Ken O'Flynn
Cork North-Central · Independent Ireland · Ireland
“The Government has not addressed school uniform problems or the fact that most parents have to pay €300 for a PE kit. It has not addressed the problem that parents have to give this voluntary contribution, which is really not voluntary when schools are putting out news bulletins listing the names of families who have contributed and those…”
“Every one of us knows from our own constituencies that laptops, iPads and tablets are being used regularly by order of boards of management. I have to acknowledge the Government's good work and call it out, including the free books scheme and the school meals. However, the Government has made a hames of the school meals.”
“Like many of the stories the Minister of State has heard today in the House, it is not strange that we have constituents coming to us regularly saying the biggest fear they have is the postman's knock.”
“We should all be inside here hanging our heads in shame about how we are treating people. Just go outside the gate and the Minister of State will see Cara Darmody outside Leinster House again, highlighting a law that the Government has been breaking for over 20 years. What was the Taoiseach's answer to me yesterday?”
“I am sure the Taoiseach will join me in welcoming Christy Hussey and Conor Burke to the Public Gallery. Since this morning, a 15-year-old child has been sitting in protest outside the gates of Leinster House. Cara Darmody is highlighting the fact that the State breaking its own law.”
“It is reported that half of the women murdered in the Kingdom of Spain this year were killed by foreign nationals. Across the Continent, governments have opened their doors and lost control of their borders. When their own citizens stand up and take notice, these governments lecture them and call them far-right for calling them out.”
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“I thank the Tánaiste for his reply to both of us. I appreciate what the Tánaiste is saying. He has had 30 meetings, as he said. There are questions to be answered, however. While I agree with and welcome the entire scheme as it is important to get people, especially younger people saving and into that routine, it does need to be thrashed out by the Oireachtas. I suspect we may need legislation on it. The questions I want to put to the Tánaiste, and I think these are the questions on everybody’s lips, are: what exact tax rate and threshold will apply to this scheme and will the deemed disposal rule be scrapped? I think the deemed disposal rule is very unfair double taxation. I do not think we have had enough conversation around this aspect.”
“It means protecting the jobs of the State and the revenue that the State actually depends upon, and not gambling them to look busy in front of our lords and masters in Brussels in their shadow. For this reason, this Bill in its current form and in this timeline is an entire mistake. The Bill asks this House to legislate before Europe has done so. It asks us to put taxpayers' funds at risk 16 institutional months ahead of its own purpose. It firmly asks this economy to carry and absorb the cost at haste, and the firms that deliver so much of that tax revenue to us. Currently I cannot support the Bill. I ask the Minister of State to rethink it before she brings it to the House.”
“No serious person in this House should be against oversight of technology, but artificial intelligence raises real questions and the public are entitled to real answers. A Parliament that truly cares about its citizens does not switch on an enforcement mechanism or an enforcement machine without knowing the rules around it first. It does not impose a cost on its taxpayers by putting at risk the very receipts that fund the Exchequer, that fund our social welfare, that fund our schools, that fund our third level colleges, that fund our hospitals and that fund our senior citizen homes. To my mind, good governance has always been about sequencing. It means waiting until the European Union rules are there and settled upon before we build Irish machinery to enforce them.”
“Is the Minister of State aware that the independent Irish Fiscal Advisory Council has already said that tighter regulation in the sector will be a risk to the revenue receipts of the State? That is a very important statement and something we all need to reflect on in this Chamber. The Minister of State has met with these companies. They are mobile companies. They make location decisions every day. We should be giving them every reason to stay in this country rather than giving them reasons to exit this country. Instead, what we have decided to do through this Bill is implement and hand them a €35 million fine regime and 15 separate regulators to answer to. It seems bizarre to me to have 15 separate regulators to answer to. Let me be straight with this House. I am not against oversight of technology in any way.”
“Around 75% of all corporation tax comes through United States firms. Those companies employ directly almost 200,000 people in the State, and another 160,000 indirectly in this State. That is not competitive advantage, or should be taken as casual trade. That is the single most concentrated precarious revenue stream in this State, and it must be protected and minded. With that in mind, what are we doing with it? We are volunteering to be the most diligent enforcer of a framework from the European Union that is imposed on an industry that it has failed to build itself. Europe has not built AI: America and China have. Europe is way behind when it comes to AI and AI firms. What are we doing here with the very firms we depend on for finance?”
“We cannot be told in this House the certainties and rules by which this office will finally have something to enforce. It is not coming in from Europe yet. We have not yet received that information. Let us turn now to what is at stake for this country. I do not think we have played this out enough or thought enough about it. Ireland is not a bystander when it comes to artificial intelligence. We host it in American technology companies that lead the field and run their European Union operations from all across this country. They did not do this accidentally. The point, which the Government will not say out loud, is that last year corporation tax brought in the sum of €33 billion, which is a record amount. The top ten companies, overwhelmingly American multinationals, paid well over 50% of it.”
“The State has set up an entire institution, it has to staff it, it has to fund it, and it has to switch the lights on within weeks. Yet, at a European Union level, the very obligations this office are meant to enforce are being pushed back under the digital ombudsman agreement, which I do not believe has been mentioned in this House, reached in May and not yet formally adopted, but already agreed between the institutions. The high-risk rules at the heart of this regime to be set up and applied will not be this August but in December 2027. We are here in this House and we are actually building a referee, at speed and with cost, 16 months before the match even begins. I put it to the Minister of State, Deputy Smyth, that we are legislating in the fog. That is what we are doing in this House at the moment with this information and this Bill.”
“We are told that the real law is going to be written in Brussels, and that we are just there simply to be the building mechanism and the machinery behind that, to enforce something that will be taken from Brussels legislation and which has not yet been fully written. For that reason, and for that reason alone, to rush this Bill through should tell this House that for the reasons I have outlined we need to scrutinise this legislation far more closely, have far more time on this debate, and look at the legislation and the Bill far more than we are. When a Parliament is reduced to installing the plumbing for a law that it cannot amend, the least we can do in this House is make sense of that plumbing work. Here in this Bill it does not. The Bill requires a new AI office of Ireland to be operational by August of this year.”
“My colleague has spoken about the positives and negatives of AI. I want to concentrate more on the technicalities of the Bill. I want to be clear from the outset what this Bill is and what it is not. Whatever we are being told it is certainly not a modest piece of housekeeping. Indeed, it is a scaffolding for an entire, new, State-run, artificial intelligence regulator, a Bill which now has 139 sections and four schedules, a statutory body and a sanctions regime reaching €35 million, or up to 7% of a company’s global turnover. That is what we are discussing here. Yet, this House is being invited to waive through this legislation on the understanding that it is just a little bit of housekeeping. That is the Government’s own framing of this. We are told that these are technically implementable measures.”
“Lesbians, gays and bisexuals are citizens of this Republic, not props for other political uses. They marched once and, let me remind the House, they did not march so their fight could be handed over to others who shout the loudest.”
“Senator Eileen Flynn told Seanad Éireann she feels terrified at the sight of the Tricolour. She is a public representative, paid for by this State and she said it in a State building that flies the flag every day. That is not principle; it is an insult to every citizen who has ever stood under that flag, and I will not pretend otherwise to keep the peace. The people who marched for Declan Flynn did not march so that gay men and women could become a Government photo opportunity once a year. They marched for freedom to live without fear, not for the right to be paraded out as proof of what seems to be a progressive country, as it claims to be. We must not let their courage be reduced to press releases or photo opportunities. Their courage was not given so it could be borrowed by other people with other agendas.”
“It belongs to every citizen regardless of their sexuality, religion or political belief. State buildings should be there to unite the citizens. They should not be there to divide for competitive identity groups, each waiting for its day, week, month or turn. I remind this House that men and women died for that flag; they died in 1916. They died afterwards fighting for the right to fly that flag for a free Ireland, the flag that draped the coffins of Irish patriots and servicemen in the Defence Forces alike. They did not die so that a sitting Member of the Upper House of the Oireachtas could stand up generations later and call it a source of terror. That is not just an insult to me; it is an insult to every Member and every family who buried someone under that flag and called it a price worth paying. I will name the hypocrisy plainly.”
“That is exactly why I will say what many gay, lesbian and bisexual men and women say privately and that many in this House are too afraid to say plainly, that is, this movement has been hijacked. It no longer speaks for the people who built it or the people who are still at risk. We are told to make room and redefine same-sex attraction to fold into the ever-expanding list of letters that has grown so broad it has become meaningless. Does anyone in this House know at this stage what the plus even means or stands for any more? That is not progress. To my mind, that is erasure dressed up as inclusion. I want to be direct about the flying of flags. I truly believe that one flag should belong to all our State buildings and local authority buildings in this country and should be flown for 365 days per year. That is the Tricolour.”
“Some 43 years ago, the killing of Declan Flynn shocked Ireland. There were thousands who marched through Dublin afterwards to refuse to accept violence against gay people. I speak today as a gay man and I am proud of the history and of the rights the gay and lesbian community has won over those years. That violence did not end in 1982. In 2022, Aidan Moffitt and Michael Snee were tragically murdered in County Sligo, because they were gay men. Their deaths are proof that hatred towards this community is not a thing of history but is indeed something of present tense. I raise this not for sympathy but for honesty about this movement and what it was built to fight.”
“If the State sets a standard, the State must take ownership of the risk. Deputy Ward’s motion calls for three fair things: the publication of the evidence base behind IS 465:2026; homeowners to be given a clear right to opt for the full replacement of foundations, which is fair and the right thing to do; and the commissioning of an independent international review of the science. That is the right thing to do. I ask everybody in this House, even though Fianna Fáil has not attended the debate and only two Donegal TDs are here, to support this motion.”
“I congratulate Deputy Charles Ward on tabling this motion in the House. I am aware of the tremendous work he has done on redress and I want to acknowledge that here today. This motion goes to the heart of trust between the State and the homeowners affected by defective concrete. The defective concrete grant scheme allows foundations to be retained under IS 465:2026 but the research behind the standard has already found that minerals have been discovered in concrete, with early signs of internal oxidation and sulphate attacks. The State’s own evidence admits it does not know how these foundations will perform over time. The Government is asking families along the western seaboard, from Donegal down as far as Limerick, to take an irreversible decision to retain something that may have to be replaced in 15 to 20 years’ time.”
“As the Tánaiste is aware, Children's Books Ireland has already had to pull at least one title from its Pride reading guide after concerns were raised, yet the book remains on library shelves and is still linked to the HSE's parental materials. Does the Tánaiste agree that parents deserve an answer as to who is responsible and what mechanism is available to them?”
“Action 1.7 of the LGBTI+ Inclusion Strategy 2019-2021 contains a commitment to taking into account LGBTI+ needs in public libraries and compiling and updating a reading list under the Healthy Ireland at Your Library initiative. That includes reading materials recommended for children as young as 12. Will the Tánaiste indicate who exactly reviews the reading list and the age-appropriateness of the material on it before it goes to libraries, which are serving children as young as 12? What Minister, Department or agency signs off on the list? What mechanisms are available to allow parents who find explicit sexual content on the shelves marked for 12-year-olds to have that material reviewed or removed?”
“Will the Taoiseach explain, not only to this House but to the 61,000 households on waiting lists, why the Government answer to its own failure is always the same - to find someone else to blame?”
“Cork alone has 1,788 derelict properties. Nationally, nearly 19,000 homes sit idle while people sleep on sofas or in their cars, working adults are in their parents' box rooms and there will be over 17,000 people in homeless services tonight. The Government has a derelict levy which is obviously not working. The Government has watched some of the local authorities fail to collect a single cent. The Minister for Finance is now blaming local government. It is worth noting that 31 of the local authorities are largely controlled by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael councillors. There are 493 Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael councillors out of 949. Will the Taoiseach now own his own failures - every empty house, every family on a waiting list, every night someone spends in emergency accommodation?”
“Was the Minister, Deputy Foley, misleading the public with her knowledge of the book, or is the former Minister, Charlie Flanagan, mistaken when he said he raised the matter directly with her in December 2023? Is the Government satisfied with the standard of transparency and candour expected of a Minister in this particular case?”
“Last week, the Minister for children, Norma Foley, said that she was not familiar with the sexually explicit book What's the T? when asked whether it was appropriate for a recommendation by the State-funded body and promoted by Raidió Teilifís Éireann to children as young as 15. Since then, the former Minister, Charlie Flanagan, has publicly stated that he raised concerns with the Minister, Deputy Foley, in December 2023. He asked her to read that book. The question is: which is it? Is it the word of the Minister for children currently serving with the Minister for enterprise in Cabinet, or that of the former Minister, Charlie Flanagan, a member of his own party?”
“The Minister mentioned a gap in legislation and regulation on this issue. In fact, it is a gaping hole. No other industry is operating in this type of cowboy country situation. If we look at a solicitor's fund or any client fund, we see it is well organised and well protected. Regulation must be brought to the House as quickly as possible to ensure the same is in place in this area.”
“The reality is that the Minister will have to come up with something in respect of these groups. Many of the festivals will not survive. Some have gone ahead or will go ahead but they are carrying huge deficits. They will go into liquidation. Some are limited companies, some are parish councils and some are community organisations. We will have a serious deficit if the Government does not invest in our festivals and does not come up with emergency funding or an emergency package. I have written to the Minister and a number of his ministerial colleagues. I ask him to intervene on the issue. It is about keeping our festivals not just this year but for next year and the years after it. There is no coming back from the blow experienced by many of these festivals. They are run by volunteer groups that have no other source of income.”
“Will the Minister for enterprise intervene on behalf of the organisations caught in this collapse and will he and the Minister for culture provide and mobilise emergency funding? Second, will the Government commit to regulating the primary ticket sales agents to protect and ring-fence money paid by and being held on behalf of those organisations? We cannot go back but we can ensure that no more people involved in parish councils and community organisations find themselves looking at a webpage and wondering where their money has gone.”
“It is the difference between that festival being run again next summer and having to wrap it up and finish for good. When a licensed travel agent collapses, customers' moneys are protected because it was decided long ago in this House that businesses holding public moneys would be subject to safeguards in respect of those moneys. It should trouble every Member of this House that ticketing agencies in this State that may hold hundreds of thousands of euro belonging to promoters and ticket buyers can collapse overnight with no equivalent protections, that is, no ring fencing, no bond and no money supplied. The moneys will simply vanish into liquidation. That is a gap in the law of the State and it must be closed.”
“It was not the choice of the multinational or stadium promoters. It was the choice of the parish festivals, the local arts groups, the community sports clubs and the volunteer community organisations running music festivals to put their town on the map. They are precisely the events that rural and small towns in Ireland need but it is those groups that are now left out of pocket. The sums are not small. Between three festivals, namely, the Rory Gallagher International Festival, Rockathon and the Cowboys and Heroes festival in Ballinamore, organisers have reported collectively being owed in the region of €580,000. One festival alone faces losses of up to €135,000. For a volunteer committee, that is not just a setback; it is ruinous.”
“The matter that has caused great distress in communities and volunteer organisations across this country is a sudden collapse of tickets.ie . Last week, organisers who logged in to draw down moneys owed to them, moneys that had already been paid by ordinary people buying tickets in good faith, were met instead with a webpage telling them that the company, Tickets.ie, and Oshi Software Limited had ceased trading and were heading into liquidation. There was no warning and no telephone call, only a webpage telling them that the company had gone. Some organisers in communication with the company the previous day were told their moneys were secure, there was no problem and it was business as usual when discussing ticket sales. For more than 20 years, Tickets.ie was one of the State's largest independent ticketing platforms.”
“The Minister is familiar with the Huguenot and Jacobite story in Cork as well, and the great wine houses of Bordeaux, which have direct connections to the Wine Geese of Cork, for example, Lawton's Quay and the great Pierre Lawton, who still operates his family's business, the Hennessy family, etc. There is so much needed for Cork and there is so much needed for investment in Cork. We need to have an anchor tenant and we need to have an anchor business as an attraction to Cork. I am asking the Minister to bring in some sort of moneys and funding to the local authority to allow it to invest in a large anchor complex, such as what Guinness has in Dublin with the Guinness Storehouse.”
“They are not staying there overnight. Equally with the cruises that come into the city, people are being taken on buses to Tipperary and Waterford. They are not investing in the city and the greater Cork area. As the Minister knows, Cork produces over 61% of the country's artisan foods. Cork is the largest producer of these foods. The English Market is doing a tremendous job as well. The recent royal visit prompted a lot of success and a lot of visitors. However, I do not see Tourism Ireland or the Department of tourism recognising Cork city as a place where you can invest in artisan food and where there is an investment opportunity for Cork to bring more people into Cork, to have the food and wine experience.”
“While I welcome this debate, I am representing the constituency of Cork North-Central. In 2034, Cork city will be celebrating its 850th birthday. It is a maritime city, with strong harbour connections and great stories. It has a huge natural harbour as the Minister knows. Our tourism industry is doing well when it comes to the number of cruises, which is up this year. Seamus Heaney from Visit Cork has been doing a tremendous job with a very small team of staff. I am not sure whether the Minister has had the opportunity to visit Seamus and his team, but they warrant tremendous respect for the amount of investment they have brought to Cork and the tremendous work that goes on in Visit Cork. Thousands of tourists visit Blarney Castle every day but the problem is that Blarney does not retain those tourists.”
“At a time the world feels increasingly divided, we need more spaces where people of different nationalities, beliefs and backgrounds can still meet peacefully and respectfully in a mutual respect of one another in the name of competition. This House should be protecting those spaces and not dismantling them. Let politics be debated in the parliament. Let diplomacy be pursued by this Government and the European governments. However, let athletics compete, let supporters come together and let sports remain the most powerful focus that we have to unite the people.”
“He used the Rugby World Cup not as a weapon, but as an instrument of reconciliation. He brought a country together where politics alone had failed to do so. That lesson is as relevant to this House today as it was then. I say to those who are angry that they have the right to be angry, and they should be angry. I say to them to bring their energy to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, this Chamber and the institutions and governments that have the power to act on that and to push for sanctions and for accountability locally, nationally and internationally. That is where the battle truly is, not on the sports ground. Parliaments and this Parliament exist to settle political disputes. Sport fields exist to bring people together.”
“However, young athletes should not be asked to carry the burden of resolving geopolitical conflicts that they did not create. As the Minister of State knows, a sporting career is short. For many of these players, there will be few opportunities for them to represent their country on an international stage. We should be very careful, therefore, before we ask them to sacrifice for that decision of which they have absolutely no control. The decision regarding Israeli participation in games with Ireland in UEFA competition is a matter for UEFA, not the FAI or for this House to impose on sports people. History teaches us one thing, which is very important. When South Africa emerged from apartheid, Nelson Mandela understood the extraordinary power of sport by uniting a nation and not dividing it.”
“I welcome the Minister of State with responsibility for sport to the House. Sport has always occupied a unique place in humane society. It transcends politics, religion, ethnicity and nationality. It brings people together in a way that very few things can. That is why I approached this motion with extreme caution. Let me be clear to this House: I condemn the horrific attacks that were carried out by Hamas against Israel on 7 October 2023, the murder of innocent civilians, the taking of hostages and the acts of terror. None of that can ever be justified. Equally, I am deeply troubled and disgusted by the devastating loss of civilian life in Gaza and the suffering of innocent men, women and children. It is absolutely heartbreaking to watch. One lesson that I have learnt in life is that war brings tragedy and grief to everybody it touches.”
“As a former Minister of Health, does the Taoiseach accept that the Government is moving away from the more cost-effective tools available to it in the context of reducing waiting lists? Will he intervene with the Minister?”
“Under the previous Minister for Health, third-party insourcing was introduced and used by the HSE to reduce waiting lists and carry out additional procedures in public hospitals outside normal hours. Now, providers are being told the system will come to an end in June, despite no alternative plans being published. At the same time, the numbers on waiting lists have surged to 155,000 since December 2024. More than 126,000 people are now waiting for treatments and diagnosis. What is difficult for patients in my constituency to understand is that over the past 27 months, insourcing delivered more than 500,000 episodes of care for around €90 million while outsourcing has cost €500 million for 157,000 episodes of care.”
“There is a widening gap between the political establishment and the messaging this Government is sending and the public reality. The public see it clearly. This debate is not just about transport. It is not just about getting our finances in order; it is about affordability, quality of life and whether ordinary working people still matter to this Republic. If somebody works hard in this State, contributes to society and obeys the rules and they still cannot get ahead, then something is fundamentally wrong in this Republic. The public know that and they are increasingly losing their patience with the Government.”
“It is how people get to work. It is how parents bring their children to school. It is how carers look after their elderly relatives. It is how ordinary life functions in this State. Increasingly, commuters feel punished for simply trying to get their lives together and to live their lives. Commuters are stuck in traffic for hours in these cities and towns, watching infrastructure delayed again and again. They are paying more every year while getting less in return. People are exhausted - financially, mentally and from hearing that Ireland is doing wonderfully while their own standard of living has continued to decline. This frustration is no longer confined to one generation or class in this country. Younger people feel it. Middle-income people feel it. Older people feel it. Small business owners feel it.”
“They see the nurses coming home from night shifts. They see the elderly person abandoned by poor public transport. They see the young worker who cannot afford to live near their job. They see the family trying to stretch every euro at the end of every week. Taxi drivers themselves are under enormous strain as a result of fuel costs. Insurance is crippling them. Vehicle costs are increasing. There are also increasing licensing costs and regulations yet many are earning less in real terms than they were earning many years ago. Some of them are asking whether it is worth staying on the road or if it is financially viable any more. The Government seems to have a tremendous disconnect from the reality facing these workers. Outside a few well-served urban areas, the private car is not a luxury. It is not a luxury for any family in this country.”
“The Government tells us that the economy is strong, but ordinary people do not experience the economy through statistics, they experience it at the petrol pump, the till and when the insurance renewal lands through the front door. They experience it when they pay another toll, parking charge, tax, electricity bill or gas bill. I will put the biggest fear in this country to the Minister and on the record of this House. It is the current postman's knock, and what bill will be dropped through the letterbox at any time. People ask themselves very simple questions: what is the point and when is this going to stop? For many workers, life no longer feels like progress, it feels like survival. Today, I particularly want to mention taxi drivers because they see the real Ireland, which the Government is sometimes very removed from.”
“The twins above in the Gallery can be very proud of their mother. She is a great parliamentarian. There is a growing sense in this community and across Ireland that the ordinary working people are being pushed to their limits, not just by one single crisis, but by continuous pressure every single day and every single week. Nowhere is that pressure more visible than it is in commuter towns - in commuters, taxi drivers and working people across the cities and suburbs. They are the people who get up before dawn, who spend hours sitting in traffic. They are the people who are paying more and more simply to get to work and get home again.”
“The State has offered this woman, who will be 80 by the end of the month, a place in a homeless hub in Cork city, which is a 20-minute drive from Mallow and from family supports and everything else are. This does not take into account her age, her mobility needs or the dignity of this octogenarian. I am asking the Minister today to directly intervene in cases like this across the nation, of which there are quite a few. People are ending up in homeless hubs at the age of 80.”
“We have seen from the Daft report that there have been brutal increases in the cost of rent. The average in Cork is €2,000 per month for a two-bedroom home. Behind those statistics are human lives. This week in my constituency office, I met a 79-year-old lady from the Mallow area who worked for decades, raised a family and contributed to the community and the State. She never asked the State for anything. Through no fault of her own, she had to sell her family home and has spent the past five years in private rental accommodation without HAP support. She has depleted and exhausted her savings, and her landlord is now selling. She has to vacate the property by 30 May.”
“Some are very frightened, some are abandoned, some are financially desperate, some are under intense emotional pressure and some believe they have no supports or no alternatives available to them. Instead of this House building a society that says we will help them, stand beside them and be there because they and their child matter, the answer increasingly offered by the State is remove the pause and accelerate the process.”
“Yet, there was an argument before this House that does not remark on the tragedy of the loss of 10,000 human lives. The argument is that there is too much time to hesitate and we must remove that time. If the position of the Social Democrats is a moral certainty, then the question for it is why is it afraid of three days? That is three days for reflection, three days for people to speak to their family, three days to seek counselling and three days to escape the panic, fear, coercion or pressure that person may be put under. The reality is that for many women facing crisis pregnancies, those decisions they are making are not in calm circumstances.”
“That is over 10,000 unborn children, not statistics, not medical episodes or procedures and not lines in a spreadsheet but human lives. It is tiny hearts that beat, tiny hands, tiny faces - children who under other circumstances would be here today playing in classrooms and parks, celebrating birthdays and growing up in Irish families.”
“If abortion is such an unquestionable, clear decision, or a very easy case, then we must also ask why HSE figures show that 10,000 women did not return after the initial consultation of the three-day waiting period between 2019 to 2024. That is 10,000 women; 10,000 moments when somebody stepped back; 10,000 moments when doubt entered that room; 10,000 moments when women realised that they needed more support or more time or that there were other options available to them; and 10,000 moments when a life had been saved. That matters, and it is important we put that on the record. Let us stop pretending that this debate exists in a moral vacuum. Last year alone, more than 10,800 abortions took place on this island.”
“There is a moment in politics where the language we use in this Chamber becomes so sanitised and so carefully engineered that we risk losing sight of what we are actually talking about and debating. This is one of those moments because today we are not debating an administrative change or paperwork. We are debating whether the State should remove one of the last remaining safeguards before deliberation of ending an unborn human life. Before this House votes to dismantle that safeguard, we should ask ourselves some very uncomfortable questions. Why are the Social Democrats so determined to remove even a three-day reflection?”
“I do not know if Government Members are knocking on the same doors as we are in Galway and Dublin but, at the doors we are knocking on, people are telling us straight out that they cannot take any more, that they are sick to death of it, that this is the final cut and that they cannot keep on going. I appeal to the Minister of State and to his Government. My colleague has just spoken about the renewable energy schemes that are available, which the Government continuously says are fantastic and marvellous. The truth is that you would want a ball of money under the bed to avail of these schemes. Some of these measures cost €16,000 but you only get €2,000 back. It is ridiculous. It does not make sense.”