Rose Conway-Walsh
Mayo · Sinn Féin · Ireland
“The very open nature of the Irish economy and over-reliance on FDI and a small number of large US firms exposes an economic vulnerability that covers an underlying deficit of €13 billion. With an all-island approach, we can tackle that properly.”
“An all-island development agency is critical to this prosperity. Competing for investment from multinational companies, based on five interlinked pillars of growth, transformational regions, sustainability and impact as promoted by the IDA is necessary to compete on a global stage.”
“I would need much longer than three minutes to discuss the fiscal implications of a united Ireland, such is the depth and breadth of the work already done. I commend all of those who have done it. Leaving all politics aside, the economic benefits of reunification present unprecedented opportunities for sustainable growth.”
“This morning, workers at Aer Lingus woke up to the devastating news that up to 500 jobs will be cut at the airline, impacting both staff at head office and flight crews. By all measures, Aer Lingus is a profitable company, reporting operating profits of €282 million in 2025. Its parent company, IAG, has operating profits of €5 billion.”
“We need to encourage student mobility across the island. I ask the shared island unit to intervene to provide funding for students from here going to Queen's University and Ulster University. Regarding the data, the NI Executive should work with the ONS, HMRC and the NISRA to improve the data on tax receipts in the North.”
“Will the Government meet representatives of the unions, the Irish Air Line Pilots Association, IALPA, Fórsa and other unions, to ensure that impacted workers receive full and fair redundancy packages and that we have full transparency, while also committing to wider statutory redundancy reforms?”
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“Can we have a debate in the Chamber about the recommendations made in this report, so everybody will have their say and we can make this really valuable work count as a first step?”
“I want to talk about the section of the report on building consensus on a shared island. The Taoiseach will be aware that, last week, there was the launch in Belfast of the public media Ireland report. This is the first time I have seen a report in preparation for the media around this subject. Academics from DCU and Ulster University considered what would happen to the public service media in a reunified Ireland. The report rightly highlights the important role the public sector and broadcasting will have in the reunification process of our island. It makes 13 recommendations. What will the Taoiseach's Department do to advance the research of projects like this from DCU and Ulster University on an all-island public service media and begin Government preparations for Irish unity?”
“I welcome that, but it says this has been done in jurisdictions where actions are deemed illegal. It should be disabled immediately across the globe.”
“It is sexual abuse facilitated at scale by technology and enabled by corporate and government negligence. It is vile and misogynistic. It is criminal sexual exploitation, regardless of whether the image is synthetic or not. What makes it even more alarming is that it was not even hidden in the dark web. That will tell you the arrogance and impertinence of some of the people promoting that. It happened in plain sight on a mainstream platform owned by one of the wealthiest individuals on the planet, who has many followers in this country I am sad to say. X chose to deploy a tool without adequate safeguards and effective moderation and without regard for the predictable ways it would be abused by its users. X last week confirmed Grok’s image generation function had been disabled.”
“It was fantastic to see what they have achieved, and I commend everybody involved in that and the winner. To me, everybody who was there was a winner. AI is the present and the future and it can be a force for great good. However, without robust regulation it can be destructive and dangerous. What we experienced this week, particularly on social media platform X, exposes the darker reality. AI is only as ethical as the rules that govern it and right now those rules are failing us. Over recent weeks we have seen the disgusting and appalling behaviour from users on Elon Musk's X who deliberately promoted the platform AI tool, Grok, to generate child sexual abuse material and non-consensual nude deepfake images, predominantly of women. Let us be absolutely clear. This is not experimentation. It is not curiosity and it is not victimless.”
“They obviously can be delivered in an efficient way with AI but at the same time, it can give rise to much social exclusion. I am talking about people who are not AI literate or indeed technological. People who are elderly and disabled are not used to that and just want to talk to a human being on the other end of the phone. Because of AI, they get one message after another. It is impossible for them to access public services, so I again ask him to be acutely aware of that and put measures in place to ensure everybody can access public services in the same way. Everybody deserves the same treatment. Last week I was at the Stripe Young Scientist Exhibition and saw the wonderful and innovative projects created by students from my own county of Mayo, from Claremorris and Crossmolina.”
“The last thing we want is for AI to end up costing the businesses which are already on their knees and struggling to survive. We need to be really conscious of that. I was glad to hear the Minister of State say that simplification does not mean deregulation because that is enormously important. The Minister of State knows that the drivers - some of the richest people in the world - will be driving for that simplification to turn into deregulation and we must be acutely aware of that and stand up robustly to not be sucked into that. That speaks to the whole EU agenda following the Draghi report. The difference between simplification and deregulation is hugely important. That needs to be monitored on an ongoing basis. The Minister of State also referred to public services.”
“It is unfortunate we are here discussing AI at this particular time because it forces us into a space that nobody wants to be in. At the outset, I want to talk about the benefits. If everything in the plan presented by the Minister of State is to be implemented to its fullest in a timely manner, then we will be making progress. As a party, and personally as the spokesperson on enterprise, tourism and employment, we will work with the Minister of State to progress that. It is true it can bring many benefits to businesses and individuals, from reducing costs to improving productivity. One thing I say with regard to the many millions of euro announced is that we make it easy for small and medium sized businesses to access that money in an easy way because small businesses will not have the resources to do that.”
“There is a lot more to be done in this area. Structures such as the North South Ministerial Council are underused when it comes to tourism co-operation with real economic impact. I believe that is where the future growth of our island will be.”
“I welcome the work that has been done in that area, but I want to encourage more of it, and I want to encourage it to go beyond the marketing. In particular, tourists travelling North and South still face poor public transport options. If I tried to get public transport from Mayo to Belfast, it would take me hours upon hours, and I would nearly be in New York by the time I would be in Belfast. There is much to do there. Other issues are the disjointed visitor information and the lack of integrated ticketing for travel passes. There are some basic things that we can get right. The continued neglect of rail links, greenways and co-ordinated transport planning undermines the potential of the natural pairings of the campaigns that I mentioned earlier, such as the Wild Atlantic Way and the Causeway Coast Route.”
“We need a Government-led vision that links infrastructure, transport, heritage and regional development to a coherent North-South tourism strategy. We want our visitors to experience the best of what the island of Ireland has to offer, all in one trip.”
“While I am happy to finally see a regional focus on the Government's latest tourism policy document, which aims to grow sustainable tourism in historically overlooked regions, I fear that we have missed an opportunity to integrate successful tourism campaigns from both jurisdictions. Ireland's Hidden Heartlands, for example, only recently expanded to include a fraction of County Fermanagh. While I welcome that, it could be further expanded into mid-Ulster to offer visitors a unique experience across both sides of the Border and bring much-needed footfall and spending to rural towns and villages there. Another missed opportunity was the potential to join the Wild Atlantic Way to the Causeway Coastal Route. Marketing co-operation alone is not enough.”
“We are all aware that the Good Friday Agreement established tourism on the island of Ireland as a key North-South co-operation area, and it markets the island as a single destination for visitors. Will the Minister outline initiatives in the Government’s new tourism strategy that aim to grow sustainable, all-island tourism on a North-South basis? My concern is that the plan will leave parts of our island behind, particularly the Six Counties, and that we are not maximising the potential there.”
“Regional unemployment requires targeted, measurable and time-bound interventions. We cannot ignore the figures that are in front of us.”
“In that case, why are so many people moving to Canada, Australia and Great Britain? It just does not add up. If they had jobs and a place to live, they would be staying at home. The Government’s enterprise support structure and investment and skills programmes remain disproportionately concentrated in already prosperous areas, while towns and rural regions struggle to attract sustainable employment. We need concrete action from the Government to attract and retain employers in regions with persistently high unemployment. We need to ensure the IDA Ireland and Enterprise Ireland strategies have a genuine regional impact. We need to align education and training programmes with the local labour market needs and to support SMEs, which are the backbone of regional economies. Warm words and strategies are no longer enough.”
“Most worryingly, if we drill down further, just looking at the unemployment rate for the west, which includes our county, Mayo, we see the rate was as high as 6.7%. That is over 25% higher than the figure for the State as a whole.”
“Let us look at the figures. They are not mine, obviously; they those of the CSO, backed up by reports produced by the Northern and Western Regional Assembly, whose work in this regard I acknowledge. It is very important for us to know the picture. On regional unemployment, the CSO states that the State's overall figure for unemployment at the end of quarter 3 of 2025 was 5.3%. The northern and western region, which incorporates the five counties of Connacht, including that in which the Minister of State and I live, as well as Donegal, Monaghan and Cavan, had the highest regional unemployment rate in the country, at 6.1%. This region has been categorised by the EU as a lagging region, well behind Ireland's other two regions, which have a GDP per capita that is almost three times higher.”
“What does the Minister plan to introduce to correct the imbalance in unemployment rates between the regional areas, particularly the north and western regional area, and the urban centres? Despite the song and dance the Department and the Taoiseach made today over the strong overall employment statistics for the State as a whole last year, recent figures have revealed a growing imbalance between the unemployment levels in the urban centres and unemployment in regional areas. Will he outline the measures his Department will take to address this?”
“SMEs are being hammered by public and employer liability costs. Overall, Ireland ranks among the top countries in the world for insurance premiums per capita , which tells us something about how expensive the overall system is.”
“Then how come there are 848 insolvencies? That does not add up in terms of the supports for small business. I recognise that there are increased costs in wages but we cannot have a situation where workers are subsidising businesses. That is why the proposal for a PRSI rebate was put forward in our pre-budget submission to mitigate those costs, but the Minister did not take that up. Behind every insolvency is a livelihood and a community hit. On energy, Ireland is simply not competitive. Eurostat data shows that Ireland had among the highest electricity prices in the EU for non-household consumers in 2025. That is devastating for cafés, shops, small manufacturers and tourism businesses trying to plan month to month. On the insurance, the rip-off continues. Premiums remain stubbornly high.”
“Over the past year, the Government has talked a lot about supports but what SMEs have experienced is delay, piecemeal measures and a refusal to tackle the big drivers of cost. The signs are there. In 2025, a total of 848 insolvencies were recorded. That is hundreds of businesses that did not make it through the year.”
“How come the business owners I speak to every day of the week are struggling so much if the Minister is saying that so much is being done for them, as measured through the CSO's wholesale price index? That is not the reality on the ground. It is certainly not the reality in the businesses that I see every day. The SMEs are the backbone of employment in towns and villages right across this State. They keep main streets alive. They sponsor local teams, provide apprenticeships and take chances on new staff. Too many of them are telling me the very same thing, which is that they are working harder for less. The SMEs need Government intervention that matches the scale of the problem. That could be it, that the scale of the problem is not recognised.”
“SMEs and self-employed individuals are being crippled by the cost of doing business in Ireland in 2026. The Government is ignoring their pleas for help and rejecting every Sinn Féin proposal to alleviate their situation from our motion to tackle insurance costs to our motion to bring energy costs. I ask the Minister to outline the concrete steps his Department is taking to support these businesses struggling with the cost of doing business.”
“It has not stood up or made alliances in the EU. What has happened is a bypass of national vetoes and sidelining of national parliaments. It undermines democratic oversight. There are much bigger consequences of what has happened. There is food security. My God, look at the geopolitical situation at the moment. Food security is something people depend on. This is much more than just a farming matter; it is a matter for everybody living in this country. That is why we have said "No" to Mercosur right from the beginning. When we were told beef was taken off the table, we knew it was never taken off the table. It has to be "No" to Mercosur. I listened intently to the Taoiseach again today. Even at this late stage, there are steps that can be taken by the Government. Take back the power and stand up for rural and farm communities.”
“Destabilising rural livelihoods is not fair trade. It is a race to the bottom. What has happened with Mercosur is not right. We all understand trade and the necessities of it but I come from a rural community in Mayo and see the promises that have been made. We were told me must stand back and look at it in the wider context but I see what was done over the years going back to the EU directive in 1997, where farmers were promised and promised. They were promised they would be compensated in relation to designations. Where does that leave us today? There was no compensation for designations. In not only the designated areas but also the buffer zones, there are real questions of property rights. People cannot build on their own land as it is. The Government has not opposed Mercosur in the way it needed to do.”
“I want to raise the issue of the lack of ambulance services, particularly in north Mayo and the west of Ireland more widely. It is a dire situation that I have never seen as bad in all of my time, where people cannot get an ambulance on time. There are incidents where people have had to travel 50 miles on very bad roads to get to the nearest hospital. When people call an ambulance, they cannot even be told when it is going to come. My question is this. Does the Taoiseach know how many people are dying prematurely because they cannot get an ambulance on time? What is he going to do about it?”
“Recent public statements by US President Donald Trump have raised the extraordinary prospect of the United States seeking to forcibly take control of Greenland, a territory of Denmark, an EU member state. Such an action, if pursued, would present a fundamental challenge to international law, the sovereignty of small states and European security. It would also have serious implications for the strategic balance in the north Atlantic region of direct relevance to Ireland’s security, particularly in relation to undersea infrastructure, airspace monitoring and hybrid threats. Given Ireland’s military neutrality, limited defence capabilities and increasing exposure to geopolitical instability, will the Taoiseach outline what assessment has been made of the implications for our defence and national security?”
“I also take the opportunity to tell the Minister of State what is happening and to ask him to come to Mayo to meet with the anglers and the draft net licence holders there. What Government is attempting to do is to put an absolute blanket ban on fishing. Even if we take the Moy complex of 60 miles of rivers, 12 fisheries, 115 rivers and 20 lakes, will the Minister of State put what he is proposing to do for the coming season on hold to have proper consultation with the fishermen and the tourism bodies and to have a proper impact assessment on what he is proposing to do there? Will he please put it on hold while this consultation takes place to hear the severe impact this would have? It cannot be allowed to happen.”
“What has happened here should not a surprise to us but it is an absolute shock. It is a shock to the system and it is a shock that has to be corrected. The truth is that the EU has failed Ireland's fishing industry repeatedly but so has the Government. The EU got used to successive governments allowing it to happen over and over again. As Sinn Féin's fisheries spokesperson, Deputy Pádraig Mac Lochlainn, said earlier, the EU-based corporations were allegedly complicit in investing in fleets in third countries and benefiting from inflated quotas while fishing families and fishing communities here have to suffer. We need a radical reset of the fishing industry and of fishing across the board.”
“What we have seen over the past few weeks is an absolute and abject failure of the Common Fisheries Policy. Even the 1996 Hague preferences have failed. That was the very mechanism that was set up to guarantee Ireland a minimum level of fish to catch in our own waters. That is what it would have meant. However, France, Germany, Poland and the Netherlands banded together to ensure that not even a boat could be taken on it. The truth is that Ireland's fishing industry has suffered a death by a thousand cuts. I come from Mayo, a huge coastal county. I have watched it over the years. Along with the fishing families, I have watched huge trawlers behave absolutely recklessly because they were legally allowed to do it. Then, we have the criminalisation of fishermen and fishing families at the same time.”
“Those issues have gone way up the scale in terms of things that are important to multinational businesses and also to our indigenous businesses.”
“I reiterate that we need to have some transparency. That is why I asked that the remit of the defence and national security committee be revisited. Transparency and accountability are very important. I welcome the investment the Minister announced last week, which is badly needed to address the neglect there has been of our Defence Forces, but there must be oversight of how it is spent and accountability for it. People need to know we are resilient as a State. That is necessary not just for the public but also in terms of our competitiveness and the assurances we can give to foreign direct investors in this country. They need to be assured right across the board in terms of our cybersecurity and security generally.”
“I certainly welcome the increase in the radar capability. It is very important. I appreciate that the Minister cannot give every detail and has to be cautious in what she says but people want to know. They want reassurance that we are resilient enough and that our reliance is holding up and being improved all the time. One of the questions that has been asked of me a lot is on what protocol is in place when there is drone activity in our airspace. Are airlines notified? What happens when such incidents occur? I very much appreciate and welcome the fact that President Zelenskyy had a safe landing and take-off, and was safe while he was here. That tells us certain things but we need to know whether other incidents could have happened and whether all the protocols were followed in that incident.”
“I wish the Minister well in her new role. It has probably never been so important. I listened intently to the Minister's answers on the incident involving five drones endeavouring to intercept the plane of President Zelenskyy recently. Was a C70 form was completed to ensure there was a Garda-Defence Forces co-ordinated response? Were all protocols followed in the context of that incident?”
“I was rushed to a Dublin hospital for a week from bleeding and pains. I had a terrible experience. A lot of this stress has been brought on because of my homeless situation. That is the case for many people.”
“I ask the Taoiseach to consider issuing an upfront fund to local authorities, but to Mayo County Council in particular, in order that they can turn around the vacant properties they have without having to go through the bureaucratic nightmare of applying for funding from central government on a house-by-house, unit-by-unit basis. Can the Taoiseach imagine what it is like to be a homeless person in Mayo watching council houses remain empty month after month while nothing is done? I will give him an example from a young mother in my constituency: I am homeless, living in a friend's house. I've just had my first baby. She's now a month old. She was born at 36 weeks. I've been in and out of hospital the whole of the pregnancy with stress and anxiety. I developed diabetes also.”
“We are talking about a scheme that will cost billions, that is, in excess of €2 billion and maybe €5 billion. To have this arbitrary date to exclude some homeowners is deeply unfair and unequal. I have a situation on one estate where some homeowners on the estate are getting one rate and some owners are getting the other rate. That is grossly unfair. I ask the Minister, as others have said, to revisit this and look at it again. In the context of the whole scheme, we are talking about a pittance here but it is a huge, potentially life-changing amount of money in the difference it makes to single householders. We do not want a situation where one neighbour is pit against another because one gets more or less on a scheme that is not 100% in the first place.”
“It should be the default position that the relevant house can be done as well at the same time if it is very obvious that it has defective concrete blocks and foundations. The amendment provides that the "owner of the attached dwelling may appeal the decision in accordance with Part 5 within 90 days of the date of the notification". Is the Government really saying there will be cases that will need to be appealed because somebody decides the attached house cannot be done at that particular time? Could the Minister of State clarify that, because I want to know what to tell these people?”
“I need clarity before I leave here tonight. I want to be able to tell the people of Lios na Circe and Westport what this means for them. Not only are these semi-detached, detached or terraced houses, but the topography of where they are built means they are sitting on a number of slopes. These houses were built by an approved housing body with the local authority and local authority mortgages. The Minister of State is saying that this amendment is designed to bring flexibility so that if one homeowner applies and they want to rebuild their house and they meet the damage threshold, the other relevant owner can then bypass, if you like, the threshold required or that can be taken into consideration. Is that what the Government is trying to do in order to bring in the flexibility? I am trying to understand.”
“While we are talking about the process, why does it take over nine months for the test results to come back? There is no explanation whatsoever. People are told, month after month, that this is to do with the process of the whole thing. Why does it take so long for the results to come back from the test?”
“If somebody were standing up here trying to be obstructive or to get in the way of what needed to be done, I would ignore that, but that is not happening. We are not only seeking to protect homeowners and have fair play for them but we are also seeking to save the State millions of euro. What the Government is doing tonight by not accepting the amendments is costing the State millions of euro. That will come back to haunt it and the people involved in this.”
“I said to the couple affected, who had to rebuild the house and who had saved all their lives, that something had to be done with the house. I said the county council could not help them out but that I was sure that if they kept all their receipts and kept every record properly such that the project could be thoroughly audited, they would not be excluded from any scheme put in place. If the Minister is going to refuse to accept amendment No. 7, he will be saying to the couple that there is nothing for them and that, even though they did nothing wrong and instead did everything right, leaving everything fit for audit, they are still excluded. They are neighbours of the Minister’s TDs in Mayo. They know them, they know their faces, and they know their families. I am totally dismayed.”
“This is because the gaps we are talking about are €40,000, €50,000, €60,000 or €100,000-plus. That is an awful lot of money and it is absolutely crucifying people. It is not only crucifying the mortgage holders, as their children will be paying back because of the huge gaps. In amendment No. 6, we are asking for the end-to-end remediation scheme for all those impacted by defective concrete blocks. To add insult to the injury of the levy on the products, the State is charging VAT on top. You could not make this up. It is totally wrong. I want to turn to the issue of retrospective payments. It is now many years since I went to a house in Ballycastle that was falling down completely. At the time, we did not really know what was happening.”
“People have never been given an explanation as to why those in Mayo and other counties along the western seaboard are treated differently from those who availed of the wraparound scheme that was in Dublin. If somebody gave us a rationale for it and stated how it is and has to be, we could look at that. Everybody here has tabled amendments in good faith to improve the scheme and make it fit for purpose. When we submitted all our points on the original scheme, including those we are making now, we wanted to save the Government money. Our bottom line was that we wanted to ensure nobody would be locked out of the scheme because they could not afford to get into it. By rejecting amendment No. 5, the Minister would be continuing to lock people out who cannot afford to get into the scheme.”
“I wish to speak to amendments Nos. 5, 6 and 7. Unfortunately, this is a bit like playing handball against a haystack because I do not believe the Minister is going to change his mind on any of these amendments. Through the vote we have had on the amendment on blocks, he has made Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael TDs from all of the impacted counties, including Mayo, do something they know is absolutely wrong. One hundred percent redress means 100%, not more or less; it is just what it takes to make up for the lack of legislation or the failures by the Government. It is not because of any failure of the homeowners, as we have said many times here, but because of the abject failure of the Government that 100% redress is needed.”
“I know the Taoiseach will agree that the people in Mayo deserve to have proper road infrastructure. I want to specifically talk to him about the R312, which is the main road connecting Erris to the county town of Castlebar. I want it to be designated a regional strategic road because that is the only way it will get the funding it needs. It is a dangerous road. People have put up with it for years but it is time for it to be fixed.”
“The very serious incident of five drones endeavouring to intercept the plane carrying President Zelenskyy last week brought our unpreparedness on defence and national security into sharp focus. Was the C70 form completed to ensure that a Garda defence co-ordinated response was put in place? Were all protocols followed? Why did the navy ship not have drone-disabling equipment? Why were airlines not informed that there was drone activity in the vicinity into which they were flying? Lieutenant General Rossa Mulcahy told John Mooney of The Sunday Times that the military needs more personnel, intelligence and high-tech capabilities to navigate these uncertain times. Why is the Taoiseach so reluctant to allow the defence and national security committee to do what its title suggests and have oversight of national security?”
“There needs to be a fast-tracking of the local authorities' derelict sites to make them into accommodation that can be used in towns. There is also the unsightliness of these sites at a time when we are trying to do urban renewal and make these towns look attractive.”
“In parallel to this, it is very important to look at derelict sites that are owned by local authorities. The Tánaiste says this is a big job of work for them, and it absolutely is, but it is critical that we cannot be taxing someone on one side of the street when the local authority has a huge derelict site on the other side of the street and is doing nothing about it. I do not necessarily blame the local authorities. They need to work with the centre. I respect that the Tánaiste is not the Minister for housing, but he is the Tánaiste. That has to be done because even his own councillors on Mayo County Council were raising this issue yesterday. Councillor Ger Deere was raising this in respect of Castlebar. That situation is not tolerable either.”
“However, we need to look at this because supporting small and medium businesses, the self-employed and sole traders is important to our economy.”