Ciarán Ahern
Dublin South-West · Labour Party · Ireland
“What we are asking for today is simply that the Government lives up to the commitment made in the programme for Government to carry out a new, independent feasibility study for an extension of the MetroLink from where it is currently due to end in Charlemont, out to Dublin south west.”
“It examined quite a nonsensical route that finished abruptly in Knocklyon, and therefore it significantly underestimated the cost benefit of the project.”
“This all comes back to funding our schools. All too often, despite the much publicised overspend in the education budget, schools still have to fight tooth and nail to get the resources they need. I never predicted that so much of my time as a TD would be spent working with local schools on funding and resourcing issues.”
“As the capitation grant is not covering basic operating costs, many school boards feel that to avoid running deficits, which they will get into trouble for from their governing bodies, they have to find funds elsewhere.”
“As the Minister knows, parents are paying hand over fist for ancillary school costs, be it for school uniforms, laptops, school transport or the so-called voluntary contributions. We cannot say we have free education in this country if the whole architecture that enables proper participation is hugely expensive for parents.”
“Some parents are now having to pay hundreds of euro for devices if their children are to just fully participate in school. As this motion states, we are at risk of creating a digital divide and new inequalities in our education system unless we put further supports in place for low-income families. Kevin Shortall, principal of St.”
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“These protests last week became something far bigger than just a protest by farming and haulage sectors; they are about the level of desperation felt by workers and households who have for years been put to the pin of their collar by a spiralling and seemingly perpetual cost-of-living crisis that includes energy bills, rent, house prices, grocery prices, childcare costs, education costs and the cost of disability. I could go on. The frustration being aired on O’Connell Street, on the M50, in Whitegate and in Rosslare – that cry for help – had been coming from households and small businesses long before the escalation last week. The Government was warned about this.”
“The events of the last week have betrayed this Government's inability to grasp the level of desperation and frustration that is out there among people who feel they cannot keep their heads above water. The impetus behind these protests and blockades had been fermenting long before last week and long before Trump and Netanyahu’s illegal war on Iran, which is just the latest thing to give rise to a fuel shock and price shock. This is an issue that has been brewing for years.”
“I am sure the Minister has seen the letter written by a number of human rights lawyers and academics from the University of Galway to An Coimisiún Pleanála today regarding this site, and is aware that the State has failed to comply with its obligations under European human rights law with regard to deaths and disappearances. We need to heed the calls from the survivors.”
“The location of the remains of 19 mothers is also unknown. The commission of investigation reports it is highly likely burials took place on the grounds of Bessborough. The absence of certainty around the location of the remains of those who died at Bessborough is precisely why planning permission was refused for a redevelopment there by An Bord Pleanála in 2021. Nothing has changed in the interim. We cannot atone for best Bessborough, this national shame, by bulldozing it and paving over the memories of those who lost their lives there. Special advocate for survivors, Patricia Carey, has spoken about how this proposal has been retraumatising for survivors.”
“There always tends to be a focus on the financial redress side of a State apology but true justice requires a much broader and more holistic approach than simple financial restitution. That is the easy part, and we are not even getting that right by putting up arbitrary barriers based on time spent on institutions if one wants to apply to these things. A genuine apology requires self-reflection and changed attitudes and behaviours towards people who may previously have been excluded and looked down upon and changed approaches to how the State conducts its business so that the failures and sins of the past are not repeated. It requires truth-seeking and truth-telling, reflection and memorialisation. We know that of the 923 babies who died at Bessborough, 859 are entirely unaccounted for.”
“I express my solidarity with the survivors of the Bessborough mother and baby home and of all mother and baby homes as we broach this issue. We are talking about a matter of great sensitivity relating to the disappearance of hundreds of women and babies. This is a matter of basic human dignity for survivors and for the babies and mothers who did not survive. We are also talking about what exactly it means when the State makes an apology for something. The State is making plenty of apologies these days but what do they mean? We all know what a hollow apology sounds and feels like. How do we know, and how does the State express it is actually sorry when it comes to survivors of mother and baby homes?”
“The Minister must instruct the CCPC to conduct a stand-alone investigation into potential price gouging in the hours after this latest conflict in the Middle East began, and the failure to immediately pass on any cuts in excise duty. I will conclude by cautiously welcoming this legislation, which will temporarily reduce the excise duty, cut the NORA levy and extend the fuel allowance, but the Government could and should have gone further. We know we cannot tax-cut our way out of our over-reliance on fossil fuels and our overexposure to the whims of a warmongering US President. We need to look ahead towards real solutions to shield ourselves from future oil shocks to the greatest extent possible, and that means building up our renewables capacity.”
“I would be willing to accept that argument if it did not imply that for some reason, fuels bought in advance of these cuts cannot be charged at a lower rate, but the fuels bought prior to the outbreak of the war had to be charged based on the wholesale price at the time consumers were filling up their cars. It is absolutely outrageous. I welcome the instruction given by the Minister for enterprise to the CCPC to conduct a review of the retail energy market. On many occasions in this House, I have called out the poor behaviour of energy companies and the dysfunction of our supposedly competitive market. However, it must go further than a simple review.”
“The fuels being supplied in the hours immediately after the outbreak of the conflict would have been bought at a much lower rate, but they were being sold based on the present wholesale price. The fuel providers - never ones to waste a crisis - saw an opportunity and went for it. It was frankly insulting to hear Fuels for Ireland, the industry lobby group, tell consumers the other day not to expect a reduction in their fuel costs immediately following the cuts to excise duty and the NORA levy. Its excuse was that the fuels being sold would have been purchased in advance at a higher rate.”
“As I said previously, the solution to our energy security needs lies off our coast. Government inertia in building up our offshore capacity can no longer be tolerated. The urgency we have seen from the Government in rushing through the legislation for this LNG terminal needs to be redirected towards meeting our 5 GW offshore target and getting the projects currently in the pipeline delivered. I want to touch briefly on the issue of price gouging. The case for an investigation by the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, CCPC, is clear. Within hours of this war beginning, we saw prices soar for home heating oil and at the petrol pump despite the fact that, as we know, fuel stocks are bought well in advance.”
“The European benchmark price for LNG soared by as much as 60% in the days following the start of Trump and Netanyahu’s illegal war in Iran, following the shut-down of a major LNG facility in Qatar. The Government has estimated that its proposed LNG terminal will cost almost €1 billion, paid for of course by ordinary bill payers. The likely increase in that cost arising out of conflicts like the one we are seeing at present underscores the irresponsibility of going ahead with this proposal. We simply cannot secure our energy supply by further exposing ourselves to price shocks like this. We are already vulnerable to an increasingly unstable geopolitical arena, and ordinary households and commuters are paying the price. Charging ahead with the introduction of even more fossil fuels to Ireland will only make matters worse.”
“I appreciate the Taoiseach’s acknowledgement that the source of market volatility, and the reason people are currently being fleeced, is the crises in oil and gas, but I cannot fathom how anyone would think the solution to ensuring energy security in future is further entrenching fossil fuels in our system through the construction of new fossil fuel infrastructure. This Government should seriously reconsider its plans for its strategic gas reserve. We need a new energy security analysis in light of this most recent crisis. This was recommended by the Joint Committee on Climate, Environment and Energy in its pre-legislative scrutiny report on the Government’s LNG bill.”
“Alongside soaking up all of our renewable energy, it is anticipated that they will account for more than 30% of our total energy consumption within the next couple of years. Even the former finance Minister, Pascal Donohoe, has warned in his new role of the huge water consumption issues that data centres bring and the dangers for countries that go along with that. I was left further baffled yesterday when the Taoiseach continued to insist on the Government's plans to import liquified natural gas, LNG, a highly polluting fossil fuel, for energy security purposes, given that he later acknowledged that every energy crisis since the 1970s has been due to a crisis in fossil fuels arising out of a conflict.”
“That is not a success story; it is an outrage, and it is only going to get worse with the continued data centre proliferation that is being enabled by this Government without putting the necessary safeguards in place. The Government's large energy user action plan has utterly failed in that regard and the proposed private wires law will only further the expansion of data centres and their continued expansion and use of fossil fuel generation. I acknowledge that data centres have a role in our economy and our society in terms of enabling our access to modern technologies, but we have to be honest: they are huge sources of pollution and they are placing an unbelievable strain on our energy grid.”
“While I acknowledge we have made some good progress in terms of onshore generation, I do not see how failing to utilise our greatest asset, which is our offshore potential, can be characterised as a success story. It is not a success to be so far behind in our transition to clean renewable energy that the Taoiseach's predecessor once called our country a "climate laggard", and he was right. In any case, any new renewable energy that we are generating is not going towards decarbonising important sectors of our economy; it is being gobbled up by the huge energy demands of data centres. Essentially what we are seeing is the good work that we are doing in terms of renewables benefiting not ordinary households or small businesses, but faceless multinationals.”
“As I said in the Chamber last week, this crisis must also serve as a reminder to the Government of the urgent need to wean ourselves off imported fossil fuels. Our economy remains far too reliant on them. We are 20 years behind where we could have been in terms of offshore wind generation. We have a wealth of renewable potential off our coasts that is almost entirely untapped. We have literally one offshore wind farm, in Arklow, built more than two decades ago, and it is no longer generating any energy. I have serious questions about our target of 5 GW of offshore generation by 2030, given the pace of developments so far. It is clearly not going to happen. I was left baffled in many ways by the Taoiseach's performance during Leaders' Questions yesterday. He said at one stage that Ireland is a "renewables success story".”
“There will always be a need for private cars, of course, but when people are forced to rely exclusively on cars it leaves them exposed to fuel shocks like the one we are experiencing at present. The solution has to be further and urgent investment in public transport and active travel expansion, improved bus services in our rural communities, light rail for cities such as Cork and Galway and the DART+ projects. I am delighted to see that the MetroLink for Dublin's north side is progressing, but we want to see its expansion out to Dublin South-West and elsewhere as well. We need a well-connected active travel network across our major cities and between towns and villages in rural Ireland. We need to see a renewed commitment, a real vigour, from this Government to get these vital transport projects over the line sooner rather than later.”
“It is a real safety concern, and it is the sort of thing that discourages more people from leaving the car at home and getting them or their families on their bikes. People should not feel like they are taking their life into their hands when they decide to cycle to work. Returning to my main point, I hope this fuel crisis will serve as further evidence for this Government of the pitfalls of a transport system built primarily around private car use, not only for climate and health reasons, or to deal with the chronic traffic issues and congestion around our cities, but also for how vulnerable it leaves people when petrol and diesel prices shoot up.”
“The Leas-Cheann Comhairle may have seen a piece by RTÉ yesterday in which they timed three people making a journey from Knocklyon, in my own constituency of Dublin South-West, into town - one driving, one taking a bus and one cycling. Those of us who make that journey into work in the city centre every day will not have been surprised by the finding that cycling is the fastest option. That said, and notwithstanding the significant improvements that have been made in recent years, the cycle network along that route remains a patchwork, for instance where the incredible Dodder greenway ends at the Rathfarnham Road as you head into town and you are abruptly spat back out onto the road alongside cars. As the RTÉ presenter said, it does not pass the test of whether you would allow your child to cycle on that route.”
“Services are infrequent, routes are limited and reliability is often lacking. While we can take short-term measures to try to reduce the cost of public transport and encourage people to leave the car at home to avoid increasing fuel costs, the bigger picture is that we need to reduce the need for expensive car journeys in the first place. That is the longer-term solution to high costs at the pump but it means investing in a public transport system that is affordable, reliable and accessible. It means expanding bus services, increasing rail capacity and ensuring that rural communities are not left behind. It means creating a network that people can depend on in their daily lives. It means going further in terms of our active travel network. Cycling is the cheapest, healthiest, cleanest and often most efficient way of getting around.”
“I acknowledge improvements that were made over the course of the previous Government, particularly with regard to the roll-out of Local Link buses. We need to double-down on that progress. It has been disheartening to see any momentum that had built up during the previous Government in terms of our commitment to public transport expansion being squandered by this Government. The 2:1 spending ratio in favour of public transport and active travel has been done away with. The national development plan, NDP, review's sectoral investment plan for transport was a damp squib that pushed back the start dates of vital transport projects. The reality is that too many people in Ireland remain dependent on their cars because they have no viable alternative. Public transport is simply not good enough in many parts of the country.”
“The International Energy Authority has explicitly said that people should be encouraged to work from home so that the cost of commuting is mitigated. This is a no-brainer - something that can bring relief to many workers without a direct cost to the State - and I have not heard any justification for not doing it. There are other measures that could be taken in the short term to protect people against prices at the pumps. We should be looking at implementing an emergency reduction in public transport fares by at least 10% and identifying all opportunities to increase the capacity and frequency of services. More broadly, this crisis has exposed the fundamental issue in our transport system - our over-reliance on private car use. That is something that we desperately need to change.”
“Remote work is no longer only a workers' rights or quality-of-life issue; it is a real and effective way to protect many people from this present energy crisis. The Government must urgently reconsider its position on the Labour Party's Work Life Balance (Right to Remote Work) Bill 2026. It must institute a genuine right to remote and flexible working, not the tepid right-to-request model that we have at present. In effect, that has been a licence for employers to refuse requests. It should be obvious to the Government that by reducing people's need to travel to and from their workplace, it is shielding them from the sky-high prices we are seeing at the garage forecourts. The Minister does not even have to take our word for it.”
“They are a short-term instrument that the Government has belatedly brought in to get people off their back. As I have said, we support the individual measures, but the overall package is, in the words of my colleague, Deputy Nash, "timid, anaemic and underwhelming". The Government could and should have gone further to support households and commuters in the short to medium term. The Labour Party has long championed strengthening our remote and flexible working legislation, and that is now more important than ever in the context of the diesel and petrol price crisis. During recent yellow weather warnings, workers were encouraged to work from home where possible. The same logic and support must be provided to workers at this critical time.”
“The energy market is so volatile at present - determined, it would seem, by whichever side of the bed Donald Trump wakes up on - that any benefit arising out of the temporary reduction in excise duty and the small cut to the NORA levy could be wiped out by the end of the week or even sooner. The reality is that the measures the Government has introduced do not go far enough. They will not provide much reassurance to households and commuters, only a temporary reprieve that is vulnerable to further price increases. What happens if this war rages on beyond May and energy costs continue to pile pressure upon consumers? These new measures are not a long-term strategy to protect households and they certainly are not about building a more secure future in our energy systems.”
“We are talking about the lived experiences of working people, older people and families who are struggling to hold things together in the midst of what the International Energy Agency has described as the “gravest energy shock of all time”, and that is on top of our existing cost-of-living crisis. I sincerely hope that the measures announced yesterday by the Government provide some relief to people who are really feeling the pain in this energy crisis but we should not kid ourselves into thinking that these measures are anything more than sticking plasters. They are short-term and limited and they do not provide anyone with any real certainty.”
“We have seen a huge degree of uncertainty and anxiety as fuel prices skyrocketed following Trump and Netanyahu's illegal and bloody misadventure in Iran began, particularly among vulnerable households that rely on liquid fuels to keep their homes warm and those who need to drive to work. This crisis has left no one untouched. In every part of the country, ordinary households are feeling the pressure of rising energy costs in an immediate and seemingly relentless way. All of us in this House will have heard from our constituents over the last number of weeks about the effect this is having on them, about how anxiety-inducing a trip to the petrol station has become and about how heating bills feel like a looming threat. For so many households, the cost of getting to work or bringing the kids to school has now become a financial calculation.”
“I begin by cautiously welcoming the short-term reprieve brought about by the Government's decision to reduce excise duty temporarily; to cut the NORA levy, a measure to which this legislation gives effect; and to take on board one of the Labour Party's proposals, which was to extend the fuel allowance by four weeks. The Labour Party voted in support of the introduction of these measures last night and we will support today's legislation as well as it is going some way to ease the financial pressure on working people across the country but, of course, we believe that more can and must be done.”
“However, I cannot help noticing as I cycle into the Dáil every morning that I see lots of high-visibility gardaí in the Minister's constituency, but I get reports from my constituents and people all over Dublin that the same visibility is not elsewhere. While we support the measure, we would like to see it somewhere outside of Dublin Bay South as well.”
“We need urgent investment in the Garda roads policing division to bring the numbers up and enforce the rules of the road. We can talk all we like about road safety strategies, speed limits and penalty points, and they are of course necessary measures, but unless the rules of the road can be vigorously enforced, nothing will change. We will continue to see driver behaviour deteriorate and more and more people will be killed and seriously injured on our roads. We need to see greater investment in the Garda and investment into the traffic corps cannot be treated as an optional extra. It can quite literally be a matter of life and death. While we talk about high-visibility policing, it is great to see it.”
“We have only nine static speed cameras in the country, three average-speed cameras and one red-light camera at Merrion Gates. In terms of numbers of traffic gardaí, before the recession we had a force of about 1,300 gardaí policing our roads, which was then absolutely decimated and cut in half to just 623 in 2018. There are now about 500,000 more cars on the roads than when the cuts were made. As noted in the motion, the then Garda Commissioner told the transport committee that over the course of 2024 and 2025, 150 new gardaí would be allocated to the roads policing division. What was actually delivered falls far short of this. At the end of 2023, there were 632 gardaí in the traffic corps and at the end of 2025 there were 647, a net increase of just 15. In other words, it was 10% of what was promised. We need to get a grip on this.”
“There is speeding, red-light running, driver distraction from the massive iPad displays in cars or mobile phones, texting, watching Netflix on the M50 or recording Snapchats or voice notes while driving. I ask the Minister to look at the Bad Drivers Ireland account on TikTok, which will scare the bejesus out of him and give him a sense of the lunatics out there on our roads putting lives at risk with their recklessness. They will keep doing it unless they think there is some chance they will be caught. The Garda is essentially hamstrung on this. We have a road safety strategy, but we have seen next to no urgency in increasing the resources available to gardaí in terms of people power and the tools at their disposal such as traffic cameras.”
“Tá an Teachta Kelly ar dhuine de na cosantóirí is mó ar son na ngardaí sa Dáil. Tá muid go léir i bPáirtí an Lucht Oibre ag iarraidh feabhas a chur ar choinníollacha oibre na ngardaí agus cur ar a gcumas an pobal a choinneáil slán. I will focus my remarks on the area of roads policing. As the Minister knows, 190 lives were lost on Irish roads last year, the highest number in over a decade. Thirty-nine people have been killed on our roads so far this year, seven more this time last year. We are going backwards when it comes to road safety. Is it any wonder when the Government has failed to properly resource our primary enforcement mechanism of the rules of the road, namely, the Garda traffic corps? Bad driver behaviour will not change until the rules of the road are relentlessly enforced. It is like the wild west on our roads at times.”
“Who gets caught in the middle of this thirst for profit from the private sector and the inertia from the State? It is the hardworking families across the country who just keep paying more and more to live their daily lives. We must urgently move away from our over-reliance on fossil fuels. The Government must abandon its plans for a new LNG terminal and show the same urgency in developing renewable infrastructure and supporting households to decarbonise as it has for importing more fossil fuels from America.”
“Third, there is a cobbled-together piece of PR that does not address the problem. We are possibly in the middle of that process now, at the advanced dithering stage, with the promise of some kind of plan next week, we hope. The price of petrol and diesel has neared or surpassed €2 per litre. The average cost of 500 litres of home heating oil has rocketed from €498 to €870. These are only the average prices and there are individual cases around the country where we have seen much higher and more dramatic hikes. The giant companies that provide us with oil and gas products that heat our homes or fuel our cars are quick to respond to a crisis and turn it into an opportunity. This Government has lacked the required urgency and seems to be playing catch-up.”
“The Government has powers to investigate price gouging and anti-competitive behaviour in energy markets, and those investigations must happen and any wrongdoing must be dealt with decisively. As we all know, however, investigations take time and people cannot wait while their heating bills continue to rise. That is why we need to see the Government bring forward supports sooner rather than later. The Labour Party has already called on the Government to use maximum price orders to tie the cost of home heating oil to what it actually costs suppliers. Ministers can set a maximum price on home heating oil today. We know other countries have already done this. Unfortunately, what we have seen is the usual cycle whenever a crisis falls at this Government’s feet. First, there is paralysis. Second, there is dithering.”
“We can use the social welfare system and taxation to deliver help where it is most needed. As well as an additional four weeks of fuel allowance, we would like to see a double social welfare payment and targeted income energy credits of €400 to support households with incomes of less than €80,000. This type of intervention is needed to ensure we do not add to the 320,000 families who are already struggling to pay their energy bills. This needs to be addressed urgently, as does the behaviour of energy suppliers. Both at the forecourt and with home heating oil, there has been clear and significant price gouging in the days immediately after the start of the Iran war.”
“We cannot bend the knee and expose ourselves to further risks arising out of global instability and fuel shocks. We are already overexposed to US interests when it comes to our corporation tax receipts. We cannot allow ourselves to become reliant on the US for our energy needs as well. In any case, the European benchmark price of LNG has, as of today, soared by around 60% since Trump and Netanyahu’s illegal war on Iran commenced. I hope this latest crisis in the fuel market gives the Government pause for thought on its plans for a new LNG terminal that would see us importing highly polluting fracked gas and leave us further exposed to these kinds of shocks. People are feeling this energy crisis in their pockets right now, and we need to see action from the Government on this now.”
“This crisis should serve as a reminder to the Government – not that it should need one - of the urgency with which we need to transition our economy away from its reliance on fossil fuels and towards clean, indigenous, renewable energy. Wind energy produced off the Irish coast will not get stuck in the Strait of Hormuz. The inertia from the Government in building up our offshore capacity can no longer be tolerated. It leaves us vulnerable to an increasingly unstable geopolitical arena, and it is ordinary households that pay the price. The only urgency we have seen from the Government, from an energy perspective, is to rush through legislation to build new fossil fuel infrastructure. Yesterday, we saw Donald Trump trying to bully our Taoiseach into buying American liquefied natural gas, LNG.”
“The surge in fuel prices triggered by instability in the Middle East is a stark reminder of just how exposed Irish households remain to global shocks. How did we get to this point? First, unfortunately, there seems to be a lack of strategic planning. The Government has reacted far too slowly to a rapidly escalating problem and the crisis seems to be getting ahead of it. This is our second energy crisis in four years. How are we being price gouged again? How have we allowed ourselves to be caught by surprise? Second, it comes back to our overdependence on unreliable, intermittent, imported fossil fuels. We are overexposed in this country, even compared with our European neighbours, when it comes to the amount of fossil fuels we continue to import.”
“The Labour Party has called on the Government to release part of our 90-day petroleum reserves as part of a range of cost-cutting measures to protect people from the immediate price shock, a measure the International Energy Agency, IEA, has subsequently proposed and endorsed. The Opposition is united in wanting to support the most vulnerable in our society who are suffering from energy poverty. We can and must protect people in ways that are both environmentally and fiscally responsible. The Labour Party will not attack the carbon tax, however. There are other ways to crack this nut, which I will get into a little later.”
“I thank Sinn Féin for bringing this timely motion forward. As we saw at the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, the cost of energy and fuel has skyrocketed in the weeks since Trump and Netanyahu’s bloody misadventure in the Middle East began. Never ones to waste a crisis, whether at the garage forecourt or in our home heating tanks, fuel providers here saw an opportunity for profit and they went for it. Prices changed not by the day, but by the hour. On top of an already crippling cost-of-living crisis, working people are struggling to cope. No action is not an option. Unfortunately, that is all we have got from this Government so far. I heard the Tánaiste’s comments earlier that action will be taken in the coming days, which I welcome.”
“I will not hold my breath. We call on the Minister to ensure the Taoiseach does not continue his policy of appeasement towards Trump. While we can condemn the Iranian regime and its authoritarianism, the actions of Israel and America completely undermine the international rules-based order.”
“Israel has been allowed to level Gaza, murder with impunity and continue to expand its illegal settlements in the West Bank. If the Taoiseach is still intent on travelling to the US for St. Patrick's Day and visiting the Oval Office, it cannot be another exercise in pandering. The Irish people will not allow our heritage to be used to shamrock-wash the flagrant breaches of international and domestic law carried out by Donald Trump. Ireland is in a unique position to have an annual face-to-face meeting in the White House with the President, but what good is that if we are simply going to use it to gloss over the erosion of democracy and international law at the hands of our supposed ally? The Taoiseach must have the moral courage and steel to speak up at this unique opportunity for the UN, for peace and for upholding international law.”
“Its impact has been profound and completely undermined the ambition of nuclear non-proliferation. In Europe, too, we need to be honest about our own role in the path towards this war. For years, the US and Israel have been given carte blanche to behave however they like and to run roughshod over international law without any meaningful consequences. As a community of nations, and as individual states in Europe, we have acquiesced, appeased and stayed silent, and so we have emboldened the Trump and Netanyahu regimes and allowed them to believe the normal rules do not apply to them. No real effort has been made to impose sanctions at European level. Here at home, the occupied territories Bill has effectively been abandoned despite election promises.”
“We in the Labour Party have been consistent and forceful in our condemnation of that Iranian regime and in our support for pro-democracy movements and women's rights campaigners, and no one more so than my colleague Deputy Smith, who has been the loudest and most consistent voice in this House in calling out the brutal Iranian regime. However, as our party leader, Deputy Bacik, said during Leaders' Questions earlier this week, two things can be true at once. We can oppose an authoritarian regime and still insist that international law is upheld. There is no evidence basis for this war. There was no imminent threat. A number of things have got us to where we are today. As Deputy Smith discussed, Donald Trump ripped up the Iran nuclear deal, the JCPOA. That has set the course for where the Middle East is today.”
“This is not a war of self-defence on America's part. There was no imminent threat. This is a war of opportunism. Benjamin Netanyahu saw an opportunity to take out the Ayatollah, something he has been trying to do since the 1990s, and his lapdog Donald Trump has been more than willing to do his bidding for him with, even for this Trump Administration, a shocking lack of foresight or a plan for what comes next. We know the Iranian regime is tyrannical, totalitarian and deeply repressive. We have seen it murder thousands of Iranian people just in recent months.”
“It is the Iranian people, not Donald Trump or Benjamin Netanyahu, who must choose their next leaders. We must be clear that the US and Israel do not have the best interests of the Iranian people in their minds when they do this. They are in it for themselves, but there are civil society groups and leaders in Iran calling for international partners to help them facilitate an international dialogue to enable a self-determined transition in Iran. We want Ireland and our Government to play a leading role in that process, but we will not get there by pussyfooting around in how we describe what is happening. This is an illegal war, so will the Minister please be clear on that, ask the Taoiseach to be clear on that and condemn the US and Israel for it? It represents a flagrant breach of international law and US constitutional law.”
“I first and foremost send my solidarity to the innocent people in Iran and the broader Middle East who are caught in the middle of this illegal war between a brutal and repressive Iranian regime, a genocidal Israeli regime and an increasingly fascist and autocratic American regime. By the way, this is not a "situation" in the Middle East, which is the title the Government has put on this speaking slot. This is an illegal war and a flagrant breach of international law, prosecuted in the first instance by the US and Israel. Even the title of today's statements betrays our Government's lack of backbone in calling it out as such. I also send my solidarity today to those who have fought for decades for democracy in Iran and continue to do so, and I pay tribute to all who have given their lives for that cause.”
“Older people in particular are having to walk 15 or 20 minutes to get to a bus stop, where they used to have one pretty close to them. There have also been issues with the reliability of buses. Because this is a cross-town route, people are getting caught in traffic coming from the northside and going to the southside. Some constituents have had to pay nearly €200 in taxis because buses are not showing up and have become increasingly unreliable, which is another problem. I ask again that the Minister talk to the NTA about it.”