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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“No one in this House wants to see victims of crime let down, nor do we want to slow down legislation for the sake of it, but the way to honour victims is not through legislation that creates new risks while we do the minimum to address the structural causes of harm. I do not believe that surveillance powers introduced without scrutiny will deliver the safety people are crying out for or that legislation which risks discrimination, profiling and legal challenge will stand the test of time. These are not just risks. They have been documented already in other jurisdictions. Clearly, we can do better. We can legislate in ways that protects communities, supports gardaí, respects rights and aligns with European safeguards, but only if we stop treating scrutiny as an inconvenience and democracy as something to be rushed passed.”
“That is a false choice. We can have strong Garda powers, meaningful accountability, clear legal thresholds, alignment with European law and public confidence, but we can only get there if we do the work. Frankly, it is not that hard to get this right. It requires a proper pre-legislative scrutiny of the new powers, clarity about what technologies are being authorised, transparency about how decisions are made and real safeguards against discrimination and misuse. What concerns me most is not just what is in the Bill, but how we arrived here. If justice legislation is repeatedly rushed, term after term, without full scrutiny, we will look back in years to come and ask ourselves how glaring gaps were allowed to pass unnoticed. We will ask how powers affecting rights were normalised without debate and how trust was eroded so quietly.”
“We want to see crime addressed and we all absolutely understand that. We empathise with it and share it. Communities living with antisocial behaviour, organised crime, intimidation and violence deserve action, not just rhetoric. We deserve more than bad law and bad scrutiny. Doing this properly should not be seen as optional. It is not an obstacle to safety. It is a prerequisite of it. Rushed legislation, weak safeguards and poorly scrutinised powers do not make communities safer in the long run. They undermine trust, expose the State to legal challenge and disproportionately impact people who already experience over-policing and under-protection. We have seen this before and we know how it plays out. I do not accept the idea that it is somehow inevitable that protecting human rights must come at the expense of public safety.”
“That has been well interrogated by previous speakers. However, this Bill avoids the language of biometric categorisation altogether. It introduces the concept of biometric analysis without clearly defining its scope and fails to set out how these powers will be aligned with the EU AI Act's protections and obligations. This is eerily familiar to anyone who followed the international protection Bill pre-legislative scrutiny. That legislation had to be repeatedly defended by the Minister against claims that it did not properly align with European safeguards. We are once again legislating at the edge of compliance and trusting problems can be resolved later. People in this country absolutely want safer communities. We want to protect our gardaí and give them the powers they need.”
“Now with this Bill, we are seeing the very same approach again. Once more, we are being asked to legislate first and interrogate later and told that this will all be sorted out in codes of practice we have not seen. Once more, the detail, the safeguards, the limits and definitions are being deferred. This is not how good law is made. We have to be honest about how this Bill sits in the European context. The EU artificial intelligence, AI, Act is clear about biometric categorisation. It distinguishes between uses that are outright prohibited and uses that are permitted but classified as high risk, requiring stringent safeguards. It explicitly prohibits the use of biometric systems to infer sensitive personal characteristics. It warns about discrimination, profiling and disproportionate impacts on marginalised communities.”
“Yet, here we are on Second Stage being asked to debate the principle of this Bill as though that scrutiny had taken place when it simply did not. That is not even close to good enough, nor is it an isolated incident in the area of justice over the past year. It has very much become a pattern. We saw it with the international protection Bill where legislation with profound implications for people's rights, legal safeguards and access to justice was pushed through at a pace, only for serious concerns to be raised repeatedly about its alignment with European law and fundamental rights standards. We were told then, as we are being told now, that urgency justified the shortcuts, that operational necessity outweighed the need for careful scrutiny, that safeguards could be dealt with later.”
“It did not examine, because they had not been included, the new biometric analysis powers that are contained in this Bill. Those new elements are not minor, technical changes. They are a very significant expansion of State surveillance powers. Some of the items included in the Bill are the automated categorisation of people based on biometric data, the tracking of individuals across multiple images or video feeds, the ability to reconstruct people's movements based solely on how they look or move using algorithmic analysis and the use of AI systems to single people out in footage, even when their identity is unknown. Those are not cosmetic additions or the tidying up of drafting; they are new powers and they were never examined at pre-legislative scrutiny stage.”
“In the Minister's opening statement, he gave a very reasonable analysis of supporting gardaí and giving them additional powers to do their work and it is hard to argue against that. However, we are asking that the Minister give us the power to do our work, proper pre-legislative scrutiny, time for reflection, proper consideration across committees. That has not been done to this point. The pre-legislative scrutiny that took place in 2024 focused on facial recognition technology, specifically the identification of individuals by matching images of people against databases of known individuals. That is what the committee examined, what stakeholders were invited to comment on and what TDs were asked at that point to grapple with.”
“Before I begin, I wish the Ceann Comhairle and her team a happy Christmas and a wonderful 2026 and the same to the Minister and the staff across the Oireachtas, who do such a brilliant job. I was not a member of the justice committee during the pre-legislative scrutiny that took place last year on the An Garda Síochána (Recording Devices) (Amendment) Bill, but I have taken the time to examine it carefully, to read the report and compare it directly with what is now before the House. On the basis of that research, one thing is absolutely clear. The new and - let us be clear - intrusive elements of this Bill have not been subjected to proper scrutiny at all. That is what this is about.”
“Until those protections fully articulated, fully costed and fully scrutinised, I believe we should proceed with caution, not rubber stamp endorsement.”
“Ireland is already behind when it comes to digital rights protections. We are already behind on regulating algorithmic decision-making. We are already behind on providing transparency on how law enforcement technology is used in the State. We cannot keep making the same mistake of approving international frameworks first and asking human rights questions later. My contribution today can be defined simply: if we are serious about protecting both security and civil liberties then we need far more clarity, more safeguards and more democratic oversight than that which has been placed before us. Cross-border co-operation is important but so is the right of every person in the State not to be subjected to digital surveillance without strict legal protections.”
“Therefore, before we opt into something like this protocol we should be asking basic but essential questions about how data obtained under this protocol will be protected, what oversight body will monitor its use and whether individuals will have any route to challenge misuse. Will Ireland be able to refuse requests that violate our own proportionality standards? What safeguards exist against surveillance powers being stretched beyond their intended purpose? None of these questions have been adequately addressed in the material we were given. In principle, I support Ireland engaging in modern rights complaints co-operation with our European partners. However, I cannot endorse a system where surveillance capacity expands faster than the safeguards that are supposed to govern it.”
“It is impossible to ignore that some of the most consistent and credible warnings on EU digital surveillance frameworks have come from civil liberty organisations. Such groups as the Irish Council for Civil Liberties have spent years reminding both our Government and the EU that rights have not become optional just because technology makes it convenient to overwrite them. These groups highlight that it is not a burden but a democratic obligation. I want Ireland to play its part in tackling cybercrime and serious organised crime. We absolutely should co-operate with our European partners. However, co-operation cannot mean signing blank cheques or shifting ever more investigative power into international spaces where parliamentary scrutiny becomes weaker and democratic accountability becomes more abstract.”
“However, they are clearly not. Ireland still does not have a comprehensive framework for governing how cross-border digital evidence is collected, retained, stored, accessed or deleted. We do not have clarity on whether data acquired under this protocol could be repurposed for national security claims, a term that is still nowhere defined in Irish law. We do not have adequate transparency mechanisms for the public to understand the scale of surveillance technologies being used. At a time when the European Court of Justice has repeatedly struck down overly broad data retention laws, the idea that we should simply wave through expanded cross-border data access without scrutiny feels deeply irresponsible.”
“If we are being asked to vote on that, then we need a hell of a lot more detail than we have received. The truth is that every time Ireland opts into a new EU framework on justice co-operation, there is a familiar pattern. There are big promises about efficiency, speed and fighting cybercrime but very little upfront clarity on what safeguards actually exist for people's data or for privacy, proportionality and oversight. That is where I have to place my concerns today. We are being asked to approve a protocol that allows for enhanced co-operation using digital tools that can be extraordinarily intrusive, tools that in another context would rightly trigger debate about surveillance creep, mission drift and large-scale data retention. Yet, we are expected to just sign off and trust that all the appropriate protections are already in place.”
“At its core this protocol is presented as a modernisation project, an updating of a 1959 convention in order that cross-border co-operation in criminal investigations can function in a world of encrypted phones, cloud storage, cybercrime and increasingly transnational networks. That is a legitimate challenge. Nobody denies that. However, to be clear, we have been given extraordinarily little briefing on the real implications of what we are being asked to sign up to today. When the language is stripped back, this protocol is not just about allowing a Garda detective to send a letter of request more quickly. It is about broadening the legal basis for digital surveillance requests, remote searches, GPS tracking, data interceptions and the sharing of that data between states.”
“It cannot continue to have a greyhound industry, which, while a separate issue, is also seeing dogs destroyed constantly. We have to do better because these pets are little friends at home. We cannot continue to have another side industry in which exploitation, cruelty and harm are built in. I want to work with the Minister of State and I know Deputy Whitmore wants to work with him and the Minister, Deputy Heydon. Let us do that quickly.”
“I think about the dogs who are in these kennels being forced to breed constantly, as if they are a factory churning out litters. The inhumanity of that is something that sticks with me when I think about the kindness of all of our pets and little animals. We should be rushing to remove that from ourselves. The length and breath of this country, one will find people whose pets are part of their family. The idea that Ireland remains the puppy farm capital of Europe is unconscionable to that little being that sits at our feet and shares our food and home. We need to act with as much pace as we can. Let us work collaboratively on this because it seems to contradict what we all know. Ireland cannot continue with these puppy farms.”
“She ate something in the park, got an upset stomach and was brought to the vet. The vet up in Cabra treated her amazingly but gave her a little shot in the back with a little needle. Every day since that day, when she walks past that vet, her stride hurries, her tail goes between her legs and she starts to shake a little bit because that was a time in her life when she knew a little bit of pain. I think about that when I consider the context of this Bill to address female dogs being forced to breed constantly from the age of six months, which is incredible to think of. I think about the emotional pain as well as the physical, because these are emotional beings. They are emotionally intelligent. My dog knows when I am not having a good day, so she definitely knows when she is not.”
“I will begin by thanking Deputy Whitmore not only for bringing forward the Bill, but also for the passion she brings to the area of animal welfare. I refer to the idea of a 12-month delay. We will work with the Government because of the importance of the issue, but we need to get beyond simply kicking the can down the road. Let us start the immediacies of working together. I am very proud to talk about this animal welfare Bill because it also gives me an opportunity to talk about my dog, who I have been dying to talk about in the Chamber for a very long time. My dog is called Ethel and she has no problems in life. She gets walked several times a day and she gets the comfiest bed. Sometimes she allows me to sit on the couch. This dog has no issues at all. However, about two and a half years ago, she got gastroenteritis.”
“Over the weekend, a child of four years of age and his 60-year-old great aunt were murdered in their own home through an arson attack in a manner most despicable and most heinous. It is something which absolutely requires the immediate attention of this House. I cannot understand how the justice Minister is not here talking about how we are going to crack these gangs and how we were are going to confront drug-related intimidation that is destroying our communities. This warrants immediacy.”
“If we fail to speak for Sudan now, when the evidence of atrocity is literally visible from space, we are not just failing Sudan; we are failing the very idea that human life has value at all.”
“We should continue to demand better - and I urge every Member of the House to continue to do the same - and to demand humanitarian corridors, a ceasefire and an end to the arms flows; to support the Sudanese diaspora and refugee pathways; and to refuse the idea that Sudan's suffering is simply part of the turbulence of our times. This is about more than international solidarity. It is about moral consistency and deciding whether human life actually matters or whether we only defend it when it suits our political convenience. The scale of the crisis is almost unfathomable but silence is not an option, not now when an entire nation is being fractured, starved and terrorised in full view of the world. We owe it to every family torn apart, every child displaced and every community destroyed.”
“If powerful governments can watch atrocities from space and simply shrug, what hope do displaced Sudanese families have when they come knocking on the doors of nations that now treat asylum and poverty as just an inconvenience? That is exactly why our role matters here, why scrutiny matters and why calling out cruelty matters. Challenging self-interested decision-making matters, every single time it appears, no matter how exhausting it becomes. The moment we stop holding governments to account, the moment we stop naming injustice for what it is, we become part of the silence that lets these horrors continue.”
“Yet, despite crimes visible from space, the global response has been silence, sidestepping and selective outrage. We have seen the commentary that Sudan does not get the attention Palestine or Ukraine gets. I understand the frustration deeply but I reject the idea that we must choose which horror deserves our outrage. Humanity is not a competition. When a child starves in Sudan, it demands the same moral response as a child bombed in Gaza or displaced in Ukraine. The new world order, this transactional, self-interested, "not my problem" foreign policy, is a terrifying indicator of how the world will respond to the millions of Sudanese who are fleeing in search of safety.”
“Civilians are dying, not only from bullets but from starvation, disease and abandonment. In Darfur, long marginalised communities now face a brutal campaign of execution, displacement and terror. The RSF, emerging from the same Janjaweed militias responsible for earlier genocides, now controls cities through fear, violence and mass atrocity. This is often called a civil war but that phrase hides the truth. This is not a war between communities or opposing cities. It is a war on civilians, a war in which foreign actors have found opportunity rather than obligation. To the fore is the United Arab Emirates with its complicity in this brutality. We know who is funding and arming these groups. We know how gold, oil and geopolitical leverage have turned Sudan into a marketplace for influence.”
“At the heart of this war are two military forces, the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces, neither of which can decisively defeat the other. Into that stalemate has poured a global foreign policy environment that has abandoned principle entirely. Where decisions once relied, at least in part, on diplomacy, pragmatism or moral pressure, what we now see in the governments across the world is the naked self-interest of powerful states pursuing business, resources and influence however they see fit. The consequence of this change of tone for Sudan has been catastrophic. Tens of thousands are dead. Over 13 million people have been driven from their homes. Hunger and famine stalk communities already shattered by violence. The very basics of human survival - hospitals, water and sanitation - have collapsed.”
“Satellite images taken by the humanitarian research lab at the Yale School of Public Health show numerous clusters of ground discoloration across Darfur, consistent with the presence of human bodies. The blood spilled in Sudan is now visible from space. Let us think about that for a moment. The scale of killing is so vast, unrestrained and utterly unhidden that it is visible from orbit. Nobody, no government, institution or leader, can pretend that they do not know what is happening. The horror is in full view of the world. What is unfolding in Sudan is not a distant conflict we can categorise as another human tragedy of the global south. It is one of the most horrifying humanitarian disasters of our time. More than that, it is a moment that exposes something very dark about the direction global politics is taking.”
“For a country with a history such as ours of enforced incarceration, monetising oppression and poverty and imprisoning people who have committed no crime, be it in Magdalen laundries or mother and baby homes, the idea that we would initiate detention facilities for children is an affront to our history.”
“We are being told that this is fair and is in keeping with what other EU countries are doing and there is nothing to see here. We will not be supporting this motion. The International Protection Bill, as it is currently being transposed, is an absolute shame on anybody who believes that such legislation can be brought to pre-legislative scrutiny without heads of the Bill or answers to vital questions. There is no trust when it comes to the Government's treatment of integration. It is a descent not only into far-right narrative but also policy. We are at a crossroads in terms of how we treat people in this country.”
“Nobody has told me whether, for example, a person who lost an arm in a conflict and needs a disability payment will remove the person's right to citizenship. These ridiculously cruel measures are now being put in statutory form to the effect that access to welfare entitlements somehow diminishes the right to citizenship. It is Thatcherite in all but name. We are making people who earn a paltry wage pay for substandard accommodation, which sets the bar that somehow those people should be grateful for the opportunity. A person earning €150 for doing whatever job he or she has been able to get has to give up €15. This is not a cost-saving measure to the State. It actually costs the State money to initiate this level of cruelty.”
“This is the exact same language we were given before the EU migration pact. We all know now how significant that package was and will be as we transpose the International Protection Bill. We cannot keep legislating like this. We cannot keep allowing opt-ins. I wish to talk about some of the measures that were introduced today because they are important in the context of what we are being asked to vote on here. When it comes to family reunification, the Government has chosen to allow it only for the most wealthy - those who have accumulated enough funds. It has set a new standard that is remarkable. It has introduced a condition whereby access to welfare would somehow diminish a person's right to citizenship.”
“We know what AMIF funds have been used for across Europe - detention facilities, returns programmes, border enforcement and the hardening of asylum procedures. We know what Ireland is doing right now domestically. It is increasing citizenship residency requirements from three years to five years, narrowing family reunification and introducing charges on people in IPAS accommodation. I will come back to the latter point if I have time. These are political choices that mirror the EU's direction of travel. The Government wants to opt into a funding framework that will reinforce and accelerate those choices without explaining how the money will be used, what conditions it carries, or what rights-based safeguards will exist. What is happening here is a very familiar pattern.”
“This is about billions being devoted to policing, surveillance, data-sharing, cybercrime capabilities, intelligence exchange and operational co-operation between police forces across the EU. We are being asked to endorse a massive new security funding structure without knowing, first, what specific Irish systems it will integrate into, second, what data will be shared, and third, what oversight exists. On that basis, I will be voting against the motion. Given the current climate, the EU asylum, migration and integration fund, AMIF, is clearly the most important of the three, and the one that most clearly demonstrates why we cannot keep rubber-stamping these proposals. The AMIF is being sold as a benign pot of money for integration projects, NGO supports and aspects of the refugee programme. We know what is left unsaid.”
“We are being asked to do this today through three separate motions, each of which is significant and linked to wider EU trends of locking down migration and deepening security powers, yet all we are told is that they warrant no further scrutiny. I simply do not accept that, nor do I have trust in the Government. We are told the motion on the justice programme is harmless and simply a continuation of an existing programme that funds judicial co-operation, access to justice and the digitalisation of courts. However, every time we expand EU-level justice mechanisms, we need to be certain they are not being used to underpin policies that diminish rights, reduce procedural safeguards, or push member states into accelerated processes that undermine fairness. We do not have that here. Neither is the motion for internal security a small measure.”
“Worse still, the Government has chosen to follow the path of the United Kingdom. That has been very clear in the rhetoric of recent days. I will repeat what I said to the Taoiseach today for anyone who wishes to hear it. For the life of me, I cannot understand how anybody who aspires to Irish republicanism could follow the lead of the UK and the influence of Nigel Farage. We see that very clearly. It is as if the Government woke up and discovered recently that there is a shared common travel area. These issues were raised last year when the pact was going through the justice committee. The Government seems immune to the fact it was raised then.”
“They are the kinds of decisions that shape how the EU, and Ireland within it, treats people seeking protection, people coming here to work and people simply trying to live their lives with dignity as well as people trying to reclaim their lives from a terror they may have experienced someplace else, such as is part of all of our history here in Ireland. We have seen over the past number of years a real tightening of rhetoric and a hardening of action when it comes to migration and asylum across the EU. The Bill is effectively a response to that. Instead of providing a clear counterbalance and being a rights-based voice at that table, the Government has chosen at every step to mirror that tightening and to follow the EU's lead even when it runs contrary even to our own stated values.”
“I will be voting against this motion for a variety of reasons, but first when it comes to the transposition of the asylum and migration pact into Irish law through the International Protection Bill 2025. Anybody at the justice committee a month ago when this was going through pre-legislative scrutiny could not in good conscience agree to advance it one Stage further. Heads of the Bill were missing. Vital aspects of the Bill fundamentally change who we are as a country. The Bill pertains to how we allow the detention of children, how we screen adolescents and how we change the nature of access to legal rights to an undefined reference to legal counsel. There is so much wrong with the Bill that we could not in good conscience allow ourselves to be a participant in its advancement in any form. These motions are not abstract measures.”
“I support the principle of these agreements but I urge the Minister to ensure that our participation is rooted in full compliance with the European Court of Justice ruling, with robust domestic implementation and that transparency, necessity and proportionality are not just buzzwords but, rather, the standards we actually enforce. Security and rights are not in opposition to each other. We get better, safer systems when we protect both.”
“Too often, we approach these international PNR agreements on the assumption that every partner country will apply the rules with the same rigour and safeguards that we expect within the EU but even within the Union the EDPB, which is the EU’s own top data protection authority, has warned that many member states have still not aligned their national PNR laws with the European Court of Justice’s requirements. If several EU countries are struggling to meet the court’s standards, it should give us real pause before we authorise negotiations with a third country like South Korea. At the very least, it should prompt us to stop, examine the risks and ensure the safeguards demanded by the court are fully reflected from the very start of those negotiations.”
“We are talking about bulk processing of personal data, often of people who are entirely innocent, who will never come close to any suspicion of wrongdoing. The European Data Protection Board, EDPB, has said loud and clear that PNR data should only be used in connection with serious crime or terrorism - not for so-called ordinary offences. There must be an objective link between the data and the offence. That link has to be evidence-based, not speculative. Anything less risks undermining the very rights this Union is meant to uphold. We also need clarity around independent oversight, time limits on data retention and, crucially, data subject rights - the right to know how your information is being used, the right to challenge it where necessary and the right to redress if something goes wrong.”
“International co-operation in the fight against serious crime and terrorism is vital. No one disputes that, but how we co-operate matters just as much as whether we co-operate. These motions on the conclusion and signing of PNR data-sharing agreements between the EU and South Korea are part of a wider framework that can enhance public safety. I support that objective, but I sound a note of caution. When the EU’s PNR regime was tested before the European Court of Justice, the court was unequivocal. PNR systems can only be lawful where robust, enforceable safeguards are in place. As we consider authorising negotiations with South Korea, that principle must guide us. We must have safeguards that are grounded in fundamental rights because we are not just talking about sharing names and passport numbers.”
“It is time for the Government to stop renewing temporary solutions and start backing permanent ones by making this legislation permanent, funding the Dublin city task force, and giving local authorities the certainty they need to build - I am conscious I am speaking in the national Parliament but I am a Dublin representative - a capital city that people can be truly proud of. I will support the legislation but I will support even more strongly a vision of a city that is vibrant, public, inclusive and one that belongs to the people.”
“They talked about it being essential but gave absolutely no resources to it. That is not only frustrating but it fails the city of Dublin. We cannot keep going on like this, talking about the need for urgent task forces, organising press releases and Ministers going to the GPO only for not one single cent to be given to it two years later. It was insulting to the people of Dublin to keep kicking that can down the road while the city cries out for investment, imagination and leadership. Outdoor dining has shown us what is possible. The people of this city, businesses and councillors have already embraced it. This House overwhelmingly and clearly embraces it also.”
“That is not fanciful because we have seen what happened on Capel Street where the council actually gave it some attention and totally transformed the whole dynamic of that street. We can start sending some of that love around some of those other streets too. These are streets where people live, work and spend their time and they would be utterly transformed by the confidence of the council and the State and a bit of design and political will. None of this can happen in isolation, however. Streets do not redesign themselves and business will not invest if the State refuses to give clarity. Local authorities cannot build a new public realm out of thin air. When we talk of the Dublin city task force, it got so much fanfare initially by the Tánaiste and then by everyone across the Government.”
“The success of outdoor dining has always been about more than tables or chairs; it speaks to something deeper, that is, the right of people to experience a city as citizens and participants in a social life rather than mere consumers moving through it. If we truly believe in this, then we need to broaden its footprint. Last year, I said that we need to bring some of that ambition north of the river and I say that again today. Imagine Talbot Street, which is often discussed, with a stretch of outdoor dining and public seating. Imagine Amiens Street with colour and life spilling out from the shopfronts. Likewise, imagine Parnell Street as a vibrant, welcoming boulevard which all of its communities deserve.”
“Drury Street, which I will pass by on my way home today, is one of the best examples we have of how outdoor dining can work when it is done right. Any summer, or even autumn, evening, the place is absolutely buzzing. It is full of life and it is showing exactly what a city centre can be when we give people the space to enjoy it. During the summer, I was heading through the city and I heard someone say that they were going into town, to which their friend fired back, “Are you on Drury duty?”. I love that because when language penetrates into the vernacular of the people, that is when you will actually see a measure worth keeping.”
“I thank the Leas-Cheann Comhairle for allowing that. I am happy to support the extension of the Courts and Civil Law (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2025 once again but I will say at the outset what we said the last several times we have been asked to extend this piece of legislation: we cannot keep treating it as a temporary measure. I appreciate the Minister of State said in his opening contribution that this is going to be addressed. It is important we do that with some urgency. Outdoor dining has proven itself. It has changed how people use their city. It deserves permanence and not another six- to 12-month stay of execution. We have all seen the effect it has on the character and energy of Dublin.”
“As a self-proclaimed Irish Republican, does the Taoiseach have any shame at all that his Government continues to change our laws around immigration simply to mimic those of Great Britain and the influence Nigel Farage is having on its politics? Today it was announced that there will be family reunification only for the wealthiest of migrants. The Government has set the standard that those on welfare are somehow less worthy of citizenship. It is making people who are earning paltry sums in wages pay for substandard accommodation not as a cost-saving measure to the State but as a form of lesson to those people in such accommodation. How far is the Taoiseach willing to take this? If Britain leaves the European Court of Human Rights, as it is advocating for, will the Government follow? It seems to be following toe in step at the moment.”
“If we are serious about believing survivors, then we must change the systems that continue to fail them. Not in speeches and photocalls, but in funding, in refuge spaces, in courtrooms and in every decision we take in this House, with a full recognition that the absolute antithesis of justice is the retraumatising of victims that happens in court rooms every single day. I am proud to support this Bill. I urge every Member in the House to do so, because if we cannot protect women in their homes, then no part of this Republic can honestly call itself safe.”