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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“Some are injured and some are killed as a consequence. That is what hare coursing is. Unless you regulate the hares out of hare coursing, which is what our Bill proposes to do, then I do not see how the Minister of State can claim that animal welfare is a top priority. The Minister of State can make the case that he is concerned about animal welfare. If animal welfare really was a top priority, however, people would not be capturing hares from the wild and allowing dogs to run after them. Let us get real about what sort of regulation we are talking about and what hare coursing involves. I want to emphasise a point. I do not know if Deputy Aird really intended to suggest that the hares enjoy it, but that is what it sounded like. Obviously, they do not enjoy it. They are not running for the craic.”
“I thank all the Deputies who participated in the debate. I will start on the point about hare coursing being highly regulated, and that we do not give that more credit to that and to the idea that animal welfare is a top priority. Let us consider what hare coursing is in essence. You can regulate it all you like - and we are in favour of more regulation - but the essence of it involves going into the wild and capturing hares who are out there living their lives. They might sometimes be brutally short lives because of nature, which is fine, but they are out there living them. You go out, you make a lot of noise, you capture them in nets and you terrify them. You put them in little crates and then you put them in enclosures with a bunch of other hares. Then you allow dogs to chase after them.”
“I point out that the Bill is explicit in allowing lure coursing, which is where there is a mechanical hare, as happens in Australia. I will finish with two points. The first is an appeal to Members of this House to put pressure on their parties to fight for a free vote and, in any case, to vote with their conscience. They should not vote to allow this cruel practice to continue. Second, I appeal to those outside of this House, namely, the ordinary, decent people, both rural and urban, who oppose this practice. The vote will be next Wednesday. We have time to build more pressure on TDs and parties to take this opportunity to stop hare coursing.”
“They will be the final nail in the coffin for many hares. I have heard today for the first time the claim that the industry is worth €70 million annually to the Irish economy. I am intrigued about that. This may come up in the debate, but I will ask it in advance. Where does that figure come from? I looked online but could not find any source for it. The greyhound industry is usually said to be worth €120 million, and there is creative accounting happening with that figure, too. I do not understand where this figure of €70 million comes from or what study is being referred to. I suspect there is more creative accountancy that takes no account of the damage caused to families and communities by the scourge of gambling and gambling addiction.”
“There are also much greater numbers of dairy cattle in particular and a reduction in the natural variety of grasses for hares to eat, due to the limited varieties of grasses being sown to increase milk yields. On top of that, rabbit haemorrhagic disease, RHD, has ravaged rabbit and hare populations across Europe, with a new, more deadly strain, rabbit haemorrhagic disease variant two, RHD2, first detected in England and Wales in 2014. One would think that all of that might have prompted at least a temporary ban to protect this supposedly protected species. That is one of the ironic things about this - the law says that hares are a protected species but, in turn, it goes on to say that people can get a licence to capture and chase after them with big dogs. Of course, the gambling, coursing and greyhound industries took precedence.”
“One report of a coursing meeting in Roseberry, County Kildare, in December 2024 said that only two hares ran, with hare stocks low that year. Data from the Irish Coursing Club show this steep decline in the number of captured hares. Ten years ago, 5,348 hares were caught, compared with 3,124 in 2025 and 2026, a fall of 41%. Coursing was first halted in the North in 2002 because of evidence that hare populations there had declined by 25%, yet here in the South, it is allowed to continue seemingly no matter what. Of course, there are lots of reasons hare numbers are falling. The intensification and industrialisation of agriculture has increased the use of heavy machinery that can kill and injure hares.”
“Thank you. I will keep going. For anyone concerned about biodiversity, the impact of coursing on the Irish hare population should be a major concern. A National Parks and Wildlife Service study indicates an eight times lower survival rate for hares after they are released from coursing. That is a significant additional stressor on wild hare populations, which are already in decline, along with most of our other native species. Those involved in the practice of coursing and capturing the hares each year know that. Every year, they are capturing fewer and fewer hares to be terrorised. When I first introduced this Bill, I was talking about over 5,000 captured per year. Now it is over 3,000 captured per year.”
“The bottom-line finding was that after six months, it could find only one out of 20 coursed hares alive, compared with eight out of 20 uncoursed hares. Even if you are one of those rare psychopaths like Elon Musk, who is devoid of human empathy and does not care about the suffering of other living creatures, it is possible, although perhaps unlikely, that you might still care about biodiversity and the survival of the ecosystems upon which we all depend to survive. That is unless you are Elon Musk and you are planning to head off to Mars. For anyone concerned about biodiversity, the impact of coursing on the Irish hare population-----”
“First, there is the stress of being hunted with nets, captured and put into crates and held in captivity for months. Unlike rabbits, hares are solitary animals, so being kept in confinement with multiple other hares is extremely stressful and unnatural for them. During those months, they are trained, which causes them more stress and terror. Then, you have the coursing meeting itself. Two dogs race to see which is the fastest to turn, pin or catch the hare, within which more than 4% of hares are killed. Many more are seriously injured. If they survive all of that, they are much more likely to die after being released back into the wild than hares that have not been coursed. A study funded by the National Parks and Wildlife Service, although used by the supporters of hare coursing, followed up coursed and uncoursed hares.”
“The mechanism through which this causative link happens is not really explained but, somehow, capturing a load of hares from the wild, putting them into captivity and terrorising them is apparently good for hare conservation. The origin of this claim is a tiny sample of 135 hares taken in a small area of east Donegal way back in 2003, which was then compared with a sample of hares in another part of the country four years later in 2007, and then extrapolated to the whole country to say that hares are 18 times more common in coursing areas than non-coursing areas. To be blunt, this is junk science. Coursing advocates also claim that coursing does not really hurt because the greyhounds now wear muzzles. This is also fake news.”
“We do not have to accept a lazy appeal to tradition for one minute. It is worth noting, again from that Red C poll from 2019, that over 85% of over-65s supported a ban, higher than the average support for a ban of 75%. Any notion of a generational divide rooted in tradition is complete nonsense. Just because this cruelty has gone on for a long time does not make it right. In fact, it makes it all the more outrageous because it means the scale of the suffering caused to these beautiful animals over decades is truly enormous. Another baseless claim put out by the Irish Coursing Club and its supporters is that coursing areas have significantly higher hare populations than other areas and that this means, somehow, that coursing protects hares.”
“The NSPCA is the foremost authority on animal welfare in this country and it should be listened to by the Government. The supporters of hare coursing may prove to be a majority in this House but they are a tiny minority of the population. It speaks to how out of touch this place is with public opinion. What is happening here is the same thing that has happened with fox hunting. A well-connected minority that wants bloodsports to continue, that enjoys making animals suffer and making money out of it, is the tail that is wagging the dog and the result is all sorts of spurious arguments that we will hear. One of those is that because coursing has gone on for a long time, it is somehow all right. The same was true of badger baiting, wild animals in circuses and fur farming, all of which have been rightly banned in this country.”
“The Minister of State should not come out and tell me that rural people are the only ones who know about coursing and that they want it to continue, when the evidence suggests that, yes, they do know about it but precisely because of that, they want it to be stopped, because they have been more personally exposed and know the realities of the horrors of this so-called sport. The truth is, the vast majority of Irish people want hare coursing banned. Only 9% in the Red C opinion poll opposed a ban, or fewer than one in ten people. It has been banned in the North for over 20 years, since 2003, on conservation grounds as well as the appalling cruelty. The Assembly then voted to make the ban permanent in 2010. The National Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, NSPCA, supports a ban. The Irish Wildlife Trust supports a ban.”
“I hope that, at the very least, they will try to persuade their party leaderships that these orders go against public opinion and that a free vote should be granted. The public out there is overwhelmingly opposed to hare coursing in both rural and urban areas. There is not an urban-rural divide on this issue despite the attempts to turn it into some sort of culture war issue. In fact, the Red C opinion poll on hare coursing, which found that 77% of people were opposed to hare coursing, actually showed a slightly higher percentage of people in rural areas opposed to it than those urban areas. It was some 78% in rural compared with 76% in urban. Support for a ban in Munster, the supposed stronghold of hare coursing, was 77%, compared with 76% in Dublin.”
“There are very few people who would support fox hunting and oppose hare coursing or vice versa . If that is the position, and we will see what the position is, that is not a position that would please anybody. Sinn Féin needs to stand up and make the right decision, which is to ban hare coursing here, just as it is already banned in the North. There should be no more partitionism on this. Hare coursing in this country is a legacy of British colonialism introduced here by the British Army. To all those TDs who privately support a ban on hare coursing but will troop through the voting lobbies or, more likely, press the buttons at the seats to vote against a ban, all they really have is the coward's defence. They are just following orders.”
“All of the waffle we have heard in the debates in the media and that we will presumably here today from the Government benches about rural pursuits is to try to cover up and suppress that instinctive human response. The Government and Sinn Féin TDs know that in their heart of hearts too. I know many of them would vote to ban this barbaric practice if they were not being whipped into voting for it to continue. We saw with Sinn Féin a few months ago on the issue of fox hunting that TDs were whipped to vote against a ban and then shortly afterwards, thankfully, the Sinn Féin Ard-Fheis voted in favour of a ban. I suspect the same breakdown of a vote at a Sinn Féin Ard-Fheis would happen now in a ban on hare coursing. Sinn Féin members would vote in support of a ban on hare coursing.”
“Musk has claimed that "the fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy" and suggested that there is an "empathy exploit". Others are going so far as to talk about the sin of empathy. The vast majority of ordinary people will rightly think that this is bananas, and that we have plenty of empathy because empathy is a fundamental part of what makes us human. It allows us to feel solidarity with other human beings, including people we do not know, who we have never met or do not look like us, and to empathise with animals, like the Irish hare. Empathy is our natural reaction when we see videos of greyhounds ten times the size and weight of hares smashing into terrified hares, throwing them up into the air, pinning them to the ground and hurting them. Instinctively, we feel for the hare.”
“We could do with renewing and broadening that ancient taboo by banning hare coursing too. We would not be here at this step of the road, debating this today, without the tireless and Trojan work of the Irish Council Against Blood Sports, the National Animal Rights Association and the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Some of their tireless activists are in the Visitors Gallery today. Countless dedicated individual activists have stuck with this day in, day out over many years. They are the best of humanity. They know what empathy is. Those who support this cruelty do not. In the last while we have seen Elon Musk, JD Vance, and other leading figures on the US far right denouncing empathy and declaring war on empathy.”
“Now, here we are again, ten years later in 2026 as one of only three European countries that still allow this annual torture of the hare to continue. In the last 15 years, more than 65,000 Irish hares have been captured from the wild and forced to participate in barbarism all because a relatively small number of people enjoy watching animals being absolutely terrorised and some want to make money through gambling on this torture. The Irish hare is a unique subspecies of mountain hare found only on the island of Ireland. We do not have many unique animals but the hare is one of them. Its cultural status was cemented for many decades on the old Irish three pence coin. It is iconic across Irish folklore where hares were often seen as spirits of the dead, leading to a taboo against eating them.”
“I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time." It is an honour to finally be moving this at Second Stage after the Animal Health and Welfare (Ban on Hare Coursing) Bill was first introduced in 2020. It has been a long road getting to this point. This section of the road will finish next Wednesday with a vote. I will start and finish with an appeal to the public to get on to their TDs and demand they reflect the big majority opinion in this country that we should take this opportunity to ban hare coursing. This road has been going on for a very long time. This is the third Private Members' Bill to attempt to ban the barbaric practice of hare coursing. Tony Gregory tried over 30 years ago. Maureen O'Sullivan introduced her Bill in 2015 at First Stage and it was voted on at Second Stage in 2016.”
“Even if we forget that point for a minute - I rarely forget the issue of workers' rights and people getting less than the minimum wage - if we are serious about addressing the housing crisis and getting people into apprenticeships, then this is an immediate measure that could be taken and would have a significant impact in terms of people coming into the trades. The committee on higher education produced a report in February that recommended that a minimum wage floor be introduced, which was obviously informed by all of those apprentices who were saying this was a big issue for them.”
“An apprentice - a first-year motor mechanic - contacted me after we introduced the Bill. He said: I am currently working a 40-hour week at €6.20 an hour. I am expected to pay for my own tools. To be fair, the employer I am with gives a tool allowance of €250 but that would barely get you much. To even get into an apprenticeship in Ireland it is a minimum requirement across most trades you must be able to drive and hold a licence. As a first year, I am expected to pay the extortionate prices of insurance on top of loan repayments for the car.”
“We introduced a Bill to scrap the exemption for apprentices to ensure that everyone would get the minimum wage. I was contacted by multiple apprentices saying their situations were not doable and they could not exist. These are often people with kids - we heard statistics on that. Many of them are in their 20s or older. They are not young people. This is not a bit of pocket money. They deserve to get the minimum wage at the very least.”
“That is a bit of a hard case to make to young people who are looking at their options and see that they will be getting paid €7.67 an hour in the first year, or just over half the national minimum wage. I am in favour of an increased student grant and so on, but the difference is that these people are working. They are creating value for their employers. It is a real obstacle. According to Mr. Ben Friel, who was at the Joint Committee on Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science when I was a member, many apprentices dropped out in the first year because they could not afford the tools and were expected to pay big upfront costs. The low pay, along with the fees and the price of tools, was creating many barriers to entry.”
“The number one reform that would make the most difference is ensuring that apprentices at least get the national minimum wage from the start. That is not a radical demand. I was previously on the committee and this came up with everybody we spoke to - apprentices having to pay loads of money for tools and so on and not even getting the minimum wage. At the very least, let us give apprentices the minimum wage.”
“That is precisely the problem with a short-term economic utility focus, which then leads to a downgrading of humanities, social sciences and so on in favour of those that have a more immediate commercial application, which would be a real problem.”
“Just to confirm, the Minister is saying that he is open to changes continuing to take place to this strategy. That would obviously be welcome. I ask the Minister to commit to prioritising research that is for the public good. "Research on economic inequities, democratic participation, mental health, housing injustices, climate justice, education, and the full range of human experiences and societal processes must be valued on its own terms". That is a quote from the petition, which I think is very important. The current proposal suggests that non-applied research has to demonstrate its future economic utility in order to qualify for funding.”
“That is what is being proposed, with a prioritisation of research that is profit related and commercially driven by corporations. This would be to the detriment of us all.”
“It seems to me that what has happened is effectively a corporate or partially corporate capture of our research programme. If it continues, this is going to be to the detriment of all of us and the detriment of our education system and society, which will lose out on research that does not have an immediate commercial application and, therefore, is not being prioritised under the new strategy. The petitioners emphasise that there was a lack of participatory process in the development of this strategy. It was not based on evidence. They emphasise that what we see here is industry-centred, commercially-focused, profit-seeking priorities at the expense of arts, humanities and social sciences. In particular, they warn about the dismantling of the current PhD scholarship and postdoctoral fellowship programmes.”
“I am sure the Minister is aware of it but I want to draw his attention to the open letter signed by more than 2,300 academics and researchers, which rings the alarm bell about Research Ireland's 2026 to 2030 strategy. The letter states, "The new strategy is structurally, rhetorically and materially focused on commercially translatable research and economic impact rather than supporting bedrock, fundamental, discovery research and research for the public good." Will the Minister take this on board and meet the petitioners? Will he intervene?”
“The senior counsel I mentioned states in the letter I referenced: It does not strike me from what I have seen that the trial is in conformity with either EU law or the European Convention on Human Rights. Obviously, the Government can take a different view but I do not see how that view can be properly formed other than on the basis of a first-hand observation since there is no independent record being created of what is happening. We need observers for the Irish State on the next occasions.”
“Fundamentally, I do not accept that the denial of the right of an Irish citizen to a fair trial is a matter just for his or her legal team. I just do not accept that. It is a concern of the State if an Irish citizen is, in effect, being railroaded through a show trial. The State needs to be represented by an observer at that trial to see what is happening. Deputy Boyd Barrett has been organising a delegation of representatives to go there on 22 July. Deputies Farrell and Duncan Smith are going, as are Lynn Boylan MEP and Senator Stephenson. I hope others will join them. However, the State itself, and the Minister, need to be represented there in an observer capacity.”
“The letter also stated that there was no way for prosecution or defence lawyers, the court, human rights monitors or the Government to check for translation accuracy and no way for the defence to correct mistakes at any time. There are limitations in terms of the communication of the defendants with their lawyers. At the very least, will the Government send legal observers to the trial tomorrow and on 22 July? The State needs to be represented there to observe what is happening to an Irish citizen.”
“All of the evidence suggests that an Irish citizen, Daniel Tatlow-Devally, along with four others, is being denied a fair trial by another European state. I believe the Minister has a letter from a senior counsel. The letter refers to the fact that no audio recording of what is happening is permitted or provided by the court, there is no official stenographer, and the defendants cannot bring their own stenographer and have been refused permission to engage a professional note-taker. The letter went on to say that interpretations were electronically transmitted to the accused in a way that prevented their representatives and the court from hearing what was being said and that these communications were not merely secretive and kept from lawyers during the hearing, but were not recorded, so they could never be subsequently checked by anyone.”
“The amendment is good because it says that this should be central and that the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act has to apply here. We have had it disapplied on a number of occasions this evening. That is what we are generally doing this evening, but AI has to be consistent with our supposedly legally binding climate targets.”
“We also heard from Professor Hannah Daly about the reality many of us have been pointing out for a long time, which is that all the extra renewables we are adding to the grid are just being sucked up by the data centres over an extended period. For me, it did crystallise something and I felt our guests today were trapped in this a bit. Often, there is just the illusion that somehow adding more renewable capacity, in and of itself, is in some way dealing with climate change but it is not. We can add all the renewables that we want but as long as we keep expanding usage we are not getting any closer to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The climate does not really care if we have a whole load of renewables happening over here but we are still increasing or sustaining the same level of greenhouse gas burning.”
“The thing that struck me is that AI is being used to make fossil fuel exploration and extraction more efficient in a sense. Professor Stephens also said, "Tech companies are also collaborating with the fossil fuel industry to develop AI tools used to accelerate fossil fuel exploration and allow fossil fuels to be extracted more quickly and cheaply". She argued "AI promotes climate obstruction" and denial, delay and distraction. I thought this point was very strong: "Tech companies are now deploying many of the same strategies that the fossil fuel industry has used to squash public concern and block climate policy", strategically squashing research, discussion and awareness about the environmental impacts of AI.”
“His main thing was to say this is not like the large language models, LLMs. I did not disagree with anything he said but I do not think he was making the general case that is being made that somehow AI is going to help us to deal with climate change. If we roll out the argument that a combination of AI and a stable demand for energy is going to promote investment in renewables, and load management and so on will happen at a better scale, I really think it is magical thinking. I do not think we are going to find climate scientists to make that case. Instead, what we heard from Jennie Stephens was that AI is preventing the phase-out of fossil fuels. The rapid deployment of AI has led to a dramatic increase in fossil fuel exploration, extraction and burning.”
“It is funny and I have quoted this to a few people who have been in. KPMG has a report whereby it surveys chief executives of companies and asks what they think about AI and 95% of them say that AI is really going to help us deal with climate change. I do not know why we are asking the chief executives. Let us ask climate scientists if AI is going to help us deal with climate change. I have not found one yet that says yes. Everyone says this is really a problem in terms of climate change.”
“It is appropriate that I speak at this stage because I think that gets to the point. I think the Government agrees with the Deputy that it wants to set up an enabling office. That is the wrong way to go. Fundamentally we need a “thou shalt not” regulating office to try to protect the citizens from the potentially negative impact of AI. I will speak to two of the amendments. I support Deputy Gibney's amendment on adding in the promotion of the responsible use of AI as opposed to the current proposal we have. It is amendment No. 2 and speaks of “ethical and responsible”. I presume we are going to hear that we are not going to get that, but it is really not too much to ask. Second, Deputy Lawlor's amendment No. 7 on the climate impact of AI is extremely important. Last week we had Jennie Stephens and Hannah Daly in.”
“The Minister of State can make the case to have people advocating for fostering AI innovation and literacy and so on, but the idea that the body carrying out that function will also be the regulator is very problematic.”
“This is financial regulator stuff, where the financial regulator was promoting finance and simultaneously regulating finance. You cannot be poacher and gamekeeper at the same time. They point in opposite directions. If the Government wants to have a body whose job it is to promote AI literacy and so on, it can knock itself out, but it should not be the same person and office that is supposed to be regulating and ensuring this does not cause harm to society. That is the whole problem here. It will have both the good mandate and the bad mandate set up together in this one office. It is sitting under the auspices of, and not really independent of, the Department of enterprise, which is very much on one side of that equation. That is the fundamental problem.”
“I have two points. One is the point that Deputy Gibney made. The Minister of State denied that she gets to appoint the CEO. For now, until the establishment of the board, she has total power in appointing the CEO. That is the truth. That is what is set out in the legislation. Afterwards, she still gets to pick the CEO. She picks the CEO from a shortlist, which is done by the Public Appointments Service, but she does pick them. The Minister of State may feel free to correct me if I am wrong in that. I am not sure her strong rebuttal of Deputy Gibney really holds up. My second point is that probably the worst thing in this Bill is the inclusion of the mandate of promoting and fostering AI innovation and literacy in the AI office.”
“However, what we are seeing in the structure of this Bill, and we will get to the mandate in section 9 shortly, is green for go and doing everything we can to support and promote AI. It very much sees things through an enterprise frame, which is very problematic.”
“That is the whole mindset. I fundamentally disagree with that, as my colleagues on the committee will know. In general, from where we are currently standing, AI is a force for bad and not good in the world. It is accelerating genocide, climate change and mental health crises, and it is beginning to accelerate significant job loss and displacement. It is eroding workers' autonomy for those who still have jobs, and it is driving misogyny and hate. I do not deny some discrete, positive applications we have heard about for weather forecasting, healthcare and so on, but, as a whole, any objective look at the current impact of this technology will conclude that it is a negative thing.”
“As regards the section we are dealing with here, the fundamental problem that some of the amendments, and I am assuming the Minister of State will reject them all, attempt to address is the fact that the AI office is not independent and is subordinate to the Department of enterprise. Even the location of the office, subordinate to the Department of enterprise, tells us everything we need to know. This is then fleshed out in the mandate of the AI office and so on. This tells us what the mindset of the Government is in relation to AI is. It is that this is an enterprise issue that is overwhelmingly viewed through that lens. Its view is that this is a train that is moving or has already moved and we all need to get on board, and given that all the companies seem to be doing it, we need to educate all our young people in using AI.”
“Being honest, I did not intend to speak on these amendments - I was going to wait until later - but when a substantial debate, which should go on for a long period in a committee room, is squeezed into two hours, it invariably turns into Second Stage speeches because it is our last chance to have a say on it. For me, this is the third leg of a bonfire. I know bonfires do not have legs but I am referring to whatever the wooden structures are that go around a serious bonfire. This is the third one we have had in one evening as we burn up our climate targets, the other two being much more obvious, namely, the Bills on LNG and the passenger cap in Dublin Airport. However, this is also part of it.”
“To avoid a proper light being shone on that, a proper debate being held on what is going on and a proper discussion of the various amendments we have, the Government just rams it all through, sandwiches it all together and does it in two hours. Presumably, Michael O'Leary would be very happy.”
“There was no consideration of children's rights, including their right to a stable climate, even as very young children died from extreme heat in France, and local opposition to the airport for health, noise and environmental reasons was ignored, as was the recommendation of the committee after pre-legislative scrutiny stage "that meaningful engagement is undertaken by the daa with local communities to mitigate the impact of noise from the north runway." No such thing has taken place. Let the Minister be in no doubt that what is happening is that the profits of the likes of Michael O'Leary, Ryanair and the very big aviation corporations are being put before children's health.”
“Another outrageous feature of what is being proposed is the centralising of decision-making about removing the cap outright into one person, namely, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, the Minister. Unlimited expansion of Dublin Airport is effectively promised here. The Minister has previously referred to 60 million passengers a year, a number almost double the current cap. The Minister has done no evaluation of the climate or environmental implications this will lead to. He has done no evaluation of the economic, social and health costs of just letting Dublin Airport rip at the behest of Michael O'Leary. No climate or biodiversity experts were consulted by the Minister. The excellent group Children's Rights Over Flights tried to meet the Minister. There were numerous requests but no chance to meet him.”