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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“the Minister for Social Protection, which recognised that people can be cohabiting but not married and that they should therefore get the bereaved partner's pension. We welcome that. As I understand the ruling - I am largely informed on this by Free Legal Advice Centres, which Deputy Coppinger has alluded to - it primarily arises from the judge's view that the children should not lose out because the parents were not married although they were cohabiting. As the committee recognised, logic dictates that this would also remain true even if the parents were separated. It is absolutely logical that it should follow through. If the welfare of the children is the primary concern, those children should not lose out because of a separation or a divorce.”
“I apologise that I was not here for the earlier discussions. I was tied up at another meeting. I will follow on from Deputy Coppinger's contribution. I will preface my remarks by noting that there is a pretty awful history in this country of people who did not fit into the conventional idea of the Catholic family, marriage and so on being treated in a lesser way, not accommodated at all or even being stigmatised because they were not in a married relationship sanctified by a certain religious outlook. I thought we had come a long way from that and that we recognised that the modern family is much more complicated than that, that people may live together without getting married and that the welfare of any children should be of foremost concern. The Bill arises from the judgment in O'Meara v.”
“That would benefit our society a hell of a lot more and be a lot better for the sustainability of our economy and society. This is a simple suggestion on how to pay.”
“If 5,000 undergraduates dropping out each year does not concern the Minister, he really needs to rethink his being the Minister for higher education. It is obvious that we have an urgent problem affecting our entire economy and society owing to the lack of skilled people, as well as the mental health issues and all the stress put on the students who drop out and their families. I suspect there is a financial reason. Every year, the most profitable multinational corporations get €800 million in research and development tax credits. These are companies that are already making astonishing profits. I suggest that the Minister redirect some of this tax credit money towards getting rid of fees for students, postgraduates and apprentices.”
“There are also the costs of accommodation and travel, stress and mental health pressure, but the financial aspect is big. It would cost €255 million to get rid of fees and €100 million to get rid of postgraduate fees, and a fraction of that to get rid of apprenticeship costs, which we discussed earlier. It would be money well invested in people we need to make our society function.”
“Yeah, right. Is the Minister considering getting rid of the temporary reduction in fees or not? He should just tell us straight. He should not get rid of it. Doing so is outrageous and he should be going in the opposite direction. Why? There is now a 15% dropout rate among undergraduates. Five thousand drop out in first year, representing an increase in recent times up to 12% from 9%. What government could stand over that when we have shortages in the construction profession, trades, the healthcare sector and industry? There is nowhere without a shortage of skills. It is insane to put financial and other barriers in the way of people. Students are dropping out not only because of fees but also because of financial hardship. The cost-of-living impact on families is clearly a factor.”
“I have a suggestion for the Minister. It is to abolish all fees for third level and for apprenticeships. We have critical shortages in skills across our economy and across our society. It makes no sense to have fees. My question today particularly relates to the Union of Students in Ireland's concerns that not only is the Government not going to abolish fees, which it should, but it is actually thinking of getting rid of the once-off reduction of €1,000, which was brought in over the last years. The Minister commented to that effect recently. Will the Minister give us an assurance that this will not happen and that we will move in the other direction?”
“Okay. I just want to elaborate in order that people understand. They are saying that they are prompting the European Union to spend more on defence, which Ursula von der Leyen and this Council are promising to do, with the current EU expenditure on weapons, at €356 billion, more than doubling to €800 billion, in their interests. The same regime is threatening tariffs against Europe and this country. Deputy McGrath thinks we should cuddle up to it, by the way. What does the Minister of State think about that? Does he think we ought to be dancing to their tune? On the issue of the war bonds -----”
“Okay, grand. No problem. I am quite happy to give way to Deputy Lahart for a second question but I will take my second question. I asked the Minister of State a question about Jeffrey Goldberg and The Atlantic and the reference, to use the words in the chat, to adding to the “horribles on why the Europeans must invest in their defense" in the context of attacks on Yemen. I just want the Minister of State to understand the question here.”
“Therefore, I ask the Minister of State whether the Government is going to do anything about that to show an example to his European colleagues who are up to their necks in complicity with this horrific action. My second question is this. Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic just released the thread he was in with JD Vance, Peter Hegseth and the various leading figures in the Trump Administration over the missile attacks on Yemen. In it, it says "From a messaging standpoint we absolutely ad this to of horribles on why the Europeans must invest in their defense."”
“Okay. The Government raised its concern for the Middle East. In his speech, the Taoiseach said that he condemns the attacks that Israel has resumed against the people of Gaza and the ongoing attacks on the West Bank. The Government does not call it genocide. Its European partners refuse even to mention the name "Israel" when these horrific attacks are taking place, but the Taoiseach says he condemns it. I ask the Minister of State what the Government is going to do about it. As long as Israeli war bonds, which are being used to finance the horror that is being visited on the people of Gaza, continue to be sold through the Irish Central Bank, Ireland is complicit.”
“When I spoke earlier, I asked the Minister of State whether this Government will stop facilitating the sale of Israeli war bonds through the Irish Central Bank. It is an absolute outrage that that is allowed. Maybe the Minister of State’s official can fill him in there. I am quite happy if the Minister of State wants to confer with them.”
“This is the horror, the brutality, the disgusting actions being done by Israel, with weapons provided by the Government's allies in Europe. Will the Government call them out for their crimes and distance this country from them? Will it stop facilitating the sale of Israeli war bonds in the Central Bank?”
“Many European states and the US which the Government allies itself with are complicit in genocide. The Government is right to condemn Putin but will it acknowledge European leaders and the US are complicit in genocide? Will the Government call them out? Israel could not do it; it could not commit the crimes it is committing without the weapons provided by the United States, Germany, Britain, Italy and France. Will the Government say they are complicit in this genocidal horror? Yesterday, I heard a trauma surgeon from the United States working in Gaza describe a young infant who he said had the worst injuries he had ever seen in his life. The child's limbs were blown to pieces - mutilated - and he said that little baby will probably have to have all four limbs amputated.”
“In his regular statements, the Taoiseach is very happy to say - as am I - that Putin is a warmonger, tyrant and imperialist. The problem is, however, the people the Government wants us to ally with in the United States and Europe, are also brutal warmongers, imperialists and militarists. Trump is giving billions to Israel to commit a genocide in Gaza and is actively promoting the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. The first action of Friedrich Merz, the new Chancellor of Germany, is to invite Prime Minister Netanyahu, a wanted war criminal who is guilty of the genocidal massacres in Gaza and the horrific actions Israel is committing against Palestinians, to the country at the same time he proposes we spend billions more on weapons - hundreds of billions to use his phrase - similar to Ursula von der Leyen.”
“The Israeli genocide against Gaza, the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank and the apartheid could not happen without US and European money and arms. This is what the Government wants to involve us in and smash up the tradition of Connolly and Markievicz, which stands against all of that. We will pay a price for this because the genocide in Gaza is coming home to roost if our sons and daughters are sent out to fight in wars for European or US empires. The Government now wants to spend billions of euro more on weapons that should rightly go to housing, health and education. Connolly would turn in his grave.”
“The Government wants to be able to deploy troops at the behest of Ursula von der Leyen, Olaf Scholz or, for that matter, a US administration which it goes grovelling over to and which insults and humiliates it as with the Trump Administration. The Government wants to allow US troops to go through Shannon as they rain down missiles in Yemen. Trump is a pig and a horror, a warmonger and an imperialist but Ursula von der Leyen greenlighted the genocide in Gaza and Olaf Scholz invited the war criminal, Netanyahu, to Germany. Germany is the major provider of arms and weapons to those carrying out a genocide. Why would we want to deploy troops in any way connected with military powers that are guilty of arming a genocide?”
“The Irish Government wants to trash the tradition established by Connolly and Markievicz and the people who led the Irish revolution against colonialism, war and empire, by aligning us with the embryonic European empire and project of militarisation in Europe which is directly aligned with NATO and which is dominated by the major western imperial powers. That is the simple truth. The triple lock, as inadequate as the United Nations is, prevents us from deploying troops where empires are fighting against each other. It prevents us from sending troops and taking sides in battles between empires, because our tradition is to oppose empire.”
“The statue of James Connolly is behind us and the portrait of Countess Markievicz is in the hall. They were two of Ireland's greatest revolutionaries who stood for working people and stood against empire. They set up the Irish Neutrality League in 1914. That is where our tradition of neutrality comes from. They were two of the greatest revolutionaries and they were revered by the people of this country because they opposed war, empire and colonialism. That is where the tradition comes from.”
“It should of course immediately abolish the means test for the allowance and do a lot more about the income poverty carers suffer in general, but it has an even greater obligation to young people and children given the role they are playing in providing this care. The economics of it are obvious, although we should not even have to put it in these terms. Carers save the State about €20 billion a year, which is nearly the entire health budget. If these young people and other carers were not providing the care they do, we would have to double the health budget, pretty much. That is the service they are doing our society so it is incumbent on the Government to listen to what these young carers are saying. They have our support for all their efforts and well done to them for bringing this to our attention.”
“Those young people are six times more likely to suffer the symptoms of depression, significantly affecting their results in the leaving certificate, according to the ESRI. It makes it more likely that they will suffer from things like poverty, financial distress, unhappiness and so on because they are engaged in an act of love and care for their loved ones and doing all of society a favour. I have learned from reading into the subject and from reading the motion about the huge service these young people are doing our society and tens of thousands of people who need help and care. I seriously hope the Government is listening and will do absolutely everything.”
“The Economic and Social Research Institute, ESRI, has done a lengthy paper on the whole issue which details many of the facts and figures and the issues confronting young carers. I am staggered by the bare bones of the issue, that we have 67,000 young carers between the ages of ten and 17. That is absolutely astounding. They are looking after parents and siblings with disabilities and chronic illnesses when they are children. It is a time when they need to develop, have a life, be educated and have a social life. It should be the beginning of a life flourishing but because of love, care and concern for their loved ones, they find themselves caring, washing people, cleaning up, feeding people and otherwise looking after them. That then impacts them disproportionately.”
“I thank Deputy Wall and the Labour Party for bringing forward this important motion. I also commend Family Carers Ireland and all the young carers who have brought this issue to our attention. We fully support the motion. I know the Government is not opposing it but I hope it will do more than just not oppose it and that it will take seriously this motion, which I assume was drawn up in consultation with Family Carers Ireland and the young carers themselves. I apologise for not being at the briefing today. I was out the door with meetings and so forth. I am not an expert in this area. I have come across many of the issues to do with carers but I was staggered as I was reading about this.”
“Of course, Putin is a tyrant, an imperialist, a thug and we need to stand up against people like him, but do we seriously suggest we do so by aligning ourselves even more closely with a NATO military alliance dominated by the United States, Britain, France and Germany, the very people who are arming the Israeli genocide against the people of Gaza? We should be standing now proudly on our neutrality, not aligning with them and not giving up the triple lock and we should be imposing sanctions and being a voice for peace and against the thuggery that both Putin and Trump represent.”
“What is even worse than that is that while Trump is doing this - emboldening, encouraging and greenlighting genocide against the people of Gaza and Palestine - the Irish Government is, through the back door and deceiving the Irish public in the process, smashing up Irish neutrality at precisely the time when Irish neutrality is more important than ever. Our precious tradition of neutrality is based in our history of fighting against empires, freeing ourselves from colonialism, empire and all the apartheid that was inflicted on us. We abandon our neutrality by getting rid of the triple lock so we can align ourselves with Europe as it militarises and pulls closer to a NATO military alliance controlled by precisely the powers that have armed and emboldened the genocide against the people of Gaza.”
“The idea that being servile or diplomatic in front of someone who is out to set the world's international order and international law on fire and who is brazenly saying that this is about might is right, that he will take the resources of Ukraine, turn Gaza into a casino owned by the United States - maybe owned by Donald Trump himself - while the Irish Government, pathetically, tried to grovel in front of this pig and tyrant and pretend he is normal or that some sort of reasonable diplomacy can take place with this monster and the monstrous agenda he is pursuing, is pathetic.”
“Donald Trump is setting fire to the international rules based order. He is putting two fingers up to any notion of international law, morality and human decency. The most egregious example of this is that he has given a green light to Israel to restart and accelerate its campaign of genocide against the people of Gaza, directly emboldened by Trump's plan for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza.”
“Many Jewish Holocaust survivors have condemned that definition because it is loaded in favour of the state of Israel and yet the Government decided to adopt it without any proper debate about the context.”
“It is precisely because we must remember the horror that the Holocaust was, and say "Never again", that we must not put any impediment in the way of calling out other instances of dehumanisation, racism, apartheid and genocide, particularly when those guilty of genocidal crimes, as Israel is now, and in the dock in the International Criminal Court and International Court of Justice for genocide and crimes against humanity, are using the memory of the Holocaust to legitimise its crimes against the Palestinians. In that context, we have the adoption by the Government, without any notification, of the IHRA definition, which it knows is controversial and which says, for example, that it is antisemitic to describe the Israeli state project as a racist state project. It says that in the guidelines.”
“All my active political life, I have been campaigning against antisemitism and racism and campaigning to remind people of the horrors of the Holocaust. When David Irving, the Nazi apologist, came to meetings in this country to deny that the Holocaust ever happened, I was the organiser of the protests against it. I arranged for Jewish Auschwitz survivors to tour this country, to speak on national television and to speak about the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust against the Jewish people.”
“The death toll in Gaza in the past two days is estimated to be 1,000. Hundreds have been slaughtered in their beds by Israel. Will the Taoiseach admit and condemn the fact that the horrific slaughter of 50,000 or so people over the past 15 months could not have been done without the weapons provided by the United States under Biden previously and now Trump, whose ethnic cleansing plan for Gaza has egged on and clearly emboldened the Israeli regime to start to commit further atrocities, and the weapons provided by European Union states? These European states, particularly Germany, but also France, Italy and Britain, which is not a member of the EU but which is coming to these meetings, have the blood of dead Palestinians on their hands. Will the Taoiseach acknowledge that fact and condemn it?”
“We have 82 data centres in this country with 18 more on the way. Do the maths. If the lack of water is now a major impediment to putting roofs over the heads of people affected by the housing crisis, how on earth are we continuing to allow data centres, which are sucking up vast amounts of the inadequate water resources available to us to make a profit for a tiny number of companies? Is the Taoiseach looking at their water usage and the extent to which it is now an obstacle to us having the water necessary to build the homes we need to address the housing crisis?”
“The Central Bank in its latest quarterly report issued another damning indictment of the catastrophic failure of Government housing policy. One aspect of it that relates to this subcommittee is the fact that deficits in water infrastructure are now a major impediment to delivering the volume of housing necessary to address the housing crisis. I wonder if there is any joined-up thinking going on in terms of the enormous volume of water usage by data centres and the proliferation of such centres. We already know they use up 20% of our electricity, and they are driving up energy costs for ordinary householders, but what about water usage? In Clonee, Meta's data centre, which is only one data centre, uses 2.5 million litres of water per day. This is the same volume of water usage as the entire city of Athlone with 21,000 people.”
“That is not what is in the programme for Government, which only proposes a marginal increase in the amount of social and affordable housing, with actually no mention of affordable housing at all. There is a major problem with people going over the thresholds for social housing and then being ineligible for any support. These things need to be addressed. The Government has to stop the flow of people into homelessness through no-fault evictions. It is an absolute scandal.”
“The Minister may have seen a wider problem I have raised recently as regards much older council properties in Sallynoggin, where residents are living with mould and horrendous conditions, and their children’s health being affected by this, yet they are being forced to still live in these properties. I will say this on the generality. The Government deceived the public during the election about the number of houses that had been built. Even as far as what it said it was building but did not really build, the commission says we need twice that. If we need twice what the Government is delivering, then we need twice as much social and affordable housing.”
“There is damp and maggots eating off the wet plaster in the apartments, fizzing sockets and wires, and a lack of proper fire safety in the development. There has been no proper independent survey of what is wrong, but it is really bad across the entire development. There has been no independent survey or resnagging of the building to find out what the hell went on. We now hear that some residents are being moved out while others are not being told what is going to happen. The place has turned into a building site again. It is appalling. Will the Minister look into this and talk to Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council and get to the bottom of it? Families, children and so on have waited all these years only to be in an appalling situation. This should not happen in social housing that is funded and allocated by the State.”
“There has been some engagement between the tenants and Co-operative Housing over the deplorable state of these apartments, which were built by a builder called Kavco, but the situation continues to be unbearable for the tenants. I am asking the Minister to step in. The point is that, even though it is an AHB, the tenants asked me to point out that they were allocated from the Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown council list. Therefore, the Government, the Department of housing and the council should take responsibility for what is going on. It is deplorable. They described the situation to me today and I went down and saw some of it myself. In new apartments, there is black mould in most if not all of the apartments.”
“We have been asking for this debate for eight or nine months and I have got four minutes. I will try to make a few points about the generality of the housing crisis and the failure of the Government to address it, yet I have no choice in the little time available to me but to raise a specific issue with the Minister which I hope he will take on board, namely, the St. Germaine apartments in Ballybrack village. They are social housing managed by the Co-operative Housing AHB. It is a community of approximately 20 or 30 households. Like most people who are allocated a social house, they had been waiting many years to get their social homes. They were delighted after all that long wait to get them only to discover that these newly completed apartments were in a dire state. I have raised this matter with Co-operative Housing.”
“Or is he going to just ramble on about abstract rights and we will find ourselves, as we did last year, back around with parents racked with anxiety and uncertainty about the well-being of their vulnerable children?”
“The problem is the Government has breached and failed to vindicate their rights. As a result, more than 50 parents will be gathering to sleep out for 24 hours tomorrow. These are parents who are looking after children with special needs and who feel they have to go to the lengths of doing a 24-hour round-the-clock sleep-out protest outside the Department of Education because the Government cannot give them the school places to which they are legally entitled to by right. Is the Tánaiste going to save them the trouble of that protest and give them the firm commitment they will get the special needs resources, supports and school places to which their children have a right?”
“Noel, the section 39 worker I was talking to, said the Tánaiste was going to mention the WRC. He said the workers had been to the WRC and sometimes the Government does not even bother to turn up. He said it is a stalling tactic. He guaranteed that Simon Harris would say "WRC". The workers do not want the WRC; they want a commitment to pay restoration. Give the commitment to pay parity so we do not have people doing the same job being paid different rates because one of them happens to be outsourced to a section 39 charity looking after the most vulnerable in our society. Dún Laoghaire home care is closing tomorrow because the Government is outsourcing the home care for people with dementia and other vulnerable people to a charity which can collapse-----”
“They suffered two pay cuts during the austerity period which were never restored. He has got a pay increase of about €1 per hour over a period of ten years but is still earning just above minimum wage and he does not enjoy parity with other people doing exactly the same job who are directly enployed by the HSE. The Government says it is going to do right by these workers. The Tánaiste said he heard what Charlotte Fallon was saying, but still the Government goes into the WRC - or sometimes, as Noel told me, does not bother going in - to give a firm commitment that there will be pay restoration and pay parity for section 39 workers-----”
“Despite his pleadings afterwards, when he was made shamefaced by Charlotte Fallon about the despicable, arrogant, contemptuous treatment of section 39 workers who look after people with dementia and Parkinson's disease, people who have suffered strokes, people with disabilities and other vulnerable people, he continues to show that contempt such that thousands of those low-paid workers have had to ballot for industrial action because despite his squealings during the election, his Government still has not done right by those low-paid workers. I was talking to one such worker today, who has, by the way, written to all the Ministers individually. He is a section 39 worker out in Ballymun. He has been working for years looking after the most vulnerable in our society. He is on a miserable €15 an hour and many of his colleagues are on €13.”
“----- are what were on display at the Dáil reform committee on the part of the Government last night. Why is that important? It is not just contempt, arrogance and the Government speaking out of both sides of its mouth that are a problem for the Opposition, but it is the mask slipping on a more general approach of the Government, which is about arrogance, contempt and speaking out of both sides of its mouth on precisely the issues we are trying to represent to the Tánaiste in here about the failure of his Government to address the problems faced by ordinary people. The contempt we saw on display last night mirrored the contempt and arrogance the Tánaiste displayed when he confronted a section 39 worker in Cork during the election campaign and was called out on it, and it goes on.”
“Then people from Loughlinstown contacted me and then people from multiple other hospitals, all saying the same thing. They cannot recruit, replace and cover the work that needs to be done because of pay and numbers. It has to be scrapped.”
“There is no way the services or the employment of the workers working in those services should be dependent on whether a charity or company decides it can trade. That is absolutely crazy. Those workers should be in the same position as other people directly employed by the HSE. They should be employed by the HSE in a single universal healthcare system - from the cradle to the grave. The people for whom they care should not have to worry and be anxious as to whether the service will be there next week or next month, but that is what is actually happening. That needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency. Virtually every healthcare worker in this country has been balloted for industrial action because of the pay and numbers strategy. The first people to raise that with me were workers at St. Michael's Hospital in our constituency.”
“Regarding the section 39 issue, with people living longer and so on, the fact that huge numbers of our elderly, vulnerable and people with disabilities are in many cases dependent on workers where the State has outsourced its responsibility to charity organisations or companies makes it impossible to actually deliver on a sustained, fair and consistent basis the sort of service they need. I cite our constituency as an example. Dún Laoghaire Home Care Services announced recently that it was ceasing to function. During the election campaign, I met workers who worked for it for years. They were absolutely distraught as to what was going to happen to them and their clients. Their clients were up the walls about it too. That should not happen.”
“The quality of healthcare and the speed at which people get it is dependent on whether they have private health insurance. I hope we have a commitment that that will change and change soon. There has been a long-standing commitment that we should change it but nothing actually happens. The truth is those who can afford to go to the Blackrock Clinic, the Mater Private or a very expensive nursing home are in a different category from the people who cannot afford those things. That is fundamentally wrong and has to change.”
“I wish the Minister the best of luck with her new brief. It is important she succeeds for the sake of hundreds of thousands of people who rely on the health service every year and indeed for the workers who provide the healthcare. I apologise in advance that I will need to leave because I am simultaneously participating in the Dáil reform committee and therefore I will not be here for any response the Minister might make, but I will look at the transcript. I believe the State has an obligation to provide cradle-to-grave healthcare. When we have a two-tier system, there is a fundamental problem in providing that for everybody as a matter of right, which they should have. That needs to be addressed. It is obscene, frankly.”
“Ireland must stand consistently against all occupiers, all perpetrators of genocide and breakers of international law. We should not align with the double standards of the powers that dominate NATO. We want to consistently stand with the occupied and oppressed, whether they are in Ukraine or Palestine.”