Gary Gannon
Dublin Central · Social Democrats · Ireland
“I will talk about that in a couple of minutes but before I do I want to come back to some of the things the Minister of State said in his opening speech, particularly the last paragraph.”
“It will create a scenario where vulnerable people will simply not be able to get up their street for potentially three days because there will be a multitude of different providers steaming up these streets, which were never created for such large vehicles.”
“Those things should not be in competition with each other. The remunicipalisation of waste is going to cost money. That is a simple fact, but public services often should operate at a loss.”
“He engaged with the evidence and with stakeholders and came to the same determination, namely, that what we have at present for waste management services, not only in Dublin but nationally, is no longer tolerable. It has led to a system that is clearly not efficient or not suitable for the purpose intended.”
“Does the Tánaiste recognise the scale of the chaos in our criminal justice system at the moment? Thousands of cases have been adjourned. Victims will await justice. Backlogs are building. We now have habeas corpus cases taking place in the High Court. The Minister referenced my flowery language.”
“I want to acknowledge Deputy Sherlock for her work in bringing forward this Bill. We in the Social Democrats will be supporting it. It is a shame that the Minister of State is not willing to engage further than to simply vote it down on the promise that a review will be released in an unspecified time.”
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“I return to the scourge of scramblers. Despite the assurance the Taoiseach gave earlier, the fact of the matter is it should not have taken as long as it has taken to get to this point. The legislation passed in 2023 to give effect to the control of scramblers and enforcement had provision for a prohibition on the use of scramblers in urban communities. Last night, I watched a person of extraordinary courage, Siobhán Lynch, 24 hours after the death of her daughter, stand in front of her community and family and say she would place her own devastation alongside her courage to campaign to end the scourge of scramblers in our communities. She will need support. Does the Taoiseach have a timeline for enacting a prohibition on the use and, I would argue, the sale of scramblers in our areas?”
“We have the evidence and committee recommendations but we do not currently have a Government brave enough to follow them. The Bill shows everything that Ireland could be but it also shows us we are not there yet until we change the politics that produced it and keep getting legislation that gestures justice while quietly entrenching injustice.”
“I am not going to refer to any particular case that has recently been in the media, but recent cases have demonstrated how far we have to go when it comes to the area of coercive control and exploitation. Every Part of this Bill tells the same story: pepper spray instead of prison reform; minimal community sanctions instead of a real alternative; half measures for survivors; book passing on housing and the exploitation that exists within that grotesque area of failure; and now procedural gamesmanship on Garda powers. Yet, inside this Bill, we can still see the outlay of a different Ireland: prisons that rehabilitate instead of brutalise; a justice system that protects survivors; and housing that does not force people into exploitation. There is clearly money in our economy.”
“We all agree it is an exploitation and it is wrong. However, when the committee recommended real protections such as extending tenancy rights, regulating platforms and protecting people in informal housing, the response of the Government as a whole and not just simply the Minister was "Well, that is a housing problem", as if anyone in the country has faith left in the Department of housing, the same Department that has delivered thousands of homeless children and whose failures has forced people into desperate situations. We cannot separate sexual exploitation from housing insecurity but the Government has found a way to avoid responsibility. It is the same with the area of coercive control, which is also dealt with, to a point, in the Bill.”
“If it is a requirement that we need a referendum to modernise the Constitution, I expect the Minister to lead on it because we cannot have a scenario where the opposite of justice - the antithesis of justice - happens, which is the re-traumatising of victims, and that is the scenario we have today. If it happens that the Minister's advice is better than the advice some of us will have when we table amendments on Committee Stage, let us modernise the Constitution because this cannot be allowed to continue. When we talk about the issue of sex for rent, or sexual exploitation for rent, it is the exact same story. We all agree and welcome aspects of this Bill that deal with that unimaginably cruel practice. My colleague Deputy O'Callaghan introduced a number of Bills in the previous Dáil on this.”
“These applications are traumatising, they deter reporting and stop people seeking therapy at all. I have said it previously and I will continue to say it. We do not subpoena a priest's confession and we do not demand the notes of a TD's therapist, but a rape survivor's mind is apparently up for cross examination. We tell women to come forward, we tell them we believe them and then we betray them in the most intimate way imaginable. Yes, I understand there are constitutional complexities, as the Minister said, and he referred to the Attorney General's advice, but the laws of this land are not inscribed on a tablet upon a mountain top. The laws of the land are written down and can be modernised.”
“These are the notes about when someone finally says the unsayable, when they try to process the violence done to them, where trust and safety are supposed to exist and somehow, our judicial system has decided that those notes, those insights to trauma, those written words that capture probably decades of oppression, victimhood, beatings and abuse are all fair game for a victim's judicial exploitation at trial. The justice committee heard overwhelming evidence on this and recommended in no uncertain terms, a complete and unconditional ban on the use of counselling records in sexual offence trials because survivors told us and we listened. I do not doubt for a second they have told the Minister also and he has listened too. I accept that completely.”
“Quite clearly, there is no capacity to do that in our prison system, which is crumbling with antiquated architecture, buildings that are freezing cold, has people sleeping on the floor and has no access to proper rehabilitative outputs that could genuinely make prisoners play a constructive part in communities when they come out. I will turn to counselling records. There is no part of this Bill that exposes the moral limits of the Government more starkly than in what it does to survivors of sexual violence. Right now, defence teams can apply to access survivors' therapy records. We all know that. It is well documented. Everyone across the Chamber, no matter the political colours they wear, accepts that is wrong.”
“People who go into our prison systems have committed a crime. They have impacted people often in incredibly harmful ways and justice absolutely needs to served but too often that is the outcome for people going into prison. The profile of prisoners has been well demonstrated, including backgrounds, conditions of poverty and poor mental health. We were in Limerick prison a few weeks ago where we met a gentleman on the floor who did not even realise he was in prison, such was the extent of his Alzheimer's disease. Even if we take it as a whole, seven out of ten people going to prison should be the point where the State intervenes to address the factors by which we stop the next reoffending, the next victims being hurt and the next communities being terrorised.”
“Yet, 12 years later that Bill is nowhere to be seen. The Government knows exactly what would relieve the pressure but it is clearly unwilling to do it. Worse still, it ignored the committee's recommendation to include probation orders in the legislation where community service is not appropriate. That was an amendment I brought forward, which would have expanded non-custodial sentences even further. Again, there is an absence of ambition, no urgency and no vision. I am conscious that when those of us in the Chamber and at committees speak publicly, as I am now, about prison conditions, it is not a soft-on-crime approach. It is not a non-victim-centred approach either. The evidence speaks for itself. Almost seven out of ten people who enter our prison system will reoffend within three years.”
“Even the jaws of those of us who asked for these discussions were on the floor due to the frankness with which the Inspector of Prisons spoke about conditions tantamount to torture and we are now bringing incapacitant spray into that environment. We will look back at this period with horror, with how casually we allowed human beings to be warehoused in degrading conditions. This change, where a change is being offered, is a slight tweak that will not address the issue it seeks to serve. It is a bare minimum. The joint committee explicitly called for much more. We called as a matter of urgency for the publication of the review of the criminal justice (community sanctions) Bill 2014, a Bill that would dramatically expand alternatives to custody, give judges a real menu of options and take immediate pressure off overcrowded prisons.”
“Turning to community sanctions on the other side of the justice system this legislation covers, the Bill introduces modest changes to community service orders and that is welcome. However, let us be honest about the scale of the crisis we are in. Our prisons are operating miles beyond capacity. People are sleeping on floors every night. Rehabilitation, where it may have existed previously, has collapsed and people are quite literally dying in our prison system. The year before last, we had the highest level of prison deaths since records began. I am not sure whether the Minister looked at the justice committee testimony two weeks ago when the Inspector of Prisons was there.”
“Yet, the Government looked at all that, with the conditions of our prisons in mind, and still decided to proceeded, certainly not because the evidence supports it - if there is evidence supporting it, I would like the Minister to present it to us - but because overcrowding has made prisons more volatile and rather than fixing overcrowding, the Government has chosen to weaponise staff. That is not a safety policy. Those of us who have visited prisons, heard testimony - and I will go into the prison inspector's testimony shortly - and understand the nature and psychology of people in prisons where there is overcrowding know there is no way to spray an incapacitant spray in a overcrowded hallway and not impact the wider prison population. It is grotesquely unjustifiable in the conditions.”
“HM Prison and Probation Service, when evaluating the use of PAVA spray in England and Wales, found it was "unable to conclusively demonstrate that the use of PAVA had any direct impact on levels of prison violence". The committee heard that in English and Welsh prisons, one third of uses were found to be unjustified, one quarter of uses were where alternatives existed and nearly two thirds of uses breached operational guidance. That means, in practice, chemical weapons are not used as a last resort. They are used when staff are stressed, when tempers are high, when systems are failing.”
“The Government presents it as a safety measure but the evidence clearly says the opposite. The Oireachtas justice committee, after hearing from human rights experts, prison specialists and international researchers, recommended this proposal be removed in its entirety, not amended or softened, but removed. We concluded that prison officers should not be armed with chemical spray at all. The reason is that the evidence from comparable jurisdictions is damning. I find it borderline insulting for the Minister to use overcrowding as a justification for a bad policy, when overcrowding is also a consequence of numerous other bad policies.”
“Removing it now, only to insert it later on Committee Stage, ensures less time, less visibility and less scrutiny of a significant expansion of policing powers. An Garda SÍochána already has extensive powers under the Criminal Justice (Public Order) Act 1994 to deal with threatening, intimidating and abusive behaviour. That analysis is shared by the Bar Council. The question is not whether gardaí need this tool but whether the new powers are necessary, proportionate and legally sound and we should be able to debate the Minister's proposal on this Stage. Let me turn to pepper sprays in prisons. I think my view is echoed by all members of the justice committee that this is one of the most dangerous provisions in this legislation. The proposal is to arm prison officers with incapacitant spray.”
“For example, we looked at pepper spray in prisons. We clearly all have a different view from the one being advanced by the Minister but there has been no attempt to collaborate on that. The absence of the provision and how the Minister intends to approach face coverings could have been put into the Bill and we could have understood exactly what we will be seeking to amend, modify or argue against, or if the Minister had won the argument, that would be fair enough. That is what parliamentary debate is for. Its exclusion speaks to homework unfinished. If the Government believes it necessary and proportionate to change Garda powers, it should have been included in the Bill on publication and debated openly on Second Stage, where questions of principle clearly belong.”
“The Bill represents a lot of things Ireland could be but clearly will not be under this Government. Before I turn to what is in the Bill, I will address what has been deliberately left out on this Stage. The general scheme of this legislation contained a proposal to explicitly grant An Garda Síochána the power to require people to remove face coverings in public. That provision is not in the Bill before us today. The Minister has confirmed it will instead be introduced later by way of Committee Stage amendment. That is deeply cynical. I read the last part of the Minister's speech in which he talked about wishing to do that in collaboration with those who potentially have an opposing or different view. I think I speak for those of us on the justice committee when I say that would be a first.”
“All of us on the justice committee know this is a wide-ranging Bill. It is a fair reflection of how the Government is currently approaching the justice system. The Minister is often talked about in media circles as a Minister in a hurry. This Bill demonstrates that it is all hurry and very little pace because buried in these 33 sections are, admittedly, glimpses of what Ireland's judicial system could be - a country that treats survivors with dignity, with prisons that rehabilitate and that understands that housing, safety and justice are deeply connected - but what the Bill actually delivers does not come close to that standard. It is a timid, risk-averse version of reform. It shows a Government afraid to trust the evidence and the people who advance the evidence and afraid to be ambitious.”
“On Thursday the drugs committee will also be exploring the area of nitrous oxide and aerosol abuse and we look forward to scrutinising different areas of expertise within that also.”
“I assure the families and communities who I know will be watching debates such as this with interest that they are very clearly not imagining what they are seeing. They are seeing the effects of a drugs trade that is embedded, adaptive and too often unchecked. Too often communities are told that they have laws, as we were told earlier, but then they wonder why they never seem to be enforced. I support the Bill. I absolutely commend Deputy Ward on the work he has done in bringing it forward, I will be asking the Government to simply allow it to pass. I do not have much expectation because all too frequently during these nine months the Opposition brings forward a Bill and then on a Tuesday or Wednesday the Taoiseach will tell us that we do not bring forward any ideas.”
“We will of course be supporting the Bill, but supporting it should mean supporting it as a foundation, not as a finished product. If this was allowed to progress to Committee Stage - I see no justifiable reason it should not - what we could be exploring at Committee Stage would be stronger traceability and record keeping, meaningful online age verification standards, sensible product capacity restrictions and a statutory link to health and education so that prevention is not left to those who are demonstrating improvisation in their schools and communities in the absence of State support. Above all, it should mean real resources because a register without enforcement is just a spreadsheet, and seizure power without follow-through is often just a headline.”
“Displacement is a familiar pattern in drugs policy. If we restrict one product without building a prevention and support mechanism, the use simply shifts elsewhere. That is not a reason to do nothing, but it is a reason to ensure supply control is part of a health-led strategy and not a substitute for one. Seizure powers can also cut both ways. If they are used proportionally, they can and should prevent harm. If they are used bluntly, they can deepen it. If the only interaction a young person has with the State is a form of worthy confiscation on the part of An Garda Síochána, with the subsequent humiliation that comes with it, we risk entrenching disengagement rather than reducing harm. Enforcement must be paired with diversion, youth services and family supports.”
“It must be properly co-designed with young people, targeted where needed, linked with real supports and evaluated honestly and consistently. A licensing and regulation system will only work if the body running it is properly resourced. This Bill allows for a licensing authority to be designated and I think at a committee level we could explore how that would work, what enforcement capacity it would have and how best compliance would be monitored at scale. The online market is another challenge. While the Bill addresses remote sales, the reality is that young people access products through platforms, social media and delivery routes that are notoriously difficult to police. Without serious work on platform accountability, customs controls and age verification standards that actually work, we risk displacing supply rather than stopping it.”
“I do not see what harm would come from allowing it to pass. On awareness, we also need to be honest about awareness campaigns. Awareness is a word we reach for when we do not want to fund services. Everyone says they want awareness campaigns but awareness is not automatically effective and is not automatically harmless either. There is strong emerging research that shows that poorly designed universal, skill-based interventions can lead to unintended harms, including increased anxiety and reduced well-being for some young people. That matters because if we charge into schools with a one-size-fits-all message, we risk failing to change behaviour while also increasing distress and poor-quality information. I want the State to intervene in the concept of awareness but I want it to do so in an evidence-based way.”
“In fact, we have asked and we have had very little contact from the Department as to when we will see a copy of that document, which is really important to the work of all of us. I would like to see some urgency and some leadership in this area that reflects the scale of the crisis that our communities are living with the length and breadth of Ireland. If the drugs trade is at the heart of intimidation, harm and exploitation in our communities, and it very much is, then we cannot keep treating drugs policy as something to be parked or delayed for a further nine months. This Bill very clearly shows what happens when urgency exists. Deputy Mark Ward has brought a very comprehensive Bill through two Stages now. It would be very worthwhile for us to explore this at the justice committee.”
“Nitrous oxide is still treated by many as harmless fun when we simply know that is not true. The neurological damage, the emergency presentation and the long-term harm are very real and very terrifying. Schools are often dealing with this without supports, and parents are dealing with it without the answers from the State. I support bringing order to the supply chain, but I will not pretend this Bill creates the education, prevention or treatment pathways to make that regulation stick. That is where the wider failure in the drugs policy becomes impossible to ignore. I am the Chair of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Drug Use. This committee was established to ensure our drugs policy is evidence-based, health-led and effective. Yet, as we stand here today, the committee is still waiting patiently for a copy of the national drugs strategy.”
“On an issue like this, clarity would be very helpful for all involved, especially the gardaí. It also very clearly matters to communities and to parents. I want to put something on the record that goes beyond this product because nitrous oxide does not exist in a vacuum. What people are experiencing in our communities is not just littered canisters; it is the normalisation of drug use and the presence of informal supply chains. In many areas, drug-related intimidation is making daily life not just unsafe but also unbearable. Families see who controls the spaces, young people know who supplies what and the State often arrives late or very rarely at all in some instances. The hardest part is addressing the demand, the culture and the perception of harm or lack thereof.”
“At its core, the legislation introduces a licensing and regulatory system. Wholesales must be licensed and retailers must be registered. That is the spine of the Bill. There does not seem to be anything controversial in there to me. It simply brings visibility to who is selling nitrous oxide, from where and on what basis. It restricts sales to exempt purchasers only: people in businesses with legitimate reasons to buy nitrous oxide including medical professionals and food and catering businesses. It introduces a clear prohibition on sales to under 18s, including online sales and proxy purchasing. It also gives gardaí powers to seize nitrous oxide in public spaces where there are reasonable grounds to believe it is being used as an intoxicant alongside search, disposal and enforcement provision. Those are very meaningful steps.”
“However, as I support the Bill, I will support it honestly and not just simply as a box-ticking exercise because it will not be legislation on its own that will solve what people are seeing in our streets, parks and outside schools. The reality is that nitrous oxide admittedly exists in an awkward place. It is a legitimate product with lawful uses in healthcare and food preparation but it is very clearly being exploited and used as a harmful intoxicant. That is why I do not believe blunt criminalisation would work in this instance and it is very welcome that Deputy Ward is not going down this road. Doing nothing is also a choice, and that choice has left families and local communities feeling like the State has been absent. They will hear tonight that we are doing nothing for a further nine months and then for whatever time after that.”
“When I go up to watch a local football team on a Sunday morning, go for a walk through town or bring my dog for a walk in the morning, I see these canisters everywhere. We have heard stories - I know people talk to me about it in the constituency - and we have heard media reports about how many young people are consuming these poisonous products. We have also heard about the damage that is being caused, but I do not think one single shop has been convicted for the sale of these products. The Minister talked earlier about the illegality of these products, but there is a big flashing warning sign that despite how prevalent they are in front of our eyes, there is no enforcement. Deputy Ward has been told that the House will come back to it in nine months.”
“Of course, the Social Democrats are going to support this Bill, but I first want to commend Deputy Mark Ward on having the diligence to bring forth such a comprehensive Bill. I also commend the heart he brings to this issue. We are supporting this Bill because quite clearly nitrous oxide misuse has become visible in too many communities because of the current free-for-all around access, particularly for children and teenagers. It is quite simply not good enough and is actually worse than not good enough. It is also the case - this was captured in the Minister's opening contribution - that the sale of nitrous oxide is already illegal under the psychotic substances Act and is already provided for under the children's Act. That screams another larger question, does it not?”
“My simple question is this: when will that €140 million be given to the Dublin city task force because everyone else has fulfilled their roles?”
“I am stepping in for my colleagues, Deputies Liam Quaide and Pádraig Rice, who are both asking about the task force for Cork. I caution my colleagues and the other Deputies around the Chamber who are asking similar questions. We have the report from the Dublin task force, which was released in October 2024 - a full year after it was announced by the then Taoiseach, Deputy Simon Harris, to great fanfare - and there still has not been a button given over from this Government to those plans. Dublin City Council is doing the work. It has a special purpose vehicle. My colleagues, Councillors Cian Farrell and Daniel Ennis, are on the working group, but all it is missing is the €140 million that was promised by the Taoiseach's Government last year.”
“It is also hard to take the Government seriously when it tells me that it is tackling drug-related and gang-related intimidation and violence when we see that only 4% of cases have led to prosecutions. That is only 4% of cases out of 2,500 incidents since 2021. I would like to work with the Department on prioritising the issue of drug-related intimidation. It is very clearly costing lives and destroying communities. The DRIVE programme is a good start but it does not have the right level of funding allocation. People do not know too much about it and it is not endemic in the heart of the communities that are most impacted by the violence we are discussing.”
“It was not the Garda, for example, that failed to facilitate a parliamentary discussion on drug-related intimidation, which we have been asking for since early December. It was the Government and Chief Whip, who was present today, that did not allow those discussions. Please do not conflate the two. Gardaí do a difficult job in difficult circumstances. It is the absence of priority from the Government that enables a scenario in which some communities are absolutely not policed as well as others. That is also something the Minister has written into the record of this House, when he said that there are parts of Dublin that are not as safe as other parts. Which parts was he referring to exactly? Probably not his constituency in Dublin 4. It is definitely the more marginalised communities that are left to deal with these incidents.”
“I went back and read Deputy Hearne's contribution as the Minister of State was speaking. His contribution was targeted at the Department of justice and the Minister responsible. We do not doubt for a second the work of the Garda, given the supports available to it. It is not the Garda itself that leaves police stations understaffed or undermanned. That is the responsibility of those who allocate budgets, which is the Government. I find it quite insulting to the Garda that because we have an exchange in the Chamber to do with budgetary allocations and absolute priorities, the Minister of State says we are going after the Garda. Let me be clear: we are going after his Department - the Department of justice.”
“I know we have one small initiative that is badly funded and poorly advertised, yet we have what can only be described as pandemic levels of intimidation being experienced by communities. There have been no statements on the matter, no major interventions, nobody tweeting from their accounts, just silence. I would love to hear what the Minister of State and his Department are doing about this issue.”
“I will speak more broadly. I will not even refer to the fact that a woman in Clondalkin opened her door to be smeared with petrol and set on fire also. There have been 2,500 incidents of drug-related intimidation since 2001. Of these, over 150 were arson attacks linked to drug-related intimidation. Arson attacks connected to drug crime rose sharply, from just 13 in 2022 to about 50 last year. Despite more arrests, only 4% of cases have led to prosecutions. Recorded incidence of drug-related intimidation overall has increased by roughly 38% since 2001. It is fair to say we are reaching extraordinary levels of intimidation targeted at particular communities. It is not just urban communities. I appreciate that there has been a significant increase in smaller, rural environments. I have no clue as to what the response is from the State.”
“I expected to come into the Dáil that week to have statements and to hear it described as a line that we shall not cross again, and that we must really get to grips with these incidents.”
“They are absolutely terrified. The council they are dealing with has not been overly responsive. Amanda today, with a bandage still on her arm, had to do another interview with the media. She is so frustrated by the lack of engagement from the State with her family's experience that she has had to park her trauma and muster the courage to speak to RTÉ earlier in the week and another media outlet today. That does mean something. I cannot imagine another community being targeted and not receiving comprehensive engagement from the State. There was an horrendous incident in Edenderry at the start of December where a child was murdered in an arson attack, again, a four-year-old and a 60-year-old caregiver who was his great aunt.”
“That resulted in some interruptions, and understandably so. It is a charge that is highly emotive. One may consider it to be fair or unfair and that is absolutely fine. I went for a cup of coffee with Amanda after the session. She was speaking to the horror of seeing her house targeted, having to go back inside a burning home to rescue two of her siblings and watch another of her siblings jump from a second-storey window through which she, too, had to leave the premises, and then wait for the fire brigade to come and get her mother from the burning building. It was terrifying. In the weeks that have passed, Amanda's family has not been allocated a Garda liaison officer yet. I find that extraordinary. They have been placed in an accommodation that is not only too small but also minutes away from the home that was targeted.”
“It is great to have the Minister of State, Deputy Brophy in the Chamber again today. It follows on from the conversation that was initiated by my colleague, Deputy Hearne, earlier. The Ceann Comhairle was not in the Chair herself but there was quite a furore in the Chamber earlier. My colleague was speaking on behalf of a constituent of his, Amanda Uwase, who was in the Gallery at the time. Over Christmas, Amanda's family experienced an absolutely terrifying ordeal very few of us could even comprehend, when their home was targeted in an arson attack. The Garda is investigating so I will not speak to the specifics of the incident, more to the follow-up. Deputy Hearne was making the point that there are perhaps differences in how some communities are being policed. The community which Amanda came from is quite disadvantaged.”
“This means we have a duty to act when their products cause harm. This week is not just a story about Grok; it is a warning. AI in the hands of people who lack empathy, restraint or basic decency will be used to hurt people.”
“A billionaire with a track record of recklessness is now shaping how artificial intelligence interacts with human bodies, identity and dignity. What predictably followed when there was an uproar was that we were told this feature to do all of those horrific things would only be available to paid users. Now, we are getting different information today that it will be turned off. That is not nearly good enough. If someone built a tool allowing strangers to create sexualised images of children, we would shut it down immediately. We would not ask for patience or wait for a voluntary code of conduct, but because this tool sits inside a tech platform, there was hesitation. That hesitation is and will continue to be dangerous. Ireland hosts these companies, regulates them and gives them legitimacy.”
“This week's Grok scandal tells us something important about artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence is never neutral. It takes the values of the people who build it and the people who control it. What we saw this week was one of the most powerful AI tools aligned to a social media company in the hands of a creepy little slimeball who has shown again and again that he does not care about harm. Under Elon Musk, the platform X has rolled out an artificial intelligence tool that could be used to undress, sexualise and humiliate real people, women, men, teenagers and children, all without consent. That was never a glitch but a design choice. We are told it was about innovation, but it clearly was not. It was simply about power being exercised without any restraint.”
“At yesterday’s justice committee meeting the chief inspector of prisons, Mr. Mark Kelly, gave the most extraordinary testimony in relation to conditions in prisons in Ireland. He described them as an affront to dignity and later said what is happening in our prison system is almost tantamount to torture. I understand when we talk about improving prison conditions it is often not easy. Many people in prison may have done immense harms in communities. We also have recidivism rates in this country of seven out of ten. That is one of the highest in the EU. The Taoiseach might tell me we are going to build more prisons spaces but even if we included the other 940 prison spaces that are being spoken about, that still will not bring capacity below 100%. Has the Taoiseach a plan for improving prison conditions and outcomes?”
“A child who comes here unaccompanied at 16 will not be able to be reunited with a parent because they will have timed out of the system under the measures the Government has announced under its family reunification scheme. There is no consistency. This is not fair. It is a form of performative cruelty.”
“It is the lack of consistency from the Taoiseach that often bothers me most. He referenced the fact that the majority of applications by those seeking international protection are turned down, yet the measures announced today and yesterday in the media are specifically targeted at those who have succeeded. Family reunification, which is factored into the Geneva Convention and the UN refugee convention, was only available to fewer than 600 people who came here last year, either to be with their wife or husband or as children to reunite with a parent. These are the people the Government has targeted with this measure by imposing a three-year wait and a financial barrier.”
“For those reasons, I have very serious concerns about this Bill, not just in substance, but in process. I urge the Government to pause and reflect and allow this House to do its job properly before yet another justice Bill is passed with holes we will later regret. The Minister said we have to absorb technology. Nobody is disputing that. The process, however, requires time, engagement and the respect of parliamentarians to do our job on Committee Stage to scrutinise the legislation, make suggestions and see where there might be holes in it and to engage with stakeholders on the type of Bills that are coming before us now. That has not happened and we are engaged on what the contents are of the Bill that the Minister is asking us to speak on today.”