Several times this year, I have raised the hot school meals programme for St. John's and St Paul's schools in Drogheda, including with the Taoiseach back in March. These schools have an in-house canteen providing affordable daily hot food options for children. The Department of education saw its value and importance. It has been lauded as a best practice model for school meals and it has been cited in various publications as a good guide for school food initiatives. Despite providing the first breakfast club of its…

There is a lot in this motion, which I thank Independent Ireland for bringing forward, but I will focus on petrol and diesel prices for now as successive Government policies have made my home town of Drogheda a commuter town. Decisions by Fianna Fáil governments that there should be a focus on just one town in a county - in the case of Louth, that is Dundalk - has seen foreign direct investment and a lot of jobs go to Dundalk while jobs continually leave Drogheda. The closure of BD, which employed hundreds of skill…

This week, our national football team looks set to line out against the terrorist State of Israel in the Nations League. The Government has been completely devoid of leadership and humanity on this issue and its inaction and reluctance to intervene or enable the FAI to withdraw from fixtures will be a lasting stain on our nation. Sporting infrastructure and stadiums have been obliterated and 75,000 Palestinians have been murdered. This includes 566 footballers, 100 of whom are children, who have been murdered. The …

Ireland has lost 88 personnel from the Irish Defence Forces while serving on UN peacekeeping missions since 1958. Among other places, they went to Congo, Cyprus, and, most famously, Lebanon. They all went wearing the blue beret to protect civilians and to preserve peace. They went assured they were upholding international law and in service of the rules-based order. They did not go as part of wars of aggression. They went with a clear mission statement and clear guidelines: to protect the people and to protect the …

The WALK peer model is the cornerstone of the Government's WALK peer ability programme for young people with special educational needs. The programme was developed as a supported transition model in 2013 with the aim of bridging the gap between leaving special school and successfully transitioning to further education, training or employment. This unique model has been supporting young people in my constituency of Louth for many years. It has faced down potential closure on more than one occasion and it manages on …

I note that the Minister of State spoke about giving people the best possible care and services they require. I hope it is not lost on the Minister of State that WALK peer has dramatically changed the lives of young people with special educational needs in my constituency and other counties. Countless young people have availed of the programme. In most cases, it has literally been a lifeline for young persons and their families. The recent PASTEL report from DCU undertaken by Dr. Scanlon provides compelling evidenc…

A couple of days before my tenth birthday, I came home from school to once again find my mother beaten to a pulp and our home smashed to pieces. The bravery of my mother that day changed the course of our lives forever. With the aid of a social care worker, we were brought to a bed and breakfast before we moved to the women's refugee in Galway for a number of weeks while waiting for a longer term placement as the first family in the new women's refuge in Navan, which opened a couple of months later. My mam, the str…

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this motion on protecting the copyright of Irish artists in the era of artificial intelligence. It is important to note this is a nuanced and targeted motion to protect Irish artists across the entire spectrum of the arts. It is not an attack on AI as a whole, which we know has its uses where appropriate. The AI systems and databases are hungry beasts that have to be continuously fed huge amounts to learn. Unfortunately, they have been fed the copywritten works and intellectual…

I welcome the advancement of this Bill. It aligns with Sinn Féin's policy of supporting the post office network and matches the critical investment of €15 million in funding we pledged in our alternative budget last year. For this reason, Sinn Féin will not be proposing any amendments. It is heartening to see collective agreement that the post office network needs to be supported everywhere, and in particular in rural areas. I will highlight, however, that the Government funding pledge ends in 2030, after which the…

Families in Louth have heard multiple announcements from local government representatives, but no meaningful action to deliver the Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael election promises of €200 per month childcare in the first 100 days of Government has come. Childcare is not a luxury and it needs to be given priority in investment. We have more than 29,000 families with children in Louth, and almost 7,000 of those families have a child under the age of four. In sharp contrast, we only have 113 childcare providers, with 46% o…

I received a letter from Louth County Council, which I did not expect, requesting urgent support in securing Government funding to assist the council in addressing the extensive damage caused to the county's road and drainage infrastructure following Storm Chandra. The scale of the damage across the county is significant in both urban and rural areas, with the council recording 69 road closures and 81-----

-----road locations, with an estimated overall reinstatement requirement of €3.61 million. In all my years dealing with Louth County Council, it has always gone through the proper channels, but for the council to call on TDs and Senators to publicise the need for additional Government funding highlights the dire situation.

Will the Taoiseach explore this with the relevant Departments and Ministers, if he can?

I welcome these statements on Pride and the chance to talk of where it began in Ireland and where we are now. Pride began in response to the darkest of crimes. It has now grown into a beacon of light, positivity, progressiveness and inclusivity. Pride, a banner that previously criminalised and marginalised, is now one that cohorts of people can stand behind together full of colour and hope. The first Pride parade in Ireland was in 1983 in response to the homophobic murder of Declan Flynn in Fairview Park in Dublin.…

Week in and out, my constituency office is inundated with people trying to access dental and orthodontic services. The population in Drogheda and south Louth is growing faster now than it ever has before but vital services are not by any stretch keeping up with the population growth. In fact, they are getting worse under the Minister's watch. The number of dentists working under the dental treatment services scheme in Louth dropped between 2019 and 2025. There is huge population growth but the level of service prov…

I am immensely proud to have played an active part in campaigning to repeal the eighth amendment. I had so many people share their very private and personal experiences with me on the doorsteps in Drogheda and the wider parts of my county. Activists of all political hues joined together under the banner of Together For Yes. We asked voters to trust women and we asked them to support providing compassionate care at home. We met daughters, mothers, sisters and grandmothers from all walks of life who had their own har…

The Minister of State will appreciate these questions were submitted before the recess and before the Government's shameful response to the two Private Members' motions on the Ireland and Israel fixtures this week. In spite of that, a response is warranted from the Minister of State to the Irish football community and Irish footballers as to why it is okay for him and the Minister, Deputy O'Donovan, to publicly state they will not attend these fixtures, yet they will shoulder that burden onto our footballers and as…

I am delighted the Minister of State has learned a new word since Tuesday night-Wednesday morning. In the response which the Minister of State, Deputy McConalogue, gave to me on Tuesday night and which was carbon-copied by the Minister of State, Deputy Dooley, on Wednesday morning, the word "genocide" never featured at all. It is great that he has learned that word in the past two days. Even though he has now acknowledged there is a genocide and obviously understands what a genocide is, he still cannot grasp the ma…

You did not do so this week.

History, including his own party’s history, is lost on the Minister of State. There is a precedent in this State of us taking a stand when it comes to sport. It is wrong for him to stand there and tell me that it is unprecedented. That is factually incorrect. He is a Fianna Fáil Member and he should know this. He should talk to his previous Taoiseach. There is absolutely no justification for it. What he is saying this morning, what he said on Tuesday night and the script he handed to his colleague to say to Deputy …