That is all it is for you. As long as we are not in NATO we are neutral.

I did not. Check the record.

Today is 30 June. It should go down as the day of the bonfire of our climate targets. In this one swift afternoon, we will make real the Minister's softly saying just after Christmas this year that we would not reach our energy targets. What does that look like in reality? It looks like ramming through measures, with no parliamentary oversight, no proper debate and, in the case of the next Bill we will discuss, no economic impact assessment, which will mean we are not coming close to meeting our climate targets bec…

I will try to be swift, so we can move on. We have heard the same speech from Deputy Danny Healy-Rae on a number of occasions, effectively denying human-caused climate change by saying we have had storms and extreme weather events in the past. Yes, we have had storms and extreme weather events in the past. That is not evidence against human-created climate change. The evidence is very clear. There is a clear scientific consensus. Deputy Healy-Rae says he has heard that some paper exists that proves the climatologis…

I am less concerned about that. It is fine. The main thing I have a problem with is that we have a Government that did not really make an effort there to object to the climate denialism but will, on occasion, object to climate denialism and will say it recognises the science. We have a Government that says climate change is real and accepts that climate change is caused by fossil fuels. It accepts that climate change is a consequence of the greenhouse gas emissions. It says we are going to sign up to legally bindin…

The Minister was not here when I spoke earlier on the LNG Bill, so I will make the point to him now. What the Minister is doing tonight is disgraceful. This is, in six hours, a bonfire of our climate commitments. What we are seeing in action is the Minister's abandonment of targets that we were told many times were legally binding and, therefore, we did not need to worry and the Government would do everything. This is what this means. It is what the Minister has done in terms of LNG. It is what the Minister is doin…

Being honest, I did not intend to speak on these amendments - I was going to wait until later - but when a substantial debate, which should go on for a long period in a committee room, is squeezed into two hours, it invariably turns into Second Stage speeches because it is our last chance to have a say on it. For me, this is the third leg of a bonfire. I know bonfires do not have legs but I am referring to whatever the wooden structures are that go around a serious bonfire. This is the third one we have had in one …

I have two points. One is the point that Deputy Gibney made. The Minister of State denied that she gets to appoint the CEO. For now, until the establishment of the board, she has total power in appointing the CEO. That is the truth. That is what is set out in the legislation. Afterwards, she still gets to pick the CEO. She picks the CEO from a shortlist, which is done by the Public Appointments Service, but she does pick them. The Minister of State may feel free to correct me if I am wrong in that. I am not sure he…

It is appropriate that I speak at this stage because I think that gets to the point. I think the Government agrees with the Deputy that it wants to set up an enabling office. That is the wrong way to go. Fundamentally we need a “thou shalt not” regulating office to try to protect the citizens from the potentially negative impact of AI. I will speak to two of the amendments. I support Deputy Gibney's amendment on adding in the promotion of the responsible use of AI as opposed to the current proposal we have. It is a…

Does Deputy Geoghegan mean the weather forecasting guy?

His main thing was to say this is not like the large language models, LLMs. I did not disagree with anything he said but I do not think he was making the general case that is being made that somehow AI is going to help us to deal with climate change. If we roll out the argument that a combination of AI and a stable demand for energy is going to promote investment in renewables, and load management and so on will happen at a better scale, I really think it is magical thinking. I do not think we are going to find cli…

Eleven Irish billionaires now own more than wealth than two thirds of the population. Half of the population owns less than 10% of the total wealth. It is time for a wealth tax. A wealth tax on the richest 1% could raise €9 billion. At a time when so many people are suffering in one of the richest countries in the world, is it not time to introduce one?

We heard this week from Barnardos that, in Ireland, one of the richest countries in the world, 30% of parents say they do not have enough food to feed their children. A total of 44% of parents - almost one in two parents - said they have to cut back themselves so that their kids have enough to eat. That is at one side of the pole of Irish capitalism. On the other side is the 11 billionaires who are richer than 66% of the population. Eleven people are richer than two thirds of the population put together - 3.5 milli…

I thank Deputy Ward for tabling this important motion and for his diligent attention to detail on this issue. It is about making sure the Government cannot get away with just burying the issue and saying it is now dealt with - it is definitely not dealt with. This has fundamentally been the approach of the past number of Governments in terms of trying to bury this from the very start of the scandal. The campaign started in 2011. Affected households were fobbed off for nearly ten years, forced to campaign strongly, …

Workers at Castolin Eutectic have been out on strike for three days now. They are due to go on strike again next week for five days. This is about eight workers being made redundant. The company agreed to go to the Labour Court but has since refused to implement the Labour Court's recommendation of 1.5 weeks per year of service on top of statutory redundancy. The cost of this to the company is minimal. It will be €30,000 or so. This is a company generating over €300 million annually in sales. It is owned by a ventu…

There are thousands of people already at our coasts or on their way to our coasts to swim but there are swimming restrictions in place across all of the closest designated swimming spots south of the city centre. The Half Moon, Seapoint, Dún Laoghaire Baths, Sandycove and the Forty Foot have all been under an eight-day swim restriction notice since Thursday last. The notice warns of a possible increase in bacteria following heavy rainfall. In other words, there is a good chance you are swimming in faeces. The same …

That is precisely what tropical weather is.

You would not know it from listening to the British commentariat, but a key factor in the downfall of Keir Starmer was his complicity in genocide and, in particular, that infamous clip where he says Israel does have the right to block water, block food and block electricity from Gaza while engaging in very blatant war crimes. Another man entirely complicit in genocide is Peter Thiel, the founder of Palantir, which is deeply integrated into the Israeli military structure and has played a crucial role in the slaughte…

They are planning to do a lot of harm.

Pride has always been a protest as well as a great party and a celebration, and unfortunately there is still a lot to protest about. The Government's record on trans healthcare is really shocking. It is the worst in the European Union with record waiting lists of up to 18 years for the only public gender clinic. You cannot talk about trans rights when you cannot access trans healthcare. It is eight years since the Government's own review of the Gender Recognition Act recommended non-binary recognition. Still, the G…