Brian Stanley
Laois · Independent · Ireland
“We are going through an epidemic of domestic abuse and violence. In 2025, the Garda had over 67,000 calls in relation to domestic abuse. Seven women were murdered last year, and in many of those cases, it was by a family member, a partner or somebody known closely to the victim.”
“Those fundamentals cannot be ignored. Are supporters of partition really saying that we can continue on this small island with 14 different departments in each jurisdiction working back to back, often in competition with each other? Are they saying that having Twenty-six Counties in the EU and Six Counties out of it makes economic sense?”
“Those who still argue for partition ignore the fact that in a reunified 32-county state, the pension liabilities of those workers in the Six Counties who accrued pension entitlements by paying into the British national insurance system and the British exchequer or employment pensions would receive that portion of their pension liability.”
“Unfortunately, I do not get any sense of urgency from the Minister of State that we are going to have laws introduced in September or October, and that is the crucial issue. Yes, we have rules now, and she listed them out in relation to the signs. However, they are being ignored.”
“The cost is €2.6 billion for the diplomatic mission alone. There is also MI6 and the massive military machine and capacity, including the army, the navy and the Royal Air Force. I saw a figure of €60.2 billion for 2025 and 2026. That amount is due to rise sharply to meet its increased military capabilities.”
“The issue I am raising with the Minister of State is the increase in the number of injuries, including those involving young children, relating to e-scooters and e-bikes. Ten have been killed.”
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“The Minister may have disputed what we were saying to him in January, February and March but we were seeing what was happening on the ground. Let us see the effects of this in six months and see what is happening. I am asking the Minister of State to use this Bill. He has introduced a pile of amendments. I ask him to go back and look at this and to try to put some cooling effect on the spiralling cost of private rented accommodation. None of this will do anything for low-and-middle income households who are really under pressure. We should not be doing this to people. This is not fair. What has happened is not fair and everybody here in this House, if they look at the evidence, will recognise that. That is not the type of society that we should be trying to live in. Of course, we need more housing.”
“What I am trying to get across to the Minister of State is that the cumulative effect of the measures the Minister has taken over recent times has reduced standards, that landlords, and particularly big landlords and developers, have benefited, and that the Minister has piled further pressure to people who are already struggling. That is not good enough. We do not need to be doing this. There was another road to take with this. The impact of the measures being imposed by the Fianna Fáil-Fine Gael Government should be assessed. We should let it run maybe to the six-month point, and the effect of this on people and on housing should be assessed at that stage in September or October. It should be examined in the cold light of day. I urge the Government to do that.”
“The message I want to convey to the Minister of State is the human cost to all this. There is a human cost in terms of stress. There is a human cost in terms of mental health. There is a human cost in terms of conflict within families over it. Health is affected, relationships are breaking down and, of course, there is poverty. He will have seen the figures for child poverty earlier in the week. That is not good enough in one of the richest states in the world. As always, I am not arguing for willy-nilly measures to be brought in.”
“Then the developers building apartments, including those who had started, got a tax break. To cap it all, the Minister is bringing in this measure on rent so you have tenants competing against each other for somewhere to live. That is what is being played. It is like an auction and some landlords are using that. In all of this, the context is always important. I am raising this with the Minister of State because I am hearing this from constituents day in, day out. All of this is happening at a time the cost of living is going up. There is no disputing it, with increases in the cost of electricity, fuel, groceries and transport. The coming winter will be very difficult. We are in June now, but renters and a lot of people who have mortgages are struggling badly at present.”
“Three-bedroom new lets cost over €2,000 a month. It is the law of the jungle. Nothing less than that is what has happened. It is Trumpian-style politics and that is regrettable. I recognise that some small landlords are being fair enough about it. In a lot of cases, they have tried to not be too penal about it. On top of all that then, in recent times the Minister has lowered the standards and for apartments and the size, including the sizes of windows. The last time window sizes were reduced was under British rule because one of the issues on which the rent was based was the amount of light going into the little cabins that people lived in. Here we are now with 36 sq. m apartments and the Minister has limited the light going into them. Not alone has he limited space, he has limited the light.”
“We would have liked them to be stronger and there are ways out of it, but they provided some cooling effect in the municipal districts where they applied. The evidence of that is that when the Fianna Fáil-Fine Gael Government removed them, we could see what happened. The evidence is there in the rent reports of Daft.ie. Looking at the Residential Tenancies Board figures, everything shows. It is not only us telling the Minister; the hard data tells him this. I told the Minister about the increases in Laois. The average increase for a two-bedroom house or apartment has risen by 34% in the space of one year. Now there is nothing else that I know of that has gone up 34%. That is like something that would happen in a banana republic but that happened in County Laois. Nobody is disputing it because it can be seen in the hard data.”
“I am seeing it with the number of people coming into my constituency office. Since November-December of last year and right up to yesterday, the effects of those changes have been seen by us at local level. It is piling huge pressure on households and individuals renting. There is a case on the street where I have my office where more than half the income of a household is going on rent. That is not sustainable. We cannot do that. That is the result of what is happening here, in this legislation and previous legislation that the Minister brought in. The notices to quit continue to spiral. Rents in new tenancies have not just hit the roof but gone out through it. In particular, a cap needs to be reimposed in section 8. I will table an amendment to that effect. Most of us were critical of the rent pressure zones.”
“The question with this Bill, as with previous ones, is: will it help families, particularly low-and-middle income families, to access affordable and secure accommodation? I have particularly in mind those in private rented accommodation. The concern is that the Minister of State is bringing in further measures and amendments to what was brought in in March. That was one of the most far-reaching Bills relating to tenants and renters in this country because the Minister threw them completely at the mercy of free market speculation. That was a recipe for disaster. Let us look across at America and other countries, where unbridled free-marketeering is the order of the day. What I am hearing from some parts of the country and from my own constituency, Laois, is that those changes have been piled on.”
“I have raised this many times in the Dáil and with the Minister. Research has found that 58% of neurological patients in the midlands have no access to community rehab. In the midlands, and in Laois in particular, there is a four-year wait to get to a clinic and see somebody, 58% have no access to community rehab and we have absolutely no adult recovery or OT servicesinr primary care. I ask the Minister to ask the Minister for Health to address this.”
“A 23-year-old woman from Portlaoise was not diagnosed with scoliosis until she was 17 due to inadequate services. She had surgery last December and four weeks later developed tremors in her leg, which have affected her ability to walk meaning she has to use a rollator or a stick. Her condition has worsened. She has serious mobility problems. She is facing a four-year wait for the Mater neurological clinic to get services. She has been refused access to other neurological clinics as they are full. She is meeting a brick wall. After having to wait until she was 17 to have a diagnosis and 23 to have a surgical intervention, she is left in limbo. Caoimhe is anxious to get back to work but she cannot. She has no access to adult occupational therapy, OT, services - nor does anybody else by the way - as there is none in County Laois.”
“Trade with the occupied territories in Ireland will not amount to billions of euro but that is no excuse not to stop it. People are angry and people want action. There is massive support for penalties against Israel. It is time for action. We have had eight years of dithering. We cannot have it any longer. Ban trade in goods and services, use the forthcoming EU Presidency to push for similar measures at EU level and work towards the full suspension of the Israel-EU trade agreement.”
“Over 400 prominent lawyers have stated that we can ban trade in goods and services with the occupied territories but the Government said there are legal issues, that it is complicated and referred to the Attorney General's advice. They say the banning of services would be impossible to implement and so on. The Government should publish the Attorney General's advice. Spain has been able to impose a ban on goods and services and the advertisement of services. Other EU states are taking similar steps. There are clear parallels here with the boycott against South Africa and it may have been a small step at the time over in Dunnes Stores on Henry Street but that snowballed and was huge in terms of isolating the apartheid regime.”
“However, this Bill is about the occupied territories and we should ban all goods and services from the occupied territories. There should be no dancing around that and no ifs or buts. We must also continue to demand and work with other EU states to cancel the EU preferential trade agreement. Anything less is a cop out. Of the trade between Ireland and the occupied territories, 70% is in services. The EU and Ireland were quick to ban trade and to put sanctions on Russia, and rightly so. Yet, when it comes to Israel all we hear are excuses. What is worse, a lot of EU states are actually helping to sustain Israel's war in terms of supplying it with arms and the materiel for arms. The International Court of Justice has decreed not just that we can do it, but that we are obliged to do it due to the war crimes being carried out.”
“People up and down the country, and certainly people in County Laois, are infuriated by the war crimes carried out by Israel and what it has got away with: the illegal occupation of Palestinian lands, the genocide and slaughter we witness on our television screens evening after evening, the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian West Bank, the occupation of southern Lebanon, the massacre of Lebanese people and the deliberate efforts to prevent any hope of a two-state solution. Then there is the Israeli torture and abuse of Palestinian prisoners on the orders of the war criminals - they are not a government - who pose as an Israeli government. As a supposedly sovereign Parliament we have the power here to take action. All trade in goods and services to Israel, I believe, should be stopped.”
“This has the potential to do the same thing. We must send a powerful message to the Israeli Government and the Israeli people who support it. Its genocide is not acceptable. As I have said, there are some things more important than sport. Irish people want action and here is the opportunity. I welcome the measure taken by RTÉ to boycott the Eurovision, which was good. I welcome to measure by the Government to ban the two Israeli ministers, the security minister and the finance minister, but it should go further than that. Israel needs to be ostracised in total until it makes amends for what it has done to the Palestinian people.”
“Is what Israel has done to Palestinians not the same? I note that well over 90% of FAI members voted to instruct the association to call on UEFA to suspend Israel and that should have happened. There is growing support across the country for the match not to go ahead. Ordinary people, who normally would not think too much about politics or what is going on in the world, are horrified by what they have seen through the good work that has been done by journalists - those who have been left alive to actually witness it - in Gaza who have brought that information to us on a daily basis. People may say that it is tokenistic or whatever but back in 1984 when the women in Dunnes Stores took the small step of not handling South African fruit, it mushroomed and ballooned into the boycott of the apartheid regime.”
“The issue is whether people support the genocide of their government and the people in Israel who do so share some of this blame. Many Israeli people do not support it and many Jews I have met do not support it, which is good but over 75,000 people have died in Gaza since October 2023. With the aerial bombardments, starvation, disease and people buried under rubble, what people have seen is horrendous. Since the October 2025 ceasefire, 947 Palestinians have been killed with over 3,000 injured. To rub salt into the wounds, the treatment of the flotilla, including the 13 Irish citizens, was fingers up to the international community. Israel is not a normal state. Israel is a terrorist state and should be treated as such. FIFA and UEFA banned Russia and there have international bans on Yugoslavia as well.”
“I thank the Social Democrats for bringing forward this comprehensive motion. Football is very important and I certainly do not want to be stopping any sport but there are other things that are more important. It is important that the slaughter that we have witnessed in Palestine, not just in the past two or three years, but going back over generations, is stopped. Medics, journalists, families and children have been killed; it is absolute genocide. The strangulation of normal life in the West Bank, ethnic cleansing of the West Bank and now Lebanon, all of southern Lebanon, almost a quarter of the territory, are war crimes. People in Israel who support it are as guilty as their government. I do not care what religion anybody is. Whether they are Jewish, Catholic, Protestant or whatever I am not interested. That is not issue here.”
“That is a huge levy and that is on top of all the other overheads that have gone up, such as wages, although it is good that they have gone up, along with insurance and energy. They are competing with tech giants and other platforms and it is important that this is reined in. Coimisiún na Meán says it is committed to ensuring value for money by maximising cost-effectiveness. The Minister of State has a responsibility to make sure of that and I would ask her to address that latest hike. Could she engage with Coimisiún na Meán on that? The outsourcing is the main issue of concern in the Bill, however.”
“As outlined already, there will be contractors and individual companies, they will not have union representation or terms and conditions and they will have "if and when" contracts. That is a very uncertain way to live when the cost of a house in Dublin is so high and when someone has to have a permanent job and income to get a mortgage. Coimisiún na Meán's broadcasting levy on independent radio stations increased by 29% this year. I know it is a bit detached from this Bill but I want the Minister of State to hear this. The figure is 69% on average over two years. The figure for the radio station in my area is 2.8% of turnover - not profit. We are talking about nearly 3% of turnover.”
“I welcome the provision about the monitoring role of Coimisiún na Meán in the Bill. It involves assessing and appraising performance. Regarding spend on the overall media sector, including what is going to be independent sector, I am not going to argue against independent radio stations, etc., but that does need to be monitored. Regarding outsourcing production, one of the issues we came up with actually before we started diving into management was the issue of bogus self-employment. Regarding outsourcing the fat, make no mistake about it, it is the fat of RTE that is going to be privatised. There was bogus self-employment in RTE but this will not be counted as bogus self-employment when it is in the independent sector.”
“The one thing that came to light fairly quickly as the Committee of Public Accounts started a deep dive into it was the fact that one agent could get themselves into a position of being able to let the whole lot spin in the palm of their hand. That must never be allowed to happen again. The rules of engagement with agents need to be very clear. It was literally a game of bluff. If they were poker players, they would be very good at winning. To allow somebody to get that excessive control is wrong so there has to be transparency with regard to that, there need to be very clear rules of engagement and that requires continuous examination by the Minister of State and the Department to make sure that never happens again. Transparency is obviously important in terms of accounts, renumeration and performance.”
“It was clear that the connection between board and management was not great despite the fact that there were some good people on the board doing good work. It is the same with the audit committee. Appointments and decision-making are key. Pay for top earners is very important. All that was in the recommendations. I acknowledge that progress has been made on a lot of that. A lot has been done on presenters' pay but more has to be done. Regarding the issue of producers and presenters, if somebody is known as a presenter in the public mind and that is a huge part of his or her work then he or she should be counted as a presenter. The pay of at least the top 50 earners across the board in RTÉ should be published annually regardless of what their role is. The issue of agents came up a lot.”
“The Committee of Public Accounts produced over 20 recommendations. Central to them was something I proposed way back at the start. I was amazed to find that RTÉ was not accountable to the Comptroller and Auditor General or directly accountable to the Committee of Public Accounts. Indeed there was reluctance to come before the committee and we had to go to extreme lengths to actually drag the previous management of RTÉ in through the door initially, so I welcome that part of it. It is important that this second level of oversight is there and direct accountability to this House and the taxpayer in respect of public money. It is a key recommendation. It is key for the Minister of State to make sure that the board is fully functioning and has its eyes on what is going on.”
“There are some good parts in this Bill but I have some serious concerns as well. The decision in the 1990s to remove the power of the Comptroller and Auditor General and indeed direct accountability of RTÉ to the Committee of Public Accounts was a huge mistake by the Government at that time. During the four and a half years when I was Chair of the Committee of Public Accounts, when we started looking at RTE, it got worse. What we met at the first couple of hearings was every attempt to not answer questions. I am trying to be charitable when I say that what was clear by the end of those hearings and that four and a half year period of the Dáil was that there was a cabal at the top of it that was run by the cabal for the cabal and anybody who agreed with it. That had to change.”
“They use them as a means of cheap labour by paying less than the minimum wage. Instead of apprenticeships being used as an opportunity for learning and training, they are being used for that. The apprentices are being let go in their third or fourth years. It is important that apprentices have the right to be represented, like all other workers, by a trade union. We do not have the right to collective bargaining here and we need it, particularly for apprentices. They need to be within the minimum wage framework and the Redundancy Payments Act.”
“They have on-the-job and real-life experience, which is hugely important. They also have progression to secure employment and the exceptionally high rate of employment after apprenticeships shows that. They also have freedom in later life because they have a transferable a skill. They can progress to greater things. For example, carpenters can move on to become clerks of works. I acknowledge the expansion in the range of apprenticeships. We should be actively promoting that. An idea was put forward over the weekend by an economist who suggested that when we are building an extension to a school, the pupils of the school should be able to visit it and interact with the workers and the project to give them a taste of what it is like and encourage them. There is exploitation of apprentices by a small number of employers.”
“There is, in Laois, a chronic shortage of mechanics, technicians and crash repair panel beaters, along with the shortages across the county in the building trades. We need apprenticeships. There need to be apprenticeships across a wide range of areas. I welcome the fact that the Government has expanded the programme. There are over 80 apprenticeships at the moment. We need to be promoting that in accounting, IT, manufacturing, logistics and so on. Apprenticeships offer an alternative route. We need to further develop apprenticeships through the Laois and Offaly Education and Training Board. It is doing excellent work in Mount Lucas. Other training centres in Laois and Offaly need to be used for that. Apprentices have an advantage because they are earning and training. That is better than being in a third level college in a lot of ways.”
“This is an important debate. A high proportion, in excess of 60%, of our young people go to third level. It is good that people are becoming highly qualified and are able to get quality jobs. However, there is a skills shortage and an imbalance. There is a shortage of people with construction skills and a shortage of people undertaking those apprenticeships. That was not addressed during the Celtic tiger, even though there was a building boom, and it was certainly not done during the crash. There is a shortage of electricians, plumbers, plasterers, carpenters and technicians for retrofitting and heat pumps, etc. Laois County Council has difficulty even getting people to service heat pumps and finding people to repair them because the skills are not there. We also need apprenticeships in the motor trade.”
“The last thing is that on government procurement, we need to get better value for money. We cannot keep spending €336,000 on bike sheds, €2.5 billion on the children’s hospital and €1.4 million on a security hut. We need to spend money better.”
“On haulage, we have to recognise the reality that there is an absence of an alternative there but we have biofuels and for some reason we are charging very high VAT on HVO, which is being used in trucks. That should be looked at. I am aware there is a European directive there but we need to go back to Europe on that.”
“That would benefit them. On agri supports, we must face that we need added value. Of course we need financial supports for farmers but there also has to be added value if we are going to keep modest-sized family farms going. That is the reality. We have not even got off the blocks with anaerobic digestion. Farmers need to be getting a second income from their produce. We have a huge farm waste problem and there is an opportunity for pelleted fertiliser, which has been done in other countries like Italy, but we have not even started doing it. I welcome the proposal from the Government on flour production. Some counties, including Laois, have a big tradition of growing wheat. One of those flour mills needs to be located there. We need to boost organic production.”
“Retrofitting of homes has to be accelerated. I welcome the progress that has been made but some of the grants need to be improved. Some 880 homes in Laois added solar in 2024 to 2025 and 1,100 homes in total got some energy works in that period. That is welcome but out of over 30,000 homes that needs to be accelerated. We need the rent credits to be improved but most importantly we need measures to calm rents, reduce them and cap them. Affordable childcare must be addressed. For businesses insurance costs continue to be high. VAT changes we had in the last budget are going to favour large hotels and the big fast food companies. The changes should be altered and I propose a graduated scale, so it is 9% on the first €5 million of turnover and after that 13%. Let us favour the smaller coffee shops, businesses and hotels.”
“The debate we are having is very welcome and I thank Independent Ireland's group for putting it forward. With the economy, we have to radically reset how we are doing things and the next budget has to be different. Over €9.5 billion extra was given out last year in measures but none of it went to the disabled, the self-employed or PAYE workers. They were left out. The disabled finished up €1,400 a year worse off. The upcoming budget has to change that. We need a democratic, left republican budget this year. Income tax thresholds and tax bands need to be adjusted to favour middle- and low-income workers. Any one-off winter energy credits must be targeted and go to households that are on below €75,000 gross. I understand everybody cannot get everything and we should not do that but we should favour middle- and low-income families.”
“I am not blaming the HSE but because of the system, we rely solely on the private ones and that kind of an answer does not suffice. It cannot be a hands-off approach. I am aware a strategic review is under way. That review is supposed to be considering directly employed GPs. Where there are areas of serious population growth such as County Laois, I ask that the Government employ a few directly employed GPs to provide care.”
“I again with to raise the issue of the shortage of GPs again, particularly in the context of Laois. There is a shortage of GPs in the main towns across the county. There is a problem for medical card and non-medical card patients, including families with children. In the past few days two families tried to get a GP in Portlaoise, Portarlington and Mountmellick. One parent had to take time off work to go to a practice in Dublin. People are going to the accident and emergency unit with common illnesses for treatment. That is what is happening. There is a public health issue here. We have had a huge population increase. A HSE reply of one sentence stated that the HSE was not in a position to advise on the number of private GP practices providing primary care in County Laois.”
“Only about 80% of the work that was done last year will be done this year with the level of funding we have, which is €1,000 less at €469,000.”
“In his reply the Minister said some local authorities may not use it. There may be indications throughout the year that some local authorities are not going to use it. I understand there is not an endless pot of funding and it is not down to the Department of community and rural affairs solely but in relation to this scheme, it is. I ask that where there is a surplus of funding or unused funding that the funding be reviewed. I am with the Minister in relation to spending it well and getting a good return for it. The county council is very good at making sure the local contribution is made by local residents and landowners. It is important that happens. We are in a standstill situation. The cost of roadworks has gone up 15% with contractors. It is between 10% and 15% extra this year, so it is not even a standstill situation.”
“At this rate, it will take nearly ten years to complete what is on the scheme. That is if the scheme is closed. The Minister knows more will come on next year and the year after. It is a matter of trying to keep ahead. It requires more funding.”
“I think the Minister will find that with Laois not too much money comes back to the Department. It tends to get used. I agree with him about using it well. It is a 10% contribution where there are five residents or landowners or fewer and 15% where there are more than six. The funding for Laois is actually €469,000. It was €470,000 last year and nine schemes are approved locally for this year but there are more than 80 on the waiting list. Some are more urgent than others. The Minister will appreciate that, as will anyone who is local councillor or constituency TD. I highlight to the Minister the western Slieve Bloom area - he was in Mountrath recently and saw how money was spent very well in the wonderful Cafe Donate and the river walk, etc. With the topography, a lot of those roads are over peat and bad land.”
“The local improvement scheme is very important for local roads. The local community makes a contribution of between 10% and 15%. The level of funding this year in the case of Laois dropped by €1,000. I was hoping it would be a bit more. I ask that the funding for this year be reviewed.”
“The report yesterday on rents shocked a lot of people. I predicted, as did others, that this would happen but the scale of it has really shocked me. In County Laois a four-bedroom house has gone up 12.5% year on year, a three-bedroom one by 10% and a two-bedroom house, which is the type most in demand in the county, has gone up by 34%. That is in one year. Notices to quit are up and house prices are up. It is now €530,000 for a bog-standard house in Portlaoise in one estate. I am telling the Taoiseach that the Government cannot leave it totally to the market. We have seen where a laissez-faire approach that the market will sort it out has got us in the past. I hope the Taoiseach has not forgotten the crash and the noughties. What happened then was we had a laissez-faire approach and it led us into a black hole.”
“Some 110 years ago, James Connolly hung a banner over Liberty Hall that read "We Serve Neither King Nor Kaiser But Ireland!" This is not about being isolationist. It is about us being a peaceful country, using our voice as an independent neutral country to stand up for what is right in a world run by bullies such as Trump and Putin and the terrorist State of Israel. I express my solidarity with the people who have been kidnapped by Israel and I urge the Government to take the strongest possible action. If it sees the Israeli ambassador, tell them to go home as soon as possible. It should expel the ambassador. They should be expelled and we should pass the sanctions Bill today to stop any trade with Israel. It is a disgrace that we co-operate in any way with it. We should continue our role as a peace-keeping country.”
“The Government at the time signed up to allow this. We cannot allow that to continue in light of the slaughter that happened in Iraq and Iran. We facilitated flights into and out of Shannon and flights over Ireland on military missions. That has to stop. We recently gave €90 million in aid to Ukraine. I support the €60 million for humanitarian purposes but I do not support the €30 million that was given to buy guns and bombs. You are firing guns and bombs into what is already an industrial war. That is the only way you could describe it. It is like trying to put out a fire by throwing petrol on it. A neutral country cannot do that. The boys and girls at the top of NATO are not worried because they already have the Government. Wolfe Tone was the first to enunciate Irish neutrality.”
“When she was asked what she meant by Brendan O'Connor recently, she said that it is about guns. The Minister said here a number of times, and told me and a number of members at the defence committee, that we are not going to join NATO but we do not have to join it. The boys and girls at the top of NATO know this. Why do they know this? It is because the Government is already joining in and signing up to joint missions and partnerships with all sorts of names and terms used as a cover for participating and being aligned with NATO. That is the reality. That is the conditioning process. We are supposed to be neutral. I remember being at Shannon Airport. The one and only time I was there was in 2008 and I was horrified to see the number of American troops in American Army uniforms going through the airport and the military overflights.”
“The arms industry in Europe, led by Germany, is banging the war drums but, of course, we have cohorts banging the war drums at home. There have been over 50 articles in the media calling for the abandonment of the triple lock, with hardly any articles putting forward the counter position. Week after week, we hear from people like Brigid Laffan, Dan O'Brien, Dan Mulhall, John O'Brien and Ben Tonra banging the war drum and churning out the propaganda that we must abolish the triple lock and abandon our policy of neutrality. A conditioning process is happening to convince people to transfer money away from spending on agriculture, social cohesion and important matters like health, education and housing and use that money to buy guns. Brigid Laffan was very clear about it.”
“It does not stop us from increasing the numbers in the Army, Air Corps and Naval Service or having modern equipment. It is the Government parties that have presided over the running down of the Defence Forces. I welcome the fact that some money is being invested in them and there have been some improvements but there is a lot more to do. Poor pay and conditions and lack of investment have been at the core of the problem. Next Tuesday night at 8 p.m., there will be a meeting on neutrality in the parish centre in Portlaoise. I am just getting in that plug with the indulgence of the Ceann Comhairle. Who are the people sent to war? They are not the sons and daughters of the militarists. It is the working class that is sent to the front line.”
“If the Minister really believes in it, which she said a number of times, enshrine it in the Constitution; to work with other neutral and non-aligned countries to reform and re-establish the primacy of the UN as the forum to uphold international law and for resolving international disputes and conflicts; to abide by the principal of multilateralism and not allow the State to be become part of any regional force; and to halt plans to progress the Defence (Amendment) Bill 2025, which is about abandoning neutrality, and respect the will of the people. Being neutral does not inhibit us in any way from having a level of co-operation with other states. Being neutral does not stop us from enhancing and modernising our Defence Forces and the protecting the likes of undersea cables.”
“2) Act 1960 and the solemn national declarations attached to the Nice and Lisbon treaties; to recognise that these commitments regarding the triple lock and neutrality can only be changed or amended by a majority of the electorate in a referendum; to recognise that the triple lock and neutrality are intrinsically linked, as set out by Micheál Martin; to strengthen the State's policy of neutrality by bringing forward a referendum to enshrine it in the Constitution.”
“I acknowledge the work of Irish peacekeepers in Lebanon and in other missions overseas, particularly those serving in Lebanon currently given the actions of the terrorist Israeli State. I also acknowledge the work of volunteers who have campaigned and continue to campaign to uphold neutrality. I thank all those from the Opposition benches who spoke on it this morning. I note that not one Fianna Fáil Deputy has darkened the door to come in and to defend what is being proposed here. That is interesting and speaks for itself. The motion calls on the Government to uphold the policy of neutrality and the triple lock as set out in the Defence (Amendment) (No.”