Richard Boyd Barrett
Dún Laoghaire · People Before Profit-Solidarity · Ireland
“It is absolutely incredible that about 50% to 57% of all professional artists in this country live on or below the poverty line - three times the level of poverty in Irish society generally.”
“On a global level, the consumption of electricity by data centres is due to go up elevenfold by 2030. They are hoovering up the water resources and electricity resources of the planet. There will not be much human creativity, art or music if we have no water and no energy. That is what is going on with these people.”
“St. Joseph's Centre in Shankill is the largest care home dedicated solely to dementia care in the country. SIPTU members feel compelled to take industrial action tomorrow because of the failure of St. John of God's to recognise the work and duties that they do.”
“These people actually want to replace human beings and human creativity with AI. That would literally be the road to disaster for humanity. Some people think about AI as if it is cutting edge and the most advanced thing possible, but AI is like the Neanderthal.”
“Against that background, we are seeing these billionaires who run AI looking to steal en masse all of the artistic and creative output of humanity and to profit from it. The artists rightly are asking what the Government is going to do to prevent them making a bad situation for most artists and performers even worse.”
“I thank Deputy Ó Snodaigh for bringing this motion forward. As Deputy Paul Murphy indicated, People Before Profit is very happy to support and commend all the artists, organisations, musicians and so on who are campaigning to bring this forward.”
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“On a personal level I wish the Minister and his family the very best. He has been a civil and thoughtful adversary for the years we have both been in the House. He never held back in letting us know what he thought about our perspective on politics and economics. I am not going to hold back in saying that I think the legacy that has been left behind by the years of Fine Gael Government since I have been in the House, and Deputy Donohoe has been in the House, is not one to be proud of. He simply cannot escape responsibility for a disastrous and ongoing housing and homelessness crisis, which has plunged so many people into the misery of emergency accommodation, rotting for years and sometimes decades on housing lists and being crucified by unaffordable rents. Indeed, as reported by the Society of St.”
“Before they pay any tax, they use these tax loopholes, so they do not actually pay 12.5%, 15% or anything like it. While ordinary workers are paying 20%, 30% or 40% of their income or more, these fellows are paying 6%, 7% or 8%, and, as we know, some are paying less than 1% while making astronomical profits. In a choice between enriching Apple, Google, Facebook and already spectacularly profitable pharmaceutical companies to research stuff that, for the most part, we do not need at all, is of little benefit to us and, in some cases, is actually doing damage to our society, would it not be better to redirect that money towards researchers and young people to access higher level education, and towards our universities to advance science, research and innovation?”
“They are making so much profit that the idea they would all be running out of the country is nonsense. In any case, that is only one of the tax reliefs they are getting. They are getting enormous tax reliefs, which, again, we detail every single year in our budget submission. Intragroup transactions are another tax expenditure and they were worth €4.4 billion last year to the same companies. They get tax breaks on the losses they make so they can carry them forward, but when they make profits, they do not pay tax the next year. This amounted to €2.4 billion last year. In total, guess how much these big multinationals get in tax breaks each year? It is €22 billion. It is flipping enormous. It is a scandal, and it is almost never discussed.”
“It is money that should be going to the universities, to getting rid of fees for students, to postgraduate researchers and to poorly paid, precariously employed academic staff in order to boost this State’s ability to engage in cutting-edge research, put ourselves at the higher levels of education and develop our domestic economy and our own capacity. But no, we are handing it out in another massive giveaway to the billionaires of this world, who are largely located in the United States and are now the cheerleaders for Donald Trump. That is what is going on. It is just ridiculous. We will never manage to be the country of saints, but we could do the scholars bit in a serious way if we redirected even half of what we are giving away in research and development tax reliefs to a tiny group of probably ten or 15 big multinationals.”
“That was up from the previous year, when it was €1.1 billion, and up €400 million from the previous year, when it was €700 million. That is not even examined in the budget. Most people do not bother to look at tax expenditures, which are the shadow budget in this country, the shadow giveaways to the big multinationals, which are already making astronomical profits. What are they researching? They might be researching iPhone version 15 for Bill Gates, Elon Musk or the billionaires and trillionaires to further boost their profits, which are going through the roof. That is where the money is going.”
“When we say things, such as that we should get rid of postgraduate fees, give them a decent stipend, treat them as workers or get rid of third level fees, people ask where that is coming from - the socialist magic money tree? They say that Ireland could not actually do that. We cost this every year, however. To get rid of the postgraduate and mature repeating student fees would cost €100 million, to give a stipend to all PhD researchers of at least €30,000 a year would cost €225 million, and to close the funding gap and maintain the existing level of funding would cost €355 million. Anyone would think that is quite a lot of money. However, how much do we give out to the big multinational corporations in research and development grants every year? Last year, it was €1.4 billion.”
“Then there are the barriers that we put in the way of accessing higher education more generally, most notably third level fees and fees for postgraduate degrees, all of which are barriers to people getting into higher levels of education and areas of research and innovation, which would put us at the cutting edge that we keep saying we are trying to put ourselves at. This is borne out in overall figures. The average spend in Europe in the area of research is 3%. We spend about 1.7% to 1.9%, which is significantly lower. This is the land of saints and scholars, but there are not many saints, in my opinion, and we are definitely not looking after the scholars in this area. Do we give money to some? The answer is “Yes”.”
“They are the basis on which we educate our young people, give them third level education and engage in their research that really counts, but they live on minimum wage. It is absolutely outrageous. That compares with our European counterparts, where you are talking more like €30,000, €40,000 and, in some cases, €50,000 for doing what are actually real jobs. We are exploiting people who do the research and science and who teach our young people in third level education. I would say that 50% of those who live in universities are living in precarity of one sort or another, or are not even recognised as workers.”
“It is important to note that our public universities are held together by postgraduate researchers and academic staff who are on part-time contracts, effectively if-and-when contracts, living on very low pay with almost no rights as workers, in the case of PhD researchers, or literally no rights as workers. They are not recognised as workers, but they hold together our universities, research and our third level education system. Without them, we would not have those things, but we treat them in a shameful way. Due to their campaigning, the Government was forced to raise up to, in most cases, a minimum stipend level of €25,000, but that is still minimum wage for people who are highly educated and supposed to be the cutting edge.”
“It is good that we have this debate every year about the importance of science. The Government, to my mind, largely pays lip service to the importance of science but does not actually translate it in reality into backing science and encouraging those who are working in the area of science, research and development. What is my evidence for saying that? First of all, there is the plight of about 10,000 to 12,000 PhD researchers who, in recent years, have felt compelled to organise themselves into a union through the Postgraduate Workers' Organisation. Some of their demands are articulated by unions in the third level sector, like the Irish Federation of University Teachers, IFUT, who have explained about the poverty that they suffer. It is quite incredible.”
“It is a tax scam and a tax loophole where some of those on the highest earnings and these companies get tax benefits. The money is there to give people decent pensions, address poverty and help the most vulnerable, but the profits of the rich and even those complicit in genocide seem to come first.”
“Why on earth would a company guilty of and complicit in the genocidal horrors inflicted on Palestinians be given a ten-year contract by this Government? It is absolutely outrageous. We could have a far better pension system in this country and we could probably double the State pension if the Government just closed down the tax breaks going to the very wealthy and the companies involved in the pension industry whose profits, of course, are constantly going up. I do not have time to detail some of the facts around this, but the tax expenditures, for example, on the exemption of employers' contributions from employee benefit in kind is €956 million in one year. That is almost €1 billion, and I bet it is for the best paid workers.”
“I am not sure if this is in the public domain, and there are many things I would like to say about the scheme, but I will say one thing about a company called Tata Consultancy Services, which has a role in the administration of the auto-enrolment scheme. Lots of private companies, such as Irish Life Investment Managers, Amundi and BlackRock, will profit from this scheme, which should be run on a not-for-profit basis by the State. Tata Consultancy Services, which has won a ten-year contract from the Government, is a company that is deeply implicated with the Israeli military, the genocide and Project Nimbus, a surveillance project that assists the US military in the brutal occupation of Palestine and in all the genocidal horrors that have taken place over the last few years.”
“It is cruel and unfair but the Government has chosen to prioritise the profits of energy companies that are going to the roof. The Government allows them to do that, does nothing about it and does not redistribute it properly through taxes, so Emma and other people with disabilities get crucified. That is the truth of it. There is no justification for what has been done and the Government should seriously reconsider its set of priorities. I doubt that it will because it is always big business and the corporates that are profiting from the cost-of-living misery that are prioritised. A quick word on the technical amendment to the auto-enrolment scheme.”
“Prices have gone through the roof, crippling vulnerable and less well-off people. Energy company profits go through the roof and the cost-of-living misery is inflicted on the most vulnerable and the poorest in our society. That is the reality, and Government after Government continues to allow it to happen. I have heartbreaking letters, one, for example, from a young woman, Emma, in my constituency, who has a disability. She describes how the current budget will give her €660 extra a year but that is €1,000 less than she got last year. She is down €1,000 when energy prices, grocery prices and all the other costs of living have gone up. She will be poorer this year by a significant margin than she was last year. That is true of the most vulnerable and the people with disabilities.”
“The least well-off and most vulnerable in our society have been absolutely hammered by the cost-of-living crisis that has been inflicted on them over the last number of years. It is very important to say that the cost-of-living crisis is not like the weather. It does not just happen. The other side of the cost-of-living crisis is profiteering by the people who increase the prices; it is as simple as that. The energy companies ratchet up the prices and have done so consistently over the last number of years. In fact, they have done it consistently since a previous Fianna Fáil Government deregulated the energy industry. We used to have a not-for-profit ESB energy supply in this country. Competition was supposed to lead to decreasing prices but the exact opposite happened.”
“While I was getting my treatment in St. Luke's, I met a very nice woman called Shirley who brought up her daughter Lauren's case with me. Lauren subsequently wrote to me. Lauren lives with her and has a life-long disability condition that means she is unfit for work. She had previously been on domiciliary care allowance, then on disability allowance, but she then got married. She lives at home with her mum still, being cared for by her mum, but because she got married and went over the threshold, her disability payment has been cut. It really highlights the massive problem and injustice of having means testing of disability payments. What does the Taoiseach have to say to Lauren and many others like her who lose all support for their disability on the basis that their partner’s income has gone over a very arbitrary threshold?”
“His employer is very supportive - and even supported him while he was in prison - but cannot re-employ him, obviously, because he is subject to a deportation order. What is the good, or where is the humanity, in deporting this man, separating him from his children and imposing that level of stress when he has been contributing, paying tax and is a decent human being? It is absolutely cruel. Will the Taoiseach look into this matter? I have written to the Minister for Justice and his Department about it.”
“I want to draw the Taoiseach's attention to the human consequences of the Government bending to the far-right groups that are screaming for mass deportations. Bilal Butt has been here for 19 years. For the past 15 years - as long as he was allowed - he has been working and paying tax. I know him personally, and he is a lovely man. He is married with two kids. One daughter is ten and his other child is three months old. The children have lived here all their lives. Recently, Mr. Butt was incarcerated for 50 days and is the subject of a deportation order. He has a heart condition and had to have a number of stents inserted. His wife is absolutely beside herself with fear that he is going to have a heart attack.”
“I want the Minister for Transport, Deputy O'Brien, to intervene in this and recognise that bus drivers doing a very stressful job should not be harassed in this way and forced to consider industrial action.”
“Tomorrow the National Bus and Rail Union will be balloting all its members over industrial action on our buses. SIPTU has also indicated it plans to support the action of bus drivers. I have not got time to go into the detail other than to say it is about the harassment of drivers by Dublin Bus over profiles, key performance indicators, KPIs, and a "Press it" box system. The only thing people might recognise is where buses are forced to stop for periods of time, putting drivers under a lot of pressure and then they are getting bookings over this, so harassing drivers. Being a bus driver, by the way, is a very stressful job and bus drivers are facing constant harassment and are now being booked for this. They are being forced to consider taking industrial action to stop this harassment by Dublin Bus.”
“As I said, doctors who should be providing services and care to patients are instead, in their own words, coming to the Minister, the Government and Departments begging for money, resources and so on to replace the machines they need to provide the care to save lives. The Minister needs to respond to the specific request to have a national programme for the replacement of these machines and to have the staff and infrastructure necessary to deliver it.”
“The professionals in this area stated in the context of the budget that radiotherapy services are operating significantly below capacity due to under-resourcing. They went on to state that our healthcare staff do everything they can to minimise the impacts on care for patients but it is simply not possible to provide optimal care in these conditions. Sixteen of 24 working days last month were affected by unscheduled downtime. Machines are breaking down because they are too old, putting stress on patients and staff. Some €23 million per year is being spent on outsourcing to the private sector because of machines breaking down and not being replaced, and because of the lack of a national replacement programme.”
“Some 40% will need to be replaced in the next five years. This means there is a lot of discomfort and stress for patients and staff who need this lifesaving treatment. What the people who work in radiation oncology are asking for, and they have asked repeatedly for this, is a national radiotherapy replacement programme where there is centralised oversight and procurement and ring-fenced multiannual funding, going forward, so they do not have to come each year with a begging bowl for money to provide this absolutely vital machinery to save lives.”
“I did not know this, but 50% of people will have an encounter with cancer during their lives. Some 44,000 people this year will get a cancer diagnosis. The Irish Cancer Society made a whole series of requests pre-budget. It is still not clear whether any of those have been met to fully fund and resource the national cancer strategy. There is a particular issue for me and for the people who provided me with care in St. Luke's in the area of radiation oncology machines. They are called linear accelerators. They, as well as the staff, infrastructure and so on, have given me my life back. Some 50% of those people who get a cancer diagnosis each year, which is a very high figure, will need these machines. Fairly incredibly, 35% of those machines, which are supposed to be replaced every ten years, are now 15 to 17 years old.”
“Certainly not. We might learn a few lessons from it though. I also thank colleagues across the House for their kind words today and messages during, before and after my treatment. I also thank the thousands of members of the public who sent very kind messages. They were very heartening and very helpful. My biggest debt of gratitude is to the fantastic people who work in our health services, particularly the cancer services, in my case in St. Luke's Hospital, and the eye and ear hospital. There are similar people providing cancer services right across the country. They asked me to raise particular issues about the need to properly resource and support cancer services in this country. It is important to say that everybody has a stake in that happening.”
“It is good to be back. It is particularly good to be back in the aftermath of the successful campaign of Catherine Connolly. I congratulate her in her position as our new President. It is also good to be back on the day that a socialist gets elected in New York. Signs of hope and portents of the future.”
“Dalkey United is struggling for pitches and facilities, as are teams in Shankill and Cabinteely. Cabinteely GAA has inadequate facilities for its club, as does Shankill FC and so on. I appeal to the Minister of State to give an instruction for local authorities to positively engage with the clubs and not have a controlling or dismissive attitude to the provision of these vital facilities for youth participation in sport.”
“It was promised by the council that on giving up an oul' shack it had and a pitch on a public park that it would get a facility, but it is now being given the runaround. That club is partnering its senior team, which has been around since the fifties in Sallynoggin, with Granada's junior team, involving many young women in particular. It has a proposal for a new clubhouse but, to be honest, the council is giving it the runaround. It has been promised and promised. The club is willing to raise money itself and so on but there seems to be control-freakery and a negative attitude. St. Joseph's Boys, which I used to play for, also in Sallynoggin, is fighting for an all-weather pitch and, again, is getting the runaround over it. Cuala, one of the most successful GAA clubs, is struggling for pitches.”
“After a 20-year fight, Monkstown Boxing Club, on behalf of which I campaigned for many years, in a disadvantaged area, finally opened its clubhouse this week. It was a 20-year fight. It has an Olympian this year, Jack Marley, and fantastic people such as Robin O'Reilly, a young woman who is competing at international European level, and many others. This is fantastic for young girls, women and men, but for years they were in totally inadequate facilities, with no showers and so on. They had to fight for 20 years. I am glad the council eventually got on board. It was a huge victory and shows the potential that exists. I then look at Sallynoggin Pearse in the area where I live. This is a club that the legendary Paul McGrath began his career playing for. It has been fighting for almost as long, near enough 20 years, for a new facility.”
“One absolutely key area for giving young people a positive outlet for energies that might otherwise go in worrying or dangerous directions is sport. This also has a great deal of relevance in the context of women and of challenging all the misogyny that one can encounter. One of the positive developments we have seen in the past few years is the tremendous growth in participation in sport, by young people in general and by women in particular, which has been enormous and very positive, including boxing, soccer, Gaelic, rugby and all sorts of other ports. However, there is a chronic deficit of facilities and pitches to cater for this huge growth in participation in sport. I will speak to my area, but I hear it is much the same everywhere else. I will give one positive example.”
“However, they are on miserable pay and conditions and the company that has been given the contract is not currently entertaining in any serious way their request for improved pay and conditions and for a retainer during those periods when they are not working. I have raised it at the Business Committee and in the Dáil previously but I would like the Government to intervene in this. It is disgraceful that people broadcasting these proceedings should be on this miserable earnings and on "if and when" contracts.”
“Many, if not most of the people who broadcast the proceedings in this Dáil who work for Oireachtas TV are on precarious, or "if and when" contracts, where they basically do not get paid if the Dáil or the committees are not sitting during Christmas, during the summer and other breaks. Most of these part-time workers earn approximately €12,000 per year. I could not believe it when they told me. A big contract is given to the company that provides these services but these workers are asking they get some kind of retainer because they have to be available to do the work of broadcasting the proceedings, which is an important role for all the parties, democracy and the Dáil.”
“I have been fighting cases in Sallynoggin and in Shankill now where people are living in housing of crappy quality because the Government does not believe housing that is secure, affordable and decent is a right. It is a right but the profit-hungry developers which the Government represents make money from it so it does not want to do anything.”
“If someone is on a working family payment, and is working, that can take them over the threshold for social housing. Thousands and thousands of working people who go out, work hard and pay their taxes are taken off the housing lists after ten or 15 years waiting when they are on a working family payment or just because they get a pay rise or they do a bit of over time. It is gone and they have no chance whatsoever. They are trapped in homelessness or in squalid conditions with multiple generations living in poor quality housing. I have raised this again and again. It also affects the attitude in councils because they want people to live in squalid conditions because they want to say they, "Oh we cannot make it easy for you to have a decent house".”
“That is what the Government is, that is what it is doing and that was revealed in the White House. You could even see it from the lack of energy in the Minister's speech. He reads off the script. The Government does not flipping care anymore. We are dropping the pretence that we are trying to solve this. This relates to defective and poor quality buildings. It is profitable for the people who build houses to cut corners. They do not put in fire breaks, do not put in proper materials, and do not check the houses in case they turn out to be defective because it would cut into their profits. It is greed, greed, greed. That is what the Government represents and ordinary people are suffering. It also relates to another issue I would like to raise again about the thresholds.”
“He makes money when house prices and rents are high, when there is a shortage of housing and when there is poor quality housing. That is how they make money. That is how the rich in this country make money. That is how the property investors make money. They have no interest in solving the housing crisis. In fact, they have an interest in making sure we do not solve the housing crisis because if there was an adequate supply of affordable housing, built on a not-for-profit basis, they could not make profit. That is the simple truth and that is why the Government resists every measure to address the housing crisis. It is there to represent the landlords, the property speculators, the developers, the Trumps of this world and their Irish equivalents.”
“It is obvious the Government does not want to solve the housing crisis. It has dropped the pretence. It has no targets, it is curtailing the tenant in situ scheme, it has always resisted rent controls and its homelessness figures continue to rise. It does absolutely nothing about it. It does not want to stop the flow into homelessness. It is planning to remove even the minimal rent controls. It does not want to solve the housing crisis. The truth about the Government's housing policy was revealed in the White House in the exchange between Donald Trump and Micheál Martin. When Trump said that the housing crisis in this country was a sign of success, the Taoiseach said it was a good answer and he had not thought of that one. Why does Trump think it is a success? He is a property speculator, a billionaire and a landlord.”
“They are the ones subverting democracy, and then they cover all that with utterly dishonest - knowingly dishonest - claims that "it is only eight minutes". We had the spectacle earlier of Government TDs jumping up and down like jack-in-the-boxes during 45 minutes of Taoiseach's Questions. They would do the same tomorrow except that the Government has slashed Taoiseach's Questions in half - 45 minutes gone from Government and Opposition. It is scrutiny Micheál Martin does not want. That is why the Government is so keen on this. Time is slashed off Private Members' business and the Order of Business because not only does the Government want to control everything and maintain itself in power, it also wants to gag, silence and subvert the Opposition in order that it will not be subject to scrutiny or criticism.”
“Regrettably, the Ceann Comhairle has compromised the integrity of her position and her independence by involving herself in the grubby deal that was done between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael and Michael Lowry, the politician who was found by the Moriarty tribunal to be "profoundly corrupt". The reasons for that, obviously, are that the Government does not care about corruption and is quite willing to do anything in order to sustain itself in power. A hundred years of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael is not enough for them. Controlling the purse strings is not enough for them. Controlling the Dáil schedule is not enough for them. Controlling all the legislation is not enough for them. They want to rig matters and undermine and gag the Opposition.”
“It is absolutely disgusting. These were peaceful women protestors on a Mother's Day protest. Does the Taoiseach condone that kind of treatment of people who were a threat to nobody? It is absolutely outrageous behaviour. Does the Taoiseach condemn that? Is that where we are heading? Is that the sort of society we are heading for? They were protesting about our continued complicity with the genocide because of US troops in Shannon Airport, Israeli war bombs being sold and the failure to impose sanction on Israel.”
“They had a peaceful sit-down protest and were arrested, very violently in some cases. In some cases, it included Palestinian and Lebanese people who actually suffered the horrors of the past 18 months. Some were strip-searched. According to one description: I was stripped completely naked and was asked to remove my underwear. When I questioned the necessity of this, I was told I would be forced violently if I did not comply and that they did not want any trouble. After removing my underwear, they looked inside my private areas and touched all my sensitive parts.”
“I strongly advise people to read George Orwell's book 1984 in which the world is divided into three blocs and governments tell people to live in fear of the others all the time to justify increasing authoritarianism and more expenditure on arms and weapons while working people are kept down and denied the money that is going into weapons and arms, which should go into health, education and housing. That is what is going on - project fear. The Irish Government is trying to pull us into it. I wonder has this sort of hysteria and fearmongering now descended to the strip-searching of peaceful women protestors Dáil Éireann. The group Mothers Against Genocide was on a Mother's Day protest to show solidarity with women and children in Palestine and Lebanon who have been slaughtered over the past 18 months.”
“These workers said that Ireland had about half the ambulance cover that Scotland, which has a similar population, had and that there were not enough paramedics, so even if ambulances got there in time, they did not have the paramedics to deal with incidents. There are also threats to the helicopter emergency medical service arising from a lack of staffing and to the emerging threat team due to a lack of funding and staffing being provided by the Government. Will the Taoiseach engage with the representatives of the National Ambulance Service and their unions? This service provides the emergency services. Will he ensure it has the proper funding, staffing, infrastructure and cover to save lives when we have emergencies?”
“I note the poor oppressed Government backbenchers are getting plenty of opportunities to speak today. As of tomorrow, they will have half the time to raise important issues like our response to storms, despite the Taoiseach's claims that he is standing up for their rights. One group that we will not be able to talk about as much is the ambulance drivers of the National Ambulance Service, who are critical to responding to emergencies. Storm Éowyn and the Covid pandemic should be warnings about having the capacity to respond to emergencies where lives can be at risk. Before Storm Éowyn, I met representatives of the National Ambulance Service.”
“People in homelessness end up trapped there because they work, they are over these thresholds and consequently cannot get help-----”
“I will throw in an extra issue because I am talking to the Minister. I do not know the next time I will get to. It is slightly off topic but it is under the Minister’s brief. It is another great unfairness that needs to be addressed and probably is between the Minister and the Minister for housing. It is about people who go over eligibility thresholds for social housing support. When they go over those thresholds, even if they have been on the housing list for 15 or 20 years, all of a sudden they have gone off a cliff. They spent all those years waiting and they are not entitled either to housing financial support such as HAP or rental allowance, etc. That is between the Minister and the Department of housing, that is, the rent allowance end of it. I ask the Minister to consider this matter.”
“The Government will clearly end up in the courts if it does not. If it does not do this, the people affected unfairly and adversely and discriminated against will almost as a racing certainty end up in the courts with the Government. Even from the Government’s own point of view, it can save itself the money - be fair and consistent. Do what the spirit of the judgment suggested and what was recommended by the joint committee. I hope that amendment will be forthcoming. Do I have a bit of extra time?”
“The children should be the primary concern and we should recognise the legitimacy of relationships and their complexities. Incidentally, it is clear that were this to be extended, it would not apply to separated or divorced people who were now newly cohabiting with somebody else and whose financial position had changed. Caveats to this have been suggested to ensure that people are not gaining disproportionately from it but that there is consistency in the treatment of the children of the person who contributed to the pension and passed away but whose divorced or separated partner is still alive and those children or that person are financially dependent on that pension. I hope the Minister will look favourably on this. It would be unfair not to for the sake of the children and for the sake of fairness and consistency.”
“I understand from the Free Legal Advice Centres briefing on this matter that were the Minister to amend the Bill in the way we propose to do right by the children where there has been a divorce, approximately 100 people would be affected. It is a tiny number of people. It will not cost the State very much to make the amendment we propose. It is the logical outcome of the legal case and it was recommended by the joint committee. I hope the Minister will do this because we support the broad thrust of the Bill insofar as it arises out of that case. This is about modern Ireland recognising that family set-ups are more complicated these days and do not fit into nice neat categories determined by a particular religious view from the past. They are more complicated and varied than that.”