Pádraig Mac Lochlainn
Donegal · Sinn Féin · Ireland
“In recent days, First Minister Michelle O'Neill visited Letterkenny Chamber of Commerce. Present were the heads of Donegal County Council, Atlantic Technological University, Donegal ETB and a range of employers and businesses from across the county.”
“The opportunity to progress towards a united Ireland is incredibly exciting. It is an opportunity to reimagine our island and its potential. David McWilliams wrote in recent years about the impact of partition on the North of Ireland. Some 100 years ago, Belfast was larger than Dublin.”
“There are many challenges and issues but the easiest one is going to be the economic benefits of a united Ireland. They will be immense, particularly for the northern half of the island. As an eminent economist said, if the North of Ireland can perform at the level of counties Cork and Kerry alone, there will be no issues.”
“In recent weeks, the Taoiseach talked about the importance of the Minister of State with responsibility for the marine. However, incredibly, it is the Minister for agriculture who will address the European Parliament's committee on fisheries today.”
“That would give a clear message that the Taoiseach is serious about giving the Department of marine and the Minister of State with responsibility for the marine independence to speak and fight for our people, rather than the Minister for agriculture, who could not possibly know anything about these matters.”
“Nationalism is united on this issue. We are asking for responsible preparation, a Green Paper and a citizens' assembly to make the plan and the case. The Taoiseach says that he is an Irish republican and a united-Irelander, then he should make the case and have a plan. That is what nationalism wants.”
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“As he was coming before the committee, the Minister of State will not have had a chance to hear the contributions from the fish producer organisations and the representative of the Irish Fish Processors and Exporters Association. In all of my time, I have never seen it worse. I have been in politics for 23.5 years, representing the fishing communities around me. In all those years, I have never seen a worse situation presented. The term "economic Armageddon" was used today. Every single witness said this is the worst scenario they could ever have thought of. Why is that? Over 1 million tonnes - I had to read that again to make sure I was right - of mackerel above what was recommended in the scientific advice have been caught. Unbelievable recklessness and greed have led us to this. It has to stop.”
“The Minister of State and I had an extensive engagement at the fisheries committee earlier today. These proposals are devastating. There is a 70% cut to the recommended mackerel TAC, 41% for blue whiting and 22% for boarfish while a zero TAC is recommended for cod, haddock and whiting. I would like to engage with the Minister of State on the Government's plan.”
“It is such an egregious offence to people in Mayo, Sligo, Leitrim, Clare and Limerick, and in my home county of Donegal. It is second-class citizenship. I am appealing to the Government to urgently look at the mistakes of this scheme to see how cruel it is. Thousands of council houses are also affected but there is no plan for them. In my home county, most tenants in private housing and all tenants in public housing have no pathway. They are living in utterly dangerous homes. They have a scheme that is dysfunctional. They are left at the mercy of the market where builders can just name their price. This is a deep injustice. I am appealing to the Government now because it misled the people of Ireland. There is no 100% redress and there is no justice. It needs to change urgently.”
“Their mortgage now will be 21 years at €1,800 a month. That is what 100% redress looks like in the west of Ireland. Micheál Martin is an absolute disgrace. There is no additional money provided in this budget for the defective blocks scheme that reflects anything like the €3 billion he boasted of. He misled people in the west of Ireland. He gave the impression that they would get genuine justice, just as home owners in Dublin and Leinster rightly got 100% redress. Those 3,000 home owners who suffered the affliction of pyrite got 100% redress. I have given the Minister an example of what is happening, by contrast, in the west of Ireland. When houses are being rebuilt, I ask the Government not to insult people by saying it has stepped up.”
“I want to talk about the defective blocks grant scheme that is being made available to home owners in the west of Ireland. The Taoiseach, Micheál Martin, stated that the scheme would be the biggest redress scheme in the history of the State. He said it would be over €3 billion. He told home owners in the west of Ireland that they would get €500,000 each, the biggest redress scheme in the history of the State. That was nonsense. I want to share a story. I met a family recently on a site where they had just demolished their home. They were absolutely traumatised. Their home was about the size of an average detached house in rural Ireland. They will be €200,000 short of redress. That is €200,000. They had a mortgage left of six years, which was €900 per month. That is what they had left on their mortgage.”
“When we have inaction and complicity again and again internationally, Israel believes it can attack boats with human rights activists in international waters. This is why it believes it can get away with it every time. This is a moment for action. This is a moment when a message is sent clearly. We have seen people queueing up for food, starving to death, who were murdered by the Israeli state. Is it any wonder that human rights activists are insisting they deliver the aid directly to the people in Gaza? Who could trust the Israeli state when it murders starving people, men, women and children queueing for food? What level of obscenity will it get to before we take actual action? This is the context for having 22 Irish citizens and 300 human rights activists from around the world in a flotilla. We need concrete action from our Government.”
“There have been eight decades of oppression, occupation and apartheid. Today there are six million Palestinian refugees throughout the Middle East. There are 750,000 Israeli settlers in illegal settlements. These are war crimes under international law. Israel ignored it. Apartheid has been defined by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. It is clearly apartheid and the world ignored it. Again and again, the world turned away. It took a genocide of the scale we are seeing in Gaza for our State to officially recognise the Palestinian people. It took a genocide for us to do this. How many delays have we seen to Senator Frances Black's legislation on the occupied territories and Deputy Brady's similar legislation?”
“I welcome the joint motion that will be dealt with later today. However, hundreds of human rights activists, including 22 Irish citizens, one of whom, Senator Chris Andrews, is a Member of the Houses, are heading to Gaza right now. There is every possibility of intervention from the Israeli State. This has concerned many Governments, which have sent their naval vessels to the area.”
“The policy approach is always about who is inside the tent and has the resources to influence policy, and we pay the price. I say again we had publicly owned electricity infrastructure which was our pride as a people. It was given away, put in the hands of the wealthy few and this is where we are today. None of this is by accident. It is on the Government to resolve this. It must bring in electricity credits in the budget and, once and for all, get a grip on the energy companies and the handfuls of people making huge profits at the expense of our people and leaving 300,000 families unable to pay their bills. A very high percentage of those have now gone over nine months without being able to pay their bills. That is the outworking of failed policies. The Government needs to own them, take responsibility and sort it out.”
“There are over 20 turbines on that hill; half of them are switched off during the day because we do not have the electricity infrastructure to avail of wind energy. What was it about? It was about making profits for the people who developed those wind farms, not about reducing costs for our people. The potential of wind energy is huge. If Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael had worked in partnership with communities and ensured ownership stayed as much as possible within communities, we would be benefitting hugely from that today. Those are the facts. Again and again, those parties' intentional policies have put huge profits in the pockets of the few and caused huge difficulties for the rest of us. Our homeowners and small businesses are paying for what data centres should be fairly contributing towards.”
“Where did it all go wrong? We built up a publicly owned electricity service that was the pride of our people. We built up electrification when we were a poor country and we had some of the cheapest electricity in Europe. Thanks to the policies of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, that all now lies in ruins. Those parties embraced the privatisation agenda from Europe with glee. They sold the family jewels and today we have the most expensive electricity in all of Europe. That happened not by accident but by design. When it came to wind energy, it was all about the profits of the few, the insiders. Communities saw turbines popping up around them. These turbines should ensure electricity is cheaper but I will tell the Minister of State a story. In recent weeks, I went to a hill above my home town.”
“They are not agreed. Every week when the Business Committee meets, I have raised the issue of defective concrete blocks. A year ago, the Government stated that it would extend the increase in the cap to everybody going through the scheme. How on earth has it not produced the legislation to date? It is cruel. People are struggling to find tens of thousands of euro. I met someone the other day for whom the gap is €200,000. They had a six-year mortgage; they will now have a 19-year mortgage. Their mortgage has doubled. That so-called 100% redress in the west of Ireland compares with 100% redress for pyrite in the east. How dare the Minister say that the Government has stepped up and done what is right.”
“It is going be an awful situation where extended family will be physically attacked and nobody can help, either with psychiatric assistance or respite. That is the reality on the ground and it has to change.”
“They are in such a crisis and they can get no help, no psychiatric assistance and there is none going to be there for the foreseeable future. There is another almost identical situation with another family. It was two separate families, two separate meetings, and they have had to lock off access to their surrounding family who live nearby because they cannot get respite support. I cannot understand how we end up in this situation. I have said this so often over the years. If you ask people whether they would mind their money being spent on children with disabilities, I do not know anybody who would. Imagine being locked in your own home and being unable to leave because your child is disabled.”
“My colleagues have summarised the situation well. Plans are well and good, but we need to see fundamental change on the ground. I will share a few personal stories from Donegal where, unfortunately, the failure to recruit a range of professionals has led to appalling outcomes for children with disabilities and their parents. Right now, for children who require psychiatric assistance and medication, it is not available to those who have an intellectual disability. It is just not there. If this child had medication, they would be able to have a manageable life at home. Without the medication, it is, sadly, a nightmare for the family. I spoke to a family who are completely isolated from social events and their wider family.”
“Not agreed. Energy companies are lining up to fleece customers again. There will be big increases after increases. The Government is steadfastly refusing to introduce an energy credit again in the budget. We need an urgent debate in this house about its failure to get a grip on the energy companies fleecing customers and on the wider cost-of-living crisis. We need an urgent debate on why the Government is refusing to introduce energy credits in the budget. This should happen preferably today, but certainly tomorrow it needs to happen.”
“No. Six months on, this really is a do-nothing Government. Hundreds of families in Donegal and the west of Ireland have waited ten months for it to honour its promise to bring in a simple amendment to legislation to ensure the increase in the cap for defective block homeowners applies to people already in the scheme. That means they cannot make the final payments to builders. The Government is now pushing the issue on for two more months. A simple amendment any legislator here could have done in hours is all that is needed. The Government has not honoured this for ten months. It is a do-nothing Government. It is outrageous how the Government has treated those homeowners.”
“I am very proud to join in this renewed effort along with Deputies Ward and Guirke. I welcome to the Public Gallery the McGill Lynch family, whom I worked with in the past, and also Jim and Vera Connell, who have joined them. Jim and Vera are here because the issue has not gone away. There was a missed opportunity when I introduced this legislation as a Senator. The Government said it had advice from the Attorney General but it did not offer an alternative. The issue is that people are dying – in this case, young people who have been given medication that has led to their deaths. The core issue is that they are not responsible for their own deaths. The medication they were given is responsible. There must be recourse in law for that.”
“No. There is a story on RTÉ today about the 257 post offices that have closed in the past ten years. Of them, 56 were in towns and cities. This is not just a rural issue. We need to have statements and for the Minister to come in. We know from the Irish Postmasters' Union that the existence of 40% of the remaining post offices is threatened unless the Government provides serious support for that sector. We need to have statements and questions and answers. We need an actual future for post offices, and not more of the same.”
“It is really long overdue that they did the right thing. I ask the Minister of State to strongly convey the view, with which both sides of the House would agree, that this has to stop and be resolved.”
“I am mindful that the previous Scottish First Minister, Ms Nicola Sturgeon, according to reports in The Guardian newspaper, was trying to resolve this issue. Ultimately, it is a jurisdictional issue and the British Government has probably been let off the hook on this. The fisheries element of the TCA was recently extended by 12 years. That is very problematic because it locks down the loss of fisheries. I know the Minister of State is going to work to improve those quotas as a result but I would have thought this issue should have been resolved as part of that agreement at the time. This is bad faith, particularly by the Whitehall Government, but the Scottish Government has been a disappointment on this issue, too. They know these are our traditional fishing grounds and are very important to a fishing industry that is struggling.”
“At some point, if the British Government will not do what is right, we have to look at international arbitration. It is outrageous that this has gone on for so long.”
“I apologise for being a little late and thank my colleague, Deputy Conor McGuinness, for introducing my question. I appreciate that the Minister of State is new to his role but my difficulty is that what he has just read out was said to me again and again by the previous Minister for agriculture, Deputy McConalogue. This is an uninhabited rock and there is just no basis under international law for what the British are doing. It has cost millions of euro every year, not just for fishermen in Donegal, Greencastle and Killybegs, but all the way down to Castletownbere. Fishermen from around Ireland are affected. It is outrageous action. Basically, there is a blockade around the rock and threats to people's livelihoods for fishing in their traditional grounds.”
“Will the Minister please promise us now, prior to the recess, that the legislation to allow for all homeowners in the scheme to avail of the increase in the cap, so they have a fighting chance of at least making up something towards 100% redress, will happen? There are two more weeks to go. It is absolutely essential that the legislation is introduced.”
“As the Minister knows, the victims of the pyrite scandal in the east coast of Ireland, comprising 3,000 families, rightly received 100% redress. In the west of Ireland we did not get this. Worse, nine months ago the Government looked at the Society of Chartered Surveyors Ireland rates and increased the cap but this was for people who were new entrants. Hundreds of families are being denied more than €40,000. They cannot make the final payments to their builders. This has been going on for nine months. The Government said it would sort it out nine months ago. Every week I am told we will have the legislation.”
“I will reiterate that we are not playing the game of divide and conquer. Sligo, the north west, Donegal and all of us deserve this. There is an absolutely unique case now for a surgical hub in Letterkenny and Sligo to be delivered at exactly the same time to have the quality of services our people deserve, to protect what we have and to protect our emergency services. This is where it is at. We need that clarity between the Minister for Health and Deputy Harkin and a public statement of clarification. If it is two surgical hubs that is fine but the Government should not play divide and conquer. It needs to get its act together on this issue.”
“This could not be more serious. As the Minister of State will know from his Government colleagues, we have been told this very clearly. These doctors and consultants have said publicly on local radio that our emergency services could be lost. Imagine us losing an emergency department in Letterkenny University Hospital. That is how serious our surgical services have gotten to. We are down to three permanent surgeons; it was six not that long ago. We cannot attract the level of surgeons we need. If the Minister decides the surgical hub for the north-west is in one place, Sligo, it is just a death knell. It is extremely serious. I have never seen 171 doctors, consultants and GPs, sign a letter. I do not know anywhere in this State where this has happened. That is how serious this is.”
“We want clarity, following the intervention from Deputy Harkin, that a deal has not been done, there will be fairness for the people of Donegal, all of the doctors and consultants will be listened to and the facts and evidence on the ground about population numbers and demand will be listened to. The final message is this. We, in Donegal, will not be neglected anymore. This is a cross-party matter now. We will not accept second-class citizenship. This issue has united us like no other health matter has done before. It needs to be sorted out. We need clarity today that we are going to get fairness in all of this.”
“The Minister for Health, Deputy Carroll MacNeill, is very aware of that and I thank her for engaging at the meeting last night. We need to have absolute clarity today that no deal has been done on this. To be clear, in Donegal we are not into divide and conquer. We want Sligo and Letterkenny to have a surgical hub. We want all of the people to be treated the same. We want equal services for all of our people. The HSE has pulled services away into Galway and neglected Donegal for a long time but we are not turning this into a Sligo versus Donegal issue. We want a surgical hub and equal access for all our people.”
“All we are asking for in Donegal is fair play. We are not asking for special treatment; we are asking that our citizens do not have to travel long distances for care that should be provided in their own community. We are asking that our emergency services not be allowed to collapse and that we have the necessary number of surgeons and consultants in Letterkenny University Hospital. If there is to be only one surgical hub for the north-west region, a huge region extending from the top of Donegal down into Roscommon, I imagine, and that hub is not in Letterkenny, it will be a disaster for County Donegal and our services. Those are not my words but those of the consultants. A presentation made to TDs was extremely concerning.”
“No. Last Friday, on Highland Radio, the Minister of State, Deputy Marian Harkin, stated that she secured a surgical hub for Sligo University Hospital as part of the Lowry Independents' negotiations for Government. In Donegal, we have been standing together to look at a surgical hub. Our services are in absolute crisis and our emergency Department is threatened. Will the Minister clarify if a deal has been done with the Lowry Independents for Sligo University Hospital to have a surgical hub? Is the Government seriously looking at a surgical hub in Letterkenny?”
“What an exciting opportunity that would be - a President for which all Irish citizens would have a stake. That is what we are asking for.”
“The Minister of State is a rugby fan. When people go to a rugby game, Ireland players stand together but some of them cannot vote for their President. Some of the international hockey team cannot vote for their President if they are from the North of Ireland. Down, Tyrone and Armagh have been down in Croke Park and won the all-Ireland on our biggest day of the year but their players cannot vote for the President. Players from clubs from the North of Ireland that won the club championships in Gaelic football, hurling and camogie cannot vote. How long will this go on? It is outrageous. We ask the Government to bring in this legislation in line with the constitutional wishes of the assembly that gathered and for our people who are forced away to allow them to have this connection to elect a President.”
“Where I live gives me a unique insight into the failure we have seen over the past decade. The Inishowen Peninsula has seen so many of our people emigrate, forced to go to England and the United States back in the day and more recently to Australia, Canada and the Middle East. That is the story of my peninsula and my county. Just half an hour away is Derry city, an Irish city with Irish citizens who are deeply proud of their part in our country. The Fleadh Cheoil was there a few years ago. I think of all those from the North of Ireland who have won Olympic medals, such as Michael Conlan, Wayne McCullough and Paddy Barnes in boxing, Daniel Wiffen, who recently won gold and bronze medals in swimming, and Rhys McClenaghan, who won a gold medal. We all cheered them on. They cannot vote for their President.”
“No. As the Taoiseach knows, the victims of defective blocks in the west were not given 100% redress by the Government; however, the Government agreed nine months ago to increase the cap, but not for all homeowners. The Taoiseach said he would sort it out nine months ago. Hundreds of families are tens of thousands of euro short. They are struggling to make the final payments to builders, and builders are chasing those payments. Will the Taoiseach finally bring in the amendments to the legislation and sort this problem out once and for all?”
“The Chief Whip will have been party to an email from us regarding Committee and Remaining Stages of the Residential Tenancies (Amendment) Bill tomorrow evening. Sixty minutes just does not cut it. We are going to need two hours. I am asking that the Government allow two hours for that. Whatever way the Government does that, we need to have at least two hours.”
“This is an injustice. These are the conversations we need to have a European level. The word "patriotism" is bandied around these days and it is abused. To me it is about looking at every other country. Nobody is better than us and nobody is worse than us. We are all equal here. We are asking for a fair share of the fish in our waters and a Government that stands by our people. I wish the Minister of State well. If he takes that path he will have no criticism from me.”
“Laws do not work unless everybody follows them equally. Here, the law-breakers were rewarded with trade deals with the European Union. The Union was telling one thing to our Irish communities. For God's sake, we have a young girl here in Ireland who had to go to Europe about the fact that she could not fish pollock any more. That is really contested. Our inshore and islands people were forced and told it is zero catch for pollock. They have to fish for crab and lobster. Pollock was a vital part of that system of fish they catch throughout the year. They are having to abide by the rules and suffer the setback, but when it comes to Norway, Iceland and the Faroes there is huge investment from European member states like Holland. Dutch multinationals have put massive money into those states to recklessly overfish and there is no price to pay.”
“We have to have a conversation about it. We have had to decommission our fleet while other countries are investing in their fleet right now. We touched on this earlier today in the committee. We have countries like Iceland, Norway and the Faroe Islands. I have great admiration for the people of those countries in many ways, and the seafood industry that has been built in Norway. I am an admirer of the Norwegian people. However, this is wrong. They have not followed the science. They have overfished mackerel. Mackerel is a migratory species which spawns off the west coast of Ireland and works its way up the Atlantic. It is a shared, precious resource which does not belong to any one country. One set of people whose country and territory is part of that collective space, collective waters, overfished and ignored the science.”
“The Minister of State spoke about going to Europe and said that if we ask for bluefin tuna, somebody else has to give it up. Somebody else should not have got it in the first place. We have to have those honest conversations. These are our territorial waters. We have one of the most lucrative fish species in the world that gets fattened in our waters and is a predator fish. There is an armada of Japanese vessels catching them outside the 200 mile limit. Our guys can only catch and release; they can lift it and look at it but it has to be put back. It is derisory stuff. These are the conversations we need to have. European people, no matter what country they are from, are decent just like us. They have a sense of fairness just like us and know what is fair and unfair. We have 12% of European waters and get less than 6% of the fish.”
“It was pointed out to me in recent days that if all that was put together, we would be one of the biggest countries in the European Union. This is a huge resource that we have. Some 90% of the people in that survey said they feel that the industry has declined over the last ten years. Although they had the option, not one respondent said the industry had significantly improved over ten years. That is damning. Some 90% said they would not encourage their children to continue. This is intergenerational work, handed down. There was a documentary on RTÉ recently, "Tarrac na Farraige", which was beautiful but also tragic. We see this noble tradition at the heart of Irish culture that is just being allowed to wither. We have collectively failed as a country to get the full resource. We have to do so much better.”
“For the Minister of State starting off with a good heart, as he is doing, it is important to be honest about the problems we have and to acknowledge that we have a profound crisis. Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, some of which were touched on by the Minister of State, we have not been able to avail of the immense resource. In recent days the Minister of State will have been with the Taoiseach at the UN conference on oceans. The Taoiseach talked about one of the greatest marine resources in the world and what it brings but we are not getting anywhere near the full value of it in so many ways. I want to focus particularly on fisheries today. We have some of the richest fishing waters in Europe, if not the world, surrounding us. We have territorial waters that are seven times our land mass.”
“The Minister of State and I have had a number of engagements now in the Dáil and at the committee. I wish him well. That is a big understatement, actually. We have waited a long time for a dedicated Minister of State with responsibility for fisheries. It is vital that he does well for all of our fisheries and coastal communities. I am going to refer to a matter on the Dáil record. We had an exchange on it earlier at the committee. My colleague, Deputy Conor McGuinness, is Chair of the Oireachtas Committee on Fisheries and Maritime Affairs. We jointly launched our report into the survey which was carried out late last year. Hundreds of fishermen, workers and businesses in the seafood sector took part. It was a very representative survey around the coast. I am not shocked by the result, if I am being honest.”
“The Taoiseach will know the international activists on board the aid ship Madleen have been kidnapped in international waters and taken to Israel. Some have been deported and others will be deported, but at least they took action. All we hear from the Taoiseach are words. He said in the Dáil the Central Bank is not facilitating the sale of Israeli bonds. Will he correct the record? Will he support the motion coming through the Dáil tomorrow, reverse his position and at last take definable action in support of the Palestinian people?”
“One quarter of them died or were forced out of this country. That is our history. We must take a stand on behalf of the Irish people. We must do everything we can, whether it is enacting the occupied territories Bill or the Bill to ban Israeli bonds or passing this motion to have a UN peacekeeping group on the ground. Future generations will judge us. The Government cannot stick to the approach it has taken over recent years. We have now crossed the line where it is clear we are not dealing with rational people. We have to impose sanctions and take a stand as we did with South Africa. We led the way back then. Why are we not leading the way now?”
“A deeply disturbing opinion poll was recently published in the Haaretz newspaper of Israel. Some 82% of the Israeli public supports the ethnic cleansing of the 2 million people of Gaza from their homeland. This is an almost entirely refugee community. Furthermore, 65% support the biblical Amalek command that all men, women and children should be killed and cleared from the land. That is where we are at. It is utterly horrific and the world has stood idly by. It is unforgivable. In years to come, we in this Parliament will be asked what we did in response to this. It is not a time to talk about multilateral approaches with the rest of Europe. If other European countries are willing to accept the mass starvation of the people of Gaza, we cannot stand by. We know our history. We know what happened to our people.”
“The greatest memorial to their beloved son and brother will be that laws will change and people will be inspired to fight the system against all odds. No matter how long it takes, they will get justice because justice and righteousness are on their side.”
“It was heartfelt and comprehensive, as it needed to be, but any citizen who looks at the scale of the failure will see it is beyond belief, in respect of our bail system. The Minister is aware of the suspicion that this criminal, this evil man was a Garda informer and was protected by the very people who are supposed to protect us. This family was grievously failed. I am pleased there will be a monument to Shane's memory in the scholarship to UCD and I welcome that there will be legislative change, but the Irish people owe a debt of gratitude to the O'Farrell family. They have shone a light on the utter failures of our criminal justice system, how the parts do not talk to one another and how it sometimes protects evil people and fails us all.”
“My wife, Sinéad, worked with Mary Lou McDonald and, because of that, she worked with Lucia. As a mother, she really identified with the pain. Sinéad, like many Irish people, sends her deep love to Shane's family for everything they endured. They were failed twice. They lost their beloved son and brother due to an appalling litany of failure in our criminal justice system. It was wilful neglect and absolutely appalling beyond belief. They have to get up every day without him in their lives but then they were failed again because every door they knocked on was slammed. The answer to every question they asked was held back, delayed or procrastinated upon. I thank the Minister for his statement today.”
“I acknowledge the O'Farrell family, who are in our Distinguished Visitors Gallery. I acknowledge Lucia and Jim, Shane's parents, and Gemma, Pia, Aimee and Hannah, his beloved sisters. I first met Lucia and Jim many years ago here in Leinster House. I was serving as the Sinn Féin justice spokesperson at the time. I will never forget that meeting. Lucia had a framed picture of Shane. She took me through what had happened. At that point, it had happened in recent times. There was the grief of this family, who are a role model Irish family. They are hard-working and decent and they have done everything that you are supposed to do. I could see the profound injustice that was burning in Lucia and Jim. They have continued to inspire all of us who have met them over the years.”