they do a good job our country succeeds, so we should give this initiative a fair wind. However, a lot of the people involved in the infrastructure division and task force will themselves have considerable experience with delayed projects. I am not apporti…

I am sharing time with my colleague, Deputy Ahern. We will divide our time into seven and three minutes. I will focus my comments principally on the Drogheda and Baltray flood relief scheme, which was announced in 2021. Four years later, the latest newsletter proclaims it is still at stage 1 of five stages. The Minister of State set out quite clearly that, on average, the process involved five separate stages. It appears that this particular process is still at stage 1, which is scheme development and preliminary d…

The Tánaiste will recall the House yesterday approved a motion developed by the Labour Party and formally supported by Sinn Féin, the Social Democrats, the Green Party and others, mandating the Government to call for a special General Assembly of the United Nations to promote and instigate certain collective measures in respect of Gaza. Given the motion has effectively been adopted, how does the Government plan to implement it?

It is important that the motion be implemented and that the will of the House be accepted by the Government and implemented at every opportunity. We have used the opportunity of the special General Assembly well. In recent times, we called for the upgrading of Palestine's status in the context of the UN General Assembly and the UN more generally, which is to be welcomed. Ireland has led the way internationally on Gaza. There are no two ways about it. This time last year, we took the decision to recognise the State …

I absolutely would. A window is now opening because we have seen a step change in the UK, France and Canada over the past week or ten days in respect of their perspective on Gaza, the genocide, what is happening there and what needs to happen. We have also seen a step change in Germany, especially in our sister party of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, SDP. The Chancellor has made interesting remarks about the completely unacceptable behaviour of the Israeli regime and state. Ireland will be chairing one of …

I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time." I will be sharing time with my colleague Deputy Bacik. I am pleased to speak on the Competition and Consumer Protection (Unfair Prices) Bill 2023. When I introduced this legislation on First Stage two years ago, the rate of inflation was at levels not seen in decades. A confluence of grim circumstances, some of which were the consequence of Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine, saw the price of basic staples, such as bread, eggs, butter, pasta and so on, rise in pr…

Was it during one of Ivana's lectures?

Exactly

I thank the Minister of State for his response. Both he and I live in the real world. Who we are and where we come from insists we do. We shop in the same places and in the same supermarkets and we see what is going on. We are connected into that and the concerns of the working families we all represent. The Bill itself is a modest proposal. I am not suggesting and never did at any point, despite the public clamour a couple of years ago, that we should, for example, introduce price controls, because they have inadv…

Where one stands on the genocide in Gaza is the moral question of our time. For the vast majority of us, the only action we can take is to attend a protest, write to our TD or boycott goods and services. However, there are 174 of us in here who have greater agency, 15 of us who have an extra special responsibility, the Tánaiste included. Members of Government must show the moral leadership cruelly absent across the world, with some notable exceptions, a cowardice that has allowed tens of thousands of children to be…

Given the state of relations between Ireland and Israel at this moment in time are at an all-time low and for very good reason, it is a rather perverse irony that Ireland is regarded as Israel's home country for the purpose of facilitating the sale of its war bonds in the EU. I note the Minister's assessment of the Bill but the truth remains. We are a cog in this wheel. Israel's bonds - the Minister is correct - are not listed for sale on the Irish Stock Exchange. That is true but is only half the story. Owing to a…

I hope the House will join me in wishing all working people across the country a happy May Day. However, delaying the living wage is no way to mark International Workers' Day. It has been 25 years since the minimum wage was introduced and ten years since the Low Pay Commission, which I established, made its first annual recommendation on an appropriate rate for the national minimum wage. This is a really important legacy to protect the interests of low-paid people. The Minister is now publicly instructing the Low P…

Speaking earlier on the radio, the Minister said he makes decisions based on evidence. There is no evidence anywhere in the world to suggest that modest incremental increases to rates of national minimum wages impact employment rates or competitiveness. The Minister talks a lot about competitiveness but by delaying the introduction of the living wage, he is owning up to the problems the Government has created. If it wanted to deal with competitiveness, it would deal with the cost of energy, deal with renewables and…

The Minister also failed to understand and accept that there has always been churn in the retail and hospitality sectors. There were enormous net job gains in the retail and hospitality sectors in recent years, sectors which, quite rightly, were protected during the pandemic but which have continued to be protected with significant subsidies that have no conditions whatsoever attached to them in terms of job quality, retention or pay. What the Minister is doing in respect of the living wage is virtue signalling. Th…

Hear, hear.