This whole debate, to my mind, turns on what you say neutrality is. Irish neutrality is not about being indifferent. It is not about not taking sides. It is about never standing with empires and always standing with the oppressed and those who resist empires. This tradition goes back to Wolfe Tone, the first person to enunciate the idea of Irish neutrality, and to James Connolly, Constance Markievicz and Pearse who set up the Irish Neutrality League in 1914 at the outbreak of the First World War to oppose both side…

I am sorry; I did not realise Deputy Stanley was here.

To provide an hour for this debate is a pathetic admission of the failure of Government policy to address an entirely predictable situation in terms of petrol prices and the cost of living. The Government does not even want to discuss it but has been forced, because of the fear of public outrage and protest, to have this reconvening of the Dáil. It wants to curtail the debate so we do not actually get to discuss the cost-of-living crisis that is affecting hundreds of thousands of working people and families in this…

Fear of public outrage and protest has forced the Government to reconvene the Dáil. It is a pathetic admission by the Government that its policy has failed to provide any certainty or serious protection for ordinary people who are being hammered with the hikes in the costs of petrol and diesel. We can add to that electricity prices, gas prices, food prices and so many other things that are hammering people in their ability just to live from day to day. What should be in front of the Dáil today is something that wou…

As somebody who was born in a mother and baby home, I find it pretty despicable that the Government has not stated its intention to stop a private, profit-driven developer from building on a site where the mother and baby home commission has said there are likely burials and where 19 mothers and 859 infants remain missing. The Government can overcome the obstacles if it wants to. It must demand that the site be taken into public ownership.

St. Joseph's Centre in Shankill is the largest care home dedicated solely to dementia care in the country. SIPTU members feel compelled to take industrial action tomorrow because of the failure of St. John of God's to recognise the work and duties that they do. They are employed at a domestic grade, but, in reality, they do jobs way beyond that. They feed people, drive people around and do care duties, but St. John of God's is refusing to acknowledge that in terms of their grading and their pay structure. Nothing w…

It is not working. It has been done.

It has been done.

I thank Deputy Ó Snodaigh for bringing this motion forward. As Deputy Paul Murphy indicated, People Before Profit is very happy to support and commend all the artists, organisations, musicians and so on who are campaigning to bring this forward. I hope the fact that the Government is not opposing the motion means that it is actually going to take it seriously and do something in response to it. I have to say, I have my doubts about that. Before we even started to discuss AI in a serious way in this House, I do not …

The reason we have a cost-of-living crisis in this country and across the world for working people is because of the greed of billionaires, multimillionaires, warmongers and the governments that back them. The personal fortunes of Donald Trump and his mate, Elon Musk, sum it all up. This year, while ordinary people across the world are crushed with a cost-of-living crisis and some people are being bombed to bits by Musk and Trump's allies in Palestine, Iran or Lebanon, Musk's fortune has gone past $1 trillion. It i…

The jamboree of propaganda for the EU has started with the beginning of the Irish EU Presidency. The bit that concerns me is confirmed in the Minister’s speech: The [Irish] Presidency will advance the measures set out in the White Paper on the future of European defence, the associated defence readiness roadmap 2030, and vital new initiatives on joint defence procurement. The paper she is referring to is the paper ReArm Europe. That is what this is about. That is what Zelenskyy’s visit is about and what von der Ley…

As the Taoiseach knows, Ireland will take over the EU Presidency for six months as of tomorrow and the Taoiseach will host a launch event in Dublin Castle to commence the six months of the Irish EU Presidency. I will be joining a demonstration outside Dublin Castle with anti-war and peace groups, pro-neutrality groups and Palestine solidarity groups, because they and I are concerned that, rather than using the position of the EU Presidency to defend our tradition of neutrality and reflect the views of the majority …

-----greater spending on weapons and arming a genocide in Gaza.

Will the Government stand up for neutrality?

Will it oppose the EU militarisation agenda and complicity with genocide or will it cave in to that agenda?

I spent much of last night conversing with a young man from Ukraine who fled here because he did not want to be conscripted into the disastrous Ukrainian-Russian war and is fearful he is going to be sent back there because Zelenskyy is asking that people of his age now be sent back to fight on a front line where tens of thousands are being slaughtered. That disastrous war was, of course, started by Putin but young men like him do not want to fight in it. The Taoiseach did not refer to the document I mentioned. It s…

-----to oppose the militarisation agenda-----

-----oppose the shameful complicity with the genocide-----

-----and do an about-turn on the question of the triple lock-----

-----which is about dismantling our neutrality?