I am a great sports fan. I play GAA. I play five-a-side, six-a-side and eight-a-side in Celbridge and Leixlip. Some might have seen me with a crutch in here which I lent to another Deputy. Of course, some rag put it all over social media. The reason I had the crutch in the first place is because my knee is damaged from playing eight-a-side last Friday when I went in full belt in a tackle and someone's knee went through the side of my knee. I would do it 100 times over to be able to play football. That is what so ma…

Just to interrupt for a second, can I say it was great to play against the Minister of State in Boyle?

With the malevolent Trump Administration, we need to closer links with Canada through the EU and this legislation is clearly facilitating what is essentially a trade-off with pluses and minuses. The question is not about whether we are losing sovereignty but whether sovereignty is worth giving up in certain situations, and I believe it is. We have agreed to pool sovereignty at EU level in multiple areas. The Supreme Court decision stated CETA created a parallel system of justice but it did not say the ICS was uncon…

The nub of the issue is that the Bill is before the House because of a Supreme Court decision and the Costello judgment. We are going to have differences of opinion on it. There was a 4:3 split in the judgment but a 6:1 majority said that while it is unconstitutional, it does not require a referendum because the State can change Irish law to put in place strict safeguards to make sure Irish sovereignty and EU sovereignty are protected in the context of the Bill. This is why we have the arbitration amendment in sect…

It is no surprise to hear me say that I will not be voting confidence in this Government. As I said just after the election, the Government's the programme for Government and the groups it did deals with to keep it in power did not inspire any confidence or show any vision. It's choices during the last budget favoured wealthy developers, left vulnerable people in the lurch and the Government's lack of urgency on the need to ramp up our energy security has been frustrating. People in my constituency cannot get affor…

Let her speak.

Lads, everyone has a right to speak, even if you do not like them.

I will be supporting these resolutions. It is constructive to do so. I said in a contribution a few weeks ago that the Government was not acting fast enough, which was fair comment. It has responded this time, although some will say it has not responded sufficiently, and that is also fair comment. The Government might disagree. I agree with the Government about the overall picture. There is only a set amount of revenue. The pharmaceutical industry and IT windfall is not going to last forever so the Government needs…

I want to follow up on what Deputy Healy said. Our Government obviously has to maintain diplomatic relations with the Trump Administration, but we need to be a good bit stronger in highlighting this illegal war. In this Chamber in January, I asked the Government to do more in terms of the vile, oppressive theocracy in Iran and how it has stamped on its own people and executed so many. What Trump and Netanyahu have done will set cause of the freedom of the Iranian people back for a considerable period. They deserve …

I welcome this brief opportunity to talk about Garda resourcing. I spoke very recently about how the actual number of gardaí per head of population is lower now than it was in 2008, which is a shocking indictment of the system. The Minister needs to get more gardaí into the system and obviously that means paying them, along with other public sector workers, a fair and decent wage and getting rid of the yellow-pack pay and conditions that were brought in during the times of austerity. Equally, we have to provide opp…

We have had a discussion about the immediate measures needed to help with the fuel crisis. We have also talked about the longer term investment in the grid network. I am talking about a couple of quick wins. Yesterday the issue of plug-in solar, which would put it into the household, was referenced. I would like to add to that by talking about the solar panels that you can put on your balcony and use to charge your devices. There should be some sort of a discount on them, or some sort of a grant should be available…

It is good to have a few extra minutes to talk about this. Obviously, this legislation is about the National Oil Reserves Agency 2 cent levy suspension. That makes it 22 cent in total on diesel, 17 cent in total on petrol and another 2 cent reduction on home heating oil. As I have said and others have said, it is simply not enough in the current crisis. I know it is a geopolitical issue, but geopolitics hits people very hard, especially the most vulnerable. We had calls earlier in the year for a €400 support for pe…

We have to differentiate between those who need our help and those who do not. We have made a commitment to the Ukrainian people, some of it because we are not supplying weaponry as a militarily neutral country to help the Ukrainians in their fight against the illegal Russian invasion and onslaught that has killed so many of their people. We have made a commitment and if we make a commitment, we have to continue to follow through with it. That is why I welcome the extension until 2027. The Irish Red Cross in its pr…

The Taoiseach may have seen the latest figures from the Health Products Regulatory Authority, HPRA, which are a cause for concern. Last year, for example, more than 750,000 units of illegal or fake medicines were seized and the number of individual packages separately purchased by members of the public rose by a whopping 180%. There was a 30-fold surge in fake glucagon-like peptide-1, GLP-1, weight loss products, for example, and also a sharp rise in seizures of pregabalin, which is a drug with legitimate applicati…

A week on from previous statements, the Government has finally come up with some measures, so I will be supporting them, like others in this House. However, that does not mean I think they are in any way sufficient. Hauliers have been dealt with and there is the 2 cent measure coming tomorrow with respect to storage, but the reduction in excise duty on its own is not enough. The cost of fuel has gone up by more than the amount by which excise duty is going to be cut. People in vulnerable situations need support. We…

I want to begin by broadly welcoming the Bill and acknowledging the important work it seeks to do in bringing us into line with the European Media Freedom Act. It is true and has been said before that Ireland is still considered to have one of the freest, and arguably the finest, presses in the world. We are consistently ranking within the top ten nations, according to the annual world press freedom index published by Reporters Without Borders. That said, the ranking has on occasion, experienced a few fluctuations …

I take on board what the Government said about not having a knee-jerk reaction to fuel prices. We are in a very volatile situation and who knows which way it is going to go over the coming months? At the same time, there is some space for some sort of interim coverage. I would say it is going to be coming, to be quite honest. I would like more proactivity in terms of the timescale of what the Government is doing. Ultimately, as others have referred to, the companies have pushed the prices of petrol, diesel and kero…

Almost a year ago, when I raised with the Tánaiste the issue of whether we should follow the Australian model and introduce a ban for under-16s, the Tánaiste, I think it was the second time he said it, and the Minister said it as well, said, "The era of self-regulation is over." Then today in the Chamber we heard the Government say its age verification system is not mandatory for users and not mandatory for the IT companies. That, straight away, is still self-regulation. The Government criticised this Bill by sayin…

Ar dtús, ba mhaith liom labhairt faoi mo Dháilcheantar féin. Is An Post about providing a community service or is it about being a for-profit company and making money? We are not talking about Leinster House bike shed-type of wastage here or but equally the service in my constituency has degraded. Postal workers have been asked to cover larger areas. We know that the letter side has declined but the number of packages is going up as others have said. We have to look at it as a community service model going back to …

Following what Deputy Tóibín said, why is CHI still in existence? That is something that needs to be looked at. Obviously, we have to go through the 16-week scoping exercise, led by Remy Farrell SC. That is something that the advocacy groups do not trust. It does not meet the definition of what we would call an independent mediator. The Minister might call him a kind of a facilitator to get all the information together for an inquiry, but these are people who have been damaged by Children's Health Ireland and its p…