Conor Sheehan
Limerick City · Labour Party · Ireland
“If a student does not have access to one of these devices or access to one at home, there is often no alternative and that could leave them excluded. Many families are forced to pay hundreds and thousands, particularly with the rising cost of microchips, for these devices.”
“I thank the Minister for her considered response. We need to get rid of voluntary contributions and move to generic school uniforms. This is something that has been done in the UK.”
“This digital divide is resulting in a severe and growing level of inequality where so many communities, students and families are unable to purchase the devices they desperately need for their children's education.”
“I raise the issue of the community access support team, CAST, in Limerick, which has prevented 133 detentions under section 12 of the Mental Health Act and reduced the number emergency department presentations. It has responded to over 1,000 incidents.”
“Do not worry. We need to have a debate this week before the House rises about the imminent report on Aughinish Alumina. There are up to 2,000 direct and indirect jobs at stake in Limerick. We cannot have a situation where the State is inadvertently complicit in the export of alumina to Russia. Where there is a will, there is a way.”
“It is absolutely reprehensible that planning permission has been granted for apartments on the site of the former mother and baby home at Bessborough. We have 19 mothers and 859 infants associated with Bessborough still missing. Now 140 apartments are going to be built on a mass grave. We need statements on this next week.”
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Every one of 808 lines we hold for Conor Sheehan, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 7 of 17.
“Gabhaim buíochas leis an gCeann Comhairle as an gceist seo a roghnú and I thank the Minister of State for being here. The lack of a regulatory framework and national standards for professional interpretation in judicial but also medical settings is an issue of huge concern in this country following the judgement by the Court of Appeal in the case of Director of Public Prosecutions v.”
“I touched on how it will increase the criminalisation of international protection applicants and the issues in that regard, but I could also raise issues around unaccompanied children, the powers vested in the Minister, safeguarding, the chief inspectorate, the appeals process, detention and vulnerability assessments. There is so much more I could raise. I know the Minister has indicated that a raft of amendments will be tabled. They have not been tabled yet, however, so it is difficult for us to properly scrutinise these issues. This is very much an incomplete Bill. It is half-baked, notwithstanding that we are only on Second Stage. I hope the Minister's amendments will provide a greater degree of clarity and compassion. Ultimately, I hope the version of the Bill that passes is very different from the one before us.”
“I know how important legal advice is for people seeking asylum here, both in trying to navigate the system and in vindicating their rights. I know the Minister also understands, in his professional capacity, how important that is. For that reason, I cannot conclude anything other than that this is an attempt to reduce the number of successful applicants. It is not about ensuring the human rights of migrants are upheld. It is not about creating a faster, more efficient and fairer system. We would welcome a Bill that did that. However, this Bill seems to be more of an effort from us to sidestep our obligations, an attempt at performative politics by a Government that is trying to appear as if it is tough on immigration. There are a load of other issues I could raise with this Bill.”
“On the face of it, it seems it will be little more than a one-way information-providing session given to asylum applicants who will then be left to go through the application process by themselves with little or no guidance. The migration pact makes effective legal assistance a requirement. The Government could and should have used the term "legal advice" but it has actively and deliberately chosen not to do so. It is very easy to imagine a scenario where the absence of proper legal advice leads to errors in applications and sees genuine asylum seekers fleeing war and persecution fail in their applications or be denied specialist care. Perhaps that is the aim - I do not know - but it represents an absolute failure in the obligations we have towards migrants.”
“It does not work because no matter how far to the right a government goes in this regard, it will never be enough for some people. My concern is that the Bill goes further than the EU migration pact, with which we had issues in the first instance, because the Government wants to further constrain the rights of migrants. I do not dispute that our immigration system should be rules based. It should be efficient and clear but it also must uphold fundamental human rights. Rather than vindicating those rights, the Bill seems more intent on constraining them. My colleague Deputy Ahern spoke the previous day about the issues with the term "legal counselling". We have not had any clarity from the Minister in the interim on what that term means. It remains undefined and we do not know who will provide it.”
“The changes the Government is proposing in this Bill are not palatable to the Labour Party from a human rights perspective. I actually would have more confidence in these provisions if they were being proposed in a sincere way to improve the system and if the Government were simultaneously driving home hard the point that immigration is fundamentally a good thing, is a sign of a well-functioning economy and country, that we need immigrants and that they are welcome here. The Government has not done that. Instead, we have a situation where arguments being made that are fundamentally racist are being legitimised. The Government is trying out a performative tough-on-immigration stance and is undermining human rights in the process. We have seen how successive UK governments, whether Tory or now, shamefully, Labour, have gone down this road.”
“I have a massive problem with the performative politics we have seen from Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Independent Members in government. There has been no attempt by the Government to present the positive case for migration and very little attempt to combat the misinformation and, in some cases, the outright lies from people who have sought to cause division within communities in recent years. There are real consequences to their actions. We are seeing migrant care workers having racist abuse roared at them on the street. Last year, in Tallaght, if my memory serves, an Indian who was barely in the country a week was beaten to a pulp and had his clothes ripped off him. We all want to see a more efficient immigration system in which decisions are made quickly and clearly.”
“People who come here seeking asylum want a better life. They are fleeing war, famine and persecution. They come here for safety but they also want to be able to give their family a better life and to contribute to the communities in which we all live. I have no issue in principle with reforming our immigration framework. In fact, the Labour Party was the first party to put forward, in 2023, a comprehensive policy paper on immigration reform. Leaving aside the issues we have with what the Government is proposing in the Bill, which I will come to presently, I have a huge problem with the performative politics we have seen from the Minister, including tweeting about deportation flights. I have a huge problem with the performative politics from the Tánaiste in making inaccurate statements in relation to housing and immigration.”
“I speak on this Bill on behalf of my colleague Deputy Kelly. There are a number of points that really need to be emphasised in this debate. One is that the Government is not doing enough to present the case for inward migration. It is a fact that this country is dependent on migration and many sectors of our economy are held together by migrant workers, including the care, hospitality and tourism sectors. I am not just talking about people on work visas or student visa; I refer also to asylum seekers. Contrary to what some people in certain quarters would have us believe, asylum seekers come to this country to seek sanctuary but also to work and contribute. The State makes it quite difficult for them to do so but they make a valid contribution and that contribution needs to be acknowledged more than it is.”
“I guarantee everyone in this House tonight that this is not the end when it comes to rent setting and renting here in Ireland. Rents are going to go up by an unsustainable level and the Minister, or whoever his successor is, will be back here again trying to fix it because this is absolutely botched. Go raibh maith agat.”
“Yes, Government policy must be focused on increasing supply but if the Government is serious about increasing supply, it could ensure it meets its targets for the first time. It has never met its targets for social and affordable housing. It has abandoned the annual targets for the private sector under this housing plan because it knows it does not have a hope of reaching them. We are not going to get the supply, and certainly not the supply of social and affordable housing we need, by offering up renters on a silver platter for developers and institutional landlords to devour. There has been little or no modelling done on this legislation. It does not make any sense. When the RPZ regime was introduced by the Department in 2016, extensive modelling work was done at the time. We need to see a commitment for a review within two years.”
“If that commitment means anything, I ask the Government to accept an amendment for a rent break. Renters cannot afford any more half measures, any more complexity or any more ideology designed to benefit institutional investors and property developers dressed up as protections and reform. This Bill as it is currently presented here is going to fail. It is not going to stop rents rising. It is not going to necessarily guarantee any supply. If it guarantees any supply, it will be expensive build-to-rent apartments in high-end developments like the Dublin docklands, and maybe some in Cork. It is not going to bring down rents. There is no vision here. There is no long-term vision for renting in this country beyond giving landlords and institutional investors whatever they want.”
“Despite all its intricacies, it leaves renters exposed to potentially huge rent increases with little in the way of emergency protections, given the average duration of a tenancy and the churn that is there in the rental market in this country. I am really concerned that we are going to see a return to economic evictions where people are literally going to have to leave their homes because they cannot pay the rent. This is why I have called for the rent break mechanism as a simple safeguard. What the Minister, Deputy Browne, has come in with here today is confusing, fragmented and will be impossible to enforce in the real world. In response to concerns I raised through Oral Questions a couple of weeks ago, the Minister said that all proposals would be examined and given a fair assessment.”
“We need to start this data collection process because we need to move to a long-term and sustainable data-driven model for rent setting. It is vital for tenants to know the history of the rent charged on their home so they can be confident that they are being charged the lawfully permitted rent. There might be some issues in relation to the Data Protection Commission but my concern is that the Minister and the Government should have used the Pobal HP deprivation index to more accurately pinpoint areas of material deprivation which in some cases, such as my own city of Limerick, are right next to affluent areas. The fundamental issue with this Bill remains.”
“The level of complexity is going to make this virtually impossible for tenants to actually understand, never mind their landlords, and also for the RTB which will have to enforce this. This is a recipe for confusion and chaos. It means that renters, as they always do and as they always have done under this Government, will pay the price. The changes around security of tenure and the restrictions on eviction for sale should be applied universally to all landlords irrespective of the number of properties they own. That is the norm in other jurisdictions. The creation of the rent register is something in this legislation that I and the Labour Party have called for for some time. We proposed this as far back as 2016 and it is fundamentally necessary. Many of the issues with rent setting in this country are caused by a lack of data.”
“We need to give renters some modicum of protection against extreme rent increases. The one thing I know for sure is that when these rent increases come on board they are going to become politically unsustainable for this Government. I ask the Minister to bring forward amendments to put a rent break into this Bill, or at the very least to support an amendment I will bring forward. There is so much in this legislation that does not make sense. For example, the distinction between small and large landlords is something that nobody asked for. We will have a situation where we are going to have multiple different sets of rules for different tenants. There will be new tenants of larger landlords, new tenants of smaller landlords, and existing tenants of both.”
“Given that the average rent for a new tenancy in this country is €731, the 11.6% increase means the average renter will have to pay at least €200 more per month. I have appealed to the Government on the floor of this House and to the Minister in writing to remove the market rent reset mechanism from this legislation. There are laudable elements to this proposed legislation but the rip-off rent mechanism renders every increased protection absolutely bloody useless. The evidence from the RTB's assessment of property price rental growth in Ireland shows that in 75% of cases when the tenancy turns over landlords increase the rent. This is why I have appealed to the Government and I have appealed to the Minister that if they are not going to remove the market reset mechanism, at the very least they should include a rent break.”
“It is not meant to create a backdoor for further price hikes targeted at students. Students will be some of the people hardest hit by this. We know that students in this country, by and large, live in private rental accommodation and move accommodation every single year, as they are required to. Their rent is going to rise every single year. They are being repeatedly screwed. I look at my own city of Limerick, where the average rent is now €1,800. Rents in Dublin have gone up by 94% in the past decade. This Bill is going to put a rocket under that. If we look at the RTB data from quarter 4 of 2025, the average annual rent increase in a non-RPZ area was 11.6%. By allowing landlords to reset the rent in between tenancies, the Government is condemning renters in this country to at least an 11.6% rent increase.”
“The average length of a tenancy in a build-to-rent development is one year, which means the rent for renters in these developments is going to be reset to the market rate. It is going to go up and up every single year. The Bill makes a mockery of extending RPZs nationally. It effectively guts rent controls. This is the seventh time we have done this in a decade. The chopping and changing is leaving renters in what I can only describe as a shark tank. If we are honest, we are all seeing it in our constituency offices in recent weeks and months: the rising evictions, the notices to quit, and the landlords hoping to get ahead of the six-year tenancies and the restrictions that are coming down the track. The Government has nothing to offer these people except higher rents. RPZ legislation is meant to protect students.”
“It is very clear from the Bill that when the Taoiseach went on the radio that time, he said the quiet bit out loud, and the pivot he referred to was ipso facto the removal of rent controls. As others have said, we know the sheer amount of churn in the private rental sector is going to mean that this legislation will effectively be the same as having no rent controls. The six-year rule will mean that while a tenant is protected at the beginning, they will be exposed to market rents at the end of the six-year period, if they even get that far, because we know the average tenancy is from three years to three and a half years. This Bill will lock renters into an inflationary spiral that is even worse than what we have already seen.”
“We know that is not completely accurate, and that rising interest rates and input costs have significantly impacted apartment construction. The empirical evidence of the impact of the RPZs on the supply of housing is limited. In fact, in their original 4% version, the RPZs did not have a negative impact on supply. I do not understand why the Government did not even consider reverting to the pre-2021, 4% rate instead of this convoluted, confusing mess. The only reason I can think of, to be honest, is to go back to what the Taoiseach said a year ago this week, when he went on the "This Week" programme and floated ripping up rent pressure zones. He said he was open to a "pivot".”
“It is renters who will continue to suffer. I do not understand how the Government thinks, in a cost-of-living crisis, that rents should be allowed to rise further. In my view, the Bill essentially amounts to the Government folding the tent and giving in to large landlords and Irish institutional property. They are the ones who wanted the rent pressure zones gone, and the ones who are ultimately going to celebrate the passage of this Bill. The Minister has figured out a way to almost remove RPZs by stealth because they will effectively be useless with the market reset mechanism. The biggest landlords will claim that rent pressure zones have all but killed institutional investment. They will point to the fall-off in apartment completions and claim it is down to RPZs.”
“This Bill is going to put a rocket booster under rents in the private rental sector. Either the Minister or some other Minister for housing is going to come under undue political pressure and will have to come back to try to address this again. The rental market in this country is critically dysfunctional, and it is always renters who are forced to deal with the consequences of this dysfunction. The Government talks about certainty and stability but the only certainty with this is that rents are going to continue to rise, and they are going to rise faster than they have risen in the last decade. The Bill is confusing, incoherent and fundamentally unenforceable. The Minister claims that the legislation is about balance but we know that the Bill is going to put fuel on the fire of spiralling rents and evictions.”
“This legislation seeks to rewrite the rental rules for the seventh time in a decade. In his speech, the Minister spoke about moderating price growth. Bar the tacit acknowledgement in his speech that rents are too high, there is nothing in the Bill that will bring rents down. I looked on daft.ie recently and I found that within a kilometre of Leinster House, it is €695 a week for a studio apartment on Hatch Street, €4,500 a month on Tara Street, and for a two-bedroom apartment on Grand Canal Place, it is €3,600 a month. In what world is that affordable? Under the Bill, people who are already being forced to pay that level of rent will find their rent going up by 15% or 20%. I have no doubt that we will be back here, if not next year or the year after, then in three years’ time, debating this again.”
“Many survivors who have been through our justice system say they felt the process of going through that system was worse than the crime perpetrated against them. We really need to come back and look again specifically at the counselling notes issue.”
“Adding pepper spray to that pot will not address the underlying issues. I want to see an outright ban on the use of victims' counselling notes by the prosecution, as recommended by the Oireachtas justice committee, insofar as that is possible. In an ideal world, they should never be disclosed. I have spoken about this with survivors in my constituency, even as recently as 20 minutes before coming in here. One of them disclosed to me the sheer terror and trauma of having her intimate thoughts admitted as evidence in a case dealing with a sexual assault against her. This is one of the instances where our justice system is overtly paternalistic. It was designed and has been administered primarily by men. However, this is an issue that disproportionately affects women. We need a total recalibration in this regard.”
“There are far too many people in our prison system serving short sentences. We must find alternatives to custodial sentences for that group. Violence between inmates rose by 31% in 2024, primarily because of overcrowding. My concern regarding the use of pepper spray is that, on the face of it, it might seem like a solution. However, having been implemented in the UK, there have been huge issues, for example with people being racially profiled. It is now even being used on young offenders there. That is totally unacceptable. No proper risk assessment has been done or published on the introduction of this measure. Arming prison officers will not address the underlying causes of violence between prisoners, which primarily are drugs and overcrowding. All of these factors are coming together to create a pot of tension.”
“Senator Harmon introduced a Bill seeking to ban the practice in April 2025. It is really important that we do this. The Bill includes provisions on the use of pepper spray. I took part last December in a visit to Limerick Prison organised by Deputy Carthy and the justice committee. I was shocked by the level of overcrowding, even though I had already seen the figures. There are 600 people on mattresses in our prison system. The female wing of Limerick Prison is at 163% capacity, which equates to 127 people for 56 beds. There has been an exponential rise in the number of people with mental health issues in the prison system. Our prisons are at breaking point. Some 77% to 78% of all committals are for 12 months or less and that percentage is rising. This is something we really need to address.”
“I will start with what I welcome in the Bill, namely, as Deputy Kelly just noted, the disregard for people convicted of same-sex activity pre 1993. It is really important that we get this done and get it done quickly because those people are getting older. I commend the work done by my colleague Deputy Nash, who was heavily involved in organising, first, the apology, which was the start of a suite of measures to right a terrible historical wrong. The measures in the Bill to disregard those convictions are incredibly important. I also welcome the provisions banning sex for rent, which is an issue mainly affecting marginalised women who are renting rooms and do not have own-door accommodation. This needs to be enacted as quickly as possible because these types of advertisements are still online.”
“I want to raise the issue of childcare. Yesterday, we heard that 40,000 children are on waiting lists and that over 1,000 childcare facilities have closed over the past six years. I am raising, in particular, the issue of the numerous parents in my own constituency who have contacted me because they are terrified that their crèche, UniKids Childcare, in the National Technology Park, Castletroy, will likely have to close due to core funding issues. The launch of the Government plan to provide State-led early learning, while welcome, will do nothing to ease their worries unless core funding caps are considered. What is the Government doing to help parents with kids in crèches like UniKids, which are at risk of closure due to underfunding? Will the Tánaiste look into the core funding cap in relation to this?”
“This is something that was in the report the Government's own TDs signed off on following pre-legislative scrutiny and it is something that Threshold has called for. Will the Minister accept an amendment in relation to an emergency rent break if rents go above a certain level?”
“The Minister talks about the Opposition not coming forward with solutions. I have been in this House over a year now. Time and again, we have come forward with amendments to legislation. The Government brings the Bill in, takes Committee and Remaining Stages very quickly in the House and guillotines it. We do not even have time with certain legislation to discuss the substantive amendments. I want to ask the Minister a very specific question on the proposed legislation. Notwithstanding his views on a rent freeze, which I do not agree with, would he accept an amendment to the Bill to allow for a rent break? He talks about policy certainty. Landlords, renters and investors need policy certainty, but we need policy certainty that if rents go to a certain level, something will kick in to stop them rising further.”
“This legislation is going to dramatically increase rents. The fact of the matter is that we have an inbuilt deficit of well over 200,000 homes. The Minister is talking about incentivising private sector investment but he is not going to be able to incentivise enough investment within the lifetime of this Oireachtas to bring rents down. Rents need to come down. Students, in particular, are going to be punished by this as they are forced to take up a new lease every year. The average length of a tenancy in this country is three and a half years. What specific public modelling has the Department done on this? Other than the Housing Agency report into RPZs, no specific modelling is available to forecast what these changes will do, which is send rents through the roof.”
“In fairness to the Government, it has allocated €12 billion over the next four years. It is only after a very successful public lobbying and I would argue shaming campaign in respect of Uisce Éireann. We need to recalibrate how we consider, think about and deliver water infrastructure. We need to stop thinking of Uisce Éireann just as this utility to help us to fulfil our environmental compliance obligations. We need to start to consider it, fund it and think about it as a vital utility to allow us to reach our housing targets. What I mean by this is to commit it the funding to deliver on the housing targets beyond 2029 on an ongoing multi-annual basis.”
“The funding uncertainty that comes from the failure to provide it and other utilities with the certainty that comes with multi-annual funding is a huge threat to our ability to deliver housing at scale. It is fashionable and it might sound good to come in here and have a right go at Irish Water. It is far from perfect. I have had huge issues with it. It is doing its best to operate within the constraints that this Government and previous Governments have placed on it. It is supposed to be a single national utility. It needs to be properly considered as such as opposed to the old system of the local authorities and the local authorities coming together. It needs €100 billion of funding up to 2050. That is the true scale of underinvestment that we have had in water services in this country.”
“The fact of the matter is that Uisce Éireann should have a multi-annual funding settlement. Every year, it has to enter the budgetary process in the same way as social protection, education, justice and so on and, essentially, bid for its fair share. This creates an uncertainty and hinders its ability to plan and deliver the long-term infrastructure projects that we need. Some of these projects can take five or ten years. As we emerge from what is essentially a lost decade when it comes to infrastructure, one of the results of that is poor water services and high leakage rates. We need to learn the lessons that come with that. One of the lessons is to provide utilities like Uisce Éireann with a multi-annual funding settlement.”
“I thank the Minister for his speech. To try to be somewhat constructive, we had good news from the Government this week with the €250 million announcement in my constituency into water treatment in Bunlicky near Mungret, County Limerick. That is important because once the work is done the capacity of that plant will be able to serve 285,000 people. This is more than double what it can do at the moment. This is vital because the population of Limerick is going to go up by 50% under the targets that are there. As a country, we are in a sense fundamentally not serious about the way we treat water and the way we treat Uisce Éireann as a utility that provides critical infrastructure. The issues Deputies have had around the country have been well aired at this stage.”
“We need the Government to recalibrate and reprioritise public transport. It was something the previous Government did much better than the current one does.”
“I come from Corbally and the traffic is well backed up as far as east Clare. We were promised BusConnects. It was supposed to be rolled out in 2025 but we will be lucky to get it by 2027 and we have no clarity as to whether we will get the full BusConnects or end up with some sort of Mickey Mouse diet BusConnects. There is also nothing about commuter rail in the Government's sectoral investment plan for transport in relation to Limerick. We have a number of radial railway lines around the city and there is huge potential to develop a network of commuter rail stations to take cars off the road. It is the same with a rail spur to Shannon Airport. All we have are measures that have already been announced like the double track to Limerick Junction and the park and ride, if it ever happens.”
“We are talking about all the office workers who are stuck in traffic stopping the fellow going out to dig the road from getting to that road in a timely manner. We were told the world of work was going to change post pandemic and I feel we are really going back to the worst of the pre-Covid world and forcing people back into the office for the sake of it. The current legislation is weak. There are far too many refusals and there is no proper appeals mechanism. Every morning, people are piling onto the M4, M6, M7, M8, M50 and M20 and wasting their lives away in traffic while the Government wonders why that traffic is getting worse. My city of Limerick is more congested than it ever was. Traffic has gone above pre-2019 levels. The roads are absolutely choked. The Mackey roundabout and Ballysimon junction are both lethal.”
“Tá díomá orm nach bhfuil an Rialtas ag tabhairt tacaíochta don rún seo agus go bhfuil frithrún curtha isteach ag an Rialtas agus ag an Aire. I am disappointed for a number of reasons. I am disappointed because the amendment as it was presented to us makes no reference to what we have said about remote and flexible work. The Minister of State referenced it in her speech but the amendment to the motion does not reference that. We are lucky in one sense that we have the Minister of State with responsibility for AI with us because the amendment reads like it could have been written by ChatGPT. We have been banging the drum on this for years now and we need a legal entitlement to flexible and remote work from day 1 for roles where it is reasonably practical. We are not talking about a fella going out to dig the road.”
“The matters raised by Deputies Claire Kerrane, Fionntán Ó Súilleabháin, Paul McAuliffe, Jen Cummins, and Richard Boyd Barrett and Paul Murphy have been selected for discussion”
“Deputy Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire - To discuss the tender for the building of Cork Educate Together Secondary School. Deputy Peter 'Chap' Cleere - To discuss the new Kilkenny College of Further Education and Training campus. Deputy Sean Fleming - To discuss the need for women's refuge accommodation in Portlaoise. Deputy Sinéad Gibney - To discuss the need for a second autism class in Goatstown Educate Together National School. Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett and Deputy Paul Murphy - To discuss ongoing issues with bus reliability and the cancellations of buses across Dublin city and county. Deputy Emer Currie - To discuss the need for sufficient funding to support both new and existing bus services in 2026 in Dublin.”
“Deputy Jen Cummins - To discuss the plan for schools to be included in the DEIS plus scheme. Deputy Barry Ward - To discuss the shortfall of SEN primary school places in Shankill, County Dublin. Deputy Louis O'Hara - To discuss the development of equine therapy facilities at the Toghermore campus in Tuam, County Galway. Deputy Darren O'Rourke - To discuss the shortage of transport services to adult disability day services in County Meath. Deputy Pa Daly - To discuss the north Kerry CAMHS review. Deputy Rose Conway-Walsh - To discuss funding for a "nurture room" at St. Brendan's College, Belmullet. Deputy Maurice Quinlivan - To discuss the ongoing use and misuse of e-scooter vehicles in urban areas. Deputy Gary Gannon - To discuss drug-related intimidation and associated violence.”
“I wish to advise the House of the following matters in respect of which notice has been given under Standing Order 39 and the name of the Member in each case: Deputy Fionntán Ó Súilleabháin - To discuss the crisis of mental health and lack of services in Wexford. Deputy Michael Murphy - To discuss eligibility for the vacant property refurbishment grant. Deputy Paul McAuliffe - To discuss the existing rights of victims of crime following the release of a perpetrator from prison or an institution. Deputy Albert Dolan - To discuss the allocation of SET and SNA hours for primary schools. Deputy Claire Kerrane - To discuss restoration of the rapid response vehicle on a 24-7 basis in County Roscommon. Deputy Pádraig O'Sullivan - To discuss the need for a lift upgrade and roof repairs at a school in Cork.”
“Binman a couple of months ago and I was told about the number of fires the company has in bin trucks due to single-use vapes exploding or bursting into flames. It is unbelievable. The company had an incident a couple of months ago when it had to dump a bin truck in a residential housing estate because of a fire. The message really needs to get out to people that they should not throw these things in the bin because when they get crushed the lithium ion battery will be crushed and this will cause a fire or potentially an explosion.”
“They are already starting, especially friends of mine who live in the likes of London and Liverpool, to move over to nicotine pouches. They moved over to the pouches because they knew the ban on vapes was coming in the UK. The advertisers had moved and it all clicks in like that, so it is really important this is all being done this year and that we keep an eye on what the UK has done to see how we can tweak and tighten up our legislation based on the loopholes the UK has had with, for example, the black market and the idea of a vape being, ipso facto , reusable when it is not in reality. A big awareness campaign is needed on vaping but specifically on the implications for waste providers and recycling companies. I have visited bin companies in Limerick. I visited Mr.”
“Government needs to come forward with a specific strategy on vaping cessation because we have a generation of people who were smokers and then use vaping to give up smoking, which is fine and legitimate, but we are going to have a generation of people who will have just vaped and there are no targeted resources or an information campaign targeted at getting them off the vapes. That is really important. It is urgent and important, as I said, that as soon as the Minister of State is finished with this legislation she move on to the nicotine pouches because the advertising of those has already started. I go over and back to the UK a good bit and the vast majority of people I know who use single-use vapes are in my peer group and maybe use them when they have a few drinks.”
“The issue the UK has had with this small change of pod design is it is just enough in terms of its legislation for big tobacco or big nicotine to dodge the definition of disposable. Deputy Callaghan said we do not want our children to be the nicotine industry's test subjects but they already are. I was in a local secondary school recently and the staff were talking about the sheer amount of vapes they find in a given week. I was talking to caretaker who I am quite friendly with and he told me at least twice in a given month he has to call some sort of drain specialist out to this secondary school, which is small enough, because somebody has tried to flush a single-use vape, which could be an Elf Bar or Lost Mary vape, down the toilet where it then gets caught.”
“I would welcome the Minister of State and the Department looking into this issue whereby the industry is attaching a bit of a charging point or nominally making the pod removable in order to qualify the device as being reusable. The tobacco and vape industry need to be mandated to have a particular type of pod or a series of maybe three or different pods. I make that point because in being cognisant of the role vaping plays for certain people in smoking cessation, which is important, we need to ensure when we ban single-use vapes and people are purchasing vapes that they are buying, say, a substantial vape that comes with a standard set of pods that they will not just throw in the bin after they have used it.”