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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“Will the Taoiseach ask the Minister to re-engage with the people who deliver the criminal legal aid system? They have currently withdrawn their labour and the consequences of that will be dire. Nobody seems to have a clue what is going on, and no less so the Minister for justice.”
“Has the Taoiseach any idea what is happening in the Department of justice at the moment? There seems to be an impulsivity driving and leading the Department that has scant regard for consequences. In our courts, for example, the criminal legal aid system is on the verge of collapse. Solicitors have taken to removing their labour for three days and that will continue into next week. Over the past couple of weeks, when the spokespersons asked for the analysis that is the basis on which the flat fee is being introduced, we got nothing back from the Department. Yet, I was able to ready about it today in the Daily Mail and elsewhere. There is chaos happening in, and emanating from, the Department of justice. This is nowhere better seen than in what is happening in the courts at the moment.”
“If this legislation is genuinely expected to deal with hundreds of thousands of requests every year, we should stop pretending that €2.8 million and 30 staff constitute a serious answer to that challenge because we owe the public something better than that. I believe there is a pattern here. We are talking about efficiency. It happened last week in the Dáil during the miscellaneous provisions Bill the Minister brought through where we questioned the fact that we had so many different aspects of the judicial system all contained within the same Bill and the Minister's response was that he was getting a lot done. There is a difference between being in a hurry and having some pace that brings lasting achievement. I have not seen any of it and we will not see any of it in this Bill either.”
“We will pay for it more through appeals. We will pay through delays. We will pay through court challenges. If this office is under-resourced, if decisions are rushed and if safeguards fail, millions of euro will ultimately be squandered dealing with the consequences - far more than would have been spent getting it right in the first place. That is why I believe we can do better than this, that we can have a system that facilitates international co-operation, tackles serious crime and allows evidence to move efficiently across borders, but that we can also have a system that is properly resourced, transparent and built on realistic assessments of workload rather than opportunistic assumptions.”
“At the same time that highly skilled organisations with extensive experience in trauma-informed care for children and young people were applying for that work, a management company that specialised in pest control was awarded the contract, but, apparently, that is where expertise mattered. That is where efficiency mattered. That, unfortunately, is exactly the same mindset that seems to underpin legislation such as this - the belief that if we centralise enough, automate enough, outsource enough and streamline enough, somehow everything will become cheaper, quicker and better. That, quite clearly, does not work, because public services are not about managing units and every time we try to squeeze complex human problems into simplistic administrative solutions, we end up paying for it later. We will see this over the next couple of years.”
“The Department is effectively asking us to trust a system of extraordinary scale while simultaneously admitting that it does not yet know what scale that system will operate at. That is the exact moment when safeguards matter most. Not after something goes wrong or rights have been infringed, but before these powers are granted. This Bill does not exist in isolation. It is part of a pattern of decision-making within the Department of justice, led by the Minister, where efficiency increasingly appears to trump expertise. I will highlight one recent example of that that left me shocked to my core, namely, the contract awarded to respond to the arrival of unaccompanied minors. A management services company, one that specialises in pest control, was awarded that contract. You could not make that up.”
“Amendments dealing with human rights protections, double criminality, transparency and reporting requirements are not attempts to derail the legislation. They are attempts to make it workable. They seem like attempts to introduce the safeguards that many people assumed would already be present. The amendments requiring greater scrutiny would not constitute an offence under Irish law and the amendments strengthening accountability are fundamental safeguards that this Bill needs, and if the Government is not willing to accept those safeguards or bring forward alternatives that achieve the same objective, I do not believe that this legislation is tenable in its current form.”
“The answers we received about hugely important matters, such as abortion rights, freedom of expression and LGBT rights, were not particularly reassuring. In fact, the Department acknowledged that if the new office did not intervene within the required timeframe, the service provider may simply proceed regardless. I ask the Minister to think about that. The safeguards in the system are only as strong as the capacity of the office tasked with enforcing them, which brings us directly back to the resourcing issue because rights-based protections on paper are meaningless if the body responsible for protecting those rights is overwhelmed from day 1, and that is precisely why the amendments to the Bill are so important.”
“If he genuinely believes that 30 staff can oversee a system potentially dealing with hundreds of thousands of requests every year, we are not building an efficient system; we are building a backlog, building delays, building appeals and, ultimately, building costs - far greater costs that if the system had been properly designed and resourced in the first place. The second major concern I have is regarding the human rights implications of this Bill. One of the most important issues raised during pre-legislative scrutiny was the reality that not every EU member state had the same track record when it came to civil liberties, democratic standards and human rights protection. We heard concerns about democratic backsliding, surveillance powers, and journalists, activists and minority groups who potentially might be targeted.”
“The Department itself admitted during scrutiny that it did not yet know how many of those requests would require intervention and what the final staffing requirement would be. It admitted that the office may eventually require 150 staff or more. Let us be honest about what is happening here. We are being asked to establish a major new State body with significant powers and responsibilities without knowing how much it will ultimately cost, how many staff it will require or whether the proposed model is remotely capable of coping with the workload that is potentially coming, and it is being sold to us in the language of efficiency. Everything is about speeding things up. Everything is about streamlining processes but there is a difference between efficiency and what appears to me to be wishful thinking on the Minister's part.”
“In short, it is all hurry and no pace. When you scratch beneath the surface of this proposal, there are enormous questions that remain unanswered. The first is resourcing. During pre-legislative scrutiny, the Department told the committee that Ireland could ultimately become responsible for processing over 300,000 electronic evidence requests every year because so many of the major technology companies operating across Europe were headquartered here. With 300,000 potential requests, the Department has budgeted exactly €2.8 million and allocated an initial staff complement of 30 people. I struggle to understand how anyone can look at those figures and conclude that they remotely add up to the seriousness of what we are discussing.”
“Nobody is for a second disputing the problem this legislation is trying to solve. The reality is electronic evidence now forms part of almost every criminal investigation, whether organised crime, fraud, child exploitation, trafficking or terrorism. The days when investigations were confined to physical evidence and paper trails are long gone. The need for international co-operation is real, as is the need to modernise how evidence is gathered, but good intentions do not automatically make good legislation. What concerns me about this Bill is it feels like another example of a Department of justice, led by the Minister, that has become obsessed with speed, efficiency and finding shortcuts, and increasingly detached from the practical realities of delivering the public services and judicial services we need.”
“There is not a lot of time left. This is an issue of such importance that I am going to concede my time, if it is okay with the Minister, so that we can have a vote on this particular issue. That might require the Minister to allow a vote to happen. I think that is fair.”
“On what basis is the Minister making the assumption that the scheme would be improved? Nobody else but the Minister seems to believe it. The Law Society and the Bar Council do not believe it. I have not seen any research that points to it. In fact, the evidence that those in the system would have says that we will have to develop another two-tier criminal system where those who can afford to pay will get better treatment, and because the system is no longer not only profitable but also, realistically, workable, people will be lost from the criminal justice system.”
“-----but we also maintained the system. A person who was imprisoned in 1921 for what were homosexual offences at the time would still have been in prison in 1922 or potentially in 1923. We have become custodians of our own history. We cannot just draw a line. If the Government is not going to apologise, we can find the means by which we can honour, acknowledge, respect and say that we became complicit because it was not like we changed tack. We had this system right up until 1993, so I think we could find a way of acknowledging it. I appreciate we cannot do something about what happened when were a colony but we can acknowledge and honour the fact that we did not deviate when we were not straight afterwards.”
“I did not intend to come back in but the Minister said something I profoundly disagree with. On the idea of having the cut-off at 1922 because the State should not be responsible for what happened when it was a colony, the Minister began his contributions earlier on by talking about how he inherited this system from the UK. It is not like we radically transformed the system right afterwards. What we did was maintain it, enforce it and became part of it. The idea might be that we must have a cut-off time because we cannot be responsible for what happened when we were a colony, but we did not deviate from it one iota when we were not. In regard to how we treated people, the Minister said that we inherited the system-----”
“I will keep it brief because I do not want to reiterate the points that have already been made. The Minister might be able to answer me: is he still open to making amendments at the Seanad stage in regard to improving some aspects of the Bill?”
“Important legislation deserves scrutiny, and legislation that will impact lives in the most profound ways should not be rushed, bundled together and pushed through as part of an ever-expanding miscellaneous provisions Bill. This is really starting to look like a tactic. All of us have an important role in this House in scrutinising legislation, making amendments, engaging with groups that have been impacted, hearing from civil society groups, getting into committees and being deliberate and focused in our work. This is an eight-minute speech. Shortly after it, we will have a guillotine that falls after 90 minutes. That is no way of processing legislation. It undermines this House. We have seen it before with the International Protection Bill and we are back here again.”
“The public cannot properly follow what is happening, civil society groups cannot properly engage and Members are expected to navigate a growing list of complex and unrelated issues within the same Bill. The irony is that some of the most important legislation we pass in this House often receives the least focused attention because it arrives bundled together with so many other measures. While I am delighted to see provisions that relate to historical convictions, and I support ensuring that Irish law keeps pace with developments in international criminal law, it is not unreasonable to ask why all these issues are being dealt with in this way.”
“Hugely significant new statutory powers around State security and aid to the civil power have been added into a miscellaneous provisions Bill. These are powers that warrant detailed examination, detailed questions and detailed debate, yet here they sit alongside a huge range of unrelated matters, all bundled together under one legislative umbrella, and that is a problem. If legislation affects the most vulnerable rights of citizens, if it affects the victims of crime, if it affects civil liberties and if it affects State powers exercised, then it deserves the time and attention required to get it right. Instead we increasingly seem to be treating miscellaneous provisions Bills like legislative suitcases into which anything can be packed so long as there is room.”
“It deals with community sanctions, the use of incapacitant spray in prisons, counselling records in rape trials, firearms legislation, Defence Forces powers, European arrest warrants and now it deals with international criminal law and historical convictions. Many of those issues deserve attention and many deserve reform, but every single one of them deserves proper scrutiny. Let us take the issue of counselling notes in sexual offence trials. We are talking about legislation that will affect survivors of rape and sexual violence and that goes to the heart of privacy, dignity, access to counselling, fair trial rights and the administration of justice. This is one of the most sensitive areas of criminal law this House has legislated for. The same can be said of the Defence Forces provisions inserted into this Bill.”
“We know from every other historical injustice this State has attempted to address that trauma does not operate on a Dáil timetable. It can take years for people to feel ready to come forward. That challenge will be even greater for those now living abroad. These are not reasons to oppose the scheme; far from it. They are reasons to continue to improve it. If this legislation proceeds quickly to the Seanad, as appears likely, I hope there will be an opportunity to examine some of those issues further. While I welcome the substance of these provisions, I have to say that the process by which multiple complex policies have been added to this legislation at the last minute is deeply frustrating. Once again, we are looking at a Bill that has become a vehicle for pretty much everything the Minister has chosen to add into it, without scrutiny.”
“Practices of entrapment and targeted policing ruined lives and careers and left many carrying a burden that lasted decades. The recognition that many people were forced to leave this country to escape persecution is also welcome. We should never forget that for many Irish people, emigration was not a choice made in pursuit of opportunity, but an escape from a society that refused to accept them for who they were. While we welcome the scheme overall, there are still issues that deserve further consideration. I am concerned that former members of the Defence Forces who may have been dishonourably discharged or otherwise penalised under parallel military provisions do not appear to be fully covered. The proposed timeframe may also be too restrictive.”
“These provisions matter because they acknowledge a simple truth, namely, people should not spend the rest of their lives carrying the consequences of laws which should have never existed in the first place. For that reason, we will be supporting this important provision. There are aspects of the Bill which are particularly welcome, such as the inclusion of those convicted as juveniles. We know that some young people were caught up in a system that not only criminalised them but, in some cases, led them into institutions where the consequences followed them for years afterwards. The recognition of discriminatory policing is also significant. For many gay men it was not simply the laws themselves which caused harm but the way in which those laws were enforced.”
“These are people who carried not only the stigma of discrimination but, in some cases, the weight of a criminal conviction for consensual relationships. That was wrong, and where the State has done wrong, it has a responsibility to put it right. At a time when we are seeing attacks on LGBTQ+ communities re-emerge across the world, and there are still countries where people face imprisonment simply for being gay, it is important that Ireland continues to move in the opposite direction. It is fitting that we are discussing these measures during Pride month. Pride continues to be a hugely important recognition of those who came before us, a recognition of the harm that was done and that equality is not something that can ever be taken for granted.”
“I acknowledge the work done in this area across the Chamber, in particular by my colleague, Deputy Rice. The provisions related to disregarding historical convictions are not only welcome, they are overdue. It is sometimes easy to talk about progress as though it is inevitable and Ireland simply arrived at a more equal place by accident. The reality is those rights were hard fought for. They were won by grit, determination, hurt and harm and by those who chose to believe in better. It is not some distant chapter of history in which homosexuality was criminalised in this country; it is within living memory. There are people alive today who grew up in a State that told them there was something wrong with who they are.”
“In recognition of genocide, we also apply the standard that we will not treat as normal a state we believe is carrying out genocide. I understand the complexities but I also understand the simple reality that courage matters now more than ever.”
“I cannot separate the hypocrisy of being asked to do so against a state that the Irish State believes, at the highest levels, is carrying out a genocide. Sport and politics always mix. There has been no time in history where sport and politics have not mixed. Where would we like to start? Yesterday I referenced examples from Ireland, from Yugoslavia, and from apartheid South Africa. I can go back in history as long as we want. Sport has always been a means by which people present their identity and their politics but on this particular occasion the Tricolour will fly alongside the flag of a nation we believe is carrying out genocide. There is weight to the Minister of State's office. There is weight to the Taoiseach's office. When he referred to the genocide, it was a brave decision but it does not stop there.”
“Football is something that I have lived by my whole life. It is where I found a lot of my identity. It is where I became inspired as a kid. The Gazan children who were murdered will not be inspired by a match that plays at this neutral venue, where apparently our obligations under the Genocide Act do not apply and where players are asked to leave their morality at the door. I am a football fan. I cheer wildly when Ireland scores but I do not care about six points in the Nations League division two if what we are asked to do is separate our morality or conscience to achieve that. This is not normal. This should not be seen as normal. I would not like to see the Irish team line out against Russia and I would protest that.”
“Does the Minister anticipate the stadium to be filled with fans or does he anticipate this neutral venue to be behind closed doors? Does the Minister of State reckon the capacity of the stadium would exceed about 75,000? When the Irish players look out into the stadium at the empty seats they may see a lost Gazan life that was taken by the same country whose flag now stands up beside our Tricolour and whose anthem we will listen to alongside our national anthem. Is that the Minister of State's expectation of an empty stadium where one can probably see dead Gazan bodies? Does he imagine there would be journalists there? Would those journalists have any consideration for the Gazan journalists who were targeted by Israel precisely because they could not tell the story of the horrors that are being inflicted there?”
“Yet, we are now expected to take part in a game of football, or any sport, as if it is just normal that we remove our obligations and try to unsee what we have been watching every single day for the past three years and to which we have added legal weight at the highest international courts. What actually makes a venue neutral? Will the Minister of State paint a picture for me of this neutral venue in some other state? Do the obligations of the Genocide Act not apply there? Are the players, who we expect to walk into the stadium, expected to leave their morality at the door? The Minister of State has said he will not attend the fixture in Ireland, presumably as a form of protest. That is a message but he expects the players to leave their morality at the door of the stadium on the way in.”
“It is an extraordinary attempt at an Irish solution to tell us that the game of football the Irish national team is going to play against a country the Irish State believes is committing genocide against its people will now take place at a neutral venue and expect that to be some form of compromise. The Minister of State, Deputy McConalogue, referenced that the Taoiseach himself believes that Israel's actions against the Palestinian people and people in Gaza amounts to genocide. The Irish State has aligned itself to an International Court of Justice case that agrees this is genocide.”
“I ask Deputy Grealish to remember why he became an Independent, chose to get involved in politics and became a Minister of State and to stand up for genuine public services such as the post office. I do not for one second doubt he appreciates the need for this type of infrastructure as much as I do. Now that he is sitting in that chair, I ask him to become a custodian of the issue and stand up for this infrastructure. It does not have to be a massive post office. It can be a small postal collection service with other community infrastructure like childcare facilities or anything. Let us show a bit of innovation rather than selling the service off to a private fund, which will be a loss to the community. I would imagine the Minister of State's belief system would go against that.”
“I will speak to the Minister of State in his own capacity. He is an Independent who represents the constituency of Galway West. When he envisioned himself becoming a Minister of State, did he imagine he would be standing in the Chamber defending the closure of local postal services? I appreciate that my constituency and his are very different, but I imagine some of the community needs are the same. The older population in my community of Drumcondra and Glasnevin rely on their post office. When I am told that An Post is a commercial State entity, what does that actually mean? Some State entities do not need to be run for profit. They could also be run for community gain. What we are losing through this erosion of community infrastructure, not only in Dublin Central and Drumcondra, is that community itself.”
“Further compounding that disrespect, when we strive to have a parliamentary debate about the loss of service, while I respect the Minister of State's role, I have no concept of what happens after this. He will read from a prepared script, but who will take this back to the Minister with responsibility, who seems to be able to give a soundbite to the media about some ridiculousness every once in a while? However, when we are here to engage on a substantive issue, we have nothing. I genuinely feel disrespected and the communities we represent are equally disrespected.”
“I want to speak on the loss of a postal service in Drumcondra but I am also speaking about the erosion of community. Community happens in a multitude of different forms. That postal service parcel delivery office on Home Farm Road, off Griffith Avenue, is a place of congregation. It is a place where older residents in particular in an older part of Dublin city actually find their routine. They find their engagement. They go about their business. It is a source of community. We are about to lose a site from a semi-State entity. There will be a big hole in the ground that once was a State service and residents are angry about it. They are not just angry because of the loss of a particular entity; they are angry because of the loss of a service. There has been no consultation. The residents rightfully feel disrespected.”
“I want to talk about the erosion of a community service. I am conscious the Minister of State may be taking this on behalf a different Minister. I have to be honest - the Minister of State is an Independent who is not part of the same party as the Minister with responsibility for the matter and I am not sure what role the Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine has in relation to the loss of a postal service. I am quite frustrated. Myself and Deputy Hearne are both here at 11.10 p.m. on a Tuesday evening. We equally have families to be home to. I do not think this is an appropriate standard for parliamentary debate. There was no communication with our offices on the change of Ministers. I think it is really disrespectful not only to our role but to the people we represent in our respective constituencies.”
“If the Minister of State holds the position that he is not going to attend the game, he should not ask any other young Irish person to stand on a pitch, listen to the national anthem and watch the flag of a state being waved that we believe is committing genocide against another.”
“It is actually about who we are as a people - a people who have known oppression, who have learned lessons from the many horrors and atrocities of the past and who recognise that never again should mean precisely that. We willingly signed up to the prevention of genocide convention. In doing so, we did not say we will commit ourselves to doing all we can to prevent genocide with the exception of maybe sacrificing six points in a division 2 Nations League game. The Minister of State, Deputy McConalogue, and the Minister in the Department of sport said that they are not going to attend the game. I say "well done" to the Minister, but I believe in leading from the front.”
“According to the Hind Rajab Foundation, soldiers in Gaza are planting Beitar, Hapoel and Maccabi Haifa flags in the ruins of Palestinian homes and dedicating killings to their clubs. They tag neighbourhood walls with ultras' slogans and they pose for selfies that are then celebrated by online supporter networks. Israeli soldiers are bringing stadium culture and battlefield atrocity and making it merge seamlessly in the ruins of destroyed homes where people have been killed. This is what we have rightly called a genocide and aligned ourselves to. This is not about six points in a Nations League division 2 game. It is not about whether the FAI might lose a bit of its income.”
“We, rightly, did not raise objections in 1961 or again in 1976 when apartheid South Africa was suspended by FIFA and, rightly, expelled because of the apartheid it inflicted upon its people. We rightly did not object when the former Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, intervened and said that we should not fulfil a fixture against Yugoslavia. Again in 2022 and 2023, we rightly believed that Russia should not partake in sports at any level because of its horrific invasion of Ukraine. Now and only now do we say that politics and sport should not mix. It would seem a luxury on our part if we were to tell the athletes in Palestine and Gaza, who have been directly targeted precisely because of their profile by the State of Israel that politics and sport should not mix.”
“A couple of years ago Ireland aligned itself to South Africa's case in the ICJ that Israel was committing genocide against the people of Palestine, yet now somehow we expect people adorned in green jerseys to go out onto a pitch, listen to "Amhrán na bhFiann" and then watch the flag of the same nation that we believe is committing genocide against another people - we have aligned ourselves to a case in the ICJ in this regard. I imagine that if we do that we would lose a hell of a lot more than six points. We would lose a portion of ourselves that believes we can call out what is right and what is wrong. One of the other sadder things people say is that we should not mix politics and sport. When did we become a people who believe that politics and sport should not mix? That appears to me to be a new phenomenon.”
“One of the most lamentable things I have heard over the last couple of weeks and months as we talk about whether Ireland should fulfil its fixture against a country we believe is enacting a genocide against another is when people say, "But sure Ireland might lose six points". Ireland might lose six points in a Nations League division 2 game and potentially be put down into division 3, but so what? What do we actually lose even more of if we do fulfil a fixture?”
“I am asking that the Minister intervene simply by asking Dublin City Council if this is the best policy for this particular part of Dublin. It is a much-discussed area because it is in the central part of the capital city. The policy in this regard is nonsensical. Dublin City Council is trying to remove from itself the cost involved in picking up scattered rubbish, but the consequences will be felt by people who cannot get up and down their streets.”
“The Minister can potentially apply public sector duty to ensure there is accessibility proofing done of this decision. We are paying the consequences of this bad privatisation of waste management. The ideal scenario for most of us would be for waste management services to come back under the remit of local authorities. As it stands, people in Stoneybatter, Phibsborough and Broadstone will have to choose between competing operators and providers. They do not have anywhere to store the large bins they will be expected to purchase at a cost that is substantially higher than they paid previously. For all that, they will not only have seagulls picking their bags but they will also will face impediments in the context of getting up and down their streets. These decisions that will have consequences.”
“The State does set the regulatory framework that underpins the transition here. It is important that the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, understands the consequences for people in my area in Stoneybatter, Broadstone and Phibsborough, who are being forced to enter into a free-for-all between different private operators on streets that are wholly unsuitable for the services they provide. Imagine the situation where two or three days a week where small residential streets where there will be bins preventing people from getting through footpaths. That is a substantial lacuna in the law and the policy. Accessibility and public sector duty might even come into play here because how we provide for waste management services does have consequences for those.”
“That will not be fair on people with accessibility issues who will be forced to walk on the street, nor will it be fair for anyone with a pram. Then there are also the cost implications. I am interested in hearing the Minister of State's response.”
“This initiative has not been accessibility proofed. The residents will certainly not be able to store wheelie bins or anything like that in their homes. What they are asking for is some form of intervention by the State that will oversee the regulatory approval of initiatives like this and ask for a pause in order that full accessibility proofing can be done and alternative suggestions can be proposed. There have been alternatives proposed in the context of compactors and other things. Everyone accepts that there is an issue but nobody accepts that this is the solution. The solution to one problem will create a host of new issues which will fall outside the remit of Dublin City Council into all sorts of other areas, and we will be back here again.”
“However, that is not as important as the fact that people will have to go get off the footpath in order to walk up the street. There are also cost implications. It costs €40 for the bag collection. The cost of the wheelie bin collection is €240. In a cost-of-living crisis, that is a substantial increase. This has been foisted upon residents to the point where they are lobbying for their TDs to come into this Chamber and advocate against a change in the method of waste management. That is not what I want to be doing. I want to be scrutinising legislation and proposing Bills, but this is going to have an impact on the city of Dublin, our capital city, and the communities in it. I understand that the regulation of waste management comes under the Department of climate. I am asking for some form of intervention with Dublin City Council.”
“I do not doubt the intention behind a plan like this, but the reality when it comes into place in a couple of weeks is going to be that will be rows of bins that will be an impediment to simply being able to get from their homes to their places of work and back. That is going be an issue. Councillors from all parties on Dublin City Council unanimously passed a motion several weeks ago in which they called for this initiative to be stopped. They advocated for that, but in the past couple of days, the private operators contacted residents in Broadstone, Phibsborough and Stoneybatter to let them know that this change will be coming into place. This is a change that will have ramifications for accessibility. The aesthetic is another thing, because having these bins on the streets will be a blight on the entire neighbourhood.”