Paul Nicholas Gogarty
Dublin Mid-West · Independent · Ireland
“As I have mentioned in the House before, if a border poll passes by 52% to 48%, the legal threshold of the Good Friday Agreement is met but the social consensus is not and moving 800,000 citizens into a new state against their explicit, democratic will does risk causing civil unrest.”
“We also have other gaps that are much smaller, like a ten-year phased transition, reducing the net annual cost to between €2.5 billion and €3 billion. We then had the middle figure of about €11 billion. We actually do not know how much it is going to cost but we do know it is going to cost something.”
“For example, adopting a single currency, getting rid of the exchange rate volatility and the transaction costs for cross-Border businesses are all advantages.”
“I would be loath to call a border poll right now because of the risks associated with that, but if a border poll did occur, the State would have to be prepared for the huge structural disruptions that would follow, so we have to start working now - that is why this debate is welcome - without arrogantly presuming it is going to become a r…”
“I have been listening to this debate in my office since Deputy Currie started her contribution. I always follow these debates on Irish unity with interest as someone who wants to see a united Ireland by consent.”
“Some have been mentioned in this House, such as a devolved regional assembly in Stormont to preserve local governance for the unionist community, a shared bill of rights protecting the dual Irish-British citizenship, and re-evaluating our relationship with the Commonwealth.”
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“There is a lot of emotive debate over this issue. The Irish people have consistently spoken out in terms of wanting to preserve our neutrality. In terms of Ukraine, for example, we have been keen to emphasise we are militarily neutral. As my Labour Party colleagues mentioned earlier, what we do not have is the military capacity to defend ourselves in any way, shape or form, or to patrol our coastlines. I note the Government is talking about investing in remote control-type of weaponry. We should be paying our Defence Forces more. They do a great job, and we should be trying to get more personnel on board. As a neutral country - and I wholeheartedly support Ireland's neutrality policy - we should have the capabilities to at least create a strong deterrent.”
“I disagreed at the time with this argument and now we have this glaring loophole because landlords can reset the rent for vacant properties to the full market rates using this overcrowding clause to bypass tenant protections. Ordinary families across Dublin and the country have done nothing except have a family member return or have a child and they are being legally forced out. Average rents have surpassed €2,300 a month and emergency accommodation has also been maxed out. The Minister has to support legislative amendments to close this loophole and we need to focus on helping hard-pressed people by introducing a rent freeze immediately.”
“As other Deputies have referred, when the RTB published data, it confirmed a huge upsurge in evictions in the first three months of this year alone. A figure of roughly 7,000 was mentioned but in Dublin, which includes my constituency, 2,500 householders were handed notice during this period. During the debates last year and at the very start of this year, the Government's argument was that allowing landlords to reset the vacant properties to the new full market rates was necessary, especially to try and attract institutional investors and, to a lesser extent, keep smaller landlords in the market. I agree with keeping smaller landlords in the market but there has been an over-reliance on institutional investors. Ultimately, the crisis will be solved by increasing the overall supply of rental accommodation.”
“There is surely a way to adhere to the nitrates directive while protecting farm incomes. In dealing with our problem nationally we need meaningful incentives and enforcement where incentives do not work. Above all, we need political will as opposed to plámás.”
“What is causing the problem is unsustainable land use, drainage, pollution, overgrazing, improper development and especially the shameful way we reneged on our responsibilities to sustain biodiversity. We still allow raw sewage into our rivers and seas, which is absolutely absurd. Putting animal excrement on our land and allowing it to pollute our waterways is plain wrong. We have nitrogen-fixing alternatives like fava beans, and a policy promoting more organic farming rather than over-intensification could help massively but instead we trumpet our achievement with the derogation on the nitrates directive. I believe in our farmers. I believe they will do more if their incomes are protected and they are given guarantees and incentives, along with the communities they live in.”
“Things have got worse since I spoke about this last year. I had a few more minutes then, so I have to rush. The 2025 Article 17 habitats report has come out since last year’s debate and it shows we are sliding backwards. There have been improvements in a small number of habitats and targeted conservation work by volunteers has helped some species but overall we are neglecting our country and basically spitting in the face of our many volunteers. The report shows 90% of Ireland’s EU protected habitats remain in poor condition and more than half are still deteriorating. This Government and its predecessor has allowed the majority of our most precious ecosystems to continue deteriorating. It is not rocket science.”
“We need to look at strategic investment and partnership with companies in the context of that element of industrial policy, because it would be a win-win situation for everyone.”
“We could do that, but we have the potential, using battery and hydro storage, to be self-sufficient in electricity terms , to provide the energy for data centres and get an income from them and to export energy to the UK and France. If we do need a nuclear element, we could take some nuclear energy from France, if we ever the need to do so, during an off-peak period. With wave, wind, solar and tidal power, and also if we ramp up the grid and the private wires element, I cannot see why we would ever be short of energy at any time of the year, particularly as we have enough capacity to cater for our own needs, although our export capacity might slow down at different times.”
“We need battery storage and maybe hydroelectric, a Turlough Hill-type project, that would be capable of holding onto the energy generated by using offshore wind, the waves on the west coast and the tides in the Shannon Estuary and off the coast of Dublin. We have wave energy potential in the context of which we are way behind both Scotland and Denmark. All of this could contribute to massive export potential in terms of electricity. I listened to a debate earlier today about the potential for bringing nuclear power to Ireland. I am not opposed this ideologically, but there would be a need to ramp things up and spend money on imported uranium or thorium, cheap as they might be in the current context.”
“We would possibly need to build a new city to accommodate them and plan it properly in order that it would be a 15-minute city where all of the facilities and amenities would be within walking distance and where people could work in a much more modern way. That would also mean that if people living in places like Dublin Mid-West are going to be commuting for 50 minutes in order to get to work, it would make much more sense for them to westwards rather than adding to the gridlock eastwards and along the M50. The other matter I want to reference is that of our ports, particularly in the context of co-investment funding. We need deep-sea ports on the west coast.”
“They are all living in my area, which they are entitled to do, but they have very high-income jobs, which means that houses prices locally are being pushed up. Equally, because all of the companies they work for want to locate in the Dublin area, the increase in traffic does tend to add to the gridlock. It would make a lot of sense from an industrial perspective that an area the size of Silicon Valley would be covered by that triangle, a 20 km space in the middle of the country, where future policy would encourage or even specify that the companies have to go to those type of hubs. That is where they would be located.”
“I hope that clarification can be given as this Bill progresses as to how standards will be phased in, what sort of supports will be available and how we can ensure they do not undermine local businesses. They are not related to the Bill specifically, but there are a couple of other matters I would like to talk about briefly, purely because they are relevant to where industrial policy goes. I have mentioned these matters previously, both at the committee of which I am a member and in other debates in the House. I am of the view that we should create something similar to Silicon Valley in the midlands, in the triangle comprising the lands between Tullamore, Athlone and Mullingar. My constituency has a high concentration of pharma and software industries. Some 20% of those who work in these industries come from overseas.”
“On the flammable liquid provisions, updating safety standards is necessary, but we also have to be mindful of the compliance burden on small operators, particularly those in rural areas. Industry estimates suggest it could cost up to €15,000 per site for upgrades and inspections, depending on the scale of the equipment involved. Those who came up with those estimates would say that because the information comes from an Irish petroleum industry association compliance costs survey from 2023. However, they do have a fair point to make to the effect that if you want to manage safety, you should try to do it in a way that does not potentially put companies out of business.”
“This model is widely used by governments to benchmark whether agencies with significant operational independence can still operate in a transparent, accountable and democratic framework. Looking at this from the OECD's perspective, when agencies expand their mandates, as this Bill, to a degree, proposes, without parallel reform of how they are governed, there is a risk the accountability gap increases and the scrutiny decreases. We need, in every case above a certain amount, risk-weighted assessment aligned with best practice internationally, particularly at EU level and maybe looking at the UK specifically. It means a stronger as opposed to a weaker role for the public accounts committee in reviewing the activities of agencies and for the enterprise committee of which I am a member.”
“The governance structures overseeing our enterprise agencies have not necessarily kept pace with the expansion of their mandates over the years. They are asked to do more than in T.K. Whitaker and Lemass's time, or the seventies, eighties or nineties. We now have the green transition, the digital transition, the so-called defence, security and resilience technology, growth and infrastructure. While co-investment is not new, it is new in this context, especially with the lead agency model I have been suggesting. In 2020, the OECD published the principles of good governance for independent public bodies and set out international best practice standards for how semi-automonous agencies like IDA Ireland, the HSE, ComReg, the EPA and Enterprise Ireland should be structured and held accountable.”
“If the likes of IDA Ireland will take on more risk by getting involved, hopefully as the lead, in these co-investment projects, the Oireachtas has to have scrutiny, not to the level of micromanagement that will actually stop stuff happening, but definitely pre-notification of major co-investments above a reasonable defined threshold. It means annual reporting on the performance of assets and published risk management frameworks so we know the basis on which decisions are made in advance. We have had too many overspends and too few returns in the past. I wholeheartedly agree with empowering the agencies, but we need to ensure oversight. That brings me to a broader point in the context of the Bill and possibly beyond it.”
“We would want to be careful, especially in the scenario of these conflicts and the risk of a related global recession. We do not want to be holding property purchased at a peak price or paying over the odds in a bidding war unless we can guarantee we will get a return. I am digressing slightly because I have a little bit of time available. The whole process of NAMA was a good idea, particularly in the context of buying all the property, securing it and then trying to get a return on the investment. We got billions back. If you index day-to-day prices, however, you will see we undersold things from the point of view of what we got for the State. That was in the context of a global economic crisis with the troika putting pressure on us.”
“All are areas where the State could lead the way off its own bat, or at least through co-investment, with the caveat that the State be the lead investor. Any State investment, including co-investment, carries a financial risk. Commercial property values and land values have experienced big swings over the years - 10% to 15% in recent years in the office and industrial segments according to the CBRE Ireland market outlook 2024. Construction cost inflation has averaged 7% to 9% annually since 2021, as we know from a number of reports like the Society of Chartered Surveyors Ireland tender price index for the period 2021 to 2024. That has only got worse since the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the more recent war in the Strait of Hormuz and related fuel price hikes, which also push up the price of doing business.”
“That sometimes means the problem either never gets solved or is not solved fast enough, or else it generates massive profits for private companies and little community dividend. Many onshore wind farms, for example, go into communities but very few in the communities would say they got a good share of the profits or the projects have enhanced their quality of life in return for the inconvenience. I am a huge supporter of wind energy, but we have to ensure that there is a community dividend. This would also apply from a national perspective to offshore wind and stuff we have not pushed because we are depending on private companies, like wave, tidal, solar, to some extent hydrogen, battery storage investment and deep sea harbour development.”
“Another angle I want to look at is the expansion of IDA Ireland's co-investment powers. I am not concerned about some of those relating to the more pro-business side of things. I am definitely pro business but I am not pro giving business a licence to print money at the expense of the consumer. Co-investment is a good idea, even if it crowds out some private developers. If a strategically important project requires to be pushed forward and if it strengthens things from a regional or decarbonisation perspective or provides more jobs, then the State should not be afraid to take the lead. We have seen too many cases where we have waited for the so-called market to solve a problem and let the companies come in and do it.”
“Even if the goal is a good one and we are trying to do the decent thing in a world with lunatics like Trump and others denying that climate change is an increasingly dangerous reality, we need clear reporting on the types, number and scale of grants and on the expected outcomes and measured outcomes. We need to know that the money being spent is changing behaviour, whether individual consumer behaviour, industrial behaviour or through Government agencies, so that we are achieving our objectives, rather than just rewarding stuff we were going to have to do anyway, and that we are going back to the visionary idea of T.K. Whitaker in the 1950s. If this Bill is being brought in to create something more modern and to help us better achieve our aims, that is very welcome, but it should go above and beyond our existing targets.”
“The Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, has made it clear that Ireland must reduce emissions by 51% by 2030 in the context of the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development (Amendment) Act 2021. Unfortunately, we are projected to fall short by a wide margin in that regard. That is on the basis of an EPA report from 2024. I have consistently called in the Dáil for these targets not just to be met but also to be exceeded, especially in terms of energy security, self-sufficiency and the related urgent requirements to upgrade our electricity grid. Again, we need financial transparency.”
“If, however, we are serious about being signatories in the context of calling out Israel for genocide, then we should bring this type of legislation as far as possible in order that the EU will be obliged to say, "Well, actually, you can't do this. It is illegal." At least symbolically, we will have shown we are serious about what we purport to care about as a country. We need transparency at all stages. Another aspect of this legislation involves environmental protection and carbon abatement. The Bill allows projects to be assessed solely on environmental criteria; given my Green background, I fully support that. We have to accelerate the decarbonisation process.”
“Does it have anything to do with Russian submarines or security equipment for EU Presidency events? Does it mean giving the Israeli armed forces a leg up, even if only to help them with their HR systems? We need an independent oversight mechanism. I listened to the discussion on the radio this morning between Deputies Richard Boyd Barrett and Barry Ward. It was quite interesting. I want to put this on the record because I will not be here this evening for the debate on Deputy Boyd Barrett's Private Members' Bill. I acknowledge that the Government has valid points to raise on what the proposed legislation can do unilaterally in terms of whether or not we can override the European Union element.”
“If we are stepping into the defence security and resilience space - whether we say it explicitly or not - we have to have structures that reflect our neutrality. That means we still need a statutory reporting requirement to the Oireachtas, whether it is to the Committee on Defence and National Security, with regular updates by the Minister in the Dáil or Seanad, or something similar with the same level of agreed scrutiny that Opposition parties and Independents would be happy with. It means having a clear definition of what the phrase "primarily military relevance" means in the current age. The meaning might change in five years' time, so we have to have good definitions. We do not know whether this refers to funding that would create jobs while also facilitating the guarding of undersea cables.”
“Section 8 of the Bill being added at a later stage is worrying because, once the requirement for explicit approval is removed, the moment is also moved forward when someone in a position of power can ask what exactly we are supporting and whether it fits in with our military neutrality. Are we not, lads and lassies, actually supporting genocide? Where does the buck stop? It may not stop at the Minister any more. Who is accountable? Cynics might say that is the reason, to get rid of that accountability, to give us - to borrow an American term, a weasel word - strategic flexibility. Basically, if it is a deliberate attempt to do something like that, it is an abomination. If it is an oversight, it needs to be fixed through the parliamentary process.”
“It reflects a continent that, for its own reasons - we can see why the Poles and Germans would like this - is rearming technologically and militarily. Even if we are constrained in certain aspects due to our military neutrality, our membership of the EU is being pushed in that direction. We cannot pretend we exist in a bubble. We are neutral, however, and as long as the population wishes it to be so, we cannot remove what is, in effect, a safeguard without replacing it with something, perhaps more modern, but at least of equal standing or better. This is where I have the concerns. Deputy Boyd Barrett referred to it quite eloquently a few minutes ago.”
“I refer to the removal of the requirement for the Government to give approval before agencies engage in activities of primarily military relevance. The Government argued that the provisions in place up to now are outdated, that dual use technologies blur the line between civil and military and that Ireland needs to be able to participate in emerging European frameworks and so on. This is all true. Across the EU, dual use research and development spending increased by 40% between 2018 and 2023, according to the European Commission's 2023 defence industrial strategy report. The European Defence Fund has been allocated €7.95 billion for the 2021 to 2027 period under the European Defence Fund Regulation (EU) 2021/697. That is a massive amount of money.”
“The pace is increasing all the time. However, when we modernise the machinery of the State, which is laudable, we have to make sure that checks and balances remain. We have to have that ambitious side, similar to the 1950s pioneering spirit, but we also have to make sure that we spend wisely in terms of how we invest. I broadly support the direction in which the Bill will take us, but I wish to raise a number of concerns, in a constructive way, which I hope will be reflected in the strengthening of the Bill as it goes through the different Stages. The first has been referred to by a number of Deputies already, including Deputies Gibney and Boyd Barrett. It is the most headline-grabbing one from a lot of perspectives.”
“I welcome the chance to speak on this Bill because I can see the logic in the State being prepared for the way industry, technology, national security and environmental concerns are changing. I take on board what the Government said about this Bill giving our enterprise agencies the flexibility to operate in a globalised system that is more competitive, more AI enhanced and more security sensitive than ever before. The Industrial Development Acts of the 1980s and 1990s - when I grew up - were not designed for an era of AI quantum computing, cyber resilience, cyberattacks or climate-driven industrial focus. Just like Ireland evolved, as was referenced by a previous speaker, from the 1950s policies of Lemass - and many tributes should go to T.K. Whitaker for those - the situation has again taken a massive leap forward.”
“Therefore, corporations will have control over some of the material. In this context, given the Government allowed this to proceed to this stage, will the Tánaiste now instruct Government MEPs to vote against the legislation so we can have further scrutiny because this will pose a risk to Irish organic farming?”
“This coming Monday, the European Parliament will vote on a framework that will allow gene-edited foods onto Irish supermarket shelves with zero consumer labelling and no safety screening. While we have our own ban on the cultivation of traditional genetically modified organisms, GMOs, we cannot, under this legislation, ban the import and transport of EU-approved genetic material for food and animal feed. There is a real risk that Irish organic farmers, whose livelihoods depend on keeping their crops entirely new genomic techniques, NGT, free will actually be contaminated because trace amounts of wind-blown NGT can lose them their organic certification. My understanding is also that under this final law, because it allows for an earlier law to be brought in, it is making GMOs, in this context anyway, fully patentable.”
“We need the automated safety of these measures but until the strategy delivers widespread cameras everywhere instead of tiny pilots on just regional and national roads, it will be inadequate.”
“To combat this massive volume, a strategy launching at just one or two pilot locations is completely inadequate and the €60 fine for blocking a bus lane is no real deterrent. It is happening all over and it is not about people turning 50 m from a filter lane; it is selfish and dangerous driving, so we need serious penalty points. Constituents also have a serious problem with the breaking of lights, again, not just on regional roads. The covert traffic monitoring conducted by RTÉ "Prime Time" recorded more than 60 dangerous red-light violations in just an eight-hour window across a tiny handful of junctions. That is death and injury waiting to happen around every single corner.”
“I welcome elements of the National Safety Camera Strategy in terms of expanding our safety camera network to 1,900 zones and targeting the high collision black spots. However, we cannot ignore the sheer scale of the violations occurring everywhere in my constituency and elsewhere. We need a lot more cameras and enforcement after it is handed over to TII. Equally, we have to look at the smaller roads and local authority areas also. Let us look at bus lanes, for example. An Garda Síochána issues over 6,000 fixed-charge notices a year to drivers unlawfully using these but there is no real deterrent. A survey by irishcycle.com on Westland Row near Leinster House recorded nearly one car per minute blatantly breaking bus-priority measures.”
“I am not trying to cause panic, but we need to be prepared. We have seen the virus on the boat in the Canary Islands. What if it was a more resilient and transmissible virus? What if the Iranian war or other conflicts prevented us from getting as many boats to this country? That is the issue. Food Vision 2030 is based on exports and farm income diversification. It is not about having a national food security plan. My understanding is that there is such a plan in the Netherlands. Even within an EU context, we need a contingency plan in case something happens. That is why we need a strategic food reserve as well as our strategic oil reserve. That means giving grant aid to farmers to allow them to engage in diversification. As the Taoiseach said, a lot of this produce could be turned into animal feed if we do not need it.”
“As I said at the start, we can do this the easy way or the hard way and expand our horticulture and tillage now, reduce our livestock intensity and have a national food security plan. We have a massive opportunity to expand plant protein production. Fava beans, for example, will fix nitrogen in the soil. We can produce our own plant protein and our own plant milks but also make the soil healthier for other forms of agriculture. The Teagasc tillage initiative scheme and the protein aid scheme have shown that farmers will grow more crops if the incentives are right. We need an actual food security strategy. I do not believe we have one.”
“Families on lower incomes would be hit more because, as prices rise, the better-off would use their relative purchasing power to get what is available. After 12 months, fertiliser shortage would reduce grass growth and silage yields. Farmers would cull lower yield animals. Milk and beef output would fall. Ireland would still have all this calorific meat-based protein but not a balanced healthy and affordable diet. The Taoiseach is someone who is into healthy eating, and I am a vegan so I have to be, but households would have to shift to whatever is available. Grow your own might increase massively in gardens but it would not have the scale, so after five years we would have had to adapt massively.”
“What people buy every week is bread, cereals, pasta, fruit, vegetables, oils and all kinds of food that is largely imported. Only 10% of our land grows crops in this country. Some 90% of it is grass. Modern Irish beef and dairy farming depends on imported fertiliser, feed, fuel and machinery parts. What would this mean for ordinary families? After a two-week scenario, supermarkets would begin to show gaps in fresh fruit and vegetables. Bread would become harder to source because we import most of the milling wheat. Prices would rise. Choice would collapse. The weekly shop would suddenly cost more and people would buy less. After two months, pig and poultry products would become scarce because they rely almost wholly on imported feed. Dairy output would begin to get tighter. There would be more empty shelves.”
“We have talked a lot about energy security, which is a very important issue, but I want to raise another issue that affects every household in this country and that is our food security or, more accurately, our lack of it. The Minister for agriculture describes the Government's Food Vision 2030 as strategy for a world-leading sustainable food system, but it is not a food security plan. In fact, the evidence shows that Ireland will not be able to sustain itself indefinitely without major agriculture and dietary change. We can do this the hard way or the easy way. At the moment, we are 233% self-sufficient in meat and 300% in dairy. Teagasc tells us we produce enough protein for 30 million to 36 million people, but that does not mean Irish families would have access to the food they need if imports were to be disrupted by a war or pandemic.”
“Let us remember that we are paying among the highest, if not the highest, electricity prices in Europe, but we are probably the ones that get the lowest amount of information as to why. A little bit of transparency would not go amiss, and I cannot see why this Bill would be opposed by the Government. Even if there are measures that its advice says cannot be implemented, the Bill can be amended and made better. In that context, more transparency is a good idea.”
“That is a long way down the road but we should be starting now. Hedging, to an extent, does delay price reductions, and our dependence on oil and gas for electricity and for other forms of energy makes us very vulnerable. The Bill is restricted in what it can do. The CRU cannot override EU law. The Government might say EU law is already in place so we do not need this, but it cannot get better than EU law and it cannot set direct pricing either, and it does not tackle the root cause of our dependence on imported fossil fuels. To be clear, however, it is an improvement on what is there already. Every piece of relevant information can only push the system a little closer to fairness for people.”
“That is why I welcome the Electricity Regulation (Amendment) Bill 2026. In the same theme as "The Wizard of Oz", it is not a magic wand to reduce prices but it might just lead to fairer pricing and help people make better decisions because of the suggestions like the monthly publication of the supplier margins, the oversight of the hedging, the quarterly reports showing how quickly the retail prices are tracking the wholesale costs and giving more and stronger powers to the CRU to investigate any kind of anti-competitive behaviour. To be clear, there are real reasons prices stay up. Ireland's wholesale prices are still higher in general. Network and grid charges are higher, and that is before we put the investment into upgrading the grid so we can actually be supplied wholly by homegrown energy and be a net exporter.”
“As others have said, people are fed up, exhausted and worn down by the current energy crisis. Some of those already challenged to make ends meet - those with disabilities, for example, or those on very low incomes - are now living hand to mouth and cutting back on food just to keep a bit of heat and light, and that is before the darker winter months crawl back in again. We have also found out that small businesses are hanging on. I have spoken to quite a few in my constituency. We see that prices always shoot up in an incident, but when wholesale prices drop or a Government initiative provides a belated relief, we do not see the same movement downwards. It is all about the hedging and the margins, but a lot of it is basically "Wizard of Oz" stuff and no one can see what is going on behind the curtain.”
“That means that over the past two decades, more than half of all nurses registered in Ireland were migrants and we are increasingly reliant on the great work they do. At the same time, Irish nurses continue to move abroad, and many do not come back. Even if they did not emigrate, we still train too few of them in any event, with a 2023 OECD report finding that we produce 31 nursing graduates per 100,000 people compared with 58 in the Netherlands and 109 in Australia. There have been some improvements, but we need to keep our Irish nurses and retain the international ones by paying them better and improving their working conditions, bringing in the likes of a Dublin allowance, because having a vocation only goes so far.”
“I am in solidarity with the ambulance workers but I want to take the opportunity to praise the fantastic work of our nurses on what is International Nurses Day. There are over 92,000 registered nurses and midwives in Ireland who all do a fantastic job, but their working conditions are far from optimal. They have raised issues like unsafe staffing numbers, high levels of burnout and pay that has failed to keep up with the cost of living. Ireland relies to a much greater extent on internationally educated nurses compared to many other high-income countries. According to a 2024 ESRI report, 46% of the workforce had been educated abroad while 69% of all new entrants had been trained internationally.”
“In line with issues raised by my colleague Deputy Charles Ward in relation to Donegal, Mayo and places all along the north-western seaboard, I believe, as others have said, that nothing less than 100% redress will be sufficient. We are talking about people's lives here. I again point out that the Government was asleep at the wheel in terms of ensuring that there was sufficient regulation and that this was enforced. It would be great if the industry could pay for this. When companies do not exist and they cannot pay, the liability unfortunately falls to the State, which failed to regulate. That is disappointing. I am not an expert, but I heard Deputy Ward refer to defective materials that are still out there. That is something which should not be allowed to affect the lives of more homeowners in any way, shape or form.”
“I have contributed to many of these debates because, like many others, I appreciate the hardship that people are going through and because Fingal is situated in my constituency. On the one hand, I welcome that there is a scheme proposed for Fingal, Wexford and other counties in terms of remediation for defective concrete blocks. Piecemeal as it is, as many others have said, I will not be opposing it. However, no more than the rest of it, the scheme is still not fit for purpose. It is not sufficient for people who need help. There are no stage payments. There are a lot more social houses in Fingal compared with places on the western seaboard. I see no reference to these types of dwellings or a specific plan for social housing, because people can be made homeless in those situations as well.”
“I do not want to reference names but I will just use one name in the context of this debate. We often see reports about Judge Nolan in the media. That is the way it should be. I am not making any comments on the integrity of his judgments. He is a great judge. I am just saying that he is often mentioned in the media but we do not hear about the family law courts too much. Hence the alliance of mothers-----”
“It is designed to produce anonymous reports and summaries and to contribute to national data which may inform policy changes. That is all well and good but it is not opening the courts to broader public scrutiny in itself. The Minister did, of course, mention that under the Civil Liability and Courts Act 2004, as amended, that specified persons, including bona fide journalists and researchers, may already attend family law hearings and publish their anonymised accounts. The model currently being followed here, however, basically still inserts a gatekeeper. Attendance is restricted and reporting is controlled, so in working practice, only a small number of specialist reporters might regularly cover cases. The proof is in the pudding. I have not seen too many reports out there in the media.”