Paul Murphy
Dublin South-West · People Before Profit-Solidarity · Ireland
“The Minister of State assured us we are bound by international law but then went on to talk about the fact that he wants to deploy troops outside the framework of international law. That is why the Government is getting rid of the triple lock. All the triple lock does is ensure that we only can send troops in line with international law.”
“The case for MetroLink south west is extremely strong. There are 350,000 people living between the Luas red and green lines. That is who will be served by this.”
“Hopefully the junior Minister will be able to clarify. The Minister, Deputy McEntee, said earlier to Deputy Ó Laoghaire, "The people I speak to do not like the fact that Russia has essentially removed, or will remove in the coming months, all our peacekeeping troops from UNIFIL".”
“I, too, want to ask about the senior Minister. This came up at the Dáil reform committee last week. It is very peculiar that a senior Minister is here and has answered previous questions on the triple lock today and then – no offence meant - we have the junior Minister answering these questions, which precisely prevents the continuation o…”
“Its defence is that we should not worry because the Government is only going to send them as part of an international force. I do not think anyone here thinks the Government is going to invade a country all by itself.”
“It is there in black and white in the programme for Government and the Government needs to live up to its commitment to do a new, properly independent feasibility study. I appeal to the Minister of State to ask the Minister for Transport to meet with the metro south west group which has been doing such excellent campaigning on this issue.”
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“People are not used to seeing pigs being farmed and running around on grass because they are inside for their entire lives. The only time they experience fresh air or sunlight is when they are being loaded onto a truck on the way to the slaughterhouse. No animal should be forced to live a life like that, but especially not intelligent, sociable animals like pigs. The Bill being introduced by People Before Profit today seeks to address some of the worst abuses in the pig industry. Section 1 bans the mutilation of pigs, including teeth clipping, tail docking and castration. Section 2 outlaws sow stalls and farrowing crates. When I asked the Department of agriculture in April if it would take action to ban sow stalls and farrowing crates, it passed the buck to the European Union.”
“Tail docking is supposed to be banned, but loopholes in the current law are so wide up to 95% of Irish pigs still have their tails docked. Sows were trapped in farrowing crates and sow stalls so narrow they could not turn around or move more than a few centimetres. This is to ensure they never get a moment's break from suckling the 15 piglets now born in each litter. Anyone who has breastfed a baby would wince at the torture of it. Litter sizes have increased from ten piglets in 2000 to 15 today because of genetic selection, again with no regard to sow welfare. The only concern seems to be for the number of pigs produced and the size of the profits to be made. Most pigs in Ireland spend their whole lives indoors from the moment they are born.”
“This Bill can be the next step for animal rights and animal welfare in this country. NARA and Animal Rebellion Ireland carried out two very important investigations last year into the kind of abhorrent practices going on in Irish pig farms every day. All the pig farms were selected at random and activists recorded extensive videos of the abuses. All of them, not one or two, showed pigs and piglets living in appalling conditions that are very hard for anyone to watch. The Department of agriculture has seen the footage because it has been sent to it, but there is no sign of it doing anything about it. Sick and dying pigs with open wounds and weeping, open sores were left to suffer and die in filthy conditions. Pigs had their tails painfully docked or cut off, right up to the root.”
“I move: That leave be granted to introduce a Bill entitled an Act to amend the Animal Health and Welfare Act 2013 to improve the welfare of pigs by prohibiting teeth-clipping, tail-docking and castration, limiting the use of tusk reduction and regulating sow stalls and farrowing crates. I start by thanking the National Animal Rights Association, NARA, especially Laura Broxson and Dr. Alice Brough. This important legislation could not have been drafted without their help. I also thank the many other campaigners and supporters in the Gallery from NARA, Animal Rebellion Ireland and My Lovely Horse Rescue. We had a lively protest in front of the Dáil earlier, which showed the strength of public opinion on this issue. We have banned fur farming and the use of wild animals in circuses.”
“I thank Deputy Ó Snodaigh and the campaigners on this issue. It is outrageous that there are still people today walking around with historical convictions for the so-called crime of being gay. The Government, of course, will say no one should be criminalised for consensual sexual activity, but a working group was set up to examine disregarding those convictions back in 2021 and still nothing has been done. The Minister has promised there will be heads of a Bill in due course, but due course in this case is decades overdue. Here we have an answer. This is not just a matter of righting an historical wrong; it is about sending a message at a time when LGBTQ rights are under attack in this country and globally that love is love and homosexuality is never a crime.”
“I support for the call for statements on Pride. I also call for a debate and a motion to be brought forward by the Government, if it wants us to sign up to this European armament programme called SAFE. It is part of ReArm Europe, and entails €150 billion worth of loans, effectively to be paid for by the public into the pockets of the armaments industry in Europe. It was announced on Friday that the Irish Government and State intends to participate, but it does not intend to bring it before the Dáil for a vote or a debate. Surely, at the very least, people should have the right to vote on whether we participate in this arms race.”
“We live in an upside down world where those who try to stop genocide are prosecuted for terrorism, where people who bravely went into Shannon Airport and tried to stop US warplanes are facing prosecution. With regard to those who are guilty of the terrorism, the ones who are raining the bombs down on the people of Gaza and shooting down people of Gaza queuing for food, those who fund, arm and politically support them, we are told, "No, they are not the terrorists. You are a terrorist if you try to stop it". I know which side I am on and I know which side will be vindicated by history but this Bill is a shameful attempt to criminalise effective protest.”
“Section 4 of this Bill also strengthens the criminalisation of training for terrorist activity or terrorist-linked activity. Alongside a long list of relevant instruction or training that includes training in firearms, explosives and chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, we find training "in techniques, methods, skills or technical knowledge" that enables someone else to "commit, or aid, abet, counsel or procure the commission of, a terrorist activity". Showing people in your local anti-water charges campaign how to pour cement into a water meter, training people in cyber activism, suggesting to people how they might get through the fences at Shannon Airport - all of that could now be classed as training for terrorism.”
“Under the Criminal Justice (Offences Relating to Information Systems) Act 2017, "Unlawful interference with information systems or data" is defined extremely broadly, to include "transmitting, damaging, deleting, altering or suppressing, or causing the deterioration of, data" on an information system, as well as "rendering data" on an information system "inaccessible". Redefining this not just as a crime but as a terrorist activity means that various forms of online activism, potentially including co-ordinated mass email campaigns that collapse servers or a mass reporting of social media posts, could now be defined as terrorist activity. If you express support for that or encourage people to take part in it, you can be charged with provoking terrorism.”
“to have actually been committed." Just saying online or at a public meeting that US warplanes should be sabotaged to stop them from arming the genocide in Gaza, even if that never happens, is now enough to get you locked up for terrorist-linked activity. Section 8 of the Bill is also extremely worrying. It adds " Unlawful interference with information systems or data " to the list of terrorist offences, where it is committed with the intention to "unduly compel a government or an international organisation to perform or abstain from performing any act".”
“The same would apply to someone tweeting in support of Palestine solidarity protestors throwing red paint at the Department of foreign affairs or damaging a US war plane at Shannon Airport en route to assist in genocide, and saying something like, "We need more direct action like this". Under this legislation, that would constitute glorifying "(including by praise or celebration) a terrorist activity", even if nothing happens, no more red paint is thrown, or no more warplanes are actually damaged. Section 4(3) of the Criminal Justice (Terrorist Offences) Act 2005, which remains unchanged by this Bill, states: "In determining whether an act is a terrorist-linked activity, it shall not be necessary for an offence...”
“The Government was forced to drop its draconian hate speech legislation; it must now be forced to drop this renewed attack on freedom of speech. Section 3 of this Bill opens the door to people being prosecuted for expressing solidarity with direct action carried out by protestors. Criminal damage can already be classed as terrorist activity if it is committed with the intention to "unduly compel a government ... to perform or abstain from performing any act". Someone, for example, posting support on social media for anti-water charges protestors pouring cement on water meters and saying "More of this, please" could be arrested and charged with terrorist-linked activity of "public provocation to commit a terrorist offence", fined an apparently unlimited amount and sentenced to up to ten years in prison.”
“Palestine solidarity activists in this country could also be prosecuted, presumably, for expressing support for Palestine Action, a civil society campaigning organisation that is in the process of being proscribed as a terrorist organisation in Britain. I, for one, support Palestine Action. People will remember the mass outbreak of pearl-clutching that followed the Irish soccer team chanting, "ooh ah, up the 'RA", and young people singing along to The Wolfe Tones's "Celtic Symphony" at Electric Picnic. It seems that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael potentially want to lock these people up too. Is that not glorification of terrorist activity? This is outrageous. The lowering to the floor of the legal bar for provocation of terrorist-linked activity must be resolutely opposed.”
“This Bill is a very serious attack on freedom of speech and the right of people to protest. Mo Chara from Kneecap is being prosecuted in Britain for opposing the genocide and expressing solidarity with Palestine, and now the Government here is trying to pass legislation that would allow him to be prosecuted here too. Section 3 of the Bill expands the legal definition of provocation of terrorist activity to include glorifying "(including by praise or celebration) a terrorist activity". The phrase "terrorist activity" can include activities both inside and outside of the State, so Kneecap could be prosecuted here, just as they are being prosecuted in Britain.”
“Does the Tánaiste agree that a very high bar would have to be met to justify any interference with the right of staff to choose their clothes? Does he agree it must be urgently clarified for schools, perhaps in a departmental circular, to make clear that no member of staff should be victimised for wearing a Keffiyeh?”
“When Russia invaded Ukraine, schools organised shows of solidarity with Ukraine but when it comes to Israel's genocide in Gaza, some teachers are being silenced and their clothing choices are being policed. I contacted the Minister recently about Harcourt Terrace Educate Together National School where members of staff have been told not to wear their Keffiyeh scarves. Keffiyehs are simple patterned fabric from the Middle East, which many wear in solidarity with Palestine. Zionist pressure groups are pushing schools to ban this simple item of clothing and at least that school appears to have given in. Two staff members felt so harassed by a small number of parents and pressured by school management that they resigned.”
“I do not know if he is aware of the parasitical role these corporations play on journalism, where they are not creating any of this content but getting most of the advertising revenue from it. It clearly makes sense, therefore, to allow those companies to pay. I will continue to support those who refuse to pay the TV licence. I warn the Minister this number is increasing. It seems even An Post has given up pursuing people, if we look at the number of prosecutions, which are also dropping.”
“The Minister might tell us if considers all the countries across Europe that have abolished TV licences not to be constitutional democracies. Is the test of being a constitutional democracy having a TV licence? He might clarify that. I presume he is aware that just over one third of funding for RTÉ and public service broadcasting comes from the TV licence. It is not even where a majority of funding comes from. The Minister may not be aware of our proposals in RTÉ for the People: A Radical Plan to Transform RTÉ and Public Media, which would increase funding for public service broadcasting, and takes on board many of the recommendations of Coimisiún na Meán and does so not by imposing this regressive flat tax on ordinary households, but on the big tech corporations making huge profits. I do not know if the Minister is aware of this fact.”
“I suspect that RTÉ's appalling coverage of the genocide in Gaza has contributed to the further drop in people buying TV licences, when RTÉ often continues to use a both sides framing of what is a horrifically asymmetrical conflict in using terminology like "Hamas-run health ministry" and providing platforms for representatives of the genocidal Israeli State.”
“I thank the Minister. I presume he accepts that the tax is deeply unpopular. Licence sales have plummeted since the Tubridy scandal and everything else that came out in terms of the behaviour of those at the top of RTÉ. In 2022, €950,000 was paid. This dropped to €825,000 in 2023 and €790,000 in 2024. This represents a drop of more than 155,000 households that are refusing to pay, either in protest or because they cannot afford to pay this regressive flat tax that takes no account of ability to pay.”
“Increasing numbers of people are voting with their feet and boycotting the TV licence. Will the Minister read the writing on the wall, scrap this regressive tax and replace it with a levy on big tech corporations?”
“tried by a non-jury court, should be abolished." Will the Minister of State tell us now if he supports that recommendation? Can he explain why these draconian provisions are uniquely needed in Ireland but not in all other countries, where jury intimidation and jury tampering can also exist but are dealt with through other means? I refer, for example, to the use of remote juries, which defends the right of people charged with serious offences to a trial of their own peers. No one who supports the most basic principles of democracy should support this motion or should support creating a new permanent non-jury court. It flies in the face of the basic ideas of civil liberties, the basic ideas of justice and the basic ideas of democracy.”
“All of that is automatically tried in the Special Criminal Court with no right to a jury of your peers, with belief or opinion evidence from senior gardaí accepted as fact and with effectively no right to silence. These very basic features of a jury-based and fair justice system are being denied. Regardless of who is involved, that is a travesty of justice condemned by all major human rights organisations, including the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, Amnesty International, the State's own Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission and the United Nations. Even the majority report on reforming the Special Criminal Court, which the Minister says he supports, recommended: "The current system of " scheduled offences ", under which certain offences are automatically ...”
“Tomorrow, the Government is introducing the Criminal Justice (Terrorist Offences) (Amendment) Bill. This will criminalise glorifying "(including by praise or celebration) a terrorist activity", just as the British State is trying to do with Kneecap. It will have a chilling effect on freedom of speech and artistic expression. It shows the authoritarian direction in which this Government, the British State, Trump and the European Union as a whole are headed. One hundred and fifty-two arrests were made under the gangland provisions of the Offences Against the State Act last year. This is 40 more than in the previous year. Some 90% of these were not for directing a criminal organisation but for participating in, contributing to or committing an offence for a criminal organisation.”
“This year's reports on the Special Criminal Court shows that the use of non-jury courts is at an all-time high. Right now, they are mainly being used for so-called gangland crimes but there is nothing to stop an increase in their use against a politically motivated definition of terrorism in the future. In the last few days, the British Government announced that a non-violent direct action group in Britain, Palestine Action, is going to be proscribed as a terrorist organisation. This means that anybody who does nothing other than say that he or she supports Palestine Action, as I do, could face time in prison. It is incredible. If the same happened here, we could see protestors against genocide being convicted of membership of a terrorist organisation on the say-so of a senior garda without the right to a jury.”
“Another year, another cursory debate and then another voting-through of draconian legislation tonight. I will speak against and vote against the legislation but the Government and the vast majority of the Opposition will vote in favour of curtailing basic civil liberties. The Special Criminal Court was established 53 years ago, supposedly on an emergency basis. The original emergency for which it was established was officially declared over in 1995 and yet these Diplock courts have persisted even after they were abolished in the North. The Minister now wants to make non-jury courts permanent, which is very likely to be unconstitutional. Will he commit to putting this question to the people and holding a referendum on whether we want to have permanent non-jury courts?”
“For years, care champions and others have been screaming about this and pushing for safeguarding legislation. This scandal should force the Government to act. Ultimately, we are not just talking about a few bad apples. This neglect and abuse is endemic in a system that is for profit. We have to end the privatisation and bring it back into public ownership.”
“Maybe a third or a half, with the rest going to the largest nursing home provider in the State. Families are charged €15 a week if they want to rent a sensor that alerts them if a patient falls out of a bed or a chair. Given the gross understaffing of The Residence, it looks like they would need it. Incredibly, there is no legal minimum staff to resident ratio for nursing homes. Presumably, the private providers lobby to keep it that way because wages are their main cost. That is why nursing home carers are among the lowest paid and most overworked workers in the country. That is how much this Government, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, value older people. The stock response is to say that better regulation is needed. Yes, absolutely, it is.”
“Income for private nursing homes through the fair deal scheme has ballooned. Total funding is now over €1.2 billion a year, 80% of which goes to private nursing homes. The fees are incredible. At The Residence in Portlaoise, fees are upwards of €1,200 a week, but not satisfied with that, the abusive, money-grabbing multinational, Emeis, which runs The Residence, has also been ripping off elderly people and their families by illegally charging extra for essentials like medication, dressings and pressure-relieving mattresses to prevent bedsores. Incontinence wear costs up to €90 extra a month. A hip protector is €60 a month. If residents go into hospital, they have to pay for their own transport plus a staff charge of up to €45 an hour. How much of that do the carers see?”
“The root is neoliberal Government policy implemented by successive Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael Governments to outsource our care of older people to multinational corporations. In the 1980s, three quarters of nursing homes were publicly owned and operated, but now the proportion is less than a fifth. Private, for-profit operators control 74% of our nursing home beds, and just ten investment funds in Ireland control 30% of our nursing home beds. This did not happen by accident. This is not something that unfortunately happened, that Micheál Martin and so on are very sad about. It was deliberate Government policy. As with private hospitals, the State provided private nursing homes with massive tax relief on capital expenditure and guaranteed them an income stream through Mary Harney's so-called fair deal scheme.”
“I found the “RTÉ Investigates” programme horrifying, obviously, and very difficult to watch. It was clear that the older people were not being treated as human beings, with decency, dignity and respect. Instead, many were being treated simply as a burden – a burden for whom there were not enough gloves or incontinence pads. They were treated like sacks of meat thrown on the chair, as was the case with one man. It is clear that this is not unprecedented or really unexpected. Cost-cutting, staff shortages, elder abuse and the ripping off of vulnerable people are all inevitable when you hand over healthcare to faceless multinationals motivated only by profit. SIPTU, ALONE and the INMO have all pointed to privatisation as being at the root of this scandal.”
“This can take the form of a tablet like Palforzia, which contains a tiny amount of peanuts for those suffering from peanut allergies, or oral immunotherapy where people, mostly children, are consuming tiny amounts of the product they are allergic to in controlled environments and they build up resistance over time to have a less severe allergic reaction. The problem is that these are not available within the Irish health system and are not even covered by the treatment abroad scheme. Does the Taoiseach agree we need a multiyear national allergy strategy and that we need to offer oral immunotherapy in this country?”
“I want to raise the poor state of healthcare for those suffering with allergies in this country. Many parents are forced to spend huge amounts to travel abroad to get their children the treatment they need. I spoke to a woman a few months ago who had to go to America for six weeks. She had to pay €8,000 for treatment. She was also out of work for six weeks and had to pay for accommodation. That is not unusual. A lot of families go to Britain or America to get oral immunotherapy in particular.”
“In light of the collapse of PPP bundle 3 and the reviews of bundles 4 to 7, will the Taoiseach finally abandon the failed policy of public-private partnership and fund councils to deliver bundle 3 as soon as possible?”
“The number one issue facing many workers is housing, and the Government has repeatedly claimed both that it will deliver new social homes and that the planning system is to blame for the lack of delivery so far. This month, however, funding for the delivery of almost 500 social homes has gone up in smoke. Almost 3,500 planned social homes, many with full planning permission, are in jeopardy now, facing cost reviews. That is almost a third of the annual social housing delivery target. These public-private partnership deals have collapsed for one reason: private profit. The Government has claimed that the costs are now too high, but we knew they would be. They explicity include provision for the developers to make a profit from the arrangement. Every cent of profit is a cost in excess of what is actually necessary to deliver housing.”
“Will the Attorney General's advice be completed and published before the Bill is brought before the committee so we can actually see the legal basis on which the Government is saying that services need to be excluded? Will the Government at the committee set out in detail why it has an issue with the inclusion of services?”
“Last year, the International Court of Justice held that all states are under an obligation to abstain from entering into economic or trade dealings and to prevent trade or investment relations with the occupied territories. There was no mention of an obligation just relating to goods. Instead, it was all trade and investment relations. The Government has in the past few months discovered some legal, or what it says is a legal, distinction between goods and services but has never laid that out. The Tánaiste this morning, when asked about the Bill, said it is important that every country uses every lever at its disposal but it is not clear why that lever would exclude services.”
“Over the weekend, the world’s biggest military power, under Trump, launched an unprovoked and illegal air assault on Iran. The Taoiseach has repeatedly refused to condemn this assault. I invite him again to condemn it now. We need to have a debate in this House on the US assault on Iran, the situation in the Middle East, and the imperative of defending our neutrality and ending the use of Shannon Airport by the US military.”
“How, without free market fundamentalist ideology, does it make any sense that we transfer more money of workers, either directly or indirectly through the State or directly from workers through paying more rent, to the super rich in the hope that they are will resolve the housing crisis? How does that make sense as opposed to saying that we have money and financial surpluses, we have a housing crisis, building housing creates revenue and we therefore need to build social and genuinely affordable housing at scale, directly through a State construction company? That is the answer to the housing crisis and the centre of the answer for supply. The reason it is not pursued is ideology and what lies behind that ideology are class interests. The Government fundamentally does not represent renters, workers and young people.”
“The Government expects us to believe that it has no ideology. It is free market fundamentalism. It is a trickle-down idea of what is going to happen with housing. It is interesting to read the report that the Government is basing its own proposals on rental pressure zones and increasing rents further. It is clear that institutional investors are making healthy profits in the rental sector in Ireland. They are not making a loss; they are making a healthy profit. The idea is that we need to give them even more profit so that they invest here in this sector rather than somewhere else.”
“For ten years now, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have been trying to incentivise the private sector, be it private developers or the institutional investors, to come and resolve the housing crisis. Money has been thrown at them. They do not pay any taxes on rental income when they are real estate investment trusts, REITs. There is the croí cónaithe scheme and the HAP scheme, which costs more than €1 billion per year, and there are other subsidies to landlords every single year. There is the waiver of development levies. Money is thrown at these developers and private landlords. The crisis has got worse not better. The Government goes back into the same toolbox - one marked "free market fundamentalism" - and says we need rents to rise further because that is what is going to resolve the crisis as it will attract investment.”
“It is incredible, when housing is the number one crisis facing the third level education system, that students are going to be taken out of any protection whatsoever. There are a few things that the Government often likes to say to the Opposition. It says that we have no proposals. We can write books on it, as two Members have. We can put forward detailed proposals on budget proposals and in policy, but no matter what we do the Government will say that we have no proposals. No matter the level of detail that we produce, it will say that we have no proposals. The other thing it will say is that the Opposition is being ideological or that we have an ideological aversion to the private rental market. We are expected to believe that the Government has no ideology whatsoever.”
“The headline in The Irish Times was "Minister wants exemptions to new rent rules to be considered for students sharing houses". It continues: "Students should not be 'inadvertently disadvantaged' by the new regime, says spokesman for James Lawless." On Tuesday, however, presumably all of the water under the bridge had passed. We read in the front-page headline in the Irish Independent that there are "No additional protections for students in private sector under new rental rules, Minister admits". That is it. I was accurate in my summation of things at the committee. In saying that there was a load of water going to pass under the bridge and do not worry things will be fine by March, the Minister was trying to mislead people, or he did not know what was happening. The truth is that students are being thrown to the wolves by this proposal.”
“I will sit down with my colleague, the Minister for housing, with whom I have spoken numerous times on student accommodation, and we will delve into the details about how it will effect the student accommodation sector. I could not believe that the Minister for higher education, who was telling us that a priority was student accommodation, did not seem to know how this was going to affect students but was reassuring us that it would be grand, there was loads of time between now and March, the Government would sort it out and students would be not negatively affected. I read with interest the newspaper headlines on Monday. I thought this is good because here we have a Minister who is listening to the Opposition and is going to protect students.”
“Every time they return to college, they are going to see a new and significant hike in their rents. The day after the Government announced its new proposals, the Minister for higher education, Deputy Lawless, was in before us at the committee on higher education and I asked him about this. I put it to him that the way this will work is that there will be no rental protection for students in private rented accommodation every time they change tenancy and so on and asked if that was accurate. He stated the following: We have a new proposal, which was introduced yesterday that will come in to effect next March. There will be a lot of water under the bridge between now and next March.”
“It is the magic of market. The Government expects people to buy this. It expects people to believe that somehow it is acting in the interests of those who it is hiking rents for - young people who are forced to emigrate or are unable to move out of the family home and workers who are being crucified by rents of €2,000, €2,500, €3,000 or more per month - by allowing rents to go even higher, rather than this clearly being an act of a Government of landlords acting in the interests of landlords, in particular the big corporate landlords. I will focus on the same issue that Deputy O'Gorman focused on, namely, student accommodation. Students are the group that are most egregiously affected by what the Government is proposing. Students in the private rental sector are not going to have any protections whatsoever as regards the level of rents.”
“It is interesting in debates in the House and on the media how the Government will not own its own proposals. It tells us that what it is doing is going to increase investment in the rental sector and that will ultimately bring rents down. That is the underlying logic of what the Government is doing. However, it refuses to say the bit in the middle in terms of why this is going to increase investment in the rental sector. This is because the plan is to raise rents. Every time the Government is asked this, it tries to wriggle away from it and say that there are lots of things. The fundamental, most important thing the Government is doing is trying to allow rents to rise even faster. That is Government policy now. It is to increase rents in the supposed hope that through increasing them, rents will come down in the long run.”
“There is no question that there are those for whom individual car usage will be necessary, but we must give people a real, alternative option. Most people would take such an option if it were genuinely available. If we give people an alternative, they will take it. However, we also need to stop the promotion and advertising of fossil-fuelled vehicles and fossil fuels. The picture such advertisements promote of driving on open roads with no traffic, going wherever one wants, is propaganda to make people buy into the lie. We must ban fossil fuel advertising like we banned advertising of cigarettes. It is a public health issue as well as a climate issue.”
“People can look at the Go-Ahead Group's record in Britain, which is very poor, yet more and more routes are being packaged off and given to the company as part of a privatisation agenda, which makes no sense for anybody but the corporations. A big part of the Government's agenda is the pushing of electric cars as part of the environmental solution. Obviously, electric cars are better than cars with internal combustion engines. However, the answer is not for society to shift from one model of individual car ownership to a different type of individual car ownership. There are big hunks of metal sitting all across the country, not being used most of the time, in terms of electric cars, lithium, rare earth and so on. They have their own environmental consequences.”
“We held a public meeting a few months ago in Tallaght at which we talked to a lot of people campaigning on these issues, including the impact of ghost buses. It is not just about the day somebody is waiting four hours or whatever to get home or that someone does not get to work or college on time one day. These problems have a corrosive effect on people's confidence in public transport. If commuters do not know whether the bus will be there at the time it should arrive and they have to get to work or college or collect their child from the crèche, then public transport stops being an option for them. It is not that Dublin Bus does not have problems, which it does, but it is striking how it is much worse with Go-Ahead Ireland.”