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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“Fine Gael's manifesto for the last election states: Fine Gael will stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes. We will unequivocally support Ukraine. I presume Fianna Fáil's manifesto said something similar. The Government supports them as long as it can use them to drive an agenda of militarisation and undermining of neutrality. However, when it comes to Ukrainian people who have fled Putin's imperialist invasion to this country, the Government is happy to use them as a scapegoat, to impose cuts on them and to have the spectre of homelessness in front of them. It cut the payment for accommodation providers, which does not go directly to Ukrainians, from €800 to €600. There are reports that the Government is going to cut it further to €400 as a step towards winding down the scheme.”
“However, we could immediately have free public transport, or at the very least, if the Government will not do that, a 50% cut in public transport fares. People are struggling to get the money to put the petrol or diesel into their car to get to work. They should be given the option of getting on public transport at a significantly reduced rate, which would also create the habit in people of knowing that they could use public transport. These are the kinds of measures that we need to have immediately to break our reliance on fossil fuels.”
“There are also longer-term issues. The Government should please stop allowing more and more data centres. Please do not have the Taoiseach going to Donald Trump and the US and saying data centres are our priority when it has emerged that fewer than 2,000 people are employed in data centres, which use more electricity than all the homes in the State combined. Let us have State investment in renewable energy and a renationalisation of the energy system to give people affordable electricity and to have a rapid transition. There are immediate things that could happen. We have been calling for free, frequent public transport for a long time. The Government might not be able to, at the drop of a hat, get the frequent part or provide for the expansion that we are calling for, although there are buses and storage that could be brought out.”
“That is the answer, combined with giving energy credits to people paid for by the data centres and targeted measures for disabled people, those on fuel allowance and social protection payments. The core of it is to say, "We are going to set the price and we are going to give people certainty." Then we ensure that the price is met and that the flow of petrol, diesel and home heating oil continues by doing two crucial things. One is to empower the CRU to ensure profiteering is not taking place with people taking advantage of this crisis as they took advantage of the previous one. The second is to adjust fuel taxes accordingly to ensure that fuel can continue to be supplied. That is the answer and that is what would give people certainty at this moment. The other thing we need to do is get away from our reliance on fossil fuel.”
“The second is that the Government is tied to the idea of the market. It cannot use the massive financial resources that we have to protect people because that would mean interfering with the market. The fossil fuel market that the Government is responsible for keeping us so reliant on is not working for ordinary people. Now is the time to interfere with the market in a major way to protect people. The answer here is so clear. It is in our Bill that we introduced two years ago to provide price controls. On the issue of home heating oil, in our Bill, there would be a €1 per litre price cap. The cap would be €1.75 a litre for petrol and diesel, 25 cent per unit for electricity and 8 cent per unit for gas.”
“It means people, in 2026, living in cold homes, struggling to get by in cold homes. This will be predominantly poorer people and older people at this time when the Government has a massive budget surplus and refuses to use it to protect people. It is incredible. It stands in stark contrast to what went through last night for the hauliers where the Government backdated the reduction to 1 January, forward dated it to the end of June, while any of the measures being talked about for ordinary households are ending much sooner than that and none of them is being backdated. Fundamentally, what does his come down to? Why is the Government taking this approach? There are two reasons. One is the Government represents those who profit from the various crises such as the housing crisis, the cost-of-living crisis and the health crisis.”
“We know that people have entered into a new cost-of-living crisis that has come on the back of an existing cost-of-living crisis. We know the impact of that. Four in ten parents are either passing up meals or reducing their portion sizes so their kids can eat. This is incredible in one of the richest countries in the world in 2026. Over 40% of renters are in poverty or are at risk of poverty and over 300,000 people are in energy arrears. How does all of that translate into people who are using home heating oil? A person cannot go into arrears on home heating oil. People cannot fill their tank and say that they will pay the supplier later. They have to pay them to get home heating oil. What all that means is that people do not fill up their tanks and they do not heat their homes.”
“The price of home heating oil has gone through the roof, almost doubled. Many people are at a stage of needing to fill their oil tank after they have been through the winter but obviously still need to use their heating. The Government's response to the surge in oil prices caused by Trump and Israel's imperialist wars in the Middle East is to take off 2 cent per litre. This will then be wiped away in a month and a half by an increase in the carbon tax. It is hard to imagine something more mean and inadequate. People will get €20 off for a full fill of home heating oil. Instead of paying the guts of €2,000 they might pay €1,980, so €20 off. I do not really know why the Government is bothering because it is so utterly inadequate in resolving the crisis that people face.”
“This is a mean Government. We knew it was a mean Government already because we saw the last budget, which was a giveaway budget for the developers, a giveaway budget for Google and a giveaway budget for the fast food giants but it took money out of the pockets of ordinary people and targeted disabled people, in particular, with swingeing, mean cuts of over €1,400 per person per year. We therefore knew this was a mean Government already and we had that in our mind when we were thinking, "What will the Government do when under massive public pressure to do something to protect people from the renewed cost-of-living crisis?" Looking at this proposal, however, this measure in particular, it is hard to imagine something meaner. There is a crisis out there. Close to one in five households uses home heating oil.”
“I heard the Taoiseach earlier say that LNG and so on were not contradictory to moving away from fossil fuels. Of course they are. That was the latest demand of Trump at the White House: we want to sell more LNG. The warning signals came and the message should have been heard in terms of Ukraine but it was not. The western world did not do anything to get away from fossil fuels. In this country we have continued on this track of reliance on fossil fuels. The result is that every extra unit of power added by wind has been swallowed up by the data centres, and Micheál Martin wants to go even further with them. No more data centres. Let us make public transport free. Let us invest in retrofitting to get off our reliance on fossil fuels, which is what makes us so exposed.”
“We need fuel companies to open their books to the CRU, and those found to be profiteering should be forced to contribute to the price caps by an amount equal to their excess profits. We need universal credits. The Government should just immediately get €500 back into the pockets of ordinary householders. It is the most immediate way to give people relief. That can be funded by a levy on the data centres. The data centres are now using more electricity than all households in this State combined and they are paying half the price for it. Let us fund it in that way. Yes, let us give an extra month of fuel allowance, let us give an extra payment, a double payment, on all social protection payments as targeted measures. Then let us invest in getting people away from fossil fuels.”
“The ESRI did not say that. I will get the Minister of State the exact figures by the time I finish. The Government's budget - people can check it online - hit disabled people and the lowest income groups the hardest. Let me say what the Government should have done and what we are in favour of doing. We should cap prices. We should give people certainty: €1.75, as was contained in our Bill, for petrol and diesel. Only a price cap can give certainty and security to car-dependent households. The way you do that is you cap the price and then adjust the tax as necessary to ensure that petrol and diesel can continue to be supplied. Then we need to expand the remit of the CRU to investigate petrol and diesel prices and send inspection teams to verify prices at the pumps.”
“We know that the Government's budget made all of that worse. Despite the misinformation that is put out there by the Taoiseach, we know and the ESRI, the Parliamentary Budget Office and so on will say that the Government's budget made it worse and made it hardest for the poorest groups in our society. That was the impact of its budget: increasing child poverty and increasing rates of poverty, including for older people. The Minister and the Minister of State have woken up to react to that. They are welcome. Let me tell them what the Parliamentary Budget Office said. It said the budget increased poverty rates from 11.7% in 2024 to 13.2% in 2025.”
“However, instead of actually doing that in an effective way for everybody such that they get the benefit and, therefore, consumers and the population at large get the benefit at the end of the day, the Government has done a special scheme just for businesses. It is very revealing of the Government's approach to this new cost-of-living crisis. I do not think the Government gets it that for ordinary people this cost-of-living crisis comes on top of an existing cost-of-living crisis. People are really suffering. People were already really suffering two months ago. We remember the shocking statistic about four in ten parents skipping or cutting back on meals in order to ensure that their kids have enough to eat. We know there are over 300,000 people in arrears on their energy bills right now.”
“It should just give disabled people €400, which is a tiny amount that will go some way to cushion them from the blow, a targeted amount for them. However, when we read the detail of Financial Resolution No. 2, I am afraid we discover this is not a targeted measure for disabled people but a targeted measure for hauliers. They will get an extra rebate on diesel to go back to the start of January and to go all the way to the end of June, but ordinary householders will not. Of course hauliers need support. Of course their prices going up will feed through into the rest of the economy in what people pay for the goods they buy in shops and so on. However, what is the measure to do that? It is obvious. It is the same measure as for everybody else. It is dealing with the issue of the price of diesel.”
“People will be grand." They certainly will not be; they are struggling. We have very minimal measures for the general population but then we hear that Resolution No. 2 is a targeted measure. It is a measure which, unlike the ones we voted on earlier that come in tonight and last just until the end of May, is backdated to 1 January and it goes all the way to the end of June. That is fantastic, we think. This must be for the disabled people who were hit by the Government with €1,400 of cruel cuts in the budget. They have been on the streets demanding again and again an emergency disability payment, not the full cost-of-disability payment which they were promised, not even getting back the €1,400 that the Government took off them.”
“This resolution is very revealing about the Government's approach. Earlier, we had a resolution that introduced inadequate measures, small cuts in excise on petrol and diesel but no price caps, no guarantee, no security for people into the future and nothing to ensure there is not profiteering. Those measures are time limited until the end of May and could be wiped away by the end of the week. Prices could go back down to €2 per litre and then go back up again by the end of the week. It is something but it is also very inadequate, effectively nothing. On home heating oil, it will mean a €20 saving on 1,000 litres when the price has very close to doubled over the past number of weeks. That is insulting to people. The underlying thread we hear from the Ministers is, "Ah sure, we're getting out of the bad weather.”
“The Taoiseach wants to abolish the triple lock that enshrines the principle that we will only engage in the use of force with a UN mandate while a Fianna Fáil Minister of State is correctly saying that violating that principle is illegal.”
“On 5 March, the Fianna Fáil Minister of State, Deputy Robert Troy, told the Dáil that: Ireland's position on the use of force where there is no UN mandate or authorisation is well established and known. For fear that anyone is in any doubt, let me be clear: it is wrong and it is illegal. He said that the use of force without UN mandate or authorisation is wrong and illegal, which is absolutely correct. How can the Taoiseach square that with his support for the coalition of the willing in Ukraine? How can he square it with continuing to try to abolish the triple lock? The use of force is illegal unless done with a UN mandate. That is absolutely clear. It applies whether it is for peacekeeping or "strengthening international security", as it is put in the heads of the defence (amendment) Bill. Is there disagreement in Fianna Fáil over this?”
“It means scrapping the carbon tax and putting an energy levy on data centres instead, abolishing standing charges for electricity and gas, immediately reintroducing energy credits to tackle people's home energy bills in the short term and link that to price caps. We have a Bill to do precisely that, introducing a €1 per litre price cap on home heating oil as well as caps on petrol, diesel and home energy, and linking that to the idea of renationalising our energy system. We used to have the cheapest electricity in Europe. We now have the most expensive as a result of the failed project of liberalisation. Put people first, not the profits of corporations.”
“The Government's response, to quote the Taoiseach, is to say that we have to respond in a measured, balanced way that targets our resources and that is effective, and that we understand the pressure people are under. I do not believe that. I do not believe a government that understands the pressure people are under would have cut incomes for the poorest people in the most recent budget. I do not believe such a government would have cut income for disabled people by over €1,400. The action that should be taken is very simple. It is not putting the profits of the corporations first.”
“It feels in many ways like Groundhog Day talking again about a cost-of-living crisis. Of course, this cost-of-living crisis comes on top of a cost-of-living crisis that had not gone away, despite what the Government pretended at the time of the budget. The result is people again choosing between heating or eating, with fuel prices spiralling and people in crisis situations. What lies behind it is a US and Israeli criminal and imperialist attack on Iran, which the Government refuses to condemn and to say is in breach of international law. What lies behind that is our continued reliance on fossil fuels and most immediately is short-term profiteering, which we know, in the previous cost-of-living crisis was responsible for two thirds of the price increases.”
“It did not listen to the experts or to the artificial intelligence, AI, committee when it voted down our Bill to do precisely that. I also call on the Minister to show some respect for women and girls by supporting the call of survivors of mother and baby homes not to build over a mass grave at Bessborough. They will be outside the Dáil protesting very shortly.”
“The highest price, of course, is paid by women and girls – not just those unfortunate enough to end up in a relationship with these damaged men or to be assaulted by them but every woman and girl who is now living in a climate of misogyny that is getting worse by the day. Research by Women’s Aid has found that two thirds of young men hold or do not disagree with traditionalist, sexist beliefs like “a man’s worth is measured by power and control over others”, and that “real men should not have to care about women’s opinions or feelings”. I am sure Donald Trump and Elon Musk would agree. Does the Government agree? I presume it would say “No” but it acts as if it does because it has refused to turn off the toxic social media algorithms that are normalising misogyny and hate.”
“Over the past week, a lot of people have been watching Louis Theroux’s exposé of the online manosphere, where manfluencers peddle misogyny, racism, homophobia and transphobia, which is then force-fed to young men via toxic social media algorithms. Like the big tech companies and the depraved billionaires who profit from these toxic algorithms, the only value system the manfluencers have is money, maximising engagement and clicks by making the most extreme content they can think of and then monetising the attention of young men and boys by flogging them club memberships, cryptocurrency and other sorts of snake oil. Young men and boys who buy what big tech and the manosphere are selling pay the price financially and emotionally. Anyone who takes Andrew Tate’s advice on relationships is likely to end up as an incel or an abuser.”
“I also make a final appeal, on the last day of the Dáil before Micheál Martin is going to go and hand over the bowl of shamrock to Donald Trump. Do not do that. Do not allow him to use the Irish national day to present himself as a friend of the Irish, to greenwash himself and to cover up the war crimes he is currently engaged in.”
“The European leaders who are turning a blind eye, or else applauding and assisting the US assault on Iran are going to look like big hypocrites if Trump does decide to invade Greenland. All of a sudden they will rediscover international law. The Irish Government is complicit. It is complicit in this illegal, criminal, imperialist war on Iran. It is complicit because of the use of Shannon Airport. Two US Air Force aircraft stopped at Shannon Airport before flying straight to the main European hub used to transport weapons for use in Iran. The Garda protected one of these aircraft, according to an image published by Shannonwatch. That is utterly shameful. We have to get the US military out of Shannon Airport. Follow the example of the Spanish; do not facilitate them at all.”
“I listened earlier to the Minister of State, Deputy Richmond, condemning Hezbollah for attacking Israel and then regretting the response from Israel, while recognising Israel's right to defend itself. This stuff is absolutely crazy. Black is white, the world is upside down. Where is Iran's right to defend itself in this? Everyone in this House would recognise the right of Ukraine to defend itself against imperialist assault by Russia. Does Iran not have a right to defend itself against imperialist assault? Do the people of Lebanon not have a right to defend themselves against an invasion and an attempt to create a greater Israel which is happening right now, a land invasion by Israel in Lebanon?”
“First and foremost, the ordinary Iranian people, the ordinary people in Lebanon and other people across the region will do so. Then people in this country and elsewhere in the world will be subject to price gouging and massive price hikes as they get hit and the Government does not defend them. The Irish Government response has been utterly shameful. It is refusing to tell the basic truth. It is refusing to say that this is contrary to international law. You cannot bring yourselves to say it. It is refusing to condemn the bombing of a school, and refusing to condemn this imperialist assault. It speaks volumes about the position the Irish Government has gotten itself into as completely subordinate to US imperialism; in reality, it is a poodle of US imperialism.”
“Donald Trump said yesterday that if they did not hit within two weeks, Iran would have had a nuclear weapon. He said: "When crazy people have nuclear weapons, bad things happen." That is a lie. He knows it is a lie. It contradicts what he said before and what has been said by all the UN experts and so on. It is interesting; it is like a playing out again of the same lies about weapons of mass destruction that we heard in respect of Iraq, to try to create a public opinion - it is not working in America or elsewhere - that would be supportive of this military adventure. It is weapons of mass destruction without even the dodgy dossiers, without even going to the bother of manufacturing the evidence this time. Who will pay the price?”
“If 160 schoolchildren were killed in many other places in the world, it would rightly be the number one item on the news for weeks and weeks, as of course it should be. Here, it is quickly forgotten because it is inconvenient and because it reveals the reality of what is happening. What is happening is a criminal, brutal, imperialist assault. The war being launched by the US and Israel against Iran and Lebanon threatens to become a fully regional war. It is an extension and a consequence of the impunity that Israel has been treated to after over two years of genocide of the Palestinian people. Where have we seen the targeting of schools before? Oh, yes. That is a strategy that Israel has deployed in Gaza again and again. It is a war that is based on lies, as they always are.”
“"Death and destruction from the sky, all day long" was what Pete Hegseth, Secretary of War, said with glee from a podium. The man is a psychopath. He comes across as a psychopath. It is like he has styled himself on a film villain. He represents a psychopathic regime in a psychopathic system. Who is this death and destruction being rained down on? Well over 1,000 Iranians have now been killed. Although it has gotten shockingly little attention, we know that in one bombing of a school, over 160 young schoolgirls and teachers were murdered. On RTÉ and mainstream media, I have heard this being relativised by those who say we do not really know what happened here and so on. It tells us something about the distinct value of human life.”
“In South Dublin County Council we are a year ahead of where the city council is and we have every chance of stopping this rent increase coming in. Will the Minister of State explain to me what the idea of merging the cost rental and social housing systems would look like? What does it mean to go for it being based on the principle of cost recovery? If the Government implements that, is it not the end of the differential rents scheme?”
“I am not against a streamlined system in principle but I do not think any council tenants are going to believe the Minister of State that the Government is going to streamline this downwards to the lowest levels. Instead, everyone will hear that it is going to streamline this to the highest possible levels. That will mean even more rent increases for people who simply cannot afford to pay. I am telling the Minister of State that council tenants are getting organised in a very significant way. In Dublin City Council it is going to be a massive campaign. It was only lost by one vote. Unfortunately, the Labour Party and the Green Party voted to increase people's rents. We are building a big campaign to reverse that in the next budget.”
“That would be an extremely retrograde, regressive step. It would be a move in exactly the wrong direction and would result in even bigger rent increases for those who can least afford to pay.”
“Can the Minister of State tell me whether, in the national framework the Government is going to work towards, rents are going to come down for any council tenants or are they just going to rise? That is the simple question. The Delivering Homes, Building Communities document is extremely worrying because it suggests moving away from a differential rent-based system in which people's rent is based on their income and what they can afford to pay, which is an extremely fair system. Instead the document refers to the Housing Commission recommendation of "Merging social and cost rental housing over time to form a single affordable rental sector, based on the principle of cost recovery". In other words, it will no longer be based on the principle of how much people can afford to pay but how much it costs to build the homes.”
“Across Dublin City Council letters are dropping for council tenants and HAP tenants telling them the people least able to afford to pay are going to see massive rent increases of 30% on average. Dublin city renters are getting organised. I saw there was a big meeting last night, a big meeting the week before and a big meeting the week before that. Eoghan Ó Ceannabháin is involved in organising those people. The same is happening in South Dublin County Council in advance of a planned rent rise. The question is whether this is part of national government policy and just the thin end of the wedge that is going to see council and HAP rents rise and rise.”
“Will it include general practice? Will it include the method for this? Will it include the waiting lists, which then were used to pressurise, or were part of the pressure on surgeons to do operations, and so on?”
“As I understand it, in order to get registered in another country one would need to have a fitness to practise certificate. I understand from a reply to a parliamentary question that there is no fitness to practice certificate and none has been issued. How is this surgeon potentially operating on patients in America? Has the Government contacted the Maryland Board of Physicians to say that there is some very important information that it should be aware of? Do we not have a duty of care in relation to that? With regard to the Nayagam report, will the Minister confirm that an injunction has been sought? Presumably this is still going through the courts. On the scoping exercise for the Farrell review, is it going to be broad?”
“I will not give any of the details because it would reveal their identity. This adult is convinced that they were wrongly pressurised to have a surgery by Connor Green, which was a disaster. That may or may not be accurate, but you can go and have a lookback. I do not understand why adults have been excluded. I do not understand why other specialties have been excluded. If we have someone acting in this way as a rogue surgeon, why do we assume it is only happening in these areas of speciality as opposed to others? I have raised a related point in parliamentary questions over the past months. I raised it in a question to the Taoiseach a few weeks ago. The Minister is absolutely aware of it. How come this surgeon is registered to practise in Maryland?”
“There is currently a Medical Council investigation into him. Why, then, is the lookback quite narrow, and contrary to the request of the orthopaedic surgeons? The lookback is on surgeries between 2016 and 2023, and it includes all spinal, limb reconstruction, and surgical dislocation of the hip surgeries, but not surgeries in the area of trauma and general orthopaedics. As I understand it, many orthopaedic surgeons have made a request that this should be expanded to cover all surgeries and this has been denied with this narrower review. If we have a number of red flags about a surgeon - the term "red flags" understates what they are - why do we have an approach that limits it to some areas of speciality? Linked to that, why are we excluding adults? I have been raising this for years now. I was contacted by an adult about this.”
“Secondly, when a decision is to be made about going broad or narrow, we need to go broad in terms of being expansive and covering all potential issues. Otherwise, there is real danger that these various reviews will not fully get to the bottom of the problems and then they will have to be repeated again. The guiding principle should be to take in more patients as opposed to trying to exclude patients. I will move on to my particular questions. I will start with the lookback which flows from the Nayagam report. The Nayagam report looked at a surgeon's cases and said that we needed to review two thirds of the cases he was involved in. It is the same surgeon who was responsible for inserting non-medical grade springs, which he had got himself, into children. These are some very serious red flags.”
“I mostly want to focus on some specifics and some particular questions. I will start with some general points that shape the particulars. The most obvious general point made by many is that this is a heartbreaking scandal. It is awful that so many children have been failed in this way, Harvey, along with his family, among them. It is a horrendous failure by the State. Now we have a process of various reviews, reports and lookbacks into the various medical failures at CHI. What should shape those reviews? What will be the general overall approach? Two things are key. First, I emphasise again and again that it should be patient-centred, child-centred and family-centred. It needs to have their voices at the heart of it. They need to shape the process in order to have confidence in it.”
“A 2019 internal Meta document affirmed that content moderation was impossible and that the focus should instead be on stopping artificial amplification. The parallels with big tobacco are clear in terms of the harms being done to young people and the fact these people know all about it and know about the profits they are making from it. The Minister said the algorithms are preferable to the unknown risk of switching off those recommender systems. That is bizarre. Deputy Albert Dolan, who is a backbench Fianna Fáil TD, precisely described what will happen if the algorithm system is turned off. We will go back to a space where our social media feeds are curated by us. We will get to choose who we see. We will have a wholesome space of seeing our friends, community, etc., as opposed to toxic, misogynistic content being fed to young people.”
“It is very interesting that in the senior Minister's speech, which we heard earlier, there was a line of argument that was pretty much directly taken from the tech companies' lobbying. The tech companies' lobbying that resulted in this proposal being taken out of the online safety code said that recommender systems play an important role in ensuring a safe, predictable and trusted online environment by ensuring that users are connected to relevant and high-quality information. The Minister stated that recommender systems and algorithms serve to protect people, including children and young people, from harmful content. The companies know that is not true. A report from Meta's internal research stated that 64% of all extremist group joins were due to its recommendation tools and that its recommendation systems grow the problem.”
“It is why, at a European level, they are not standing up against the big tech lobbying operation to further deregulate and undermine the levels of protections we have at a European level. Domestically, the Government is going to vote this down on the spurious basis that it is already dealing with it under the Digital Services Act. The Minister of State referred to Article 27 of the Digital Services Act and the requirement to mitigate risks, including to minors, and the requirement that very large platforms must give an option of algorithms that do not rely on profiling. Effectively, this is light-touch regulation and it may as well be self-regulation. The big tech companies can do what they want.”
“There is a gulf between words and actions here. The Minister of State said, and I would welcome it if it was true, that the Government is relentlessly committed to online safety, but that was part of a speech that was justifying why the Government is going to vote down this Bill. I repeat that the Bill is very simple and clear. It is an answer to the torrent of toxic material that is being fed to young people in particular. It is the answer that is being called for by a wide range of organisations and experts who have looked at this issue. In theory, it looks like the Government has a relentless commitment, but that is a commitment to protecting the profits of big tech companies.”
“We have to turn off the torrent of toxic content at its source, the big tech companies and the billionaire psychopaths who own them, instead of taking the Government's approach, as it is pointing to with reference to the online safety code, of putting all the responsibility on individual users and on parents, who are completely overwhelmed by all of this. I appeal to the Government at this stage to withdraw its amendment and pass the Bill. If it has detailed points to make, fine, let us do that in committee, but let us take the side of children and their safety and health and not the side of big tech companies and their profits.”
“I saw Deputy Ken O'Flynn from Independent Ireland was opposing this Bill and taking the side of the big tech companies over children on the spurious grounds that he is opposed to censorship. To be clear, there is not one iota, none whatsoever, of censorship involved in this legislation. This Bill will have no impact on the ability of people to create whatever content they want and to put it on social media. It simply prevents and stops the force-feeding of this toxic material to young people and enables the rest of us to opt out of it or choose not to opt in to have this material force-fed to us. This is simple. It really is. Niamh McDonald from the Hope & Courage Collective made the point at a press conference we had that we need to treat big tech as the big tobacco of our day and take action now to prevent even more widespread harms.”
“To go back to the study from DCU, the vast majority of the content being recommended over two to three hours viewing was toxic. It was 76% on TikTok and 78% on YouTube Shorts. By the far the most prevalent feature of this content was Andrew Tate. The other toxic categories were the reactionary right and conspiracy, which accounted for 13.6% of recommended content on TikTok and 5.2% of recommended content on YouTube Shorts. Much of this was anti-transgender content. The report recommended that "recommender algorithms should be turned off by default". The professor involved in the study said, "The social media companies must come under increased pressure from the government to prioritise the safety and wellbeing of young people over profit." This is precisely the choice.”