Ruth Coppinger
Dublin West · People Before Profit-Solidarity · Ireland
“Next Wednesday, the trial continues of the Ulm five, including the Irish citizen, Daniel Tatlow-Devally. A delegation of TDs and Senators, including me, will attend the trial in Stuttgart next week.”
“This man said of one woman that he would attach her to a concrete block. He said of another that he would set fire to her. Should this person be getting a pay off from the Army? No, of course, he should not. He should have been put on trial.”
“I have very little time left, but I want to put on record that the woman in question was abused by an Army officer using military equipment and surveillance technology, which is extremely scary. She made a complaint, which has never been pursued.”
“When is the victims of crime Act 2017 going to apply the Army? The Women of Honour have pushed for change so that if there is abuse within the Army there will, we hope, be mechanisms to deal with that, but what about women who are abused by Army personnel who are not in the Army?”
“This officer was involved in a GoFundMe campaign, where rapists' names were used as a joke by the various men who contributed to it. I do not think rape is funny and the Army should not either. That GoFundMe campaign was left up for a long time. Why is the Army a law unto itself in relation to gender-based violence?”
“The victim's belief is that the military prosecutor has evidence of a very dangerous man but for some reason, the Army does not seem to be concerned because it has not prosecuted him on those charges. Why would the Army not want to prosecute somebody? Are we at war or something? Why is it so secretive?”
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“There has also been an element of hand-wringing from some politicians in the North who have been involved in stirring up racism themselves in the past. I commend the activist groups that have intervened and shown that type of solidarity. The majority of working class people do not want the North to unfold into a racist hellhole.”
“I condemn the horrific attack on the man in Belfast. I hope he recovers and I send my solidarity and hope the perpetrator is brought to justice. However, I also want to condemn the horrific violence that is being wreaked in the North since that attack. It is straight from the far-right playbook to use an horrific tragedy or incident when it is a person of colour who is the suspect in a violent assault and to implement its precooked plan of racist and chaotic destruction. People are being stopped and questioned about their skin colour, nationality and race. Homes have been destroyed. Families who have been in the North for decades have been burnt out or attacked in their homes. Businesses have been set alight. Outside actors like Farage and Musk are intervening and actively whipping up violence as well.”
“There is not a presumption of non-disclosure stated in the Bill. That is the reality. It could have been stated. The rape crisis centre put forward the idea of a narrative rather than raw counsel notes being handed over. The Canadian system seems to be what the Minister is repeating, which has not reduced requests for access to the notes.”
“I think the Minister's remarks could certainly be interpreted that way. They show a complete lack of understanding about the impact of this issue and also about how therapy works wherein people can often blame themselves; they can take on guilt or they could say that maybe it was their fault and all sorts of things. I am not going to go into all the details again. I am just going to state what is in the law. Within the Constitution, there are other rights. There is the right to privacy, a right to dignity and a right to healthcare. I believe there are contending rights there. I am not saying it is easy but I think it could have been addressed. There are human rights as well. Even within the limit if the law, however, Dublin Rape Crisis Centre did contribute a detailed submission. Senior counsel, who the Minister knows, drafted it.”
“The rape crisis centre had asked for a court order at that stage. It does not improve the standard for disclosure. The Government broke a promise to introduce presumption of non-disclosure explicitly. It does not require the accused to engage with the facts of the case at application stage. It removes survivors' agency to consent or not. It continues the violating practise of raw counselling notes being handed to lawyers and the accused. It does not expressly state that counselling notes are not evidence. There is no legal advice to survivors about the whole process. The complainant is only notified of an application order after the court order pre-trial hearing is given. There is a total ban in Tasmania but I think the Taoiseach could have gone much longer. Survivors are extremely disappointed.”
“I think the Minister let the cat out of the bag on Committee Stage when he asked a Sinn Féin Deputy and me what if an individual he was counselling provided information to him in that counselling session and, subsequently, a criminal trial took place and he had a record of what was said to him that completely undermined what was said in the prosecution - in other words, women lie and counselling notes can potentially be used as evidence to try to catch them out. He said that he cannot ban the counselling notes. What the Minister has always said, and the Taoiseach has said, is that it is unconstitutional but the Taoiseach had a chance even within the Constitution to make really strong privilege. Very quickly, in the 45 seconds, he has done nothing to limit or regulate the Garda or Director of Public Prosecutions, DPP, seeking the notes.”
“It is squeezing it with so many issues into a new Bill, which will finish tonight at 9.15 p.m. or so. We will gather here and survivors will be in that Gallery because they want to come and see this through to the end. They will see it squeezed and, potentially, amendments will not be reached for debate. These are amendments that were sought by survivors and by the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre, whose representatives the Minister refused to even meet to discuss their proposals for dealing with this.”
“I want to send my sympathy and solidarity to the man who was brutally attacked in Belfast, and to all affected by the subsequent racist violence. I am going to refer to it in my Questions on Policy or Legislation. I will raise with the Taoiseach again the issue of gender-based violence, which he and the Government acknowledge is an epidemic. It is largely unreported. One of the key reasons is the hostile, traumatising and misogynistic legal system that so many complainants face. Survivors' counselling notes being used in trials has been an issue raised on the floor of this Dáil and campaigned on for over a year now by survivors and by the Rape Crisis Centre. The handling of this issue by the Government is shocking and disgraceful. It is shoehorning that issue into 12 or 13 others.”
“The pressure needs to be kept on the FAI and the Government. I also appeal to the players to get together and come to a collective decision, if needs be. Hopefully it will not come to that. The women's team went on strike in 2017 when players refused to play against the Czech Republic, a World Cup qualifier, because of their ill treatment and unequal treatment. That was a success. The Spanish women’s team refused to play a match as long as Rubiales was left in charge because of sexual harassment. Sometimes players take a stand for the right reasons and sometimes it is very effective.”
“The FAI moving the fixture is an attempt to quell the opposition and I do not think it is going to work. There is a very important role for the Government here. The FAI would fear finance and it would fear sanctions against it. Six points in the face of genocide is nothing to me, but the FAI would fear maybe financial retribution from UEFA and FIFA if it pulled out of having fixtures played here. I believe UEFA would be on very dodgy legal ground if it were to carry that out because it is breaking its own statutes anyway. The FAI would have a very strong legal case to challenge that, since UEFA is not abiding by what it says. However, the Minister of State could step in here and reassure the FAI that the Government will not allow the sport to suffer in any way financially. It is very important that he do that.”
“I do not know if the Minister of State has had any hand, act or part in the rumour that the FAI is talking about shifting the game. I think the magnitude has hit home with the FAI and the Government as regards playing fixtures here, given the history of this country and so on. Shifting solves nothing. The venue was never the issue. It is about playing a team that is steeped in genocide, apartheid and racism. I am not going to list the reasons, but many of these players have actively cheered the genocide. Many of them have been in the IDF. The women's team, for example, participated in a PR stunt where they swapped their jerseys for IDF jerseys. Two Palestinian women footballers were kidnapped last week. How long do we need to go on here?”
“I heard the Minister of State on the television last night and I have to say it was mealy-mouthed, disingenuous and lacking in any moral fibre. What he said was that the Palestinians think we are great, that we are doing so much. He went on to dispute the idea that this match meant anything. I spoke to ordinary Palestinians who live in my area, some of whom have been the victims of the genocide and were helped out of Gaza by the Minister of State's Department, for example. It would mean a lot to them if this match were not to go ahead. Obviously they would prefer the Government to sanction Israel and impose economic sanctions, but it would mean a lot to people in Gaza to hear that a team stood out and refused to play Israel. I wanted to pass that message on to the Minister of State.”
“The Irish Aviation Authority has dropped some of the restrictions it had on drones. Is it not time to outlaw the delivery of fast food by commercial drones in residential areas? The nuisance that they cause and the impact they have is way beyond the necessity for them.”
“Should hundreds of people lose their peace and quiet in order for a cup of coffee to be flown over them and delivered to a particular person? This week has seen major setbacks for commercial fast-food drone delivery in Dublin West and Cork. In Dublin West, Fingal County Council refused retention of operation for Manna at its base in Coolmine. Many submissions were made by residents. This was the second base from which Manna had no permission to operate. In the Taoiseach's city, where a hub was established without permission, the council has sent an enforcement letter to the same company. A unanimous motion has been passed by Councillor Brian McCarthy of Solidarity Party-People Before Profit in Cork, calling for a review of the impact of drones on the environment.”
“To show how much upset this has caused, parents in that community are going door to door. Parents in that community have enough on their plate without having to go do door to door petitioning on this. That is how much it has impacted. The parents know the importance of having that sort of supports in the school. I hope the TDs in the area will get behind this as well because it is not recognising the reality, which is that the school population has gone way over what is needed to maintain that teacher. There have to be ways in which the Minister for education can intervene to review the allocation of a school given the burning social problems the area has. It is not breaking a rule because rules and regulations that do not apply to the reality need to be challenged as well.”
“What the Minister of State said there was lovely but it does not deal with the problem. What is the point of giving a school DEIS plus status and taking away a teacher? It makes no sense. The Minister of State needs to intervene here. This is one of the most disadvantaged areas in terms of social problems and the different minorities represented. Some 40% are from the Traveller community. This is going to hit that community in particular. There are also issues like crime, drug abuse, etc., which we all know exist in very disadvantaged working class communities. The decision does not represent the reality. That is the point. The numbers have now gone ahead for the next school year based on what was the case. I am asking the Minister of State to intervene and review the allocation for the school or to ask the Minister to do it.”
“On Friday, 15 May, it had 16 junior infant enrolments for September 2026. On Monday, 18 May, it had two more. It currently has 168 enrolments in mainstream classes, plus six new enrolments in the ASD class. That is a total of 174 children. Its enrolment has gone way beyond what it would have been when it had the teacher taken away based on September figures. I ask the Minister of State to intervene. Some 40% of the pupils in this school are from the Traveller community and the rest of the children are from extremely deprived socioeconomic backgrounds. All the staff work tirelessly but we all know the impact, as educational research shows, of adverse childhood experiences and trauma and how they affect pupils' ability to learn and flourish in society. This cannot stand and it has to be overturned.”
“It had to amalgamate three junior infant classes into two senior infant classes. Those students will deal with the ramifications of that for five or six years, all the way through primary school. If the school loses this teacher, it will again have to amalgamate three junior infant classes into two senior infant classes and three first classes and into two second classes. Many of the students who come to this school do not go to preschool or early years learning, unlike peers in other communities. Upon enrolling, they often do not know what learning and educational needs they have. It is vital that the pupil-teacher ratio is maintained so that those students can get the support that they need. I have been informed by the school that it has the highest enrolment for junior infant classes in the Dublin 17 area.”
“The impact of losing a teacher in that area will be extremely damaging to the school community and it completely undermines the purpose of DEIS plus support. What is the point in getting a wellness teacher if you lose a mainstream class teacher? This school is one of the most deprived and disadvantaged in the entire country. It endeavours to ensure that every student who walks through the door is loved, cared for and given every support that they can get in society. They are provided with a teaching and learning environment where they can flourish. The pupil-teacher ratio for DEIS plus is 17:1 but this would bring it up to 22:1 if that teacher is removed. Many schools might be able to cope but not in an area like this, serving a community like this, with such high levels of disadvantage. Last year, this school lost a teacher too.”
“How can it be that a school that made it to DEIS plus status, St. Francis Junior School in Priorswood in Dublin 17, can lose a teacher at the same time, bringing the pupil-teacher ratio from 17:1 to 22:1? This cannot stand. The school was recently given DEIS plus status but the board of management, staff and parents are absolutely devastated to learn that they will lose a mainstream class teacher for the upcoming academic year. It is losing a teacher because the number of pupils on the roll book went from 166 to 165. One pupil being lost means that an entire teacher is lost. The school lodged an appeal with the primary staffing appeals board and, on 13 May, got the answer that the appeal was unsuccessful and that the decision was final. The school cannot accept that decision. That community just cannot lose a teacher for those students.”
“We have to respect it." Do not get me wrong. I am not saying that just because people oppose something, it is not the right thing. I am saying local communities and councillors who know their areas are being sidelined by the likes of this Bill, which is giving more powers to a national body to build infrastructure which, often, the councils used to propose. Then it would be a statutory public consultation, after which a vote would come back to the local council. I do not agree that we should be moving more and more in the current direction.”
“People are asking if an alternative route will be considered. Everybody will write the letters but it feels like the power is more and more being taken from ordinary people. We write letters and get everybody to feed into the public consultation. Hundreds of letters go in and then the NTA, TII or whoever it is continues with the plan. Rarely do they take these matters into account. I would caution about this Bill being passed. I first became a councillor in 2003 and was elected in 2004. The council used to run the bins and control the water. What does it do now? All these quangos and ad hoc third party bodies are being created - the HSE, the NTA, etc. It takes political decisions out of the hands of elected people and hands them over to national bodies and the Government can say, "Ah look, you know, NTA took this decision independently.”
“It is needed for Blanchardstown, given the amount of industry we have as well. I want to mention an issue that is not in my constituency but that does relate to accountability and transport projects. I did not know about this until I came across it today. It concerns the proposal for the Navan rail line. Obviously, Navan is quite near Blanchardstown. The Dunsany Nature Reserve has informed us it would be split in two under the proposed route. It would be a loss of irreplaceable ancient woodland and mature trees. There are noise issues. It would disrupt a huge number of habitats. It has eight of the nine bat species found in Ireland, for example. It is an internationally renowned rewilding project. Books have been written about it. It would also have an impact on the rivers Slane and Boyne.”
“I am not happy to give more powers to the NTA to go around the country taking consultation and voting out of the hands of local councillors. I could go on all day about transport needs in Dublin West. The greater Blanchardstown area is not all of Dublin West but it is a lot of it. It is the third biggest urban area, after Cork and Limerick, but it does not have the transport we need. We do not have a Luas or a metro. There is a rail line but it is out of reach for people not in Castleknock, Clonsilla and Ashtown, which is a lot of the population. We have a huge number of multinational companies and people driving into the area every day. There should have been a Luas extension from Broombridge to Blanchardstown Centre. It is a greenfield site and would not cost as much as if it was diverted through a whole load of areas.”
“I will raise some of the other transport things that have been ignored continually. On BusConnects, there have been public meetings all over the place, including in Chapelizod and in Dublin Bay North. Does anyone in the NTA actually listen and respond to these concerns? The big plan for BusConnects in my area is to put everybody through the busiest shopping centre in the country, Blanchardstown Centre - it is also trying to introduce car-parking charges - to route all the buses through there and make it a hub. As has been said, people do not want to have to get off one bus to get onto another. Also, not everybody has that mobility and this is incredibly ableist. Nobody has listened. That is felt across the community.”
“I do not know whether there is just a rake of money in a budget and it is a case of let us see where we can spend it or what but it is nothing to do with active travel. The best active travel would be getting people into the city centre who work there, which is probably an awful lot of people, and to their schools, etc. I am raising this genuinely because eight years ago there was a consultation on that bus route and hundreds of people wrote in. The Minister of State will have heard TDs from all parties raising this. It was just ignored. Will I vote to give more powers to an unaccountable body when local authorities should have much more of these powers, like they always used to? At least there is some accountability from local councillors answerable to their community. That needs to be considered much more.”
“Obviously, residents were going to raise issues for safety reasons about e-scooters, e-bikes and all these things that can use a footbridge in order to get onto their estate. There was also the question of providing access to the estate that was not there before and the likelihood of antisocial behaviour. The visual and intrusive impact were also raised, as was spending millions of euro of public money on the project that could instead be spent on much-needed community projects. The irony is that the transport authorities are proposing – I have raised it with the Minister of State on many occasions – to take away a direct bus route from that area into Dublin city. They will spend a few million euro building a bridge to get residents to go where the new bus routes are. This is absolute madness.”
“Local knowledge of those councillors and TDs becomes a factor in the whole situation, but that goes out the window with the NTA, TII and all the others. I will provide an example. A huge public meeting was held in my area a couple of weeks ago in respect of a proposal for TII, in conjunction with Fingal County Council and Meath County Council, to build a footbridge. There must have been 150 people in attendance. The footbridge was going to be erected from an open space in a quiet housing estate over the N3 dual carriageway to a service station in an industrial area. No one asked for this. There was no demonstrable need for it. There was no survey about how many people who live in the location in question work in the industrial estate.”
“Many people are, understandably, using this debate as an opportunity to raise a lot of transport issues. I will do that in a second, but I would like to raise serious questions about supporting this Bill. I have a few reasons for doing so. The NTA is requesting an expansion of its power out of Dublin to the rest of the country, but there are serious questions. People hope that there will be good public consultation. What we have seen with the NTA is great public consultation, but it does not take any of the things on board and there is no accountability. I served on a local authority for 11 years. In fairness to the local authorities, there is public consultation, councillors are held accountable by the local community and public meetings are held.”
“A woman attended a public meeting I held last week and she spoke about her son being out of school for two years. He is at home and is smashing things up. She has had to give up her job, as is often the case with people whose children have additional needs. We need a second special school in Dublin 15 and in Dublin West. Cork, Limerick and Blanchardstown have comparable populations, yet we have one special school whereas Limerick and Cork have numerous. This is a recommendation of the task force. How will this infrastructure be provided?”
“It is good that this is happening but we need a lot more innovation in our courts system as well because if we keep gender-based violence silent and secret, people will not report and will not come forward if these really traumatising practices are maintained in our system. I welcome the Bill.”
“It is something that has come up, and I know that the Minister is dealing with the counselling notes issue, and we had a debate only the other day on this. Survivors and therapists were hugely upset and disappointed after that committee meeting. In fact, rather than seeing progress, they feel that it is going backwards, and I feel that too. Deputies Simon Harris, Micheál Martin, Helen McEntee and others talked about the need to remove counselling notes from the courts system, but the Minister seemed to defend the practice the other day. That was hugely disappointing for so many people, and I just have to relay that.”
“The UN says that every ten minutes a girl or woman is killed by a relative somewhere in the world. That is a shocking and stark statistic. It is more commonplace in some societies and cultures than in others but we are far from immune. Northern Ireland is the most dangerous place for women and historically the Republic of Ireland has been a very patriarchal and sexist culture as well. I welcome this Bill. I give huge credibility to David French and others who have campaigned for it. It has been a long time coming but we need much more legal change in the area of gender-based violence. While I welcome this Bill and also welcome the fact that other Bills such as Jennie's Law are being looked at, we also need huge change in the area of the misogyny in the court system.”
“We need Tusla to be properly resourced. We need all of the child State agencies to have the ability and staffing, which is a huge problem because of burnout as well, to be able to intervene to protect children, no matter where it is coming from. We see the same phenomenon in the family courts. This is something that more women are coming out and talking about. Children are being forced to stay with abusive fathers in cases of separation because the patriarchal family has such a huge power and status in our society and in our legal systems. The claims regarding parental alienation are all related to the philosophy that has led to this law taking so long. As has been mentioned, femicide is a huge problem. It is a global epidemic related to gender-based violence.”
“She talked about rape and child sexual abuse without any care for the impact it has on people who are listening as well. She also spoke about the child sexual abuse of people in State care. Let us be clear: most child sexual abuse takes place within families. Let us nail this one on of the head because it is a constant mantra from a few parties and Deputies in this House. It is just a common refrain. For all the faults and issues relating to Tusla - and there are many - the idea that it should not be able to remove a child or take a child away from the natural father is something that we should challenge. We have all read about and seen sisters and so on coming out onto the court steps and talking about how abuse continued for many years. It is very relevant because it is the mindset that led to this law talking so long to come about.”
“I welcome the Bill. It has been a long time coming. Two things were very striking when women in particular were murdered in the past. One was the fact that the partner who may have killed them could inherit the family home and other wealth, and the other was that they could be the immediate first guardian. This Bill deals with the latter. I commend the relatives and in particular David, the brother of Valerie French Kilroy who was murdered by her husband. David has battled to get this Bill passed. It is that type of activism that leads to legal changes because for many years this has been demanded and called for. The idea that the birth father has a divine right to the custody of their children and access to their children has to be challenged. We heard a while ago from Deputy who talked about Tusla.”
“Momentum is building around that. Every ordinary person in the country knows this should not happen. It is just not right. It is a really poor reflection on the sports Minister and the Taoiseach who pushed the team to go ahead with that. Many of them are people of colour, from racialised communities and so on. I am sure they do not want to but the Government is nearly putting them in that situation. I appeal to the team to take a stand. It will have the support, I believe, of the vast majority of people in this country. This Bill should be supported and should be campaigned for in the next week. I agree with Deputy Boyd Barrett that there should be a free vote. The Government allowed a free vote on women's rights and bodily autonomy last night in here and it should allow it on this as well.”
“Just to make it clear, there are actually two matches. Many of us are saying "Stop the game" but it should be "Stop the games". I got an email back from Brian Kerr when I contacted him in relation to this and he made the point, which a lot of us are not emphasising, that we should not be playing Israel anywhere. We should not have anything to do with them. How can the Minister not see that? That was one solitary thing she could have done. We have to rely yet again on the ordinary people of this country to mobilise and stop that match. If it is not stopped beforehand, we have to gather and prevent it happening that day. I am confident we can do that because there are public meetings taking place around the country. We have launched a campaign which many people have signed up to - sports personalities, political figures and so on.”
“It has been the most powerful and inspiring movement in the world over the past three years because it is an antidote to the rotten racism, militarism and hate that is being peddled. If it did not exist, the Palestinian people would be in an even worse situation than they are now. Unfortunately, it has not stopped the genocide. We have lacked workers' action to do that. We have two focal points now. The national march on Sunday should be huge. I appeal to everybody to attend it. We also have the potential to shut down the Ireland-Israel football match in October.”
“Iran, sorry. Iraq could be next; anyone could be next. The Minister sees no connection between the two events, of course. Academic links have been mentioned. I absolutely agree. The Minister came out and criticised people for trying to break academic links; however, they are not academic links. Tecnium is a laboratory for weapons for the Israeli genocide in the aerospace and engineering arena. The Minister said she does not believe in BDS and clearly she does not. How else does she propose Israel is to be isolated? She certainly supported it in the case of Russia. People from the Palestine Solidarity Movement are in the Gallery. Ordinary people from all around the country, all genders, all nationalities, all races, all generations.”
“We have to cite these people, not because they are good, but because the present leadership is so bad. The fact Ireland looks good internationally is because the rest are so rotten. I want to mention the occupied territories Bill. I spoke on this already. It must be exhausting for the Minister to come up with all these reasons it cannot be passed, especially since Slovenia and Spain have done it. She said initially it was her political priority, then had to walk it back. In February, she said it should be okay. Here we are in May and we all know it will not be passed before the summer and we will go into another delaying tactic. It must be exhausting for her. On Shannon and flights - and this is since the Minister came into the role - there was a 56% surge in US and military overflights last month as the US launched its attacks on Iraq.”
“The women's team wear IDF jerseys for publicity stunts - absolutely dripping in blood, racism against Arabs and violence and they have breached all the rules of UEFA and FIFA but that is fine, business as usual. And the Minister tells us she cares about the genocide. Bertie Ahern has been in the news this week for despicable racism. He has a rotten record and has been named in tribunals. Is it not gas that we are citing Bertie Ahern for taking action to prevent the Yugoslav team coming here during the Balkan wars in the 1990s? Because the Serbs attacked the Bosnians, he did not issue visas. Charlie Haughey was a similar character. He told the IRFU the game was up, literally, in terms of going to apartheid South Africa. The political leadership now has not even got the gumption to do that; they represent nothing when you break it down.”
“Some €3 billion of the €3.2 billion seem to be directly related to the electronic components, circuits and assemblies for the Intel operation with Israel - another company directly complicit in the genocide. The Government has a very difficult job because it has to walk a tightrope of publicly supporting Palestine but taking absolutely no action to upset the multinational companies it is in thrall to. As was said earlier, Ireland's only action is the Eurovision, which was taken by RTÉ and not by the Government, by the way. Even a football match - get a grip here. A football match is not at all important. Even then the Government does not have the moral backbone to say it should not happen. Three thousand fans will come here from Israel, a team directly complicit and involved with the IDF.”
“If that is what she is saying, it is extremely unlikely that will ever happen because of big powers like Germany, France, Italy and other countries who will veto that. It is a recipe for inaction. There is nothing stopping the Government acting alone. Slovenia and Spain, the countries Ireland was working with to get the resolution recently, have brought in similar occupied territories legislation. What is so special about Ireland? I think we all know what is special about Ireland. Ireland is now the second biggest trader with Israel. The US is number one, China is number three and Ireland is number two. What is the reason for that? Intel - one major company that the IDA bent over backwards to get into this country in the 1990s. The Government does not want to upset Intel; that is why it is not taking on this Bill.”
“People say, "What would you do if you were in Nazi Germany?" It is whatever you are doing right now - that is the answer. What the Minister is doing on behalf of the Irish Government is absolutely nothing for the Palestinian people. I take issue with stating it is just words - there are funds as well. Every time we stand up here and ask the Taoiseach or the Minister, or whoever is the foreign affairs Minister, about our stance and our inaction for Palestine, we get a mantra of all the different funds the Government is delivering. They would not need the funds if the genocide was not happening. It is just pathetic. It is guilt money at this point. The Minister says she thinks action at EU level is best, so can we not do anything until we get overall action by the EU?”
“I welcome, on behalf of Solidarity, this Bill. It is the first Bill to advocate for sanctions against Israel. What has happened to Palestine and what is now happening to Lebanon and other countries Israel is attacking is an absolute shame on the EU and world leaders. What an indictment of the EU that, almost three years into a horrific genocide, not only does it not sanction Israel, it continues to give Israel a favoured trade status. What an indictment of capitalism generally that household name companies we all know and were brought up on are directly complicit in the killing and genocide of the Palestinian people. I always wondered as a child when I read about Nazi Germany how Braun and all these companies managed to operate, but I am seeing it now writ large.”
“Former Deputy Marc MacSharry wrote a reference for a property developer who terrorised children. This seems to be a plague within Fianna Fáil. A former Ceann Comhairle wrote a horrific reference as well and has never apologised to the victims, despite being asked to do so.”
“I was particularly talking about sexual and gender-based violence because it is a particular type of personal crime. These people fool judges as well. Let us be frank. Judges are not exactly top of the class. These references are designed to get people off. In the case of the two women I spoke to - and I know them - there were suspended sentences after character references were submitted. I want to ask about this oath of affirmation. Where was the oath of affirmation for the person standing in the witness box when Jim Glennon, a former TD and a personal friend of the Minister, wrote a character reference for a person who had images of child sexual abuse? We all had to wait a week or so to find out who the former TD was. He did not stand up in the witness box, so it does not seem like the oath is being applied.”
“In a trial relating to two sisters, the last word was given to references for their brother who had already been found guilty of abusing them from relatives of the brother who knew nothing about him. The references need to go. They are very confusing and damaging.”
“We are not talking about writing a reference for a mother who took a packet of nappies because she is living in poverty. In most cases, these references are from relatives or former school principals who knew the offender 20 years ago, or from a GAA football manager or whoever. In the case of child sexual abuse and gender-based violence, they should be banned entirely because the people who carry out such offences are absolute master manipulators. They have groomed people, including adults and children, and fooled relatives. We have seen cases of femicide where the perpetrator fooled the entire family of the victim. No solitary thing can be believed about these people. No one knows what they have done in private, behind closed doors, in such a personal crime as child sexual abuse or gender-based violence.”