I extend the House's welcome to my Déise Oireachtas colleague, the Minister of State, Deputy John Cummins. Only in the previous two hours, I received an email from one of my councillors but I will not say where. She gave me permission to use part of it in the debate this afternoon. I am using it in anonymised fashion and I will redact some of it. It states: Dear Senator Conway, thank you for contacting me but this situation has been a real shock to me [she is talking about the lack of remuneration during time off f…

I will make a few observations on our status as an island nation and do a small comparison between us and New Zealand, which is a country that has roughly the same population and the same demand on connectivity we have. I am somebody who is based in the south east, which is the only region that does not have a regional airport. I will contrast that with New Zealand, which has 28 regional and international airports on its two islands. Many of those double up as civilian and military facilities. We have a great diffi…

In this House we often hear on a quotidian basis about groups which are discriminated against. I want to talk about a very small cohort of people in our country who are discriminated against in matters of employment and remuneration, that is, our 950 sitting county councillors. They must be the only cohort of workers in this country that are not recognised for payment of sick leave benefit. I always eschew the sad stories that people tell about their own cases and using the House for that but, just to point out tha…

The pages of history are replete with chronicles of nations and tribes who have, by fair means or foul, aggregated spheres of influence to themselves and bestrode the world like colossi, only to see it all fritter away like quicksilver years later. In this regard, we can look at the empires of the Assyrians, the Romans, the Mongols, the Ottomans and, of course, in terms of influence in our area over the last century, the British Empire. The waning of these behemoths of invasion and subjugation followed the usual an…

I am very encouraged to hear the kindred thinking from the Minister of State. We can talk about co-operation with private and semi-State bodies and all that sort of thing, but the critical thing at this stage is to encourage the Government to initiate a reasoned and comprehensive national discourse on the issues we spoke about - and that means neutrality - and to bring the matter of co-operation on defence to a decision not just of the Government, but of the people. If the majority so accord, we should set about pr…

Today, I show unity with an initiative by Senator Stephenson as regards Gaza. On a day on which we are commemorating the Great Famine - Gorta Mór na hÉireann - a tragedy that shaped our nation and left scars generations later, it reminds us of the deep pain that comes when people are denied their most basic needs. This week, just nine trucks were allowed into Gaza. To meet the basic demands or needs of the population, 500 trucks a day are needed. For nearly 80 days now, food, water and medicine have been severely r…

Many people have expressed sympathy with the family and the force of An Garda Síochána with regard to the recent taking of life. Whereas Senator McCarthy mentioned that a large number of gardaí have died in the line of duty, in our own generation - since the turn of the millennium, not quite 25 years ago - 16 gardaí have died in the line of duty. Oftentimes, we can get complacent about the level of a pacific and peaceful society we live in, but those figures bear out that the challenges borne by An Garda Síochána a…

I draw the attention of Members of the House to what has happened regarding the enjoyment of broadcasting in our country over the past couple of months. Not long ago, it was announced by the BBC that it was withdrawing its BBC Sounds app from everybody outside the United Kingdom, which meant people who enjoyed digital radio of great quality through the app were to have it taken away. This is very regrettable for people in the Republic of Ireland and also people all over the world who like the standard of broadcasti…

I advert to something we have all come to notice, I am sure, in our peregrinations around the country, which is the diminishing standard of driver behaviour on the roads. It is all too frequent that I see hazardous and dangerous behaviour. I cannot help but notice, and this may be an ageist thing, that a lot of the people taking unnecessary chances on the road and putting other motorists in danger are younger drivers. I was reading statistics on the way up this morning on the train. Approximately 80% of the people …

When I made a contribution earlier, I made an error and said that close to 80% of fatalities on Irish roads were young males. I should of course have said “males”.

Is mian liom tagairt a dhéanamh do chúrsaí a tháinig faoi mo bhráid cúpla seachtain ó shin. I am very much a believer in the republican stance of strict separation of church and state, but since we do not really have that luxury, as I would call it, in this country, I will say something on preserving balance or parity of esteem among faiths and religions in this country. A couple of weeks ago, Ramadan ended, which, as most Members will be aware, is a big festival in the Muslim faith. There are now approximately 100…

It is very gratifying for us here in the House to welcome the Tánaiste and hear his very calm, sane and reassuring words this morning. One thing we oftentimes say is we never learn anything from history. The same can be said about tariffs in the fact that the pages of history, if they are not quite littered with examples of the failure of tariffs, then certainly the pages are fairly replete. Approximately 120 years ago, the president of the Board of Trade on our neighbouring island - which was then in the economic …

Tá mórfháilte roimh an Aire. It is very gratifying for us in the south east to see somebody from there at the Cabinet table. I hope the Minister will look after the south east to the best of his ability. It is lovely to see a champion of the purple and gold in the Cabinet milieu. I worked a lot in County Wexford in the past 20 years, but I only found out the meaning of the purple and gold during a visit to a primary school in Oulart. I was talking to the principal there and he asked me if I knew the origin of the p…

One of the main crises in the economy and in our social life at present is the undoubted problem with putting roofs over the heads of our young people, the so-called housing crisis that pervades this land. We in Leinster House are often accused, left, right and centre, of living in a rarefied atmosphere and being disconnected from the realities of life in the country. In an effort to mitigate that, I decided in the past week to pay a couple of visits to sites where houses are being built to connect with the people …

I agree with much of what my colleague, Senator Craughwell, has said. On a different subject, the House will be glad to hear that the University Hospital Waterford's cath lab last Sunday provided life-saving intervention to three patients on its first weekend of service.

These are three patients who did not have to travel to Cork or Dublin but received timely and appropriate emergency care in Waterford's national cardiac centre. This is one of the things we, as public representatives, have supported for a long time, that the 24-7 service in Waterford would be expanded fully. I can confidently predict that UHW's cardiac cath lab numbers, even on the seven-day rota, will increase and answer the challenges that exist. There will be no let-up in this service delivered, with a fairer al…

Gabhaim buíochas le Sinn Féin as ucht an rún tábhachtach seo a chur os comhair an Tí seo. Déanaim comhghairdeas leis an Aire Stáit. Tá súil agam go rachaidh sé i ngleic leis an gceist chasta seo as seo amach. I support an inclusive approach to education and recognise the constitutional right of all children to an education, tailored to their individual needs, as articulated in our Education Act 1998, which states it should be "made available to each person resident in the State, including a person with a disability…

Go raibh míle maith agat. I want to address the business of derelict sites in ten brief itemised points. Over half of local authorities are failing to collect money from the owners of derelict sites. The latest figures suggest that councils are owed more than €20 million in unpaid levies. Seventeen of the 31 local authorities did not collect any money from dereliction merchants. Just €604,000 was collected by the councils in the last year reckonable, despite close to €1 million being owed in these local authorities…

Gabhaim buíochas leis an Aire Stáit as a bheith anseo chun déileáil leis an gceist chasta seo. I want to use the maritime coastal town where I live, Tramore, as an illustration of what dereliction looks like. We have two derelict hotels - the Grand Hotel and the Tramore Hotel. The Grand Hotel has been derelict for more than eight years, since 2016, and the Tramore Hotel has been derelict for many more years. There has been a loss of 100 rooms between the two hotels for a period of at least eight years. I have done …

Ba mhaith liomsa ar an gcéad dul síos fíorchaoin fáilte a chur roimh an Aire as teacht isteach go dtí an Teach anocht le héisteacht agus deileáil leis an gcás casta seo faoi scoliosis. It is coming up on 70 years since a young Senator from Massachusetts, John F. Kennedy, wrote a book called Profiles in Courage . In it, he outlined the exploits and achievements of eight heroic Senators in the history of the United States since the civil war. It got me thinking that like the eight heroic Senators, the six Senators wh…