Liam Quaide
Cork East · Social Democrats · Ireland
“The Department is not funding the teams. That is the main issue. There is a stark double standard here. In mainstream CAMHS, multidisciplinary staffing is treated as basic good practice.”
“I already established, earlier this year, that the staffing levels of CAMHS-ID teams across the country are abysmal. These are children and teenagers with very complex needs. They experience major challenges across all aspects of their daily lives, including with communication and learning.”
“I ask about CAMHS-ID services, which are specialist teams for children and adolescents with a moderate to profound intellectual disability and coexisting mental health difficulties. According to the HSE, and by its own admission, no CAMHS-ID team nationally is staffed to the level recommended in its own model of care.”
“This is a particularly vulnerable cohort of young people, and the lack of investment is particularly stark. The Minister of State should not look at me with an expression of incredulity because we have seen this across primary care and in child, adult and older adult mental health services. This is all out in the public domain.”
“Their needs are often more complex than those of young people attending standard CAMHS. I am asking the Minister of State for a clear commitment. When will the Government move beyond small, incremental additions year by year and fully fund CAMHS-ID teams in every region? When will that happen?”
“Worried, anxious, fearful, angry, afraid, powerless, terrified, scared, overwhelmed, abandoned, hopeless. Words like these came up again and again in a survey the Social Democrats conducted in the run-up to this motion.”
The complete record
Every one of 623 lines we hold for Liam Quaide, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 6 of 13.
“Non-surgical alternatives are widely used internationally and are not associated with many of these risks. The UK, Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands have banned surgical insemination for welfare reasons and the Veterinary Council of Ireland’s code of professional conduct also discourages its use on ethical grounds. This is just one aspect of Deputy Whitmore’s Bill, but one that highlights the far-reaching favourable impact the legislation could have on dog welfare. The question that remains is why the Government is deferring this Bill for 12 months. I can so reason other than political pettiness.”
“Many puppies and their mothers are born into miserable, nightmarish environments where they may be kept in confined spaces with inadequate light, limited human contact and substandard care, including restricted access to food and water. Deputy Whitmore’s Bill represents a first step towards regulating breeding operations and providing protections for puppies and their mothers. The Bill proposes limits on the number of breeding females, the age at which dogs can breed, the age at which puppies may be separated from their mothers, the implementation of staffing ratios and a prohibition on surgical artificial insemination. I will focus briefly on surgical artificial insemination. This procedure carries welfare and ethical concerns, including risks associated with general anaesthesia and surgical complications.”
“Currently, the welfare, breeding, sale, supply, control and traceability of dogs fall across multiple Departments, including the Departments of Agriculture, Food and the Marine; Rural and Community Development and the Gaeltacht; Justice, Home Affairs and Migration; and Housing, Local Government and Heritage. This level of fragmentation ensures dog breeding remains essentially unregulated and wide open to abuse. It is estimated that around 100,000 puppies are bred in Ireland each year. Irish people love dogs and are willing to invest significant sums of money to welcome a puppy into their family. Unfortunately, this demand is very often exploited by some breeders who prioritise profits and care not a jot for animal welfare.”
“I commend my colleague, Deputy Whitmore, on introducing this important Bill, which, if not obstructed, will greatly strengthen our dog breeding regulations. Unfortunately, it seems the Government is kicking the Bill into touch, which means it will be in limbo for 12 months at least. It is important to say that the Government is prone to frequent whinging that if only the Opposition could make constructive suggestions instead of complaining, it would happily work with us. This is patently shown up here, as with so many other Bills, for the disingenuous claptrap that it is.”
“As a matter of urgency, we need to see the Government devise a workforce plan for primary care services based on a clear number of clinicians per population size in each health region, with increased staff ratios in areas of social deprivation. This plan needs to be followed immediately by a comprehensive recruitment drive. If pursued, this would provide much greater continuity of care for young people. It would reduce dependency on expensive outsourcing of assessments and improve retention of staff in services struggling at the moment and have been for many years with out-of-control waiting lists.”
“Primary care services are in deep crisis, with children routinely waiting two, three or perhaps five years, and in some instances, far longer, for essential therapies. I only came upon that information through very persistent follow-up parliamentary questions because initially the HSE only released a figure of 52-plus weeks for long-waiters. In some cases, it was many hundreds of weeks. The first step in addressing this crisis in services more generally for children and, in particular, primary care is acknowledging its existence and the interplay between the Departments of Health and disability in resolving it.”
“While the single point of access proposal is welcome, it will not paper over the cracks of this chronic neglect and the ongoing imposition of recruitment restrictions. Another historical and, in some parts of the country, more recent factor that has placed unbearable strain on primary care services is the significant number of children transferred en masse from children's disability network team waiting lists onto primary care waiting lists in the context of the roll-out of progressing disability services. This occurred without the necessary recruitment to meet the additional demand on those primary care services. It reflects a fragmented and disjointed approach to service development. Earlier this year, HSE figures released to me highlighted the dire state of these services across disciplines and throughout the country.”
“It is for this reason that the HSE single point of access proposal is sensible. It should assist child services to work in a more co-ordinated and integrated manner. A major issue in those services is what is known in clinical circles as defensive practice, which refers to a service having overly rigid exclusion criteria, basically repelling referrals of children in an unreasonable and inflexible manner. The human cost of that is children being passed from one waiting list to the next. The main reason for these patterns of defensive practice is that services are so overstretched, they understandably become territorial and guarding of their own limits. The reason they are overstretched is they have been drastically under-resourced.”
“Many families are stuck in an assessment of need avenue unnecessarily at the moment because the therapies they should be accessing through primary care services are tragically under-resourced in many cases. Lots of families are seeking an assessment of need when they may benefit much more from timely therapeutic assessment in primary care services followed by timely intervention. As we know, an assessment of need is only useful insofar as it is an access point to interventions. Pouring €20 million into assessments of need in the absence of workforce planning and comprehensive recruitment across all children's services is a dead-end policy. We need our child services to be joined up and working together, not disconnected and drawing up the shutter to each other due to the strain they are under.”
“In most parts of the country, primary care services do not really exist. If you are on a waiting list for three, four or five years, that essentially means being left without a service. Many thousands of families are seeking an assessment of need for their child. They languish on that particular waiting list for months or years only to then languish on a waiting list for intervention. Over 18,000 of those children are overdue an assessment in respect of the six-month threshold. There is a lot of legitimate concern among disability representative groups and families about the potential change to the right to an assessment of need proposed by the Minister, Deputy Foley, today because it is the one right that has a legal safeguard.”
“The crisis in assessments of need sits within a much broader picture of chronic neglect, by successive Governments, of the disability sector generally and, within that, the front-line disability services and children's disability network teams, as well as, more egregiously, the primary care services. We cannot meaningfully address the crisis in assessments of need in the absence of a reckoning with that context and without acknowledging the undeniable fact that primary care services had been under-resourced for years prior to the HSE recruitment embargo of 2023 and 2024 and the pay-and-numbers strategy, both of which have impacted so drastically on those services. The pay-and-numbers strategy continues to prevent primary care services from rebuilding to a level where they can meaningfully be seen to provide a timely adequate service.”
“There has been a "take cities out of CETA" campaign, which has seen 89 Canadian municipalities pass resolutions either expressing concern or demanding to be excluded from CETA's provisions. Civil society, environmental movements, farming communities and trade unions across Canada and Europe have concerns about CETA. It is not limited to Ireland. I call on the Government to allow the public to decide by referendum whether or not to accept CETA and whether to accept an investor court system. There is precedent as other courts were brought in through referendums. We all know the Government will not do this as it would not win such a referendum. The only reasonable course of action for this House now is to reject the Bill and not ratify CETA or any trade deal that would open up the Irish taxpayer to claims from foreign investors.”
“It would not give Irish courts any meaningful say over investor court awards nor prevent their enforcement. The investor courts will be under no obligation to adhere to Irish or EU law in adjudicating claims. Worryingly, this Bill would allow the Government to sign up to more investor courts in other trade agreements in the future. I would also like to point out it is not just in Ireland that opposition exists to CETA. In Canada, seven of the largest trade unions have called for it to be rejected. Some 450 civil society organisations, farmers' organisations and trade unions across Europe and Canada signed a statement calling for CETA's outright rejection.”
“Another is upset and seeking financial compensation after an exploration licence was not granted for Corrib south off the coast of Mayo. Returning to the Supreme Court decision in 2022, it was suggested that the amendments to the Arbitration Act could be passed to ensure the constitutionality of CETA ratification, although not all judges agreed. One judge, Mr. Justice Charleton, argued that doing so would not be effective and would be in contradiction with the terms of CETA and the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. He called it a contraindication of CETA itself. The Bill before us does not seek to explain how it overcomes these concerns. The Bill also does not address concerns over the transfer of vital elements of the State's sovereignty to institutions unaccountable to the Irish legal system.”
“The company involved has now taken a case based on the loss of its potential profits. Last year, in the Netherlands, Exxon Mobil launched a case in an investor court demanding billions in reparations based on a government decision to phase out gas exploration. There are already examples of Canadian companies taking such cases against European countries. In Romania, for instance, a Canadian company is suing for $4 billion over the denial of permit to establish an open cast gold mine in Transylvania, a UNESCO world heritage site. Ireland reportedly faces two claims in investor courts under the Energy Charter Treaty. One company is seeking damages of €100 million after an application for a lease on an oilfield off the coast of Cork was refused in 2023.”
“The Government has failed to address the Supreme Court's concerns and reflect on whether we want to be part of an investor court system at all or its implications. The investor courts in CETA would allow corporations to sue for unearned income based on the perception of losses due to new state policies or regulations. It would allow these large corporations to leapfrog domestic and EU courts and take cases against the Government when they feel their profits are impacted. Ireland would be left to face potential lawsuits for seeking to introduce laws to promote public health or to protect the environment, biodiversity or workers' rights. We do not have to look too far to see the detrimental effects of investor courts. The UK currently faces a claim after its high court ruled against a proposed coal mine in Cumbria on climate grounds.”
“The Government is cynically pushing for full ratification of CETA. I ask colleagues on the Government backbenches if they really know what they are signing up to with this Bill. This decision will be incredibly difficult to reverse. There is a huge amount at stake in allowing investor courts and little to no upside for the Irish people. We have not seen this Bill go through pre-legislative scrutiny where we could have aired the legally complex details that arose from the Supreme Court decision in 2022 which found the investor courts aspect of CETA would be incompatible with the Constitution. We have had no opportunity to discuss the consequences of how CETA would transfer vital elements of the State's sovereignty to external institutions unaccountable to the Irish legal system.”
“Investor courts are a serious threat to progressive public policy. They cast an ominous cloud over climate action at a time when climate action has never been more urgent or consequential. Ratifying CETA would see the introduction of investor courts that bring no benefit to the Irish people but allow foreign companies to extract money from the Irish taxpayer based on their perceived loss of profits. The Government is blindly walking down a path. Passing the Bill would see us introduce an investor court system when countries around the world are moving in the opposite direction, for good reason, recognising how detrimental investor courts can be to progressive government action. When other countries are actively trying to leave investor court systems, it makes no sense for Ireland to sign up to one.”
“The crisis in assessments of need is part of a broader crisis in disability and primary care services and it stems from years of Government neglect, failure to invest and failure to plan. This under-resourcing has created a feedback loop whereby the services are now struggling to retain staff when they do advertise jobs because they have become so difficult to work in, with out-of-control waiting lists. What we need now is proper workforce planning with a clear staffing target per population across these services and a comprehensive recruitment drive.”
“I want to pay tribute to Cara Darmody's determination on the assessments of need crisis and welcome Cara and her dad, Mark, here today. There are now over 18,000 children whose assessment of need is overdue. The Government is spending many millions of euro fighting in the courts some of these families who are trying to have their right to an assessment of need upheld. At the same time, the Government is imposing recruitment restrictions on the very services in primary care where many of these children should be seen quickly for assessment, followed by timely intervention. This is an absurd way to provide services. What we need is an extension of the right to an assessment of need to also become a right to intervention.”
“I am not expressing some fringe opinion. The health committee was unanimous in supporting the counselling and psychotherapy representative groups and the session included some strong and insightful contributions from the Taoiseach's party colleagues, including Senator Costello. Will the Government immediately pause the CORU process, bring representative bodies and practitioners into full consultation and commit to reforms that prioritise client safety and high professional standards?”
“There was a health committee session last week on the regulation of counselling and psychotherapy. In standards it has published, CORU has adopted a position that is entirely at odds with the main representative groups of those disciplines, which will reduce supervision requirements and remove mandatory personal therapy for trainees. These changes, if implemented, will degrade professional standards and undermine patient safety. CORU is showing a remarkable level of intransigence on these fundamentals of safe practice. Practitioners and representative bodies have warned that the proposals could also jeopardise recognition and mobility across the EU for counsellors and psychotherapists. We must protect high-quality training, preserve public confidence and ensure regulation strengthens, not weakens, these services.”
“Acclaimed novelist Sally Rooney has been prevented from collecting a prestigious Sky Arts award in person due to fears of arrest for her support of Palestine Action. Great-grandmother Máire Ní Mhurchú, originally from Douglas in Cork, was arrested in London in September, along with her sisters Gráinne and Olga, for a peaceful protest against genocide. When the Taoiseach met Keir Starmer, did he raise with him his government's aggressive and authoritarian approach to peaceful protest and its impact on Irish as well as British citizens?”
“When I asked the Taoiseach about flood relief for east Cork villages last week, he accused me of being sly in how I had raised the question. That adjective could be more fairly levelled at his British counterpart, Keir Starmer, who built his political career on the basis of being a human rights lawyer and unifier of the left. In power, he has enthusiastically supported the imprisonment of people for years who protest against climate inaction, along with the designation of protesters of genocide as terrorists. I fully appreciate that the UK makes its own political decisions and that we have to maintain good relations with political leaders with whom we often might have major disagreements, but it is also true that Irish citizens are affected by Starmer’s authoritarian crackdown on peaceful protests.”
“This is just one example of how the UK’s designation of Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation begins to seep into every corner of society and constrains the right of Irish citizens as well as British citizens to speak the truth at this darkest time in our history. What meaningful engagement does the Minister plan to have with her UK counterpart about the UK Government's treatment and prosecution of members of Palestine Action? Will the Minister push for the UK Government to end its designation of the group as a terror organisation?”
“The acclaimed and best-selling Irish author, Sally Rooney, was unable to collect her recent Sky Arts award for literature in person as she did not feel safe entering the UK due to the risk of arrest for her public support of Palestine Action. She has even had to cancel all future public engagements in the UK and has expressed concerns that because of her intention to support Palestine Action financially, the availability of her books in the UK could be affected. One of the leading Irish authors of our time does not now feel she can enter the UK because of her support for a group protesting genocide.”
“Volker Türk, said that the UK Government’s designation is “disturbing” and “disproportionate and unnecessary”, while the Council of Europe, Europe’s human rights watchdog, criticised the “excessive limits” it places on the right to protest. Does the Minister plan to raise the protection of the right to protest when she next engages with her UK counterpart?”
“The UK Government has, in an Orwellian inversion of truth, conflated protest against genocide with terrorism through its proscription of the Palestine Action group, placing it, absurdly, on the same blacklist as organisations such as al-Qaeda and ISIS. Since the Palestine Action group has been designated a terrorist organisation, at least 2,300 people have been arrested according to the group Defend Our Juries, and a large proportion of these arrests took place at peaceful, sit-in protests in public areas across August and September of this year. Those arrested have included young students, teachers, pensioners and even an 83-year-old retired vicar. The United Nations human rights chief, Mr.”
“Has the Minister, her immediate predecessor or anyone in her Department engaged with the UK authorities regarding the Palestine Action group, which was proscribed as a terrorist organisation by the UK Government in July? The group was blacklisted for instigating a number of direct action protests against weapons manufacturers involved in selling arms to Israel in the context of its campaign of genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza against the civilian population there since October 2023.”
“Ladysbridge and Whitegate also flooded in October 2023, yet they are not even mentioned by the Government as being considered for flood relief. Why are there no timeframes for the protection of these villages, more than two years on from Storm Babet?”
“Yesterday, residents of Mogeely, Castlemartyr, Killeagh and Rathcormac presented to the Oireachtas petitions committee on the infuriating lack of progress on flood relief for their villages. When I raised their situation with the Taoiseach in late October, he responded in an almost disdainful tone, as if I was asking a naive question. He said: "The Midleton flood relief scheme is a complicated scheme. The Deputy must be aware [of this]." I was not talking about the Midleton flood relief scheme. I am fully aware of the scale and complexity of that project. It is far too late in the making but at least it is moving towards a planning process and we have some idea of the timeframe for it. Incredibly, however, there is no indication from the Government as to when works will begin to protect Mogeely, Killeagh, Castlemartyr and Rathcormac.”
“In recent times we have seen an alarming escalation in racist violence against immigrants and minority communities both North and South of this island. According to An Garda Síochána statistics, race crimes and related incidents rose by 24% between 2021 and 2024. There were similar increases in such crimes in the North between July 2024 and June of this year. Amnesty International has described this period in the North as "a year of hate and fear". There is a striking similarity of experiences of minorities both North and South in respect of these increased threats. There is also clear potential to collaborate on an all-island basis. What initiatives are under way or planned to help support integration through communities North and South to help them learn from each other in terms of best practice?”
“In recent months, there has been a reprieve from a full-scale outage but water pressure remains very low and there is no clear timeframe on the extent of works required to resolve the issue. Short-term fixes will no longer cut it for Ballyhooly. When are we going to see movement on this essential project that will allow the village to thrive?”
“I know the Taoiseach will reject the claim that rural Ireland is being left behind by his Government but many residents of the village of Ballyhooly in my constituency beg to differ. They have good reason to. The very basic need for a consistent supply of water to drink, bathe in or use in appliances such as dishwashers and showers has been denied to them for many years. Residents in Ballyhooly have to deal with extremely low water pressure alternating with a non-existent supply of water for prolonged periods. This has hit people with chronic illness, disability and age-related care needs the hardest. It has also severely impacted the local school and farming community.”
“To continue appeasing these thugs and terrorists is morally bankrupt. I do not know Senator Black has maintained such a level of diplomatic calm and civility with this Government and the previous two Governments over all these years of deceit and deflection. It is a disgrace how you have treated her as the lead campaigner on this Bill; how you have taken such a haughty, moral-high-ground position of Ireland having done more for the Palestinians than any other country; and how you have allowed our democratic process to be interfered with by a rogue state for the past six years. The Government needs to pass the legislation, include goods and services, and stop the deceit.”
“The sound legal basis of this Bill has been established by a range of Irish and international experts, among them the former justice Minister and Attorney General, Senator Michael McDowell, who is not known for being on the radical left. The foreign affairs committee recommended the inclusion in the Bill of goods and services. How can you continue to argue against it, and to delay and dilute it, as Palestinians in the West Bank are subjected to unprecedented cycles of abuse and harassment from extremist settlers? Property in the West Bank is routinely ransacked, demolished or taken over; families are terrorised off their land; farm animals are mutilated; and olive plantations are razed to the ground. All of this after Gaza has been destroyed with psychopathic relish by the Israeli army.”
“I commend People Before Profit on its motion. The obstruction of the Occupied Territories Bill for the past six years since it was passed by a majority of TDs has shown up the utter hypocrisy of the Government when it speaks of the rule of international law, of the sanctity of human rights and of the importance of protecting our democracy from interference by nefarious regimes such as Russia. There was a cynical show of support for the Bill to win votes in advance of the general election last year followed by the rubbishing of the Bill by the Taoiseach, who said immediately afterwards that "virtually every section" of the Bill would need to be amended. This is a Bill his own party introduced to the Dáil in 2019 on behalf of Senator Black.”
“What is the Taoiseach’s plan to address this particular crisis in residential services for people with intellectual disabilities? Why are these services being privatised and fragmented to such an extent when the outcomes in many cases are so poor for our disabled citizens and when the cost to the State is so enormous?”
“The plight of ageing parents of adult children with intellectual disabilities is an area of abject neglect on the part of the Government. Many of these parents are being deprived of peace of mind in their later years because they remain the primary carers of their children. They are less physically able to carry out this role as time goes on. They are living with a constant background worry of not knowing where their children will live after they die and how their need for belonging and community will be met. The Government’s privatisation of services means that both young people and adults who require 24-hour staffed residential support are increasingly living far from home, in some cases hundreds of kilometres away, not connected to wrap-around services, detached from their communities and families.”
“All of this political reaction is designed to show the Government is tough on migration and to win back votes. It is leading our country down a dark path of scapegoating refugees and asylum seekers. What is the Government's actual long-term plan with regard to international protection? Is the Catherine Day report of 2020 going to gather dust indefinitely or will it be implemented?”
“In recent weeks, some of the responses from the Government to the challenges in the international protection system include: offering families €10,000 to withdraw their asylum applications, thereby implying that they are a nuisance to be got rid of with cash; announcing plans to charge asylum seekers for what, in many cases, is substandard accommodation directly after an attack on an IPAS centre in Drogheda, a measure which is estimated to cost more to implement than any revenue it will generate; congratulating Independent Ireland on drawing unfounded links between increased knife crime and inward migration following the horrific crime that occurred at an IPAS centre in Saggart; and cynically stating that migrant numbers are too high after the drubbing it received in the presidential election.”
“The crisis has been drastically worsened by the HSE recruitment embargo in 2023 and 2024 and similar restrictions since, through the Government's pay and numbers strategy, a reality the Taoiseach previously denied in Leaders’ Questions. This primary care crisis is affecting all disciplines in all areas of the country, despite Simon Harris’ contention in mid-2024 that it was isolated to psychology services in Cork and Kerry. Where is the workforce planning and the comprehensive recruitment drive to address it?”
“The crisis in primary care services for young people was back in the news again this week. It took persistent follow-up to parliamentary questions from me earlier this year to reveal its scale. The fact is that children throughout the country were routinely waiting several and sometimes many years, not just for psychology but for occupational therapy, speech and language therapy and physiotherapy. The longest wait in Dublin North-West for psychology has reduced from 13.5 years to ten years in recent months. It is an incredible picture of Government failure to engage in proper workforce planning and recruitment of necessary staff.”
“One of the hunger strikers – Mary Dunlevy Greene, originally from Kilteely, County Limerick - told me the main aim of the supports they are seeking is to be able to die with dignity as most survivors are already advanced in years and are suffering with health conditions related to chronic childhood adversity. You cannot get more stark than that. Will the Minister assure us that we will see those agreements confirmed in writing with the utmost sense of urgency?”
“Four survivors of our hellish industrial school system remain on hunger strike outside Leinster House in an effort to obtain very modest financial and medical assistance for a cohort of about 4,500 people who have been profoundly harmed and neglected by the State. They have been left without written confirmation of what was agreed in a meeting with the Taoiseach and the Minister, Deputy McEntee, last week. I understand a meeting with an intermediary has been postponed until tomorrow. Meanwhile, they are into the 45th day of their hunger strike. Their physical health is in serious peril.”
“We need ring-fenced investment in culturally appropriate, Traveller-led mental health services, designed in collaboration with the Traveller community; the recruitment of dedicated Traveller mental health workers into primary care and community mental health teams; and crucially, we need to update the national dataset on Traveller health in general with clear targets, timelines and accountability mechanisms. I echo Deputy Byrne's endorsement of the Samaritans and the really invaluable work that they do. I was a volunteer with the Samaritans for a number of years in my 20s and I found it to be one of the most formative and fulfilling experiences, particularly working with young offenders in St. Patrick's in Dublin.”
“We also know that 59% of Traveller men reported poor mental health in any given month, and that was within a context of persistent discrimination, educational disadvantage, poor housing or accommodation and high unemployment. I have some experience as a psychologist working with young Traveller men in the Cork mental health services, and I found that experience very rewarding. It clarified to me that the services need to adapt much better to the Travelling community and, in some cases, adopt more of an assertive outreach approach that goes outside a standard therapeutic frame. I very much welcome the establishment of the specialist group for Traveller mental health under Sharing the Vision, and I commend the aims of the national Traveller health action plan. It is important that the Government matches words with real implementation.”
“I thank the Minister of State for her attendance. I would like to use my time today to highlight the particular and very serious mental health challenges experienced by Traveller men. While the data on mental health outcomes for the Travelling community is in urgent need of updating, we know from the comprehensive All-Ireland Traveller Health Study of 2010 that, at that stage, Traveller men were at much higher risk of death by suicide than probably any other cohort of people in our society. The study showed that suicide accounted for a staggering 11% of all deaths in the Traveller community and 82% of Traveller suicides were among men. Suicide rates among Traveller men are estimated to be six to seven times higher than among settled men.”
“There is a very febrile atmosphere out there for refugees and asylum seekers. It is incumbent on us to be very careful with our words in here in order that we do not inflame tensions further. It was remiss of the Taoiseach, as leader of the country, not to take issue with the narrative that was put to him in some of those questions. He was practically ingratiating in response to Deputy Michael Fitzmaurice when the latter made that narrative very clear. That is something the Taoiseach really needs to push back on.”
“I was going to ask a question about the presence of Russian assets in Ireland and reparations to Ukraine, but I want to raise the manner in which some questions were put to the Taoiseach during Leaders' Questions about the terrible crime against a child that happened at an IPAS centre in Saggart yesterday. There was a clear conflation made between delayed deportations and risks to children in some of those questions. That is a dangerous narrative to put out.”