Ba mhaith liom tagairt a dhéanamh inniu do dhea-scéal don imshaol domhanda. Go hiondúil, is annamh a thagann dea-scéal mar seo chun tosaigh. It is for that reason that I happily advert to it today. In the first half of 2025, renewable energy overtook coal as the world's leading source of electricity - a historic first. Electricity demand is growing around the world go forleathan, but the growth in solar and wind energy is so strong that it met 100% of the extra electricity demand in the year past, even helping to d…

Although I am not a member of the Oireachtas Committee on Climate, Environment and Energy, I paid great attention to the massive fish kill in the River Blackwater on the Waterford-Cork border during the summer. It was an outrage. That is the only way to describe it. The best estimates are that around 30,000 fish died as a result. It was a very strange pattern of attrition among the fish. While that number of fish died, several other species of fish survived and remain perfectly healthy. It was a really unusual type…

Tá an feachtas don Uachtarántacht faoi lán-seol agus tá sé tugtha faoi dearadh agam nach bhfuil á lán de na ráitis agus idirghabhálacha atá ag teacht uaidh daoine éagsúla ró-ghalánta. I am just concerned from observing the presidential campaign that a lot of the discourse is being degraded into what I would call fairly unseemly contributions. Here we are in a republic that is, technically, more than 100 years old, and in the throes of a presidential campaign we are still drawing attention to the religion and the Or…

Next month, on 25 October, we will celebrate a fairly significant event in the tourism and socioeconomic life of Ireland, namely, the 40th birthday of Ireland West Airport. In the media reports back in 1985, it was variously described by journalists as being an airport built on the top of a mountain or on a bog. It was completely deprecated by the media and by the omniscient people of the Pale. Of course, 40 years later Ireland West Airport Knock is celebrating success after success and is getting on towards its mi…

I would like to say a few words in support of the motion before the House this afternoon, and also to signal the widespread support of the Seanad Independent Group for the sentiments and thrust of the motion. The first thing I wish to do is make an observation I have regarding the conflict as it erupted in October 2023. It is so frequently before us in the media - on television, in the newspapers, in magazines and periodicals - that it is quite easy to find ourselves being slightly anaesthetised by the suffering an…

The reason I deferred to Senator Scahill, even though I think I upset the lineage, is I was unprepared and I was trying to marshal a few figures. I want to celebrate the fact that we have the opportunity to comment on expenditure and the whole ambit of what we are doing with our money and productively. I draw the House's attention not for the first time to the expenditure on our defence budget. The last time I looked, it was about 0.25% of the national budget. It seems to be the fashion of the day. Senator Cosgrove…

I commend the Minister of State and her colleagues on the substantial legislation we have under consideration. I admit that only in the previous day or so have I become in any way acquainted with it, which is probably greatly to my shame. It is an amazingly complex area. I do not think anybody in this State does not have family members or people they know affected by mental health and that type of disability. I have received some correspondence about this. While I am commending the Minister of State and it is extra…

That is very interesting. I did not know that. I apologise for addressing the Minister of State directly. Sin an méid. Go raibh míle maith agaibh.

I would like to be associated with all the comments in relation to Martin Groves and Bridget Doody, who have now left us. I also welcome the new Martin and wish him well in his time here with us in the Upper House. I will draw attention briefly not to the election that is uppermost in many people's minds, but to an election that is coming up on Sunday next in the Republic of Moldova. About 20 years ago, when I was a member of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, I h…

Before I came into the Seanad in January, for the previous 20 years I had the privilege of going around primary school classrooms for the 20 years from 2005 to 2025. It is a matter of great pride in being able to report the widespread work that is being done by primary teachers in integrating the new arrivals into Ireland and the tremendous work that is being done in social, personal and health education, but most notably in the matter of how the new Irish are being integrated and facilitated in learning Gaeilge. I…

There has been a significant European dimension to the contributions this morning. I am happy to add my three ha'pence worth before we go our separate ways. I am charmed and warmed that a very important meeting is taking place this morning in London between Prime Minister Starmer and the German Chancellor, Friedrich Merz. It signals a rapprochement and closeness between two countries that were traditional enemies in times past. It also signals the urgency with which European leaders want to address the current situ…

I wonder if many in the House are familiar with the name Saif Musallet. Unfortunately, that young man’s name has been in the news quite prominently over the past few days, I suspect because he has dual nationality. He is Palestinian but he is also a citizen of the United States. He is a young man from Florida aged 19. He went in the springtime to visit his family in the West Bank and to express solidarity with them. Last Friday, he was the victim of a series of assaults by settlers and he was beaten to death. The f…

I would be delighted to take a small trip down boithrín na smaointe for a little bit of nostalgia. Admittedly, the whole world of sport in Ireland has gone through some significant development over the last few decades. I want to paint a small picture of what sport was like for somebody like myself who went to a boarding school in the midlands of Ireland back in the 1960s. Even though St. Mel's College in Longford was a diocesan seminary, it still harboured two distinct religions. One was the dominant one, which wa…

I feel that I am in a midlanders’ get-together today. It is the first time I have had the pleasure to meet face to face with the Minister of State, Deputy Troy, who I think hails from Ballinacarrigy, County Westmeath. Am I right? I am. It is not too far down the road from the village of Ardagh, County Longford, where I was born and raised, and from Colehill, where I lived for a little while. Of course, I also see Senator Flaherty here from Longford, who is another doughty character in the Seanad. I will get down to…

I am charmed and warmed by the Minister of State's outline of where they are going forward. It sounds like a to-do list,and when people are coming up with to-do lists, it usually implies that people have been asleep at the wheel. The Irish versions of the new EU legal materials are being produced in real time. However, the EUR-Lex website, where EU law is published, has most important historical EU legislation, for example, the working time directive, and this is not available in Gaeilge. They are available in ever…

We often have heard the expression than an Englishman’s home is his castle. If that be the case, many of us feel that an Irishman’s or Irishwoman’s home is their birthright. I think that is engendered by the fact that most of us were lucky enough to grow up in secure homes. They would not have been palatial, but they would have wrapped around us not just walls but the wall of love that we all grew up in. It distresses me when I talk to the younger generation and hear them say, with resignation in their voices, that…

I wish to speak for a few moments on the géarchéim that is attaching to Waterford Regional Airport. I have many misgivings following a recent meeting that took place between the Minister, local TDs, Ministers of State and the chief executive of Waterford City and County Council in Waterford. When we heard the Minister was meeting representatives and the chief executive, our hopes naturally spiralled high and we thought we were going to get good news. Alas, it was another damp squib. We were told the airport would h…

The latest figures, as of early July, show 743 people have been killed and 4,891 injured while waiting to get fed in Gaza by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, GHF. That foundation, which was founded only last year, is an elusive enough entity. The headquarters were incorporated at an address in Delaware, just two weeks after President Trump took office. When the premises were visited by journalists to search them out, what they found there was a registration agency. The foundation did not physically or legally exis…

I will address one particular feature of the Bill, namely, the reservations I have about the delegation of defamation to judges only and the bypassing of the constitutional and long-held right of people to be tried by juries of their peers. I want to digress, maybe to add a little bit of levity to what has been a somewhat turgid session at times. When I was a much younger man I spent most of the first 12 years of my teaching life in the capital here and I lived just out the road in Ranelagh, in a place called Cherr…

Yes indeed, and it gets better because just at the top of my road, there resided a lovely man called Mr. Justice Hubert Wine. He is long gone now. In a chat I had with him once he cracked a good joke, I thought. He said one of his defendants said that he had been sentenced by "just a swine". The sobriquet was anything but appropriate for Mr. Justice Wine because he was an entirely lovely man. That leads me on to the point I am about to make. Judges are gifted with judiciousness but not with divinity and, as such, t…