Sinéad Gibney
Dublin Rathdown · Social Democrats · Ireland
“Unfortunately, those are still not entirely clear. Although the Windsor Framework did look to enshrine that policy of no diminution of rights and the non-divergence of rights on either side of the Border, that has not been clear in how it is going to play out.”
“I want to raise one specific sector. Within my portfolio, the culture sector is a good example of where we could see a much better offering in the joining together of the two economic activities. For example, we have a very vibrant production sector for film and television.”
“The other word that is important to bring into any economic discussion and fiscal discussion around a united Ireland is "holistic" because, unfortunately at times, I see the Government looking at the economy as a discrete part of society and neglecting things that fall outside of economic discussion, economic imperatives, and policymaking…”
“There are ways that we can see how our governance of this jurisdiction can be improved simply by the opportunities that will be presented by opening up constitutional change and the discussions that we are all going to have about how we govern ourselves right now and how we may govern an entire island of Ireland.”
“When the Minister of State referred to office roles in Brussels, was he describing roles in NATO headquarters? The international forces the Minister of State is describing are exactly like the coalition that invaded Iraq.”
“I look forward to coming back to the topic of the triple lock in a few questions' time. I have read with extreme concern the reports over the past week on the lack of support provided by the Department of Defence to Women of Honour, whose members are participating in the Defence Forces tribunal.”
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“The Taoiseach said in 2013 that the triple lock is at the heart of Irish neutrality. The Government proceeds to say it supports neutrality while it advances its plans to abandon the triple lock, even though, in poll after poll, the people say they want to protect Irish neutrality. We need a serious discussion about it this week.”
“Essentially his support for peace in Ukraine has nothing to do with peace but is to do with the rare earth minerals he wants to get his paws on. Taking Maduro out of Venezuela is not about the regime that he is running but the oil that Venezuela holds. In Palestine he is still hell bent on developing a dystopian riviera. These are not things that can be considered business as usual. We have to start saying that the emperor has no clothes.”
“I appreciate that our ties with America are crucial, and that we have diaspora there and trade links there, but the Trump Administration is going about its business, particularly in relation to foreign affairs but really in domestic affairs as well, in a way that we cannot support. We have to ask the difficult questions whereby we seriously consider who our allies are going forward. This is not business as usual. I do not accept it when Government spokespeople say they make no apology for protecting jobs. They should make an apology for protecting jobs when it is to support an Administration that is proving itself to be in the kind of mindset that Trump has, whereby he decides he wants to acquire something and goes after it.”
“I fully appreciate that the UN has issues and the UN Security Council has issues but the triple lock could be satisfied by the General Assembly and no effort has been made to do this. We must maintain this global order because us walking away and removing the triple lock is sending a very clear signal, not only to the UN but to all of the states across the globe, including small states that look to us for leadership and look to us for our leveraging in the United Nations and within the Security Council. We need to pass the occupied territories Bill in full, including services, now. It is long past the promise that it was supposed to be. We must reposition our relationship with the Trump Administration. I am not anti-American.”
“I was so disappointed and gutted to see Ireland become a signatory to the letter recently asking for rollbacks on the ECHR. We have just criticised the UK for doing exactly this. We know how crucial the ECHR is to our Good Friday Agreement and to peace on this island yet we chose under the banner of migration, on which the Government is absolutely hell bent on being strong, to undermine the ECHR and join a group of European nations in doing so when others did not. Only 26 out of 46 are signatories to it did so. This is something I really want to see the Government move back on and stop attacking the ECHR under any banner. Do not abandon the triple lock. Do not push through the defence (amendment) Bill. Right now the triple lock is our connection to multilateralism, global order and the UN.”
“In Palestine we have this so-called ceasefire under which people continue to die, the promises of aid that have not happened, the continued killings, the apartheid, the annexation of the West Bank, the banning of groups such as Doctors Without Borders and the destroying of UNRWA resources while we all look away. We speak about an age of impunity as if this impunity just happened one day. We created it by deciding the rules do not apply to our allies, our trade partners and our fellow Western countries. I know many others have referenced Mark Carney's remarks today and they are incredibly prescient. Here is what I think we need to do. I have a few suggestions that I think the Government needs to consider in international developments.”
“I want to touch on some of the international developments that have been spoken about today, starting with Ukraine. I want to speak not only about the impact on civilians and Ukrainians here in Ireland. I welcome and commend the Government and the State for the incredible work being done. We also need to look at the humanitarian issues that people are facing within Ukraine. Humanitarian aid needs to increase to assist with this and make better the lives of the people who are living this war. In terms of Greenland I absolutely welcome that the EU is rallying around but it is another example of where international law seems to be applied when it is convenient. Where was the same outcry with Venezuela or Gaza and Trump's actions there, and the actions of despots across the globe who are breaking this law and flouting it consistently?”
“We are right back where we were 12 months ago with Trump and the threat of tariffs. At the time we warned about bullies and insulating the Irish economy and about Trump only respecting strength. We were warned about these things and we have seen and we saw a capitulating trade deal from the EU and months of humiliation of our leaders and diplomats, including on St. Patrick's Day when in the Oval Office in the White House our Taoiseach failed to call out the President of the United States when he said the European Union had been founded to attack the US. Our Taoiseach said nothing at that point. This is where we are ten months later because we are not upholding global law and we are not respecting international law. It seems we will simply bend over backwards to please him.”
“We need to wake up and realise the global order exists only when we enforce the standards of international law mar is é sin bunchloch na Náisiún Aontaithe, bunchloch an oird dhomhanda agus bunchloch na síochána. I would say this also relates, for example, to how we sign UN treaties. When we sign them they mean more than just pretty paperwork. They are what we sign up to and what we want to support and see maintained across our globe. All nations are responsible for international law and global order. International law exists because under the banner of the United Nations we have made it exist and it is crumbling because we have abandoned the universal standards of international law in Palestine, America and elsewhere because it was inconvenient, essentially.”
“I will spend my time speaking about international law and global order, which has been the focus of some of the Minister's comments. Increasingly the talk we hear from leaders in our Government and from other European leaders is about the global order and the rules-based order. I am so frustrated with people essentially speaking out of both sides of their mouths. We cannot speak about global order without recognising that we are the global order. It does not just sit over there. It is us. We live and breathe it. We are the member states of the European Union and the nation states of our globe that make this order happen and maintain it through our actions.”
“A right to request remote work has been a source of frustration for so many employees who realise, when their request is unreasonably denied, that this right is not particularly useful in changing the situation or helping them to deal with unfair denial of remote or flexible working arrangements. I commend the Labour Party on bringing forward this motion, especially Deputy Wall who brought his lived experience literally to the floor of the Dáil today as he was delayed on his commute here.”
“The current Act leaves them with long commutes, the financial and climate burden of running a car and the daily strain of rushing to and from work, while balancing all of their family commitments. We know all of these things can push people out of the workforce, particularly women, single parents and people with disabilities. It leaves us with congested roads, packed trains and buses and decreased revenue for small local businesses. We need a real right to remote and flexible working, which is why I will soon by introducing legislation to the House on this issue. It will address the gap highlighted by today’s motion that the right to request remote and flexible working is too weak. We need a real system defined by reasonable expectations of employers and employees with an entitlement from day one.”
“It is clear there is demand because I see that demand stuck on the side of the road waiting for a bus to stop but, instead, watching full buses sail by. We had a golden opportunity to enshrine remote and flexible working previously and we have been let down with the right to request remote working that is not even a right at all. The current legislation only grants employees a right to request remote working which, for an increasing number of employees, is refused or revoked. Like so many aspects of workers’ rights in Ireland, we have created a system where the employee has no power and something that may make no difference to their productivity but a huge difference in their lives can be arbitrarily refused by their employer.”
“This crisis is not a one-off problem or an occasional inconvenience; it is a constant daily worry and an invisible burden carried by people who are trying to go about their daily lives. There are real solutions to these issues, and this motion speaks to many of them, such as funding the expansion of public transport and infrastructure. We know that MetroLink is expected to carry 20,000 passengers per hour in each direction but we have seen literal generational failure of this Government to actually put it into action. Buses and the Luas have taken countless cars off the road which means less connection. Not forcing people into the office means fewer hours stuck in limbo on the N11 or the M50 and more hours spent on leisure, family and productive work.”
“Thousands of my constituents rely on this service every day to get to school and work but every morning, dozens and dozens of people can be seen at each bus stop on the N11 waiting to go to work as full bus after full bus passes them by. I am in constant contact with constituents who may be lucky enough to be able to access the Luas service but they cannot get onto it as every single Luas that pulls in is full past the Stillorgan and Kilmacud stops. Those who have to drive may live less than 10 km from the city centre but they have to leave their houses at 7 a.m. or before to be at their desk by 9 a.m. This is without even touching on no-show buses that leave people stranded on the side of the road in some of the most rural parts of my constituency.”
“With regard to the transport factor in the motion, our cities and towns are increasingly choked in traffic where our infrastructure has not kept up with new developments. Tá daoine i mo Dháilcheantar ag streachailt le fadhbanna tráchta atá ag éirí níos measa gach lá. Tá ár mbóithre tachta le trácht. Cuireann sé seo strus ollmhór orthu agus na daoine timpeall orthu. In the southern part of my constituency of Dublin-Rathdown in places like Kiltiernan, Stepaside and Glencullen, as well as along the N11 towards Dublin city centre, I see the daily struggle. In fact, I am part of the daily struggle that people face to get to work on time and home at a reasonable hour. My colleague, Deputy Whitmore, and I both have the E1 bus, the busiest bus route in the country, running through our constituencies.”
“Despite these developments and the fact we have more people in fully remote jobs, we are also seeing workers with hybrid and flexible arrangements being ordered back to the office by both private and public sector employers. I was at the helm of a public body - a State agency - during Covid so I have personally grappled with the fact that businesses need to have their employees in the same place at one time and that there are ways in which we need to work to foster collaboration. The track we are seeing both from the Government and leading bodies like IBEC in calling people back to work is not the response we need, however. This is often done without consultation or warning, ignoring that workers shape their lives around flexibility which is now being taken away.”
“Many of these barriers have now gone and we have the chance to create a meaningful and participatory workplace, particularly for groups historically excluded like single mothers and people with disabilities. The Government talks a lot about being innovators and the vanguard for change and, for me, this is an opportunity to say that we should be exactly that. We should be the country where remote working is done best. We should be the best in class in that particular category. We have whole businesses that communicate, create, market and deliver services completely online. This means less time spent commuting, more money going into local businesses and economies, more parent-friendly workplaces and a better work-life balance for many.”
“Caithfidh muid cinntiú go bhfuil ár ndlíthe ag coinneáil suas leis sin. We all understand that not every job can be done flexibly or remotely but we have advanced leaps and bounds when it comes to the number of jobs that can. Indeed, if there is any silver lining to the chaos that was Covid, it is surely that we need to embrace, as a species, the concept of remote working. It is not that long ago when the concept of online meetings, hybrid working and working from home in general was foreign to most people. For many, it was impossible because they did not have the Internet at home. They did not have the required technology for a virtual meeting and those they worked with were not familiar with those tools.”
“Okay. To summarise it briefly, it is a small amendment that simply adds a day-one entitlement to the request for remote working. This is based on the fact that I am currently working on legislation in this area which I will soon be bringing to the floor of the Dáil. I will come back to that at the end of my comments. I thank the Labour Party for bringing this important motion forward. Remote and flexible working is something I am passionate about. As I said, I am currently drafting legislation on it. I appreciate the opportunity today to discuss it. This is an issue of workers’ rights, transport and climate. It intersects with many policy areas. It is simply a quality-of-life issue for many people in this country. The way work has changed means that people can do their jobs effectively from anywhere.”
“We need to invest in it as a State and respect the work of care that has been largely undervalued by our society across the globe, mostly because it is done by women. That goes for paid and unpaid care. We need to start thinking about it differently, looking at it differently and start valuing it.”
“She said that as a worker in that space, the pressure you are put under to commodify care and simply move in half-hour slots between one service user and another and to try to provide them with dignity in that time was virtually impossible. When we talk about privatisation of care I am not saying there are not good people in those places who are trying to provide care. Quite the opposite, people get into that work because they want to do this. They want to provide care for people and provide them with dignity and respect in their most vulnerable time of need. Many of those business owners are trying to do exactly that. Ultimately, care cannot be commodified. In the AI space, we hear about this massive labour displacement that is coming. Do you know what you cannot automate? Care.”
“This Bill may be welcome but it represents the bare minimum intervention. I spoke with my daughter this morning; we had breakfast together after our Pilates class. She worked in the home care sector right after she left school a number of years ago during Covid. She loved the work. She loved being with people, providing them with care and providing them with the dignity and respect they need. She worked for a private home care provider under HSE funding. I started to tell her about this Bill and what is being done. She was passionate about it and wanted to share with me her experience, which I said I would share on the floor of the Dáil today.”
“Clearly, the provision of person-centred care is just not a priority for this Government. If it were a priority, there would not be this piecemeal approach to reform. Frankly, it is unforgiveable that almost six years on from the first Covid lockdown, we have made virtually no progress on developing a new model of care for older people. Reports have been published, evaluations are ongoing and a commission is under way but what has actually changed for people in receipt of this care? It is very little, more importantly, for those who are not in receipt of this care. The whole system of elder care is still weighted towards residential care, with the wishes of older people still seen as little more than an afterthought. Rights-based care will continue to be purely notional in this country without more radical reform.”
“While it is regrettable that implementation has been put on ice once again, I hope two issues in particular are finally addressed this time. The first is a real living wage for workers and not this Government's version of the living wage, which of course is not a living wage at all. The real living wage currently stands at €15.40 per hour. Anything less would show a complete disregard for these vital workers. This must also be accompanied by a commitment to maintaining parity with a real living wage going forward. Another pressing issue that must be addressed is the payment of mileage rather than travel time because that is a real problem for those workers, particularly in rural areas. Ultimately, this Bill is a step in the right direction, albeit a small one, which should have been taken years ago.”
“For a while, there seemed to be momentum behind this group but that has stalled completely. The implementation group has not met or published a quarterly progress report since July 2024. Implementation just stopped without explanation, even though only three of the 16 recommendations had been implemented when the most recent progress report was published. A further three recommendations were paused due to the HSE recruitment freeze that was in place at the time. What of the other ten? At the end of last year, my colleague, Deputy Rice, was told that an updated strategic workforce advisory group report would be published following a survey of home care workers and healthcare assistants. You would have to wonder why this is only happening now. Where is the sense of urgency?”
“This exemption presents potential risks for clients in terms of standards of care and protections. Equally, there are very real risks for workers in terms of exploitation and bogus self-employment. In particular, I have concerns about migrant workers who might be more vulnerable to exploitation when it comes to pay and conditions. I do not accept the Department's response that this exemption is needed to ensure the legislation is proportionate. I will raise a couple of points on the subject of workers. The biggest challenge facing the home care sector is the recruitment and retention of staff. In response to this looming crisis, the Minister of State, Deputy Butler, established the strategic workforce advisory group in March 2022. Six months later, that group published a report with 16 recommendations.”
“Children were omitted from the draft scheme but the Ombudsman for Children, HIQA and the previous Oireachtas health committee all recommended their inclusion. According to the ombudsman, over 650 children with complex needs are in receipt of paediatric home care packages. Providers of these services should be subjected to the same level of scrutiny as adult home care providers. I welcome that these providers are now captured in the Bill. I do, however, have concerns about other provisions, for example, the exemption from regulation, as we heard, of service providers with three or less clients. The pre-legislative scrutiny report recommended that all State-funded services should be covered by this legislation and the associated regulations but this was not accepted.”
“Unfortunately, a major deficit in delivery has prevented the realisation of such ageing-at-home policies. I note that the EU care strategy - there was a national action plan for 2023-24 to respond to that strategy - looks at that visionary, end-to-end system of care, where we recognise that across the course of all of our lives, we all receive, and many of us give, care. That is where we need to be at. That is about radical reform, not this piecemeal progress. Returning to the Bill before us, I once again reiterate the Social Democrats' support. It is welcome that the Minister has taken on board concerns related to paediatric home care packages, which my colleague, Deputy Rice, and others raised with her last year.”
“This move towards increasingly contracting out public services is often thought to result in efficiencies but the argument does not hold up. This is because most of those supposed efficiencies have costs, as we just heard from one of the Minister of State's colleagues. Those costs tend to be borne by workers, patients and service users. The commission on care should articulate a new vision for elder care, one where the State leads in the provision of publicly-funded integrated care delivered primarily in the community. All of this, of course, is the vision of Sláintecare. This new model should have a deliberate bias towards the home in sharp contrast to the current elder care model. Groups such as Sage Advocacy and ALONE have consistently advocated for alternative care options.”
“We just need a Minister and Government willing to deliver it. On the commission on care, I will make a couple of broader points about our elder care model, which I hope will be addressed by that commission. One of my primary concerns with the current model is the financialisation of services. Increasingly, care is being viewed as a commodity. We see this most aggressively in the nursing home sector, where 80% of beds are privately run. Increasingly, the nursing home sector is being financed by international investors. All the while, smaller community-based nursing homes, which should be supported, are on the verge of extinction. We also see this worrying commodification of services in home care, with just 36% of home care provided directly by the HSE in 2024.”
“While regulation is an important step on the road to a statutory scheme, it is a far cry from delivering the radically different model of long-term care that is so desperately needed, which was promised after Covid. The reality is we still only have a statutory scheme for nursing home care and not home care, which is discretionary. In 2026, the system still incentivises residential care, despite the clear preference of many to be cared for at home. Why is this disparity still not addressed? I sincerely hope that the delivering of a statutory right to home care has not been put on pause until the work of the commission on care concludes. That is not to say the work of that commission is not important but we do not need another report to tell us that a statutory scheme is required.”
“As of last September, the Department was still researching different funding models more than five years after it was supposed to be delivered. The Minister of State may deny it but it is quite clear that the statutory scheme is not a priority. In the latter part of the previous Minister for Health's tenure, he stopped talking about the statutory scheme almost entirely. Any requests for updates were met with stock responses about the importance of progressing regulation. The new Minister has continued to stick to that narrative. I accept that progressing regulation is important but if it was so important to the current Minister and her predecessor, why are we only taking Second Stage of the Bill now in 2026?”
“In 2017, the current Tánaiste and then Minister for Health, Simon Harris, committed to a statutory right to home care. That very same year, the current Minister for foreign affairs and then Minister of State for older people, Helen McEntee, said the statutory scheme and necessary regulations would be delivered in two to three years. In 2019, the Secretary General said that a statutory entitlement was an absolute priority for the Department of Health and was going to be introduced shortly. In 2020, when the statutory scheme was originally earmarked for delivery, the new Minister of State, Deputy Mary Butler, committed to delivering it by 2022. In the years since, the statutory scheme has largely been sidelined.”
“In the absence of a statutory entitlement, large numbers of people will continue to pay out of pocket for expensive private home care. From my observations of constituents who have come to me with these issues, it is often at the end of a conversation, when we are talking about the other pressures in their lives, that they also mention they cannot get the care they need for their father, for example, who is at home and needs support. It is when they come to me with other issues. There is also a massive amount of unseen pressure that is simply not reported by people. A statutory right to home care, despite this Government's stated commitment to introducing a statutory home care scheme, remains undelivered. Delivery of this key Sláintecare reform has been allowed to drift for almost a decade.”
“Demand is not going to taper off, it is only going to rise. A 2025 ESRI report found that between 2022 and 2040, annual home care hours would need to increase from 28.7 million to between 44.9 million and 54.9 million. At the higher-pressure end of that projection, that is a 91% increase. I acknowledge that the number of hours provided by the HSE in 2025 exceeded expected activity by 1.46 million hours but that has not had a substantial impact on waiting lists. The target of 24 million home care hours for 2025 was too low to begin with. The 2026 target also lacks ambition at 26.7 million hours. We also know from ESRI estimates that over 7.6 million home support hours were privately purchased in 2022, accounting for 26% of all home support hours provided that year. Clearly, there is a huge level of unmet need in this country.”
“In the waiting lists there are significant regional disparities, with particular black spots, as we have heard, in Donegal, Mayo and rural parts of Cork. The worst performing integrated healthcare area, IHA, is Cork South Lee. It consistently has the highest waiting list in the country and accounts for over 40% of the entire south-west region home care waiting list. Although this is not captured in the data provided to TDs by the HSE, we know that some older people are waiting over a year for home care services. With this level of unmet need, it is particularly galling that there is no action plan to tackle home care waiting lists. It is all well and good to pontificate about the importance of home care and moving away from the State's over-reliance on residential care but what is this Government actually doing to make that a reality?”
“That further compromises their liberty, as they have to remain in a nursing home setting against their wishes. Sage found that many of these residents would require relatively little assistance to live in their communities but the support simply is not there. The easiest option, and often the only one seriously pursued, is therefore for them to remain in a nursing home. Without the necessary services in the community, nursing home care is presented as a fait accompli . When it comes to waiting lists, at any one time thousands of people are on a home care waiting list. They have been assessed and approved for home care but no carer is available. At the end of September, 5,392 people were waiting for home care, up from 4,805 at the beginning of 2025.”
“It provides the respect and dignity that we all aspire to towards our older years. The current model of long-term care in Ireland, with its over-reliance on nursing homes, denies too many people any real say in where they live. In 2023, Sage Advocacy published a report on long-term care in Ireland from a human rights perspective. One of the key issues identified by Sage was the infringement of people's right to liberty. Why? It is because there are insufficient long-term care services in the community that would enable and support people to remain in their own homes. I would like to take a moment to commend Sage Advocacy on the incredible work it does in this space. This is not just theoretical. The lack of home care services in some parts of the country means that nursing home residents are not prioritised for home care.”
“If a provider is not receiving State funding, there is no obligation for them to comply with HSE standards and policies. Given that millions of hours of home care are privately funded each year, that should be a cause for real concern. This Bill to regulate services is therefore long overdue, as is a statutory right to home care. We can all accept that residential care is rarely anyone's first choice. Most older people prefer to stay in their homes and the State should support that. Remaining in the home can allow people to retain their independence. It is associated with better health outcomes and is much more cost-effective than residential care. More importantly, every person deserves a meaningful choice in how and where they live. Home care provides that choice.”
“On behalf of the Social Democrats, I welcome this Bill to finally regulate home care services. The Social Democrats have long advocated for a statutory right to home care and this regulatory framework is an important element of that. As it stands, home care services remain unregulated, despite the vast majority of home care hours being funded by the HSE. While State-provided and State-funded home care is subject to HSE standards and policies, that is no replacement for statutory independent oversight. Unlike the nursing home sector, HIQA has no role in regulating services. For instance, it does not set standards, monitor compliance or register providers. This regulatory vacuum has prevailed for far too long despite the potential risk to service users. In reality, there is no barrier whatsoever to entering the home care sector.”
“I also have issues with the fact that the dedicated AI office, which I appreciate is going to be detached from the Department of enterprise, is being developed within it. I see a slew of conflicts with the fact that that is a Department helping and assisting enterprises to use AI while also trying to govern it and the sandbox in which those things are being tested. AI will only have this transformational impact on our society if the public has trust in it. None of the things that this Government is doing are inspiring that trust right now. I laud the Minister of State with responsibility for AI and what she has done to shift this Government into action on this issue.”
“There is so much that we could do on decision-making and the vulnerabilities that I mentioned that could be flipped on its head and turned into positive forces in our society, but because the governance and regulation of AI is so weak in this State, in the European Union and across our globe, that is not happening. I want to pick up on one thing that the Minister of State said in his opening statement about the fact that simplification does not mean deregulation. I absolutely reject that statement, because that is what it does. To deny the fact that big tech is lobbying Brussels, Washington and Dublin is just sticking your head in the sand. Of course it is about deregulation and capitulation to these big tech companies.”
“Just as the business models of big tech right now exploit our data, AI will exploit our human emotions. That is exactly what is happening. We have heard stories of the suicides that people are being pushed to through AI chatbots. We have seen across society over the past couple of weeks the horrific way in which it is being used to promote image-based sexual abuse and the development and proliferation of CSAM. It makes me so sad, because I see so much that could happen if we were properly governing AI. We could look at labour displacement in a way that allowed us to have more leisure time in our lives, that allowed us to care for our loved ones without the poverty that normally ensues. There is so much we could do on labour.”
“Another way that it is wreaking havoc on society is through decision-making, because ultimately, when we think about it, what AI can do is allow us to delegate decision-making from humans to machines, which is exciting when considering the efficiencies that can bring about and potentially the impartiality, but, unfortunately, again, what we are seeing is that those tools are being developed with biases and errors that we as humans bake into them, only now, when those biases and errors play out, they are at such a scale that they can absolutely destroy parts of our society. The area which I am most concerned about, which we are seeing play out right in front of our eyes, is the vulnerabilities that we as humans are exposed to, and the exploitation.”
“We will see labour displacement at a scale which is unprecedented in our history. We have to start talking about the just transition which that will require on the same level that we will see the environmental just transition. It is already happening, with issues with labour quality and labour precarity that we have already seen happen over the past number of decades simply being a result of the automation and AI that we are seeing. Unfortunately, those who are most structurally disadvantaged in society will be the ones pushed into poverty and disadvantaged even further.”
“When I think of AI, I get so excited, because I genuinely see this as an evolution of us as a species from when we first picked up tools to a point in our history where we are about to see those tools take on a life of their own. It is genuinely awe-inspiring to consider the transformation that could bring to us as a globe and what it could do for us as a population, but sadly, the other thing I think of is that we cannot have nice things. Unfortunately, the way AI is being governed and managed is wreaking havoc on our society. Nobody is talking honestly about labour displacement from AI. We are talking about the fact that it will displace jobs, that it will create other jobs, and that it will have to keep up with the tech and create better, more high-skilled job. That is simply not true.”
“I want to hear an update on what is happening with the Attorney General and his analysis of the law. I want to know if the Garda investigation, which we heard about yesterday in committee, has finally reached the doors of X on Fenian Street, and I want to hear what further Government action is going to happen so that we can take off those kid gloves and wrestle back control from big tech on the absolute havoc it is wreaking on society.”
“Compliance with the law is not a gift for X to give to this State but this is the benevolent tone in which it announced this morning that it will indeed comply with law in jurisdictions where that law exists. This belated assurance for geo-blocking, which in itself is hugely problematic because it can be so easily circumnavigated, is too little, too late. It is not surprising that we are hearing this tone from this tech company because kid gloves is the approach that this Government and this State has taken to dealing with big tech and the harms it is wielding on society. The response over the last two weeks has been chaotic and it has taken a Minister of State in the Minister, Deputy Burke's Department to actually cajole this Government into action.”
“This is not based on the protections of our rights and preserving the integrity of what little protection people have but on how the rights of citizens are interfering with the bottom lines of businesses. We cannot put a price tag on the safety of people online or the protection of our children and communities but that is exactly what the digital omnibus, as proposed by the Commission, aims to do. I want to understand what Ireland is going to do to push back on that digital omnibus.”