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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“That is exactly the point. It is about the interim measures. The roll-out of this programme is piecemeal, and I can understand why, but until we have all the infrastructure in place and all the routes perfectly link up, as per the overall plan, we are going to have issues like this. I ask again that the Minister talk to the NTA and suggest that it review this and maybe implement the 49 route again to run alongside the F1 route in the interim, while this is going on. We need measures like bus gates, priority traffic lights and all that kind of stuff. These are the technological measures we can take to give buses priority. In the meantime, however, an additional route to replicate the 49 route would be very helpful. The route change has left parts of the community isolated, where once there was a service.”
“We advocate that an additional route be implemented or that the 49 service be implemented alongside the F1 route, even during peak hours. People in Dublin South-West have not benefited from the increased frequency that people in other areas have.”
“I have been very straight about my support for the BusConnects projects and the objective of the programme, which is to improve bus journey times, frequency, punctuality and reliability. That is off the bat. It is great obviously. The routes had to change because they have barely changed in the entire history of the city. When implementing any change to routes there will always be issues like this. Unfortunately, commuters coming from Tallaght, Knocklyon and Firhouse have not seen an improvement. The 49 bus route was a little more direct but the new service is bringing them down roads that do not have dedicated bus lanes and are clogged with traffic in the morning. We have seen issues with routes in some other parts of the city.”
“Is the Minister aware of the issues affecting commuters using the new F1 bus route in Dublin South-West? Does he believe it is acceptable that workers who were using the bus to travel into the city centre every morning have had an additional 20 to 30 minutes added to their commute as a result of the changes to this bus route? What is the reason the peak-time, high-frequency timetable only applies to the northern part of the route? l ask the Minister to make a statement on the matter.”
“It is pouring money into grid updates, not for the benefit of ordinary households but in order that they can cope with the huge energy demands of these data centres and large energy users. Ultimately it is going to be paid for by ordinary consumers. To add insult to injury, the energy task force the Government has held up as the answer to the ever-increasing energy bills and which will supposedly solve energy poverty has only met three times. What is it going to do about the cost of energy?”
“Figures released by Eurostat today show that households are paying twice as much as data centres for their energy in Ireland. Data centre expansion is putting huge pressure on our energy grid and soaking up all the new, renewable energy that we are generating. Not only that but they are not even paying their fair share for the pleasure. This is just the latest in a series of examples where this Government is bending the knee to data centres and big energy companies. It is costing the rest of us. It has failed to properly regulate data centres or energy providers. It wants to import fracked gas now from America, primarily so energy supply to 300 or so large energy users can be protected in the event of an emergency.”
“I thank the Minister of State for his engagement tonight. We would be delighted to meet. Regarding this particular medical issue, there are concerns around a lack of training for SNAs in dealing with issues like this. My colleague, Deputy Eoghan Kenny, has brought in a Bill on emergency medical care training for SNAs but this is an ongoing issue. This is an emergency and something they have to deal with on an almost daily basis. There are concerns around liability if something goes wrong, and things will inevitably go wrong in these high-pressure, immediate, decision-making situations.”
“That type of supervision is not possible in this case. Staff are increasingly anxious about taking on responsibilities which would usually be given to nurses. They are involved in decision making when it comes to this child’s medical needs. There are serious concerns in the school about who is responsible and the school is looking for a nurse.”
“I wish to look at one example in the same special school in Tallaght and the broader shift in the model of what we expect an SNA’s role to be, and the struggles that the school and staff go through on a daily basis. This school has a student with type 1 diabetes and epilepsy. The child has increasingly complex needs and seizures approximately every fortnight. The school is dealing with all of this. The student cannot wear a glucose monitor or an insulin pump as his needs are so complex. He is non-verbal. He has no communication device or access to CDNT services. He is completely reliant on staff. In this case SNAs monitor his presentation and bloods and the only way they can do that is by taking a sample and intervening themselves. SNAs routinely support children with diabetes and will monitor bloods.”
“It evolved the role into one that seems to be much more focused on caregiving than supporting access to education. This means SNA support is granted only in acute circumstances, where care needs are considered at the expense of educational needs. This sidelines an entire cohort of children with special educational needs who do not fit neatly into the criteria or tick a very specific box. The role of an SNA should fundamentally be about supporting a child's access to education. This may require some care-based responsibilities, but we cannot allow a situation to emerge where children who require additional support are denied it because they do not fit into the correct box.”
“The upshot is that children with perhaps less severe and often more behaviour-based needs can be excluded. However, those children, including children with sensory issues, attention issues and those who require emotional regulation, need and deserve SNA support too. Teachers who are already overburdened will be further strained without that support. Ultimately, this harms all students, be they children in mainstream classes, children in special classes or children in special schools, and their right to a decent education. We can debate technicalities and administrative matters concerning how we deploy SNAs but we cannot lose sight of the fact that beneath all of this is the well-being of children. The second key issue is the 2014 circular that defines the role of the SNA.”
“It must, we would hope, be the beginning of a fundamental reassessment of our special education system, from the role of the SNA to how levels of need are determined and how SNA support is allocated within schools. I refer the Minister to Ciara Reilly's Substack page, as others have also done. Ms Reilly has written a series of excellent articles on how this debacle has unfolded. I will briefly refer to a couple of the points she made. The first is the issue with the SNA deployment toolkit. From what I can see, that is where all roads seem to lead in many respects. Under this mechanism, SNA support is allocated almost exclusively to children with the most significant primary care needs. The threshold for meeting those needs seems to be applied quite rigidly.”
“I thank Sinn Féin for tabling this important motion. I pay tribute to the thousands of SNAs, teachers, parents, school principals and those in the broader school community who have forced the Government to back down on the attempt to cull SNA supports for schools and children with additional needs across the country. It was the groundswell against this move and the national outcry of thousands of people that got us to where we are now. However, our already stressed and strained school communities should not have had to do this. The roll-back of the move is absolutely welcome but it cannot be the end point. It must be the beginning of something new.”
“A price-only approach to tenders only penalises the good companies that already invest in the environment, employment law, workers’ rights and human rights standards. The Construction Industry Federation and the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland support this, as do all the unions. The Labour Party is proud to support this Bill today. I commend it to the House.”
“While 3% was added to the overall additional cost of procurement, additional benefits of 240% were achieved in the outcomes of using these methods. There is no issue with looking for the best deal but it has to be weighed against the quality that will be delivered. This Bill brings us in that direction. I also hope that the move towards a more quality-focused approach with this Bill will lead to greater consideration of environmental and sustainability issues in our procurement processes. Something that I have raised before on the matter of public procurement is the need to prioritise contractors who engage in collective bargaining, recognise trade unions, respect workers’ rights and agree to engage with the Workplace Relations Commission and our dispute resolution bodies when required.”
“We know there are huge infrastructure deficits in the country, be it in public transport, education, housing, water or the energy grid, etc. We have a lot of things we need to spend money on and it is so important that we get these infrastructure projects right because we failed to do so too often in the past. Often, it seems to come down to the fact that we have been penny-pinching at important points. It is important that it is recognised within public bodies that there is a need for stronger criteria that would place greater emphasis on quality in awarding public contracts. We need a greater focus on who can provide the best outcomes rather than a race to the bottom on who can provide the lowest cost. The Minister spoke about value for money. Quality is value for money. Many Members referred to the Netherlands example today.”
“When we are talking about public funds, we should always strive to achieve quality, be it in service delivery or infrastructure. We must be mindful that public money is just that - it belongs to the public and we have to respect that. Showing respect for taxpayers does not always mean choosing the cheapest option. It means delivering value. If continually having to go with the cheapest tender means finding faults down the line, spending additional time and money on follow-ups, inspections and so on, we are not delivering value but, rather, wasting public funds. This is a timely Bill given that we now have a national development plan worth €275 billion before us, not to mention the Government’s accelerating infrastructure action plan.”
“The national children’s hospital is the most obvious example of that. Not only does this represent a waste of public money, but the drip-feeding of delays and additional costs undermines the public’s faith in the State’s ability to get anything right. There can be serious consequences too in terms of the human cost, such as those we saw with the CervicalCheck scandal. This Bill is trying to move towards a price-quality ratio model. It is essentially about ensuring that we are getting the best bang for our buck, which is exactly what the Minister of State is looking for. It should not always be about finding the cheapest way to get things done when it comes to public works. Scrimping on important infrastructure means further costs down the line.”
“While we all want to see public projects being delivered faster and more efficiently, focusing on quality rather than just cost at the tendering stage may force those who are preparing tenders to look around corners and identify potential pitfalls or additional costs at an earlier stage rather than, as happens so often, providing us with multiple surprise obstacles and bills at a later stage of the process. This Bill has the potential to improve and speed up the delivery of public projects and critical infrastructure. It is fair to say that our public procurement system has not always served us particularly well. As has been noted by others, the lowest price model often results in longer term costs. Often, we see a contract being awarded to the lowest bidder and then supplementary claims start to build and build.”
“If we choose the cheapest option, we are going to have to pay extra for an assigned seat, early boarding or flexible travel times. We all factor quality, safety and durability into our everyday spending decisions. Why are we not doing this with our public procurement? I cannot see any reason any government would not support this Bill. We all profess to be obsessed with ensuring our public funds are spent wisely and appropriately. We have seen too many incidents where that has not happened, as others have alluded to today.”
“We all know in our personal lives the pitfalls and trade-offs that are involved when choosing the lowest cost option for anything, whether it is in a small and insignificant context like avoiding the cheapest bottle of wine on the menu or choosing to actively buy something Fairtrade in the supermarket. In doing so, we are making a choice about the provenance, quality and rights of workers behind these products. The choices we make are important. This applies even when we go on to bigger and more important choices in our personal lives, such as choosing the provider that will carry out work on our homes or the individual who will carry out a medical or dental procedure on us. It also applies when it comes to buying a cheap flight.”
“I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak on this important Bill. I commend Deputy Gibney on introducing it to the House. I thank Senator Higgins for introducing it and shepherding it through the Seanad. I know a huge amount of work was done in the background on this. Senator Higgins obviously had extensive engagement over the years with businesses, representative groups, trade unions and broader civil society. This Bill received cross-party support. I believe it received unanimous support in the Seanad, which is testament to the work Senator Higgins did. It is, therefore, deeply disappointing that the Government is opposing the Bill on this Stage. Like others, I encourage it to reflect on that position. This Bill is definitely one for the policy nerds but it also seems to be stating the bleeding obvious.”
“God knows our waterways are polluted enough already and are in such a bad state - Lady’s Island lake, Lough Neagh and the River Blackwater - without the Government greenlighting further destruction of precious and quickly depleting biodiversity and wildlife habitat. We need to be looking upstream at nature-based solutions rather than just this concrete-first approach. How can we possibly still be building on flood plains? It defies logic. The issue for me and for the Labour Party is that it lies in the proper resourcing of our planning authorities and the courts to deal quickly with the applications for these schemes, and appeals when they arise, and to properly resource our local authorities and the OPW when it comes to the actual construction of the schemes so that they do not take years to complete.”
“The OPW in my area commenced construction on the Whitechurch Stream flood alleviation scheme in Rathfarnham three years ago. It has been beset with what look like numerous preventable delays, the consequences of which were realised in Grange Park just two weeks ago and the disruption from which has been suffered by residents on the road beside Whitechurch Stream in estates like St. Gatiens Court, Willbrook and Tara Hill for the last three years. It can be very convenient for the Government and local authorities to blame judicial reviews and scapegoat environmental concerns about these schemes as a sole reason for the delays to the flood schemes being constructed. I was dismayed to hear Ministers essentially make virtue last week of setting aside environmental concerns to expedite flood alleviation schemes.”
“We do need to get our act together on flood defences. The Labour Party amendment notes the changing weather patterns we are seeing, with more rain, more frequent and severe storms and more flooding and all this is the result of climate change. We need to be clear about that. I am sure that acknowledgement was not purposely omitted from the original motion but it is really important for us that that acknowledgment that this is as a result of climate change is put front and centre here. On the front page of today’s Irish Examiner Maynooth University’s Professor Peter Thorne is explicit that this is going to get worse as a result of climate change and we are miles behind in mitigation measures like flood defences. Progress has been too slow.”
“Our amendment also calls for the introduction of a flood insurance scheme modelled after the successful Flood Re scheme in the UK, which provides cover for households and businesses that are increasingly denied coverage, even when flood defences are in place near them. Grange Park in Rathfarnham previously experienced similar levels of flooding around 20 years ago. From speaking to residents in the area, I am aware that it has been a nightmare for them to get flood insurance ever since, even though there is a flood alleviation scheme being put in place right beside them. One in 20 buildings in Ireland has limited access to flood insurance. That is a pretty incredible statistic. I know the Minister of State has asked his officials to examine the Flood Re scheme. We very much welcome that and we would like to see some progress on it.”
“Of course, they are only effective if you do not already have insurance. Obviously, there are lots of households which do not have insurance. I will get to that in a moment. Part of the Labour Party's amendment involves putting the support schemes - the business one as well as those for affected community organisations - on a statutory footing in order that they do not require Government approval to kick in every time there is an incident of localised flooding. When pressed by my colleague Deputy Ged Nash on this matter in the aftermath of flooding in north Louth in 2023, the previous Government stated that this statutory scheme would be a priority but it still has not been delivered. If the Government wants to project a sense of urgency in dealing with issues around flooding, then this must be done immediately.”
“I feel we were able to give people some practical help over the past few weeks in being a link between residents, businesses and the council and in giving a little advice about the supports that are available and that we have seen increase. Credit goes to the Minister, Deputy Burke, regarding the business support scheme. Households in areas like Grange Park, Woodside and Nutgrove Avenue were badly affected by the flooding. Thousands of euro worth of damage has been done to people's homes and businesses. Cars have been written off. Water came up through the floorboards in houses. We are not sure about the structural damage that has been done as a result of this. There will be medium- to long-term effects, and I am glad to see the Government has some schemes in place in relation to those.”
“I thank Deputies Tóibín and Lawless for tabling this motion. The Labour Party has submitted an amendment which, we hope, will be an effort to strengthen the motion. As Deputy Lawlor said, however, this is something we all need to work together on. Like Deputy Lawlor's constituency, my constituency of Dublin South-West was hit really hard by the floods that happened in the wake of Storm Chandra, particularly Rathfarnham and parts of the Ballycullen area. I thank the Minister of State for coming to visit the parts of Rathfarnham near the River Dodder. There was significant damage in Woodside and places like that. Councillor Paddy Cosgrave and I have been working closely with local businesses and residents in the aftermath.”
“Attempts at mandating helmets and high-vis gear are a distraction and a gimmick to make it look like the Government is doing something. It is an exercise in victim-blaming that does nothing to address the actual dangers to cyclists and other vulnerable road users. Any proposal to extend mandates from e-scooters and high-powered e-bikes to ordinary bikes would represent a major policy regression contradicting both international best practice and the Government's own ambitions with regard to active travel and public health. I will briefly touch on the scrambler issue. I extend my deepest condolences to the family of Grace Lynch. Every parent will have been touched by the incredible bravery shown by Grace's mother Siobhán in the wake of such an unimaginable tragedy.”
“Is the driver behind me watching? Will they let me into the lane? Are they paying attention or are they on their phone? Are they staring at the iPad-type screen displays that are in cars now? Are they slowing down sufficiently? Can I make contact with the driver to ensure they know I am there? All these checks, fears and chills you get, you never get when you are driving a car - never. We know what we need to do to make our roads safer: lower speeds; well-designed junctions; segregated walking and cycling infrastructure; proper road maintenance, as mentioned; and relentless enforcement of the rules of the road via gardaí and cameras. This is not just on bank holiday weekends and for Christmas but all the time.”
“The NTA wants to increase the number of cyclists by 14% by 20, which is not a hugely ambitious target. How will criminalising certain forms of cycling lead to an increase in cycling? It will undermine the Dublinbikes scheme and other city bike schemes around the country that we are currently trying to expand. The beauty of cycling is the freedom it gives, the ability to pick up a bike on a whim, enjoy the wind in your hair and to just go where you want to go, but cycling is terrifying, particularly in Dublin. I cycle all the time and I also drive. I wear a helmet and high-vis on my bike but I do not feel safe. I have to presume that everything else on the road is trying to kill me every minute I am on it. I get a chill of fear any time on my bike when I stick my hand out to change lane with my son on the back seat of the bike.”
“Standard bike helmets are not designed to cushion the blow from a two-tonne SUV smashing into you at 50 km/h or 60 km/h, or a HGV rolling over you at a dangerous junction. The helmets are designed for low-speed falls, not collisions involving cars or HGVs, whose size and speed far exceed the conditions that helmets are tested for. Most cyclists wear helmets anyway. If the Government wants to encourage more of that, just make helmets free, rather than making it an offence not to wear one. International evidence shows that helmet mandates result in a reduction in cycling, which, in turn, leads to higher emissions, worse public health outcomes and essentially criminalises cycling. I met with the Climate and Health Alliance this morning, who, like me, are appalled by this proposal.”
“Another issue I want to touch on is this proposal or gimmick coming out of Cabinet over the past few days around mandatory high-vis gear and helmets for cyclists. The fact that this is even being proposed betrays a lack of seriousness and a lack of understanding of exactly what is making our roads unsafe. Road safety is not a personal protective equipment issue. Treating it as such shifts responsibility onto the potential victims, rather than addressing the actual causes of road danger such as road user behaviour, speed, vehicle design, safe infrastructure and so on. There is no credible evidence to suggest that helmets or high-vis mandates reduce collisions, serious injuries or deaths on our roads.”
“While it is doing well in reducing driving test wait times, it is failing miserably when it comes to road safety. All it does is act as some kind of PR firm, doing photo-ops with Ministers and trying to wrap our children and vulnerable road users generally in high-vis clothing, as though that will keep them safe. The Government must split up the RSA as recommended by an external independent review and endorsed previously by the Government. The Minister of State has basically said that the RSA has got driving test wait times down, so let us leave it alone. We also heard that cost was an issue in this decision. That the Department would penny-pinch on this is pretty appalling. What does it say about our attitude to road safety? What does it say about the value we are placing on those people's lives?”
“The Minister's approach now is to make this an individual county councils to decide themselves. It undermines the national nature of this measure. We know that many county councils are going to struggle to pass these laws. They have to do it. They have to pass individual by-laws for every road that they want to make a 30 km/h zone, rather than a blanket urban area of 30 km/h. It is just not the way to do it. The Government's change in policy regarding the RSA is also hugely concerning. There is an inherent conflict at the heart of the RSA; it is both poacher and gamekeeper when it comes to vehicles on our roads. On the one hand, the RSA is funded by driving tests and the NCT, and on the other, it is tasked with making our roads safer via restrictions on car use.”
“We were told there would be 150 new recruits into the Garda traffic corps over the past two years. We got about half that. Pre-recession, the Garda traffic force was around 1,300 strong. Now it is somewhere between 600 and 750. It has been decimated. The number of traffic gardaí has been cut in half, and, at the same time, about a million new cars have been added to our roads. Is it any wonder that it is like the wild west on our roads now? I do not think this Government gets road safety. First, the Government has completely undermined the commitment in the Road Traffic Act to introduce a default urban speed limit of 30 km/h across the country. Lower speed limits work. Let us look at Wales. Road casualties dropped by 25% in the 18 months after they introduced a similar measure.”
“I express my sympathies and that of the Labour Party to the pedestrian who died and the three other people who have been injured in Dublin city centre this afternoon in a terrible crash. Where do we start on road safety? A total of 190 lives were lost on our roads last year, the highest since 2014. We need to get a grip on this. I am not sure that the Minister of State has the political will or the courage to do so. We do not need new laws that we have heard trumpeted in the past few days. We have loads of existing laws on speeding, penalty points and driver behaviour. We just need enforcement - relentless enforcement. We have not seen any urgency from this Government in providing the resources to facilitate this enforcement, whether it is additional gardaí or traffic cameras.”
“We would look forward to engaging constructively with the Minister of State on them, if they could be brought through urgently.”
“Meaningful action to prevent noise, address concerns about privacy and ensure independent monitoring of environmental impacts must come before the development of the drone delivery sector, rather than haphazard mitigation after the horse has bolted. The Government has ignored concerns in Dublin 15 for far too long. Soon, expansion of services across other areas, towns and cities will mean it can no longer be ignored. We desperately need effective regulation and rules about drones at both national and local level. This Bill is a welcome first step. I share the disappointment of colleagues that the Bill is being kicked down the road for a year. I hope the Government will, in the intervening period, come up with its own proposals.”
“Deputy Donnelly referred to colleagues of his coming to Dublin and hearing the noise of the drones. I have been with friends in Castleknock. You do not appreciate until you are there how intrusive and noisy these machines are, how disruptive they will be to family life if you have kids in the garden and how exposed you feel when they fly over you. It is a serious disruption so we cannot go on treating residents across a swathe of our capital city as subjects of an experiment. No further expansion of drone delivery services should be permitted before a safe, sustainable drone traffic management system is fully established and independent research is conducted to assess the impacts of drones in terms of noise, privacy and the environment.”
“We have also seen serious concerns among local communities over the Government's national policy framework for unmanned aircraft systems, which was finally launched in August 2025 after a number of years of stalling. The framework is strongly focused on promoting commercial opportunity for drones and pays only lip service to genuine public concerns. The Government's strategy, which envisages a series of working groups to look at key issues further has barely left the drawing board and is lagging woefully behind the rapid expansion of drone companies. It includes hardly any specifics at all on how to address excessive noise from drones, how to manage unrestricted frequency of flights by drone companies and how to monitor the environmental impact of drones, especially in relation to wildlife.”
“Local councils need stronger support based on legislation to require and enforce rules on noise, privacy and environmental impact. There is no national or local regulation around the establishment of drone bases, frequency of flights or flight paths and that is just not acceptable. It effectively means that regulation of noise cannot hope to succeed and there is not regulation of the number or route of flights during the day. What is more, is that three of the four drone bases set up in Dublin 15 were established without any planning permission. The drone company effectively treated planning as an optional extra. Local communities were denied any input in the establishment of drone operations in their area.”
“Of course, there may be benefits to the use of drones like this, but it needs to be accompanied by strong and effective regulation at both local and national levels. I pay tribute to the work of my Labour Party colleagues, Councillors John Walsh and Mary McCamley, who have recognised the great public concern this issue is causing in their communities as have the Deputies speaking here today. Over 1,500 people signed a community petition they launched calling for regulation of drones in Dublin 15. There is huge concern out there in the community. There are genuine concerns around noise, the unlimited frequency of flights, privacy and the impact on the environment, and this all has to be addressed. Ministers seem to have so far ignored public concerns while quietly facilitating the expansion of drone delivery services.”
“The measures in the Bill are basic, common-sense regulations that should have been in place before these machines ever took flight. Amending the Planning and Development Act 2024 through this legislation will hopefully force the Government to finally layout a national drone policy with similar statements in each council's local development plans. It would also allow for noise pollution complaints to be taken to the District Court on drones just as is the case for other sources of noise pollution. This is not about stifling innovation or limiting people's choice or convenience; it is about taking the sensible steps we need to make sure guardrails and safeguards are put in place to make sure that new technology like this is serving the best interests of our local communities.”
“I will focus on the communities that have had their real concerns around drone usage just ignored for years. We urgently need to see proper regulation and this Bill would be a vital step forward. The last two years have seen parts of Blanchardstown and the surrounding areas become the Wild West of Dublin with planning permission sidestepped as a drone company claimed it was running a trial period. It is just not right that residents in Dublin 15 have been treated as guinea pigs while drone bases were established without planning permission and the Government essentially turning a blind eye. Just yesterday it was reported that the number of drone deliveries had surpassed 250,000 with more than 60,000 flights in Dublin 15 since commencing operations there two years ago.”
“I am the first speaker this evening from outside of Dublin 15 and it has been noted that there are a couple of us here from outside the area. This is coming for us all. That is why I am here, and I am sure it is why Deputy Gibney is here. We have seen plans for Dundrum and elsewhere around Dublin. There should be a certain urgency to getting this right so that we nip the issues in the bud that we have seen arise in Dublin 15 and west Dublin and that we get it right quickly. As Deputy Gorman and others have set out earlier, we do need a balanced approach to drones. We have to be open to new technology and new developments and all of that, but we cannot be blind to the potential harms they bring including, as Deputy Coppinger noted, the potential for displacement of jobs.”
“I thank Deputy O'Gorman for bringing forward this really important Bill. In relation to naming companies in this Chamber, I was given out to about that recently. These companies are not individuals. They are not private individuals. They are big enough and bold enough to defend themselves, so I do not know whether we need to look at our rules on that. We should, in this House, be able to call out companies who are already-----”
“Members can see how easy it would be for documents to be seized by a trafficker or a rogue government, or just lost in the chaos of fleeing a war zone. If we criminalise this behaviour, as this Bill does, we effectively criminalise the very route to seeking asylum. The Bill will introduce a new chief inspector of asylum border procedures, as required by the pact. The Government claims this will be an independent role but what is set out here falls far short of that, as I am sure others will go into. A faster, more efficient asylum process is a worthy aim. A Bill that did just that would be welcome but this is a Bill that seems more interested in limiting the rights of vulnerable asylum seekers than anything else.”
“The Minister knows this as well as anyone else. The dilution of this right to advice is a retrograde step and can only be seen as a further cynical attempt to limit the numbers of successful asylum applications. Another major issue with this Bill is the way in which it significantly increases the criminalisation of IP applicants. It creates a range of new offences for applicants who are lawfully resident in the State while exercising their right to seek asylum. That is the wrong direction of travel. The Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, IHREC, has pointed, in particular, to the criminalisation of the use of false or even substitute documents. When we are talking about people fleeing war or persecution, we are talking about people who, by definition, will often not hold official documents from their country of origin.”