Sharon Keogan
Industrial and Commercial Panel · Independent · Ireland
“The future of European border security is being decided right row at the European Commission. It is currently drafting the renewed mandate of Frontex, the EU border police force. As Ireland holds the rotating EU Presidency, the Minister for justice cannot simply pose as a disinterested broker while our European borders are compromised.”
“Holding the EU Presidency gives this Government massive agenda-setting leverage at the Council of Ministers. The Minister must use this chairing power to strip out counterproductive rights promotion provisions. Under the guise of good intentions, these provisions and their enforcers have defanged and undermined Frontex.”
“I thank the Minister, Deputy Calleary, and I appreciate that he will engage with the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, on this. We live in the land of technology.”
“The Minister, Deputy Calleary, is welcome to the House. I rise to focus the attention of the House on a vital public service that sits at the very heart of social inclusion on this island, the free travel scheme.”
“Sitting down with Stormont to deliver a single unified rule book for free travel means we lift everyone to the same high standards of dignity and mobility, ensuring that a person's vulnerability is not penalised simply because of the jurisdiction they happen to live in.”
“It will point to the senior pass scheme, where a resident here can apply for a separate concessionary card to travel into the North. Let us be completely honest with ourselves.”
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“It means this highly technical, safety critical profession is still being planned on the basis of assumptions made nearly 40 years ago, before much of today's diagnostic technology existed. After many years of service, CMPs still await proper recognition, regulation and workforce planning for their essential roles. I urge the Government to take action on this. Perhaps the Leader could raise the matter with the Minister for Health.”
“The result is that these highly specialised clinicians continue to work without statutory regulation or protected professional titles and without the assurance for patients regulation is meant to provide. Consequently, CMPs represented by Fórsa entered an industrial relations process earlier this year when a planned work-to-rule protest was suspended following intervention by the Workplace Relations Commission. However, engagement by the HSE has been lax, fragmented and lacking urgency, leaving serious concerns in the profession about whether the issues are being treated as seriously as they should be. What is perhaps most extraordinary is the complete absence of modern workforce planning. The most recent meaningful workforce review affecting CMPs dates back to 1986. That is not a typo.”
“I will address the plight of clinical measurement physiologists, CMPs, who are highly skilled professionals working in cardiology, neurophysiology, respiratory and other diagnostic areas. They play a central role in patient care, yet remain chronically under-recognised. As far back as 2010, the McHugh report highlighted the need for updated workforce structures for professions such as CMP. More than a decade later, those issues remain largely unsolved and the profession continues to operate within frameworks that are badly out of date. CMP remains an unregulated profession. While proposals have repeatedly been made to bring CMP under the CORU framework, the Government has totally failed to actively embrace those proposals.”
“In summary, I simply ask for consistency because at present, the difficulty seems to lie less in the question than in settling on a reason not to answer it.”
“That leaves us in a peculiar position of having two reasons, neither of which has been explained and neither of which is consistent with the other. On the substance, I am at a loss. The written ruling suggests the Minister for justice has no responsibility for Garda enforcement, which, if correct, is quite a remarkable position to be taking. There was an earlier suggestion that asking for the statutory basis relied on for charges brought against protestors amounts to asking for an interpretation of the law. If that is the standard, it is difficult to see how any questions could ever be admissible. Finally, no indication was given as to how or to whom such a matter could properly be directed.”
“I raise the handling of a Commencement matter that I submitted on Garda enforcement and charges arising from recent protests. This might seem a small enough procedural point for the Order of Business. I would not usually be inclined to raise it, but the way this has been handled needs to be raised. The difficulty is not simply that the Commencement matter was refused - that happens, and we are all used to it - but how it was refused. The written ruling simply states - it does not go much further than this - that the Minister has no official responsibility in the matter. My office was given a different reason in advance, namely, that the question somehow asked the Minister to interpret the law. We asked that this be reflected in the written decision. It was not.”
“We are the people on the ground every day of the week. Does the Minister of State think we should be reading that in a newspaper? This is something he should be doing. If the Government wants community engagement, it needs to be telling elected representatives what is happening. At this moment in time, the Government has not been doing that. This is why we have problems around the country. I am not really happy with the Minister of State's response.”
“I thank the Minister of State for the reply. I have to say that it is not really as detailed as I would have liked. In relation to the 37 in-community properties the Department has purchased, nobody knows where they are. Are they currently occupied? Are they unoccupied, like the one in Stamullen at this moment in time that has been left vacant for the past four years? On the three properties that are currently under review for use outside IP accommodation, what is that for? Is that something to do with the Department of justice? Is it for prisoners who are leaving prison? The Minister of State has given me a very vague answer today. Does the Minister of State think it is right that the first I hear of a house in my community is through the media? Does the Minister of State think that is right?”
“We need to begin a serious discussion about what mechanisms we can create going forward to ensure transparency and fairness. I hope the Minister of State's response can be a token of good faith to that end. I ask the Minister of State to set out the facts clearly for this House and the public. Without transparency, suspicions grow. Without consultation, trust collapses. Without proper governance, even well-intentioned policy becomes unsustainable.”
“Leaving communities in the dark and then surprising them with developments like this is precisely how trust is destroyed, and backlash is created. Transparency is not optional; it is essential if public policy is to function at all. What is particularly alarming is that this does not appear to be an isolated case. The Department has now acknowledged that it manages dozens of in-community properties nationwide. There appears to be no publicly accessible register, no clear planning framework and no mechanism for local authorities or elected representatives to understand where these properties are located and how decisions are made. This Commencement matter is not about blindly opposing international protection; it is about accountability, fairness and ensuring decisions are made transparently, lawfully and with regard to local realities.”
“Decisions of this scale were taken quietly and implemented without any regard for the basic principle that communities deserve to know what is happening in their own estates. Second, this appears to have been done with no consideration of local housing pressure. In Stamullen and the surrounding areas, families are waiting years for homes. Housing lists are long. Young people cannot stay in their own communities. The State is purchasing residential houses in housing estates, and sometimes leaving them vacant for years while local needs go unmet. That is not some kind of hypothetical concern. It is happening now. People are reasonable. Communities understand humanitarian obligations, but people must be consulted.”
“That discovery did not come through any formal notification, public engagement or planning process. It came about only because the residents decided to investigate the property after noting how long it had been vacant and suddenly seeing furniture delivery vans. They grew curious about who their new neighbours would be. I went into the local authority offices to confirm the facts. The housing officials were unaware of the ownership until they checked the land registry. That alone tells us that something is very wrong. It is deeply troubling on several levels. First, there was no consultation with the local community. There was no advance engagement with residents. There were no transparent communications with the local authority.”
“The Minister of State is very welcome. I welcome the opportunity to raise this Commencement matter, which relates to something that has emerged in recent days. It is deeply troubling and goes to the heart of transparency, housing policy and public trust. The issue today is simple: how many properties has the Department of justice acquired for international protection since 2020? Where are they? How many are in use? How many are sitting vacant and under refurbishment? The way this matter came to light should concern everyone in this House. Stamullen, County Meath, is a residential village that is already under intense housing pressure. Local residents there have discovered that a private house in a normal housing estate was purchased by the Department of justice for international protection accommodation in 2022.”
“I call on the Government to use every avenue available to us to push for reform, strengthen oversight and insist that leadership within the EU is held to the highest possible standard and a better EU can be established because that is what the European project deserves. That is what our citizens deserve. I wish the Minister of State well over the next six months as he takes on the role here in Ireland.”
“In light of all this, we cannot simply shrug our shoulders. The European Union is not some distant or uncomfortable force. It is a political system in which Ireland has both a voice and a vote. We have the means, through this House and our Government, to demand higher standards, greater transparency and stronger accountability at the very top of the EU institutions. If the EU project is to keep the trust of its citizens, it must respect the balance between Brussels and the nation states. It must be led by people with full openness to scrutiny. Therefore, I call on everyone to engage in a greater debate over how we can better structure the EU with more respect for national governments.”
“Last but not least, we have the Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who left her previous role as Germany's defence minister amidst a raft of scandals that included overpaid consultants, improper procurement, ministry phones that had been wiped before investigators could access them and a military that had been left in tatters. To be frank, we have not seen much different now that she is in the Commission, where she is alleged to have organised our €35 billion Covid vaccination procurement deal over text messages with the Pfizer CEO, has refused to be questioned by the European Parliament and will not show the text messages, despite the EU court ruling against her. I get that scandals happen in politics, but three out of three of the EU's top leadership shows a pattern and a worrying one at that.”
“Instead, if we look at the EU's top three positions, there are former ministers and prime ministers whose parties have collapsed in popularity among their own people and who all have made an exit from politics due to scandals. As Commission Vice President and High Representative of the EU foreign service, former Estonian Prime Minister, Kaja Kallas, was effectively forced out of the latter role by a scandal involving her husband's business ties to Russia and a loan she reportedly made to her husband's business while Prime Minister. President of the European Council and former Portuguese Prime Minister António Costa had to resign due to corruption scandals in his party, not least including the alleged involvement of his chief of staff in nepotism concessions over lithium mines and data centres.”
“This is underpinned in turn by a certain argument that more EU centralisation is better and because we are in a more unstable world where big powers like India, China or Russia are on the rise, the only chance we have is to federalise Europe. This is very simplistic thinking. If more centralised power is always unquestionably better, then North Korea would be paradise and the Soviet Union would have won the Cold War. On top of this, we are really seeing a worrying calibre of leadership being put in charge of this increasingly centralised Europe. It would be one thing if our national power was being eroded but was in turn being taken over by the unquestionably best of the best of our Continent.”
“Transfers would still be made from Sofia to Dublin and some supranational European body would have to exist to organise and oversee all of that. That is what Robert Schuman first saw when he made his declaration in 1950. In the spirit of Europe Day, I have some criticisms of the current situation, direction and state of the EU because what is more European than to constructively criticise something in order to make it better? We debated the International Protection Bill and the migration pact in this Chamber a few weeks ago. I, and several of my colleagues, raised the point that we are seeing an alarming level of centralisation and competence-creep coming out of Brussels these days. We see alarmingly little being done by our own or other European national governments to counter this.”
“I am pleased to be speaking on Europe Day today, which is technically not until Saturday, but it is something I am glad we are marking in this Chamber. While I am sure everyone has different opinions on the specifics of what the European Union is doing right or wrong - I certainly have plenty - I think I speak for all when I say that the European project is ultimately a good thing. To bring the nations of our Continent together in co-ordination and co-operation in order to ensure lasting peace, mutual prosperity and even our own independence and security; all of this is a worthy goal. Even if we were totally disbanded in the morning, we would have to reassemble the EU tomorrow evening. Trucks would still need to be shipped from Warsaw to Madrid.”
“This situation is nothing but madness and our community will not put up with it. Indeed, it is my community today, but it will be other Senators' communities tomorrow, so wake up.”
“A recent report also showed that the State is ignoring basic data, such as nationality in housing, meaning it will not even bother to measure who benefits where pressures are the greatest and whether resources are being fully used efficiently. All considered, what we are looking at beggars belief: a system where first-time buyers and those on housing lists appear to be easily outflanked on one side by new arrivals entitled to the same benefits and on the other side by a State that is recklessly eating up available accommodation without any consultation. The Minister for justice, Deputy Jim O'Callaghan, or the Minister of State, Deputy Colm Brophy, must appear before this Chamber to explain what is happening. Twenty-nine of these houses have been bought throughout this country.”
“Stamullen and its surrounding areas host a very high concentration of accommodation and care facilities, while local schools are full, healthcare access is stretched and Garda resources are minimal. Who in this Chamber knew that the Department of justice is now a housing agency focused on housing international protection applicants? Decisions of this scale are being made without meaningful consultation, transparent communication or any published assessment of local capacity. This contributes to, frankly, an insane national situation. The country is in the grip of an acute housing crisis, where working families and young families cannot access homes, while the State acquires or holds residential properties for other purposes, even leaving them vacant for years. This is a failure of governance, planning and prioritisation.”
“Stamullen is a town of roughly 4,000 people, where local families are waiting years for housing. Yet, the State now owns residential properties there intended for asylum accommodation, including homes that have sat vacant despite acute local need. This is the situation that residents are grappling with. A well-attended public meeting last night confirmed that a house in the Forgehill estate has been in the ownership of the Department of Justice, Home Affairs and Migration since 2022, when our own Minister, Deputy Helen McEntee, was the Minister for Justice, while families living in the same estate remain on housing lists with no prospect of allocation. This is occurring in a community already under extreme pressure.”
“It is also unfair on our towns and cities, which are being asked to absorb growth without the planning required. The GAA is right to say that demographic change cannot be wished away and it can be managed. However, this requires national leadership and meaningful rural investment. If institutions like the GAA are prepared to speak up, Government must be prepared to listen and act. Maybe we should ask the GAA to come here and present its report to us, because it makes stark reading for communities throughout the country.”
“Rural depopulation, falling birth rates and the concentration of people along the east coast are not abstract trends; they are realities being felt in parishes, towns and clubs across the country. What is striking is that this sporting organisation has been willing to speak so honestly about issues that properly belong in the realm of national planning and public policy. Indeed, they are issues that belong in these Houses. The GAA recognises that when rural communities decline the fabric of Irish life weakens. At the same time, unbalanced growth is placing enormous pressures on Dublin and its commuter belt, with overcrowded housing, stretched infrastructure, lack of facilities and declining quality of life. Everyone moving east is not a sign of success. It is a sign of a failure to make rural Ireland viable for young families.”
“Last week, I attended the Association of Irish Local Government, AILG, and I want to commend the GAA on the presentation it gave on its recent report on democratic change, entitled, after John Healy's book, No One Shouted Stop - Until Now. I understand the association was hesitant about adopting that title but I commend it on being bold enough to do so because the warning it carries is timely and necessary. This is a serious, evidence-based document that does something many institutions shy away from. It speaks plainly about rural depopulation and urban over-concentration and it asks uncomfortable questions about where Ireland is heading. The GAA has been brave in raising the alarm to warn us - based on hard data - that the demographic shift we are living through is already reshaping our communities.”
“That only works if the State captures proper value. Norway taxed profits, took public stakes and invested for the long term. Ireland did none of that, but we can change it. Energy security will not be built through penalties and slogans. It will be built through courage, infrastructure and the will to build again.”
“Raising prices is not leadership; it is abdication. If we are serious about energy security, we must be serious about nuclear power. It provides reliable, round-the-clock electricity, independent of weather or season. Wind power can be cheap at the margin but when grid upgrades, back-up generation, storage and system stability are included, its real-systems cost converges with nuclear energy. Over a lifespan of 60 years or more, nuclear offers price stability and the security that an island nation badly needs. We must also address the decision to end hydrocarbon exploration. Ireland still imports close to 80% of its energy. Ruling out domestic production outright makes us more, rather than less, exposed. Limited, well-regulated drilling could reduce imports and provide transitional revenues for infrastructure.”
“Last year, in this Chamber, I asked whether we could build Ardnacrusha power station today. It was a rhetorical question meant to highlight how restrictive our planning system has become and how little will this Government often shows. Today, however, it is a serious question because large-scale energy infrastructure is no longer a thoughtful idea but an urgent necessity. The problem is that this Government has adopted an approach that is nearly punitive towards ordinary citizens. Instead of fixing infrastructure first, it tries to force behaviour through price increases. Make energy cheaper through public projects and State-led investment and people will follow. Instead, however, we punish motorists who are only motorists because the State fails to give them viable public transport or properly planned towns.”
“Second, the Taoiseach acts as if we are just now being dragged into a culture war, yet his party has uncritically backed puberty blockers for children, men in women's prisons and women's sports, and erasing women from the Constitution despite, as we saw in the referendums, huge opposition to these things. Far from avoiding a culture war, Ireland has been deeply engaged in one for years. The Taoiseach's Government, his party and his coalition party Fine Gael have been driving it for years. I ask the Leader to invite the Taoiseach to come in here and deal with that issue.”
“It is a medical issue. It is an issue of child welfare and even scientific truth. It is one thing if we have raging debates over political correctness and over people being cancelled for offensive jokes, or about what is and is not acceptable in public discourse or media. That is all culture, and debating it is culture war. However, there is nothing merely cultural about young people who are suffering from infertility or osteoporosis, or having to live with the irreversible reality of sex-change surgeries. That is real, life-ruining medical damage. Would the Taoiseach call the scoliosis crisis a culture war issue? Of course not.”
“I was originally intending to talk today about rural communities but I now find myself compelled to respond to the comments made by An Taoiseach yesterday where he confirmed his belief that children could be transgender. His belief is one matter. I will not spend time here going into the long list of objections raised by many medical and psychological professionals to the unthinking acceptance of children self-identifying their gender and the huge potential dangers this causes when it leads to medical intervention such as puberty blockers. I have made that case many times before in this Chamber. What was particularly galling was the Taoiseach's assertion that we should not get into culture wars such as those in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. First, I absolutely object to the hand-waving on this issue as a culture war issue. It is not.”
“We can also look at measures that mandate producers' responsibility for damages done to waste systems and perhaps even strengthening the existing penalties on those who throw these vapes into the wrong bins. None of this delays the Bill. It simply ensures that we are not back here in two years' time legislating to fix a problem we could have anticipated today.”
“I would like to ask whether the definition of "reusable" is robust enough to prevent manufacturers gaming the system, whether battery size, design and disposability should be addressed directly and ask whether producers responsible for end-of-life disposal should be made explicit rather than assumed. These are precisely the sort of questions that Committee Stage exists to answer. To this end, I will be looking to bring forward amendments that will attempt to address these issues. I invite the Government and all Members of the Chamber who are interested in contacting me to collaborate in making these amendments. For example, we could look at measures that distinguish genuine reusable products from quasi-disposables that take account of lithium battery fire risk and restrict certain battery sizes.”
“These fires reach temperatures of up to 1,400°C. The released toxic gases are incredibly difficult to extinguish and can reignite even after being extinguished. To this end, banning single use vapes is a laudable and necessary measure as it is simply insanity that they should be so easily bought and then so easily thrown away into ordinary bins. However, if this Bill inadvertently accelerates the movement towards larger single-use battery devices then we will have succeeded in banning one product category while worsening the underlying environmental and safety risk. That would represent a failure of policy design, not because the aim was wrong but because the system effects were not fully thought through. I will not ask to block or abandon this Bill but I ask quite reasonably for space and time to get the details right.”
“In practice, they become semi-disposable products that are heavier and more dangerous in the waste stream and far more likely to cause fires in bin lorries and recycling facilities. This is not a theoretical concern. Ireland’s waste sector has experienced repeated, devastating fires in recent years and the reading is quite shocking. Over the last five years at least eight major Irish waste and recycling facilities have suffered catastrophic fires, many of which were linked to lithium battery incidents, and these resulted in closures, rebuilds and severe capacity loss. Out of nine facilities sorting household dry recyclables, three are currently out of action due to fires. Maybe, one more fire could tank our national capacity for recycling. This is unsurprising for anyone who is aware of the nature of lithium battery fires.”
“That is why correspondence I received recently from the Irish Waste Management Association, IWMA, which I understand many other Senators also received, deserves careful attention. What it outlines is deeply concerning. While the IWMA fully supports the purpose of this Bill, it questions whether the current wording risks repeating the mistakes seen in other jurisdictions, especially the UK, where bans on single-use vapes were followed not by reduced harm or waste but by a shift in the market towards so-called multi-use devices. These devices, we are told, contain significantly larger lithium batteries, hold far more liquid and are often only marginally more expensive than disposable vapes.”
“I thank the Acting Chair. The Minister of State is very welcome to the Chamber. The objective of this Bill is sound and broadly shared across this House. Disposable vapes are wasteful, environmentally damaging and far too accessible to children and young people. The decision to remove them from the market is justified and overdue. However, as legislators our responsibility does not end with good intentions. It begins with asking whether the measures we put in place will deliver the outcomes we seek or whether, through gaps in design, they may create new problems while failing to solve the old one. It is fair to say the Bill before us is not one that turns on deep moral questions or contested legal principles but is rather technical public policy legislation aimed at achieving a practical objective and we should interrogate it as such.”
“There is no single authority tasked with ensuring the basics of governance. This creates a system where inefficiency is tolerated, waste goes unchallenged and risk accumulates quietly until it emerges as a headline like the one we read today. The problem here is not charity and it is not goodwill; the problem is a hollowed-out State that no longer designs, manages or disciplines the system it funds. Until we rebuild real public institutions capable of doing that work, controversies like this will not be the exception; they will be inevitable. We would like a debate on this matter.”
“They often deliver overlapping services with little evidence of co-ordination, strategic planning or enforced efficiency. This is just one area - autism - and we could also touch on homelessness, disability, mental health and other marginalised groups more broadly. What we are seeing is a State that has offloaded the delivery of core public services to NGOs without building the institutional architecture required to govern such a model properly. Responsibility has been blindly outsourced. We had that responsibility when Benefacts was there but they got rid of it back in 2023. Oversight exists largely on paper. Service level agreements measure activity rather than outcomes. Audits occur after money has been spent. Regulators are focused on compliance rather than value for money.”
“A story reported this morning in the Irish Examiner relates to the announcement that the HSE has launched an investigation into the alleged transfer by the charity Autism Initiatives Ireland of over €1.5 million to the UK. The transfers are alleged to have taken place as far back as 2019. Rather than dwell on the specific details of the case, which are to be investigated, I want to address what this story reveals about the wider state of public infrastructure and support in this country, or more accurately the alarming absence of it. A cursory glance at the autism service landscape reveals a system defined by fragmentation and disorder. Dozens of NGOs and charities operate in this space, many almost entirely funded by the taxpayer.”
“While we should continue to work on ways to see that sentences are corrective and rehabilitative, let us never lose sight of the fact that, at the end of the day, there have to be tough consequences for breaking the law. At the moment, we are trapped in a vicious cycle. The prisons are overcrowded, the convicted are left off with light or suspended sentences and, hence, we have more crime, as the criminals feel that they can get away with a slap on the wrist, and it all just continues. If we can combine discipline with opportunity, consequences with rehabilitation and reform with firm boundaries, then we can build a justice system that is not only humane, but effective.”
“The only acceptable release valve for our prison system is the resolution of its crisis, and that means building Thornton Hall. For far too long, this project has been delayed, deferred and quietly sidelined. We cannot keep pretending that overcrowding will solve itself through goodwill and pilot programmes. There is an opportunity here to join principle with practicality. Properly managed prison work parties could be used to contribute to the construction of Thornton Hall itself, giving prisoners skills and purpose while directly addressing the capacity crisis. This is how reform should work - demanding, constructive and rooted in responsibility. Prison reform and alternative sentencing should not amount to being soft on crime. It must be serious about outcomes. It is about reducing reoffending and protecting the public.”
“Properly supervised, such arrangements could relieve pressure on prison capacity while providing skills, discipline and purpose. This is not a radical idea; it has existed before and worked. However - and this is critical - reform cannot be a carrot and no stick. Alternative sentencing must come with very clear, very tough consequences for those who fail to honour its conditions. Anyone who abuses or manipulates such schemes must face swift and serious sanctions. Without that, public confidence collapses, and deservedly so. Likewise, alternative sentencing must never be allowed to become a pressure release valve for a system in crisis. It cannot be used as a substitute for dealing with the underlying failures of our prison infrastructure.”
“Campaigners and researchers have pointed out that, in the late 1970s, prisoners were more commonly viewed as people with potential value to society - people capable of rehabilitation and redemption. That belief, they argue, has disappeared. Too often today, prisoners are only spoken about as problems to be managed rather than people who might one day return as neighbours, workers and parents. That shift in attitude matters because when we stop believing in rehabilitation, we design systems that all but guarantee failure. There is also scope to think creatively. For non-violent offenders and those serving sentences for less serious crimes, there is a strong case for restoring structured work parties outside prison walls.”
“It was so successful that construction firms at the time would deliberately scout for prisoners to hire. Could you imagine if such a programme existed today and had success rates even close to that? The Government would be broadcasting it from the rooftops and we would never hear the end of it. Most importantly, it shows that where offenders are given structure, responsibility and a pathway back into society, the results can be transformative - not just for them, but for communities and for public safety. It reminds us that alternative sentencing, when properly designed and properly enforced, can work. It can reduce reoffending, restore dignity and turn former offenders into contributors rather than perpetual dependants. As an extension of this, we also require a shift in how we as a society think about prisoners.”
“Much has been said already about the overcrowding in our prisons, pressure on capacity and how we are to solve it. Alternative sentencing is being put before us a potential solution. I would like to cite one programme we had that could serve as a template. This was the Mountjoy Prison work party, nicknamed the "Pope's prisoner programme". Between 1978 and its suspension in 2009, that work party contributed over 20 community projects, including the construction and renovation of some 30 scout dens and community centres across Dublin. One of the most notable projects was Aurora House in Glencree, renovated by the Mountjoy work party and formally opened in 1979. These were not symbolic gestures but tangible contributions. This initiative also had an employment rate of approximately 80% for participants following release.”
“We can halve prices at the pump through tax abolition tomorrow. Likewise, every euro taken in USC is a euro that cannot be used by a household to make an energy bill, fill a trolley or cover childcare. Until inefficiency within the State is tackled head-on we should be reducing the burden on ordinary people, not increasing it under the guise of compassion. Abolishing the USC would be a clear signal that this House understands that the best way to help people through a cost-of-living crisis is not always more government but more freedom to keep the money they earn.”
“The truth is that it is far more efficient to leave money in working people's pockets than to take it from them, funnel it through an inefficient State apparatus and return a fraction of it through complex schemes and supports. At present, the State is demonstrably inefficient, perhaps the most inefficient in western Europe. Anyone who looks at the delays, overruns and ballooning costs knows this to be true. This Government will run out of road if it continues to substitute subsidies for real reform. We cannot subsidise our way out of every crisis while ignoring the structural problems at the heart of public spending. Fianna Fáil backbenchers were told they would have influence at budget times. If that influence is real, I call on them to use it to reduce taxes, not to invent more and new subsidies that merely mask the problem.”