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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“I received a letter this week from one couple who live near to me, who said they were offered a space for €1,430 per month in one provider that is hundreds of yards from my house. The crèche wanted a €450 deposit within 48 hours, which they were not able to come up with. They lost the place, and that woman could not go back to work. That shows the pressure on just the market-led ones. We need that Government scheme. We have the fastest growing population. I know the Minister has announced the purchase of eight or nine buildings. Everyone will be looking for them, but Laois has a strong case.”
“As outlined, there is a chronic shortage of spaces in the county, including for one- to three-year-olds. We have the private model, but we are over-reliant on that. It has weaknesses in the context of having to have separate leases or ownership of buildings, separate insurance, separate administration and payrolls, etc. While many are providing a good service, there are weaknesses. There are also shortages. There are no all-day spaces in Stradbally or Mountrath, and there are shortages in larger towns like Portlaoise, Mountmellick, Portarlington and Graigue and smaller towns like Rathdowney, Mountrath, Durrow, Abbeyleix and Stradbally. Some of what becomes available is unaffordable.”
“I ask the Minister to give full consideration for Laois to be given one of the first directly State-led, publicly owned childcare facilities. I say that in welcoming the new scheme that was announced on 21 January. Laois is one of the fastest growing counties in terms of population outside of Dublin, and there is real pressure on childcare places.”
“That is grand, I will keep to it now. Amendment No. 1, on staffing the centres, is very positive in ensuring that the systems are working, that the resources are there and that the administration and staff are there. I welcome the change in the Sinn Féin position because that was not always the position held - one, two, three or four years ago. I welcome that this change is happening now, because with what was there, if that was advocated and carried through, we would not have the services to meet that. I will be supporting positive amendments here. There are some good parts in the Bill, which I will certainly be voting for, but it needs further work. It is a pity we do not have more time to go through this. There are many amendments in a short space of time. As has been said, when you have just one member of staff, that can be difficult.”
“It is a fact that the majority come over Britain's artificial border in Ireland. That must be addressed. Amendment No. 2 goes some way in addressing that, but it cannot be resolved without checks at the ports.”
“The report is still gathering dust and, meanwhile, we have this rampant profiteering by private interests in provisional accommodation. There have been many questions regarding the practices, and because it is so rushed and because of the sheer scale of what had to be done, it was a huge task to house so many people in private accommodation. I know the Secretary General of the Department who was handling that was under considerable pressure to do that, as were the staff. The common travel area needs to be addressed. Amendment No. 2 goes some way to addressing this. There is a loophole there. It is not about throwing up borders here, there and everywhere. We know the problems they have caused on this island, and I am certainly not going to come in here and argue for that, but there is a loophole there.”
“They are here and contributing to Irish society, and separating them from their family is particularly cruel. We need to help and assist those people. For those who fail, their departure needs to be verified. I have not heard any clarification on this. When I asked about it two years ago, the Secretary General of the Department told me that failed applicants, after they have gone through appeals and so on, including the courts, get a letter in the post to their last known address. The Minister might tell us today what the current situation is, but that is not sufficient or satisfactory. If you fail, you fail. It has to be rules based. If the rules are not implemented, it does not work. With the indulgence of the Chair, I might also raise with the Minister the issue of the Day report.”
“There are some good things in the Bill, and there are some things that need to be changed. The speeding-up of the processing time is welcome, as is the speeding-up of the appeal times. Obviously, we want to help successful applicants to get through the process and allow them to integrate into Irish society and communities. That needs to be assisted in every way possible for people who are genuinely fleeing war, persecution or famine. I have raised family reunifications with the Minister before and I will raise it again today, specifically in respect of the three-year term for a person to get citizenship. I understand he may be changing that to two years, but he could go further with it. This is something I have real concerns about. If somebody has achieved status here, we should allow family reunification.”
“The problem is when a situation arises - and I have been in a school where I saw this happening - the teacher cannot leave the classroom and leave the other 23 or 24 pupils on their own. I am asking the Taoiseach to have these guidelines reviewed.”
“I want to ask about the review of SNAs, which some have described as cuts. I understand reviews have to happen and that two thirds of schools will not be affected but one third will be and Rath National School and Timahoe National School in Laois have been notified of cuts. No account has been taken of the children being enrolled for September and their special needs. Circular 32/25 will mean some of the most vulnerable children losing their support and that support is essential. The pause is welcome but the Government needs to go further. The guidelines that came with the circular state, "The behaviour should be supported holistically with whole school and whole class approaches and individual needs supported by the class teacher ...".”
“The solution is mixed developments with affordable to buy and cost-rental properties, the very same as what the Minister saw in Rath Rua last Friday, which he will agree is a good development. There is a big demand for one- and two-bedroom accommodation and we must provide that. However, the core element has to be not-for-profit and we must involve ordinary citizens in this. Let us set up a housing bond system. Let us move this away from the investors, as the motion proposes. This needs to be a national initiative. We need to get families and workers owning their own houses or having secure tenancies for life.”
“We were behind the rest of Europe when we started but by the time we finished in the late 1960s, we were ahead of much of Europe. We can do that again. That needs to be driven by the Housing Agency and the Land Development Agency, with the local councils. The Minister saw what a small council like Laois County Council is doing. It can be done by councils; there is the proof of it. The cohort most under pressure is the squeezed middle. In my book, and it may be lower for Government - Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael - it is those people who are just above the social housing limit of €35,000 income limit and under €70,000 who need assistance. They are unable to get a mortgage and cannot get on a local authority waiting list, so we must have a solution for them.”
“However, there is €170 billion on deposit in banks and building societies. Several years ago, the Irish League of Credit Unions said to the Government publicly that it had €8 billion or €9 billion and that this could be used for home construction with a modest return on it. That did not happen. There is €170 billion there now so let us have a housing bond scheme for ordinary citizens. They can buy into that and get a modest interest rate tax-free or at a reduced tax rate. Let us use it to solve this issue. Money is needed for housing infrastructure because we need infrastructure to have housing. We also need money for home construction. This needs to become a national mission, similar to the rural electrification scheme. That was only a generation or so ago.”
“I welcome this proposal and support it. The fact apartments are not included for higher tax and within the maximum of nine needs to change. The Central Bank estimates 47,000 homes are owned in the State by investment institutions or vulture funds, with 500 of those in Laois. This distorts the housing market. It drives up house prices and means these investors are competing with first-time buyers. We need to make thousands of affordable houses to buy and cost-rentals that are not for profit available. There is a chronic shortage of those in Laois. The Minister was there last Friday and I welcome that. He saw some examples of what can be done, even within the strictures at present. The first thing required is money. The Minister cannot pull money out of the sky and I will not come in here and say he can.”
“This is not because I want to be obstructionist or do down any good suggestion. Tenancy certainty would be a good thing, as would fixity of tenure. Michael Davitt talked about it 150 years ago, when some of our great-grandparents might have been around, yet here we are now. The problem is what the Government is cloaking the six-year thing in is a Trojan horse for the other measures that will nullify and kill that for the reasons outlined because people will not be able to afford those rents.”
“You have to learn from your mistakes. Sometimes, you have to do the right thing and do what is right by people. Money is there on deposit. We need to set up housing bonds and have them in place. We need to use that money and taxpayers' money well. The Government is using it to increase skyrocketing rents, which will happen. Everything that is there, all the evidence and all the projections tell us that. To chase and have that transfer of wealth to pay rent supplements to big landlords will make matters a hundred times worse. That is what is going to happen. As I said, three of us who are voting on this tonight, hopefully, are from Laois; a Fine Gael TD, a Fianna Fáil TD and myself. As the Government is framing the Bill without the amendments, I have to vote against it.”
“We are willing to use some of this to be invested in a type of housing bond where there would be a modest return on it for the people who invest in the credit union. The banks have that. There is a huge amount of money on deposit, which could be used, and used well, in investment bonds and housing bonds to build the type of cost-rental and affordable housing we need. I do not know why the Government has not considered that. I can only draw the conclusion that it is listening too much to the wrong people. I learned something very quickly nearly three decades ago as a councillor. If we listened to everybody who came in the door to lobby for this, that and the other, and did it and went along with it, we would have made a right mess of things. When we listened to them too much, we did make a mess of things.”
“The Minister is correct that it is taxpayers' money but the amount of that going on HAP and supplements will have to increase. Due to the measure the Government is bringing in, it will be chasing that. That is what happened with every other change it made, which made this worse. It had the same impact. The amount of HAP and that transfer of wealth from the public purse to these big landlords increased. We have to give people the space to be able to move towards buying. As was mentioned, there is a huge amount of money on deposit in this country. We have a very high level of personal debt but we also have a huge amount of money on deposit. I remember that in 2013 or 2014, the credit unions stated they had around €10 billion or €11 billion. I am open to correction but the figure was something like that.”
“I welcome the fact that the Government is moving on that and on affordable housing, but it is not enough and it is not quick enough. That needs to be accelerated. We cannot create a situation where people will suffer more hardship, misery and stress. There will be more evictions. One other effect of what the Government is going to do that has not been talked about is the wealth transfer to landlords and big developers. What will happen is when rents go up, it means HAP will have to go up and have to chase that increase in rent. This is a point the Government needs to take on board. The Minister and Minister of State will see the figures for last year on how much is spent on leasing, HAP and homeless accommodation. It is a huge part of the housing budget. I want to see the housing budget used well and to see us getting value out of it.”
“If the Minister takes off whatever cooling effect the RPZs and the current status has, despite which, as I told the Minister earlier, rents on new lets in Laois have nonetheless gone up by over 16% in one survey and 15% in another compared with existing tenancies - the figures are there; they are not my figures - what is going to happen after 1 March? We need to stabilise rents. That requires rent limits. I have put in a reasonable proposal in my amendment that they would not go beyond 2% per year or inflation through the consumer price index, whichever is the lower. That is reasonable. We need to have some limits on it. We need to increase the amount of cost rentals. It is tiny at the moment. I welcome what is happening.”
“They kept the rents high. That is what they did. They eventually got it. At the moment, unless the Minister is in a parallel universe to me, the people who I meet who are renting are already in serious hardship. They are paying a lot more, in most cases, than what people are paying on mortgages. That is a fact. Laois has around 13,000 people commuting out of it every morning. Along with paying for the car to get to work, mainly in Dublin or Naas or somewhere, along with that, they are paying for childminding and a whole range of things. They are already living a very difficult life. I can tell the Minister it is no fun. I am here to try to represent and put this to the Minister. If I do not do this tonight, I am neglecting my duties as a Teachta Dála. I am appealing to the Minister on this.”
“The Minister says, and stated repeatedly, that if we increase supply, we will have loads of houses and be able to reduce rent. I ask him to go back and look at the data from the last time his party was in government for a sufficiently long term. I am saying this to him honestly, just to be factual about it. Did rents go down in 2005 or 2006, the year we built 94,000 houses? Did rents go down in 2007? No, they did not. Supply shot up. We had loads of houses. In fact, we did not have people to fill some of them. Rents did not go down. I can think of all the estates around where I live. I live in the middle of a whole lot of new estates. I can think of those estates where the rents shot up. Some houses were empty. Landlords, developers and speculators who bought them were willing to wait for people to come along and rent them.”
“The high altar of the market was adored and the high priests at it told the Government this was what was needed to do it, Seánie Fitz and the boys. That is what happened. I am thinking of one couple. They have been dealing with it for 12 years in Laois trying to keep them in the house they are in, and if not, trying to get them into social housing. They have had a notice to quit from Pepper hanging over them for 12 years. It has employed Mars Capital, Eversheds and all sorts of arm-twisters and debt collectors to try to turn the screws on these two people to get them out of where they are, who should never have received a loan. If you were a member of the loan committee on the credit union, you would not give them one tenth of what they got as a loan. I am saying that honestly. It is the high altar of the market.”
“The outside of it was covered in timber. You would think about Grenfell Tower. I am saying this honestly to the Minister and Minister of State. Who in the name of God allowed that to happen? Talk about a tinder-box. That is the conclusion we came to when looking at a repeat of the programme last night. I think it was a "Prime Time" programme in relation to the timber cladding on the outside of it. Dry timber was on the outside of it and no fire breaks were inside. That is what the Government allowed. The Government allowed the banks to give out money. I have met people who got loans from banks who never should have got them. There were loan consultants in banks. These jack-the-lads were smart lads. They were supposed to be smarter than the rest of us. They gave money to people who did not have the capacity to repay it. Why?”
“That is why I am speaking passionately about this. I feel strongly about this and I am really concerned. I am not going to personalise anything and I am not looking to have a go at anybody, but I am concerned about what the Government is doing here. I told the Government to look back at when it adored the altar of the market in the early 2000s as we went through the Celtic tiger. Look at the mess it left behind. We are still cleaning up that mess. The taxpayer is cleaning it up. We are still paying the interest on the bank bailout from that time. We are still paying the bill for the mica scandal. We are still going to pay the bill for the fire remedies in all those apartments that people have mortgages on and they are renting in unsafe apartments around Dublin. I looked at one. One was on television. I think it was last night.”
“During previous terms of the Government being in power, sometimes with the Progressive Democrats, that brought us to the Celtic tiger, we saw what the deregulation of the building industry did when we allowed people to self-certify. The taxpayer is cleaning up that bill in the form of the mica Bill and the financial bill for it and in the form of fire remedies in apartments. If I heard right, I think it is 20,000 apartments, a lot of them in Dublin, because of what the Government did at that time. The taxpayer picks up the bill - Joe and Mary Public. I want to represent those people who are paying that. I have been a Member of this House for 15 years, like Deputy Boyd Barrett. This week or last week we were here 15 years. This is one of the worst pieces of legislation and one of the most dangerous I have seen.”
“I am here to speak on behalf of tenants and renters in towns in Laois like Portlaoise, Mountmellick, Portarlington, Mountrath, Rathdowney, Graiguecullen, Stradbally and so on. I am meeting people regularly, daily sometimes, who are struggling because of the situation with housing and the high rents they are paying. The Government is bringing in a measure. We have heard the RTB projections in the debate. The Minister can contradict them if he likes. It knows, and the people who look for this know, that this is going to lead to a further increase. The market keeps getting talked about, the altar of the market. The high priests at the altar are the landlords, developers and vulture funds. They are there as the high priests.”
“However, tenants are suffering hardship, stress and misery, as well as workers, students, lone parents and ordinary people. Let us think about those people. Let us not force through this Bill tonight. This needs to be rowed back on. We cannot heap more pressure and stress on those people.”
“They are not affordable for young people or the cohort of middle-aged and elderly people I have referred to. I recently came across a couple who are almost 80. The local authority, Laois County Council, currently houses them. I do not mean to plámás the council, but it has really stretched itself to try to do its best. I know the Minister is there on Friday, which I welcome. It is always good to see Ministers in the constituency. The one message I would give to the Minister is to come and see what is being done. We want more of it, and we want it replicated in other parts of the country. I ask the Minister not to force this through. The Irish Property Owners Association is getting what it wants. The developers are getting what they want.”
“It is because the Progressive Democrats and Fianna Fáil in the late nineties decided that we would just opt out of social housing that we have the mess we have. We had the crash because the regulations were taken off construction and the banks, and we wound up in the situation we are in now. It is a difficult situation. I have argued over the last 15 years to increase the number of apprentices. We must do that because we cannot build houses unless we have the people. Let us try to attract back from abroad more of the workers who went during that period and might wish to come back now. We need to increase the labour supply and ensure we have sufficient workers to build houses. People want to save for a deposit, but they cannot do so while paying these rents.”
“There are real standardised plans so that houses can be the very same internally, although the outside texture can be changed if the county council wants to do that. That will enable matters to be speeded up and will remove a lot of the blockages. I say sincerely to the Minister and the Minister of State that they should do anything else they can to accelerate that. We do not want to drop standards, and I am not arguing for that. However, we need to do whatever we can to accelerate delivery and reduce costs. The money is there. We know it is taxpayers' money and we have used it well. I will certainly support anything we can do to reduce costs and increase supply. I recognise that not all of it will be provided by the State, and I am not arguing for that. However, the State is a big player.”
“I remember talking about the need for cost rental here 12 or 13 years ago, when people did not know what we were talking about. I welcome the fact that the Government is moving in that direction, but we need to move more quickly. We need more of this. The mass production of houses is a drum that I have banged loudly in this Chamber. As I said yesterday to the Minister of State, Deputy Cummins, for the first time, the point has arrived with the council engineers and architects that we need to be able to mass-produce. Mass production means speeding up and reducing costs. While there has been a lot of talk from the officials in the Department about standardised design and so on, this has now gone a step further.”
“This will hurt tens of thousands of tenants who are already struggling to keep their heads above water and who already have to deal with difficulties. I have never come into this House and said there is a magic wand. I know this is a complex thing to sort out. However, I also know that a number of things need to happen. Within the gift of the State is one of those things, which is to increase the supply of cost-rental housing for those who are middle aged and who will never be able to get a loan again, or perhaps those who have come out of a broken marriage. They need to be able to get into cost rental. We need to help those people and provide a not-for-profit option that will pay for itself over time. The Minister knows how it works.”
“For those landlords who are unscrupulous, the race will be to get to the top. I support the idea of reviews and reports, but that in itself will not be enough. That is why the amendment tries to limit this to 2%. I recognise there is inflation, and I am trying to be somewhat reasonable about this. However, this will mean that all impediments to skyrocketing rents are removed. Existing tenants in homes and apartments are being put under huge pressure and will be put under more pressure due to higher rents. This measure will provide a climate for that to happen. There will be strategic notices to quit, as I said, because people will not be able to afford this. I appeal to Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael TDs not to vote this through.”
“What is going to happen when this comes through in the private sector? The renters in Laois will be very hard hit. I am already seeing increases in the rent pressure zones. Despite some cooling effects, the fact is that new tenancies are already 15%, 16% or 17% higher in the last two years. A one-bedroom apartment across the road from my office was on the market for €1,750 per month. A very small house in Kilminchy was €2,100 a month. In Foxburrow, a four-bedroomed house, which was not huge, was €2,500 a month. People cannot afford that. Look at the average wage and take-home pay. Some of these people are paying for crèches and commuting, they have to make payments on two cars, and they are trying to save for deposits and do a whole range of things. They are literally strapped in trying to carry out all of this.”
“There will be notices to quit for the simple reason, as I have pointed out numerous times, that the rents will be so high that people will not be able to afford them. The landlords who are inclined to have a rack-renting attitude face 1 March with this gift in their hands. Make no mistake - it will be used. I am not saying every landlord will use it but the rack-renting ones and the bigger ones will. Tenants going into new apartments and housing will face extortionate increases. The tenancies do not last six years, and we know there can be a quick turnover. There is a three-year provision for students. I have a granddaughter who is going to college, and she commutes five hours a day. She would not have a hope of being able to stay near the college, and it is the same for her pals. The simple reason is that rents are already too high.”
“People sitting here in ten years' time will have to deal with a tsunami of pensioners who are in private rented accommodation. The State will end up supplementing that if we do not do better about cost rental and if we do not do something to slow down rent increases. The RPZs were not perfect. They had some cooling effects but, despite them, daft.ie and other surveys show that rents for new tenancies in County Laois over the last two years have increased 15% to 16% over existing tenancies. If that is happening at a time when we have RPZs, what in the name of the Lord God almighty is going to happen when you remove all of this and you can say the market rent? The market rent is the highest in an area or district. The Minister knows how it is going to work. There is talk of how there will not be no-fault evictions. There will be evictions.”
“My amendment, and I hope we will get to it, is around trying to limit it to 2% or the rate of inflation, the CPI. Who is the rate of inflation not good enough for? Who is 2% not good enough for? Who is lobbying for this? Is the Irish Property Owners Association getting everything it wants? Are the developers getting everything? They have got everything they want – the VAT cuts, the tax breaks and everything else they wanted. I want to see more housing but what the Government is doing is a charter for misery and further misery. The Minister knows it and I know it because I meet these people – ordinary working people. These are couples, lone parents and all sorts of ordinary workers trying to get by. It is pensioners too. This is one coming down the line.”
“I ask the Minister and the Minister of State here to think about the people who are in private rented accommodation - I know some of them, and the two Ministers here know them - who are spending 50% or 55% of their total income on rent. That means there is not enough money for food, clothes, to heat the place, for their kids or a whole range of other things, and that is just the basics to get through life. I ask them to think about those people for a minute. Three Laois TDs will have a vote on this – one Fianna Fáil TD, one Fine Gael TD and an Independent, yours truly - and I dearly wish all three of us were voting together on it. I get that the six-year certainty around tenancy is a good thing but the problem is what the Government is bringing in on the back of it. It is a Trojan Horse. It will have huge implications.”
“I support amendments Nos. 2, 7 and 8 in relation to reviews and reports. The Minister and the Minister of State know what is going to happen here because we can see it already. We could see it from the moment they announced this in autumn last year. We can see what is happening – notices to quit are increasing, rents are increasing and pressure on tenants to move out is increasing. This is because many landlords – I am not putting all of them in the one box – and especially the bigger ones know that come 1 March the sky is the limit. This evening the Government is planning on ramming through this legislation. We are TDs but we are human beings as well.”
“Now, what he is proposing to do is stand that on its head. I reminded him that neutrality was brought in by his party in times when the world was at peril, a lot worse than what it is now. There are some people in the world who have gone mad; I agree with the Taoiseach on that. Netanyahu, Trump and Putin have gone crazy, but what we should not do is join military alliances and add to the madness that is going on. We have bona fides and some credibility to speak at international forums because we are neutral. We need to defend that neutrality.”
“I would remind the Taoiseach of two things. One is that I know the UN is not perfect and the veto may be exercised, but I also told him of the 264 resolutions that were passed in a four-year period without a veto being exercised by any of the five, including the US. None of what I am saying goes against strengthening our Defence Forces capacity and having a level of co-operation in terms of sharing information, etc., with other countries. That is not the argument I am making here. If national declarations are made - the Taoiseach's party in government solemnly made those national declarations regarding the triple lock and neutrality to the Irish people - is the Taoiseach going to tear them up? They are there in black and white on those pages. He knows why they were put there. It is a good thing they were put there.”
“Government and (c) the approval of Dáil Éireann". The very same words were used in the national declaration attached to the Lisbon Treaty. A solemn declaration was in the Nice Treaty to hold that. The Taoiseach and I know that the first two attempts to pass the Nice and Lisbon Treaties failed, and his party had to do that to get them through. That is fair enough, but is he now going to shred those two national declarations? Is he now going to repudiate the will of the Irish people and erode Irish neutrality?”
“This comes on the back of a flood of right-wing propaganda in dozens of newspaper articles over the past 12 months calling for the scrapping of the triple lock and neutrality and the full participation of our Defence Forces in combat overseas. Proceeding to scrap the triple lock and shredding not one but two national declarations that the Taoiseach's party drew up is likely to be unconstitutional and will probably be met with a court challenge. In the Nice Treaty, the Taoiseach's party put in that: "Ireland reiterates that the participation of contingents of the Irish Defence Forces in overseas operations, including those carried out under the European security and defence policy, requires (a) the authorisation of the ... [UN] Security Council or the General Assembly ... (b) the agreement of the ...”
“The Taoiseach will use this to try to justify the case for the abandonment of the triple lock. In 2013, he said the UN "is not working as it should but we must not abandon it as an essential part of the international system." I agree with that also. From 2020 to 2024, the UN Security Council passed 264 out of 284 resolutions without a veto being exercised, and the Taoiseach will tell us Russia will veto a peacekeeping mission. Will he tell me which one it vetoed? I have been looking for it. Yes, Russia's invasion of Ukraine is wrong, but the United States and Israel are two countries that have consistently undermined and trampled over UN resolutions and UN decisions. I remind the Taoiseach of the weekend poll which again showed 71% of people in favour of maintaining neutrality.”
“The Government has proposed to scrap the triple lock. In 2013, when the Taoiseach was on this side of House, he said "triple lock ... is at the core of our neutrality". I agree with what he said then. As a member of the defence committee, we have looked at this very carefully, and I am fully convinced that what he said is true. He will try to justify the abandonment of the triple lock because we live in a changed world. He has said things like this, but neutrality was adopted during World War Two. The 1960 Defence (Amendment) Act set out clearly that the UN mandate is required for the deployment of a contingent of the Defence Forces overseas. That was in the middle of the Cold War and at a time of huge international conflict. The veto the UN Security Council can exercise is something that is raised.”
“The various studies and reports on ecology, hydrology, archaeology and habitats are taking far too long, as are the public consultations and EIAs. They need to happen in tandem, not consecutively. That is the message I would give to the Minister of State.”
“The completion date for those who are centrally involved in the Mountmellick scheme will at best be 2030 or 2032, and maybe even longer. For Portarlington, it is anywhere between 2030 and 2034, which is 17 or 18 years after the scheme was conceived. We agree with what is proposed in the motion, except for the seventh point. I would say to Aontú, in the context of taking it away from local authorities, that it actually goes to An Coimisiún Pleanála. It did not go to the local authorities in the context of any of the schemes I have seen. We need to give local authorities more power and a greater role. We need to devolve more powers to them. That is exactly the problem we have because local authorities do not have sufficient staff and powers to deal with these matters.”
“Climate change is here, and we are seeing what it looks like. This is the beginning of it, unfortunately, with the changing weather patterns that we have been seeing in the past few years. Flood relief schemes are taking from 13 to 20 years, which is too long, to put in place. The Mountmellick and Portarlington schemes have been planned since 2017. People in the two towns are on high alert the whole time. Homes on Manor Road were flooded again in recent months. Botley Lane in Portarlington gets flooded, and there is extensive flooding in other parts of the town. Residents are on edge. The progress on both schemes, which are now nine years old, is way too slow. Planning and construction are taking too long.”
“We have to have a fairer society like the rest of Europe. That is what we need here and I ask the Minister of State to withdraw the amendment and support this motion.”