Jen Cummins
Dublin South-Central · Social Democrats · Ireland
“However, there is an advantage if their family can buy them one and they can continue their school work at home. It is not good enough to say that schools can make up their minds about that. The Department needs to actually decide and give guidance like it does for other things.”
“Circular 0032/2017 has been in existence for almost ten years and in most parts is not enforced. There is no point in issuing a circular if nothing is going to be done about it. I am delighted the Minister has said there will be a working group to review and hopefully strengthen that.”
“I thank the Labour Party for bringing forward this motion. It is very timely. These are the summer months when parents start to think about how we will we stretch our finances to autumn, get everything that we need to ready and then still maybe take a holiday, organise summer camps, etc. The motion is, as stated, very timely.”
“I see it as an absolute disgrace that such a number of people need that support. I welcome that that funding and support is there for those families but I am still shocked that this affects 233,000 children, which is a lot of children, aged between two and 18. I think it goes up to 22 in some cases. There is a digital divide.”
“When parents were told, they had six weeks to pay but most people do not have such a flexible budget to allow them to pay the €160 or however much it is. When things are being reintroduced time needs to be factored in for that. There was an increase in the cost of school transport for families.”
“I will go through a few of the things that I think still present challenges. The capitation grant for schools was increased last year but has still not reached a level which will mean that schools are fully funded. It has not reached the level where it needs to be. In addition, it does not take into consideration the level of inflation.”
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“While we cannot pre-empt what that next product will be with this legislation, we need to pre-empt being lobbied by these companies, which do nothing except create detrimental health outcomes for young people and adults. I will be glad when disposable vapes are banned. They are a detriment to the person using them. With regard to the rechargeable vapes, there is a little black wire in each one. How many of those wires are hanging around the place? In 2019, this Chamber said we were in a climate emergency. We were the second country in the world to do that. Having disposable vapes with tiny wires in them for recharging does not help in any way towards mitigating against the global climate disaster that is upon us. I will give a warning to those who are going to email after this: please do not lobby me because the answer is “No”.”
“When I speak to young people, they tell me vapes are only watermelon, lime or whatever - I am sure they do not think lime is great. They are flavours that are nice and therefore they do not see the harm in them. There are harms. Nicotine is an addictive substance. My parliamentary assistant came to work and walked along Grafton Street. She was offered a free packet of nicotine pouches - I will not name the company. It made me wonder why they are being handed out. As previous Deputies have said, they are being handed out everywhere, including at concerts. This is how companies are promoting the next product they can get people addicted to. First it was cigarettes, then vapes and now it is the pouches. I am sure companies are thinking of the next product after this. It is not good enough.”
“I have spoken about teenagers, who will always go against the tide and have the ability to rebel. I was definitely one such teenager and I have known quite a few in my time as a youth worker and through my involvement as a school completion programme, and as a parent. The way vapes are advertised and marketed to young people is genius. The companies make them appealing. If I were that age, I would definitely have been vaping and would have thought it looked great. That is what makes vaping even more evil. Companies are targeting young people. They know exactly what they are doing. Vapes can be matched to what people are wearing. Given the taste of vapes, it is no wonder that people are addicted to them. When I listened to the debate in my office, I was a little concerned that people would push back against the ban on flavours.”
“We welcome the Bill. I am speaking as someone who has children, although they are not all children any more, and has worked with young people over the past 20 or 30 years. Anything we can do to ensure we continue to address addiction to nicotine is most welcome. First there were cigarettes and there was a big debate about how we could reduce their use. Harm reduction came along and we had vapes. We now have nicotine pouches. The big business that is the nicotine industry is delighted with itself in marketing these products to keep people addicted to them for as long as it can. An untold amount of people's health is affected by nicotine in this country and around the world. We can see the effects of that every day. I have spoken about this issue a couple of times in the Chamber.”
“The Environmental Protection Agency reported in May 2025 that even with all the planned policies, Ireland is off track for its 2030 climate goals, with only a 23% reduction in emissions expected. Despite growing awareness, data from a global survey done by UNESCO showed that 70% of young people surveyed could not explain exactly what climate change is or explain it very well. While climate change spans many subjects in schools, we need a dedicated subject. However, it is not only for young people in schools but for all of us - individuals trying to offset problems caused by industry and external factors outside this country. These are tiny things, drops in the ocean. As a city TD, I have to say that nature, biodiversity and all of those things are so vital. We are very vulnerable to pollution, both in the future and now.”
“According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, global temperatures have already risen by 1.1°C above pre-industrial levels and it is increasingly likely that they will exceed 1.5 °C within the next decade without rapid emission cuts. The United Nations environmental programme estimates that around 1 million species are at risk of extinction, largely due to human activity. In 2019, Dáil Éireann declared a climate and biodiversity emergency, becoming the second country in the world to do that. However, there are targets to meet under the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act 2015 and Ireland's fourth national biodiversity action plan. There are loads of action plans with all of these targets set out but if we do not meet them, we are off track and we will have a seriously detrimental effect on our future.”
“It has let people in this House down, it has let people outside this House down, and if there were another motion of no confidence, it would be about this issue, in my opinion.”
“They thought they could believe the Government before the last general election or local election - any election - that it would get this right, but it has not, and it is now going to have another talking shop that asks people this, that and the other. The information and answers are there. The Government does not have to make everything up. It works in other countries, so copy and paste from where it works well. The education committee also went to Finland. We looked at what that would be like. There are so many solutions but, again, if we are not able to get it right for any child in this country, this is what the difficulty is. The Government has let people down.”
“I hope that campaign contacts every TD in this room and those who are not present also, and that we listen to them because waiting until someone dies and then figuring out what is going to happen to their adult child is just disgraceful. I am sure that the Minister and the Minister of State have not heard me this annoyed before because I tend to come into this House quite balanced, but today I am afraid I am not. I am not able to listen to the constant complaints from people because the system does not work. I thought the Minister would believe me, and I know that is what parents in this country thought.”
“I know she is trying to do her best, but the reality is that it is not what is in the wallet but how it is spent. It is clearly not being spent properly if we cannot even get a child books in Braille for the leaving certificate. What is that saying to him as an individual? Is it saying we do not value him because we did not bother getting him his Braille books? It would not happen in another country. I recently met with parents of children with intellectual disabilities who are becoming adults and are going to leave education and go somewhere else. What I heard was that there is no vision whatsoever for those young people. I know they are going to be adults, but there is no vision for what they will do with their lives in the future. I met somebody from the Before We Die campaign this morning.”
“The EPSEN Act, which the Department reviewed last year, was written in 2004 and sat on a shelf for years. I want to mention two things that I thought were really heartbreaking over the last while. Visually impaired and blind students came into the committee last week. One young person told us that he had applied for his Braille books when he was in transition year, and he got them a week before his leaving certificate. They were his senior cycle books. That is how we are treating a child who needs to have Braille books. I am speechless. We are spending gazillions of euro. I do not even know the number. The Minister knows the number and she still has to go to borrow more money for the future next year due to the overspend the Department has.”
“What was flawed was the Government's approach to SNAs. The campaign has been fighting for years because SNAs were not respected. They have again not been respected. The Taoiseach has completely insulted a pile of people in this country. It is unfathomable. The reason they are so frustrated and that there is a difficulty with SNAs is that it has taken years for the Ministers' Department to get redeployment going, to undertake workforce planning and to get any idea of what the circular would be able to do. I asked the Minister if she would meet the group. She said "Yes" and that we could negotiate. I offered the NCSE. Deputy O'Rourke and I were part of that committee, and we asked if we could do it. We are handing the Minister stuff on a silver platter to make her life easier, so that intern can make the lives of those children easier.”
“The portal was supposed to give the Minister a great deal of information. Did it actually tell her the needs those children had? If it did, has she addressed all of those needs? I hope she will tell me that it has. There is no point in collecting data and then leaving it on a shelf. With regard to those five inclusive special classes, is that specifically what those parents said they needed for their children through that portal? Therapists are going to come into schools in May, one month before the end of yet another academic year. They should never have been cut in the first place. I do not know whose hare-brained idea that was. The idea that children with disabilities would not have therapists is just beyond me. Today, the Taoiseach stood in his place and said the Save our SNAs campaign was a flawed campaign.”
“It is now going to be rolled out to training for SNAs and teachers but through a "train the trainer" model. That was not decided in consultation with teacher unions or any other unions and it is also not acceptable. I welcome my lovely colleagues from Scoil Eoin in my own constituency. It is a mild general learning disability school. I believe the Minister has visited. It is an absolutely wonderful school. The fact that its designation is facing death by a million cuts and what will happen to those children is actually frightening. I listened to the Minister's speech in full. I was upstairs in my office. It was full of numbers, which is great. I like hearing numbers. However, I also think those numbers do not actually relate to the children behind them and where they are. I will ask one question.”
“In January, another Department announced that there would not be assessments of need in schools. I do not know how schools are going to figure out what support services they need. That was done without any consultation with any education providers whatsoever. That is also an affront to the Ministers' Department. Two things happened in April. Inclusive special education classes were announced. It is beyond me why those words were used. I do not know why someone would come up with that phrase. Does that mean that the rest of the classes are not inclusive? We then had the Relate document. It is an absolutely excellent document. It is not all bad news. I will give praise where it is due. The Relate document is excellent and that framework should be rolled out.”
“I do not normally get cross. I try to be very constructive. However, I really am pushed to the limits of my patience now. Those on the Government side constantly say that the Opposition does not put forward solutions. This is a solution. We have put forward several. I literally cannot ask the Ministers any more times for the things that need to happen. In September, we had an issue with appropriate school places. We did not have enough of them. In November, the portal was closed and no one figured out what to do for those parents who were promised they were going to be able to notify the parental portal afterwards. The portal was shut and they were not able to make that notification. We had to contact the Minister individually. That is not an appropriate use of her time. This system should work properly.”
“I believed the Ministers when they told me several times in this Chamber that they would work with me. I believed them when they said several times that they had the solutions. I believed the NCSE. I believed lots of people but that might be my political naivety. I am really disappointed. I have come to the Ministers several times both here and outside the Chamber, the committee has been on to them and I have submitted umpteen parliamentary questions. I have written letters pleading with them to do something on behalf of my constituents and people around this country, their children and the schools they work in. These people are coming to me because I am our education spokesperson. I have had the quickest grinds ever on the subject of how inclusive education works in this country. It is an omnishambles beyond belief.”
“It is bringing us into the present as opposed to keeping us in the past. The result on the Gaeilge is a little disappointing. When will the results of the full survey be published and what process will be put in place to ensure divestment and other things move a little bit quicker?”
“The recently announced results of the primary school survey indicated some very interesting results. Sixty percent of parents in the denominational schools would like to retain their ethos and 73% of parents in single-sex schools wanted to move to a co-educational model. Eighty seven percent of parents with children in English-medium schools wanted those schools to retain that medium and not move to Irish. The results are very interesting but they are only part of the results. The results from the cohort of parents with children from age zero to school age have not come out, and neither have those of the educators who were able to fill in that information. They have not been published. What is the timeframe for publication? Unfortunately, divestment is moving at nought miles per hour. The move to co-educational is very welcome.”
“Inclusive education in this country has been limping from one disaster to the next. In September, there were not enough school places. In November, the portal closed, meaning that parents could not notify the NCSE of their children's needs. In February, we had the situation with the SNAs. Now, in April, we have a new inclusive special education system. Does the Government actually have a plan for special education that is fully thought out? We need a proper debate on special education in this Chamber.”
“This Bill is very welcome and while it is great to have legislative measures, if they are not enforced, they are not really any use. When this Bill is passed, whenever that will be, I ask that the measures in it are enforced. I also plead that Deputy Whitmore's Bill is progressed to the next stage.”
“It means that people now have a tree in their garden. They are the appropriate size for a city garden. We do not all have acres to plant big trees. This is really helping the air quality in the city. There are also clean-up groups. I know we are talking about air pollution but part of the difficulty with air pollution is the amount of rubbish that is often left about the city and it is having a detrimental effect on people. There are environmental groups like Inchicore Environmental Group and the Liberties Litter Pickers. I could probably spend the rest of my time talking about all the different groups but these groups spend their time trying to offset the lack of green space and the air pollution that is in our area in Dublin 8, Dublin 10, Dublin 12 and parts of Dublin 20.”
“I want to namecheck them because it is really important. These are people who spend their Saturday afternoons, their evenings and their Sundays doing things for the rest of us in the city. They are trying to increase biodiversity. They are trying to increase the number of trees, for example. In Dublin 8, in particular, the number of trees is shockingly low. Anyone who drives through Dublin 8 on their way to Leinster House will know that it does not have a huge number of trees. I am not talking about Phoenix Park; I am talking about the city part of the constituency. One of the groups is the Trees for Tenters, which I am part of. We look at how we can increase the number of trees in the area, and not just any old trees but native trees. There is Blooming Crumlin in Dublin 12. It handed out trees recently to people in the area.”
“Being naive, because I was not involved in politics like I am now, I thought it would be in by that September but, of course, I heard today that she introduced the Bill in 2021 and it has still not been passed. I echo her plea to pass that because there are still mammies and daddies going around on bikes. Deputy Ahern is here and I know that he is a cyclist and has small children. It is really important to cycle around and to bring your children to various places. It is also important for the schools in a city constituency, which are built on a kind of postage stamp space and do not have a lot of green spaces. I am talking about my constituency but I know it happens in other parts of the country too. There are organisations that are really trying their best to offset the detrimental impacts air pollution has on their environment.”
“I have a number of children and I spent quite a lot of time going to schools, doing collections and going sport and all of the different things they go to. I remember the idling of cars and being half-choked. When I had a lot of kids, I brought them all in the back of the car because we did not have those cool cargo bikes. They did not really exist then. My eldest is now 22 years of age and people did not really like cyclists going around with a trailer on the back, which we saw used in other parts of Europe. When they got older, we went around on bikes. When you cycle with children in the city, you realise how polluted it is. You see how difficult it is through the eyes and lungs of your children, so I was very thankful to see Deputy Whitmore's Bill. I thought it was great.”
“The document states it causes headaches and forms of anxiety and it impacts on the central nervous system. It causes irritation to the eyes, nose and throat as well as breathing problems. Problems with asthma increase and it causes chronic bronchitis, lung cancer, reduced lung function, infections and cardiovascular disease. It impacts on the liver, spleen and blood. I do not know why I was surprised by this but it also impacts on the reproductive system. It is obviously part of the body but I was quite surprised to read that. If you are living in a very densely populated area that is polluted, it makes sense. I have to agree with Deputy Whitmore. I was not a TD when she brought that legislation forward.”
“However, there are things being done in the constituency by people trying to mitigate it, and I will come to them. The area I represented on Dublin City Council when I was a councillor was the south-west inner city. That part of the constituency has the lowest amount of green space per square metre per person in the entire country. It is so urban, so built up and so concrete. There is not enough green space and the need for something to be done in that regard was one of the biggest things that came to my door as a councillor and, indeed, that still comes to it as a TD. The document I mentioned earlier was fabulous, and I have it here. It talks about what air pollution actually does and the fact that it is a public health issue. When we see the detrimental effects of air pollution on the human body, it is quite frightening.”
“When preparing for today, I read a document that is for secondary school teachers to use with students to educate them. Just as my colleague, Deputy Whitmore, said, it is about education. The students who will use this programme will learn all about how air pollution happens and what needs to be done to mitigate it. It was a fascinating read but I will come to that in a second. I am a TD for Dublin South-Central. I am sure Members know that because I have probably mentioned it about 3,000 times since I have been in the Dáil. It is a city constituency, and cities have a particular challenge when it comes to air pollution because of the density of population living in them, cars, businesses and all of the different things that contribute to it. It is very difficult then to mitigate it when it is such a built-up urban area.”
“If the Minister has ever gone to the west of Ireland, as I am sure he has, he will know that if you stand on a cliff edge there, you will nearly be blown over. I am really at a loss as to why we do not use that wind power to power our schools, homes, businesses and hospitals. Every day, I am contacted by families worried about costs. As education spokesperson, I really do have to say that although we have primary and secondary school education systems that are supposed to be free, people are worried about the increased cost of school transport. I am absolutely delighted to see that there are free books at primary and secondary levels, but people are now having to fork out for tablets that cost up to €700. We had the college fees debacle in September and October, but I will not go back into that today. This motion is very practical.”
“People cannot afford to do so, so we need to do what we can to make sure every household is able to access renewables. My colleague Deputy Jennifer Whitmore has introduced the Solar for All plan, and that plan includes a doubling of the grant for solar installation to €3,600 and the inclusion of solar panels in the warmer homes scheme. That will yield an average benefit of €450 for a family. That is what it will save. It is a practical plan and something that we need to implement in order to reach our environmental targets and help people throughout the country with energy costs. What we see is that only people with additional incomes are able to afford solar panels. Solar panels are so easy to install and they give immediate results, so we need to harness that. We are an island.”
“Children and young people with mental health difficulties cannot get an opportunity to meet staff from child and adolescent mental health services, CAMHS. There are no appropriate school places for children and people cannot afford rent. All of this is creating a lot of crisis and a lot of difficulty for people. The Social Democrats are not just a party that points out what is wrong. We also give solutions. We have done this regularly since I joined Dáil Éireann. Indeed, the parliamentary party did this before I became a member of it. I am not taking all the credit. Today, we are bringing forward another motion that outlines our proposal for how the people of Ireland can be supported with regard to the energy crisis we are in. We need a timely conversation about the fact that we really need to move from fossil fuels to renewables.”
“I canvass regularly in my constituency, Dublin South-Central, and I hold clinics on a weekly basis. I can tell the Minister that people are far from all right in Dublin South-Central. When we set aside the issues with housing and also that of appropriate school places – I am the education spokesperson – we see that the next biggest issue in my constituency is affordability. When it comes to the energy crisis and what is going on in people's homes, I note that renewables, solar and all these things are absolutely beyond the budget of many of the people I speak to regularly. People are telling me that they cannot afford their groceries or get an appointment with the doctor. They also tell me that they cannot get a hospital appointment or are left on a waiting list for a very long time.”
“The children of Larkin Community College have been very clear in what they want. They want to make sure that every one of those children is valued and loved and remembered, not only by their families but by us as a country. It is well-documented that Bessborough was a cruel and cold place for every mother and every child incarcerated there. To have them subjected to that cruelty at their most vulnerable can never be forgotten. To leave a mother grieving the loss of her child for decades with no grave to visit, and then to decide to pour concrete over a sensitive site is a modern cruelty that has no place in Ireland in 2026. It is not who we are as a nation.”
“A second protest by students and teachers from Larkin Community College was a tender and sincere questioning of why the Bessborough children do not matter. These young people, students from the college, made paper hearts with the names of the 923 children whose remains are disposed of at Bessborough and the cruel way that each one of them died. It would take me 45 minutes to read out the names of every one of those 923 children. The children of Bessborough were not buried; they were disposed of in the hope that they would be forgotten and never recovered. The plan to build on that mass grave is a double cruelty at a time we should know better. This is not who we are as a country. This is not who we are as a nation. It is not what we want as a country to see happen.”
“It has signalled to survivors that these children mattered not only to their families and mothers but also to this country. The news that planning permission was granted at Bessborough, the site of another mass grave, caused deep pain for survivors of that institution and sent shock waves to survivors of other institutions where thousands of children's burials were also unaccounted for. The recent protest outside the Dáil and the phenomenal public support that followed illustrates clearly that the people of Ireland want the remains of the children in Bessborough dealt with equally sensitively as those at Tuam. The stories told by survivors were absolutely heartbreaking and they have been retraumatised by this planning permission.”
“I welcome to the Public Gallery people who were incarcerated in Bessborough and other institutions. I particularly welcome Councillor Noelle Brown who was born in Bessborough and who has been an activist in this area for decades. Noelle has tirelessly highlighted the wrong done in this country. We are at a tipping point in how we acknowledge and make amends for our history and the large-scale human rights abuses that took place in mother and baby institutions. The incarceration of women and the forced disappearance of their infants and children, either through death or forced adoption, has left a legacy that affects not only survivors but us as a nation. Thanks to Catherine Corless, we finally have a sensitive excavation taking place in Tuam.”
“As Deputy Gannon said, when we see young people being groomed into crime, when there is a good relationship with the gardaí that can help to offset that. The difficulty is that Fagan’s law is there but nobody is being prosecuted under it. As far as I know, there has only been three prosecutions in the past while. That is not good enough because we know it is happening and it needs to stop.”
“With the level of need in Dublin South-Central – an urban area with great disadvantage where there is a huge level of crime in some instances with domestic violence in particular having increased since Covid-19 – we have seen gardaí are not able to respond as they would like. They do not have the numbers. I have been to visit schools which have asked me what is happening around e-scooters. Gardaí need real clarity on that law and it needs to be hurried up. They are ruining parks and communities in the area. It is dangerous. Older people and people with disabilities are particularly nervous about e-scooters. I want to commend the gardaí on the work they are doing in schools and youth services. When I have a public meeting, they turn up. They really are doing their best.”
“I thank Labour for bringing forward the motion. Over the past number of weeks, community safety fora meetings have been happening in Dublin South-Central. It has been very interesting to see, over the number of years I have been attending, the waning of Garda numbers. At the moment, however, we are on a high where people are saying there is higher visibility in Dublin South-Central for gardaí, particularly in the Crumlin area, where there is a concerted effort for gardaí to be present there. This is highly welcome. That is not withstanding what I hear from residents and gardaí themselves at those safety forum meetings that sometimes there are challenges for the gardaí in doing their job - that there are not enough numbers and they are not able to respond to phone calls because there is not enough of them.”
“The cost of living in this country is skyrocketing. Before the war in Iran, 320,000 households were in electricity arrears. People are choosing between heating and eating. The cost of living is impacting more than just energy, though, because there is now the price for education. Exam fees, which had not been in place since before the pandemic, are being reintroduced without warning to parents. The cost of living needs to be discussed this evening.”
“We have heard that adults are reducing their food intakes to make sure their children are able to eat. At a time when this is an impossible place for some people to live, to introduce those costs is absolutely scandalous.”
“Families, when they budget to the penny, have not budgeted for this. This has to be paid up in a five-week period. It is something that was not done during Covid. It was a temporary situation but we were able to manage without it and we can manage again. At a time when costs are so expensive, and families are really tight, this was an unexpected thing. Schools have contacted me to say they were not expecting this. It has come out of the blue, and now families are contacting them saying they do not know how they will pay this. This is at a time when parents are saying it is the most expensive it has ever been in the supermarket, when they are not able to pay the electricity bill or using it so little or are not heating their homes. There are so many choices they have to make.”
“Families across this country are already at breaking point. I want the Tánaiste to imagine he is in a family that already counts every single euro going grocery shopping, maybe filling the car if you have one, only turning on your heating for a small amount of time in the day and then all of a sudden the President of the United States goes to war with Iran and you can no longer afford to do many of those things. This is the reality for families across this country. Already before this war, there were 320,000 households in arrears. At this exact moment, the Government has now written to schools to ask them to charge families to sit the leaving certificate, the leaving certificate applied and the junior cycle exams. It is €109 for the junior certificate and €116 to sit the leaving certificate and the leaving certificate applied.”
“I will truly celebrate International Women's Day when half of the seats in this Chamber are women, when the people who are in here represent the people outside here and when every girl gets the same opportunity as her boy counterpart.”
“I notice outside Leinster House that the Countess Markiewicz statue has been moved to make way for the Daniel O'Connell statue. It seems like a small thing, I admit, but for centuries women have been erased and moved out of the way and this is continuing today. Girls and young women in this world are still not able to access education. There are 122 million girls remaining out of school globally. Adolescent girls aged between 15 and 19 in south Asia are three times more likely than boys to not be in education, training or employment. There are almost 50 million girls and young women who are not able to read or write a single sentence.”
“Patrick's Day in Ballinrobe, County Mayo, yesterday that had a float simulating rape. Why was a float dedicated to the Epstein files allowed, and why, when children were present at a parade was any such depiction of rape allowed? It is absolutely horrific and joking about rape is part of the problem we have in this society. Outside Leinster House today we will see a protest against proposed development of the mother and baby home site in Bessborough. There are no burial records for 859 children. There are records for their baptism but not for their burial. These mothers and their babies were treated horrifically, and their horror continues today. There is an interconnectivity of abuse of mothers and their babies that continued into the abuses in industrial and reformatory schools and other institutions of abuse.”
“Since I was elected I have met women in the worst possible situations and who have been abused, threatened, raped, controlled, dominated and demeaned, women who are shadows of themselves and who are silenced and scared. Early in my working life I worked in a domestic violence refuge for women in London. I was angered then about the way women were treated, and 28 years later I am still horrified by the way women are still being treated. They are still in the same situations and the law has barely moved on to fully protect them. Women are not being protected from their abusers and society is still not calling them out. There are people still having a pint in the pub with the perpetrator and they are still not calling that behaviour out in the workplace or many other places and there is still silence. We saw a parade for St.”
“The first International Women's Day was observed in 1911 following calls for women's rights, including the right to vote and to hold public office. It was officially adopted by the United Nations in 1975. The day focuses on celebrating progress while urging pay equality, educational opportunities and increased representation and leadership. This year I was invited to a few events, and I was asked to make a few videos. I did not go to any events, and I did not make a video because my heart was not in it. I could not muster the enthusiasm to celebrate women in power, women in business and women in leadership. Why? It is because every single day and in every single email, phone call or appointment in my clinics I meet women who have not seen the benefits of equality, equity and empowerment.”
“If the cultural and community activities are only for people who come for short visits, that is not good enough. What can be done to prevent that happening but also, more importantly, what can be done in this situation in Newmarket where this market is being priced out and is going to disappear? How can I help the community to prevent this from happening and how can the Government put in place legislation that disallows this sort of thing happening?”
“The problem is that the developer is pricing any market stall-holder or market organisation out so that they will not be able to do it and it keeps putting in for permission for change of use. This is difficult for the Minister of State because he has been given a different answer but I really need to know what can be done when planning permission has been put in and we have been told as a community that a market will go in there and then it has not because it is priced out. Second, the cultural aspect of our city has to be about the residents who live in the city 365 days a year. It has to be about what makes it wonderful to live in the city. I am very proud of living in the city and of being a TD for Dublin South-Central but I do not represent tourists. I represent the people who live in my neighbourhood.”