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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“I thank the Minister of State for the detail. My key concern in this area is that while the Department continues to emphasise dual use as, including perfectly legitimate ICT products, it also emphasises military applications and plans to extend this industry in Ireland. I welcome that applications are risk assessed but with this emphasis on military and defence applications of these goods there is a natural increase in risk and in the number of applications that need additional scrutiny to ensure the end use presented to authorities is appropriate and accurate. Figures from the Minister of State's Department reveal that the value of these exports has trebled since 2021 and that the number of licences went up by 28%.”
“In the Action Plan on Competitiveness and Productivity the Minister outlines progressing the interests of Irish SMEs in the dual-use area, specifically citing defence research and development and the European Defence Fund. Is the Department equipped to deal with an increase in licence applications and the due diligence required to facilitate the dual-use licence system?”
“We need regulation on the packaging of vapes, on their flavouring and on their points of sale. We need to future-proof against an industry that does not care about our children.”
“This, paired with the lack of enforcement of what little protection we have, means that youth vape use is higher than ever and continues to rise. Tá níos mó páistí ag úsáid galtoitíní ná riamh, but we are not resourcing the HSE to help people quit vaping. The HSE says it does not have capacity to deliver stop-vaping care and is not resourced to do so. A woman in my constituency of Dublin Rathdown contacted me recently to highlight how vaping products were being displayed and sold alongside toys like fidget spinners in a shop in her local shopping centre. Níl sé sách maith go bhfuil sé seo ag tarlú in 2025. I appreciate the proposed legislative fixes the Minister of State outlined at the start of today's discussion but we are currently operating in a regulatory vacuum, so this problem is urgent.”
“We know from young people, parents and teachers that the use of nicotine and tobacco products by children has not gone away. I know sometimes the Government recoils when I use terms like "big tobacco", similar to when I use the term "big tech", but I think it is important to do so and I feel that this is part of the problem. We know that these companies have endless piles of money that they use to lobby for their interests and subvert the common good. It is up to us to lead in standing up for that common good against these corporate interests. A World Health Organization report from 2024 detailed how big tobacco is crassly using language of harm reduction while it gets a generation of children addicted to vaping.”
“I welcome the opportunity to discuss this topic this evening, but like others I am frustrated, because it is another instance where we discuss something yet the regulatory vacuum still exists. This is our generation's version of big tobacco and it is preying on our children. Big tobacco is marketing to children on purpose and it is no secret the sale of e-cigarettes or vapes has boomed in recent years. Far from the original branding, which positioned these products as a way to quit smoking, they are now branded with bright colours, sweet flavours and stronger and stronger hits of nicotine. Why do these products come in blue raspberry, strawberry kiwi, watermelon and pineapple ice flavours? The answer is because they are marketed at the younger generations, including under-18s.”
“The Minister's Cabinet colleague yesterday trotted out the line we hear all the time that we do not have a monopoly on empathy. We know that. The people we are talking about today are some of the most voiceless in society. We in the Social Democrats and our colleagues across the left will continue to display that empathy here in the Chamber and hold the Government to account for its continued failure to deal with these crises.”
“The levels of child poverty and homelessness that we currently have in this country represent a total breach of the social contract. In a country as rich as we are, it is chilling that in 2024, 104,780 children or 8.5% of our child population in Ireland, experienced consistent poverty, nearly double the rate of 2023. One in five children lives in enforced deprivation, all while we have full employment and a booming economy. How can it be that in a country where most people have jobs and we have so much money flowing in, 20% of our children are going without? It is because this Government is failing them. It can table as many amendments to the motion as it likes. These children are not just numbers; every one of them is a child who has fallen through every safety net of successive Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael Governments.”
“I thank the Labour Party for bringing forward this motion. If we were to look for another way to express the concept of storing up problems, I do not think there are better words than "child poverty" and "child homelessness" to capture it. The lasting inequality and lifelong implications the Government is storing up because of its failure to deal with these crises will live with us for generations. Experiencing poverty as a child lowers life expectancy, increases risk of health issues and impacts across a range of other areas including crime, addiction, mental health, employment and education; the list goes on. With every inspirational story of people who have overcome the odds, the Government must acknowledge that thousands more are left behind.”
“The housing disaster is spiralling out of control. This year has seen the lowest commencement figures in a decade. The Central Bank has just revised its forecasts for this year downwards. To paraphrase, it is saying that this Government has no hope of reaching its housing targets. Meanwhile, not-for-profit housing organisations are telling us that they have never seen such chaos and they are blaming this Government. The truth is that the Government has totally lost control of housing. The Minister is barely there. We need a debate on this crisis in the House this week.”
“What we are seeing is a direction of travel, and the EU migration and asylum pact will only bring us there more quickly, that denies the right to asylum and brings people into detention and de facto detention. All along, all we are seeing with all of this is bringing us into a situation where the Government is emboldening and fomenting this incredible anti-immigrant sentiment in our society. Tá dualgas orainn mar ionadaithe poiblí seasamh in aghaidh an chiníochais agus in aghaidh scéalta chailleach an uafáis.”
“As we have heard from a range of speakers today, all that does is feed into the far-right rhetoric that is growing in society, which brings anti-migrant sentiments right into our mainstream population. That is what it does. The other thing the Minister failed to mention about this rules-based system he talked about is that those rules are rules the Government has set. They do not even meet the obligations we have under international law, never mind domestic law. When will we get to a point where we are actually speaking in reality about the experience of people who come to this country, in their most vulnerable situation, seeking our humanity and help?”
“I listened to the Minister's opening comments. I lost track of the number of times he said the phrase "rules-based system". In talking about international protection, some of the words I did not hear in his comments, or when the Minister of State, Deputy Brophy, provided more focus in his comments, were "compassion", "trauma-informed", "gender-specific accommodation" or any of the actual compassionate, humanitarian, dignified elements of an international protection system towards which we should be striving. None of those words appeared. All we have heard about from this Government since it came into power are the restrictive measures it has brought into the international protection system. That seems to be its entire and sole focus in terms of international protection.”
“The reason that these companies believe that it is okay to sell this information is that with every app we download and every website we visit, we accept terms and conditions. In the thousands of words of legal jargon that they do not want us to read, they give themselves the right to sell that location data to whomever they want. The Tánaiste just gave a response indicating that this is new but it is not a new issue. It is something the DPC has been aware of for many years and has failed to act on. Why is our regulator unable to regulate when it comes to our most personal information? How can the Tánaiste stand over the DPC as a credible organisation? The Government's answer to any of these issues relating to online safety is to work with big tech companies and not to limit them.”
“As we have heard today and as will be on "Prime Time" this evening, it has been reported that the location data of tens of thousands of Irish people is being sold online. This data tells the buyer where people live and their place of work even if it is some sensitive location like a military base or a women's refuge. It tells them when people went to the doctor, where the park is that they take their kids to play in and whom they met there. That buyer is anyone who can reasonably pose as a company that wants this data for analytics. That could be a vengeful ex-boyfriend, a disgruntled former colleague or anyone on the Internet who wants to know exactly where someone is.”
“Everyone claims to go to war for peace, love, security and human rights but we have seen in the last 25 years how hollow those words can be. UN backing guarantees that peacekeeping missions are of high quality and that the operational parameters do not do more harm than good. We cannot send young men and women abroad into conflict zones with no blue beret and with no safeguard beyond what the Government of any given day thinks is a good idea.”
“No one is denying the difficulties of the Security Council but the Tánaiste has given no effort to actually describe how the General Assembly could be engaged to fall back. It is in the Defence (Amendment) Act 2006. It is part of the triple lock and the Tánaiste is completely ignoring it. Constantly referencing other countries denies our history. It denies the Nice and Lisbon treaties and how we arrived at the point of the triple lock. Beside that, our association with UN mandates was way before then anyway. One cannot compare it to other countries like that. We can say that something is consistent with the UN Charter until we are blue in the face but the charter is clear around the use of force without consent and the backing of the United Nations.”
“From peacekeeping that is guaranteed to be peacekeeping by the UN consistent with the UN Charter, we face a pivot to opening the door to missions of a lower quality and different nature that are branded as peacekeeping or strengthening international security under this legislation. I do not believe that what the Tánaiste has described is an effective level of consultation with the very men and women who are putting their lives on the line to discuss how the context in which they do that will be changed.”
“I notice that the Tánaiste did not use the words "General Assembly" when he was describing how broken the triple lock is, so I do think we are still ignoring the fact that there is a facility within the triple lock to actually consult with the General Assembly. I would also point out that all previous Acts refer to this international United Nations force, not an international force. It is defined as, "an international force or body established, mandated, authorised, endorsed, supported, approved or otherwise sanctioned by a resolution of the UN Security Council or the General Assembly of the United Nations." It is to be replaced with an international force that can be under the banner of any international body.”
“The general scheme of the defence (amendment) Bill 2025 represents a fundamental change to how we deploy troops overseas. For the many decades that Ireland has been participating in peacekeeping it has been under the exclusive banner of the UN. When people sign up for the Defence Forces, it is with a reasonable expectation that overseas service will be in a blue beret. Has the Minister consulted with rank and file members of the Defence Forces on this fundamental change to their terms and conditions?”
“We know this is an issue for so many people. That mother asked my colleague why her child does not have a voice and why she does not matter. We have moved so far from what inclusive education should be. We should be able to access the education that is suited to our needs regardless of the ability or disability we have. I welcome the strategy and the ambition that it holds. We have a lot further to go and we need to see the follow-through on an inclusive society and a shift in perception on disability. Equality is not a favour to those among us with disabilities. It is a recognition of the humanity of those individuals.”
“In Spain there is a now a legislator, Mar Galcerán, representing her constituents in a regional parliament in Spain. We are so far from that. This brings me to my second area: education. The two are inextricably linked because accessing employment relies on us having access to education throughout our lives. Even today during Leaders' Questions, the Taoiseach was celebrating that we have opened 16 special schools this year. The fact that we are talking about special schools again as being the point of achievement tells me that we have drifted so far from what inclusive education should be. People in my office spoke to a constituent recently whose two children are sent out in taxis to different locations, passing by the school that is just metres away from their home and their neighbours, so they can access appropriate education.”
“It is about opportunities for advancement within that, and trying to get to the point where individuals are actually competing alongside their peers in a true fashion and not just always dealing with what is available to them as someone with a disability. The infrastructure around that is another issue dealt with in other planks of the strategy in terms of transport and so on. Access to labour is dependent on us having a decent infrastructure for people to access. On the specific experience of people with intellectual disabilities, it is wonderful when we see people employed in those roles but sadly it is incredibly sporadic. There are no consistent structures or programmes available to people with intellectual disabilities to access employment. We are so far behind other countries in this.”
“During Leaders' Questions earlier, Deputy Cairns raised the fact that 76% of people who are disabled are facing poverty. It is not just about the economic impact of not being able to access labour; it is also about the autonomy and dignity that flows from that. They are not able to provide for themselves or their families. They are not able to achieve the satisfaction we all seek in work that we do. AHEAD, the employment-focused NGO that deals in disability rights, has found that it is not just about jobs and numbers for people with disabilities. It is about accessing the kind of work they want to access and that their talents lend themselves towards.”
“The reality for those born with a disability or those who acquire a disability through the course of their life in this State today is that the outcomes they are facing in education and employment, the key planks identified in the strategy, are so much worse than they are for any other individual. We have a long road to travel before we land at a really inclusive society. I want to talk about those two planks, employment and education. As we heard from other speakers, in terms of employment we are an outlier with one of the worst sets of statistics for disabled people's employment across Europe. Only 36% of people in the disability community are employed. That drops to 17% for people with intellectual disabilities, and to below 20% for disabled women in Ireland. It is not only about the economic impact.”
“I thank the Minister for being here. We welcome the opportunity to make these statements and broadly welcome this new strategy that sets out a human rights-framed vision for disability action over the coming years. Of course, we have to also highlight that the waiting still goes on, particularly for the disability community. Reports, analyses and strategies including this one are very welcome, particularly as this one is framed in the prism of human rights, but let us be clear that what we need is long overdue action. We are starting from such a bad place that we need to see real aspiration, bringing us back to our vision for a truly inclusive society.”
“We have had two months away from each other and in that time, the genocide in Gaza has continued unabated. The Israeli campaign of ethnic cleansing has taken the lives of journalists and doctors and continues to take the lives of innocent Palestinian men, women and children. We have seen developments in recent days at European level. Over the summer, we have seen states take action and we need to discuss this urgently, as a House, to identify the concrete steps we can take as a State to stop this atrocity.”
“As long as we lose that, we are failing that community as political leaders and as a population of allies. That is something I intend and commit to do throughout my term as a politician. At every juncture possible, including on the committee on culture, communications and sport, where I will seek to talk about trans participation in sport, I want to promote the rights of trans people and I want to remove this toxicity and stop the weaponisation and the politicisation of trans rights as a recruitment ground for far-right ideologies and get us back to a point where we treasure, cherish and nurture one of the most marginalised communities in Irish society.”
“People are politicising certain areas like access to public bathrooms, trans athletes and trans participation in sports, and the safety of trans women and the dangers they face. Unfortunately, what we lose in that is people's ability to simply show that leadership and allyship. People are too scared. I say to all politicians: if you do not understand trans rights, learn; if you do not know enough about this, find out, look for that information and seek the support groups and the representative groups, who will tell you. Unfortunately, within all this, when it becomes so toxic to simply discuss trans rights and their realisation, we lose the celebration of the trans community. We fail to see the joy and happiness that is experienced by a trans person who is able to be their full selves in this world and participate fully in society.”
“The reality is that for trans people in Ireland, although we have progressive gender recognition legislation, the outcomes for people in the transgender community are far more challenging than for those of us in the cis community. Employment is harder to access; education is harder to access; and healthcare, of course, is critical and, unfortunately, very difficult for people in the trans community to access. The reality is that trans people face discrimination daily. My trans friends tell me about trying to enter restaurants and other public spaces where they are routinely refused entry, shamed and stigmatised in different ways. That is simply not good enough. More than that, there is a hugely problematic toxicity around the discussion of trans rights now.”
“I wish a happy Pride to everybody who is lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning or intersex and anybody who has diverse ranges of sexual identity, gender expression, gender identity and sex characteristics. I would like to focus my comments on one particular community within that, and that is the trans community. I missed the Minister of State's speech but I will look back at it. I want to focus my comments on that community for two reasons. First, it is an area I know about. I was lucky enough to do some work with Transgender Equality Network Ireland in helping it develop its strategic plan a number of years ago. Second, this is one community who need more than any other our allyship as a population and our leadership as politicians.”
“It is not the Civil Service, or the Government or any given Department – it is a state-wide attitude which permeates and still treats people with suspicion and mistrust instead of the compassion and care with which all these commissions of investigation, inquiries and tribunals should be imbued. We can use this opportunity to really turn a corner as a state and to start recognising the role of the State in the treatment of people who have been victims of State wrongdoing with much more care and compassion, taking a trauma-informed and a human-rights compliant approach.”
“As colleagues have pointed out, a key issue we need to consider is accessibility and making sure that those who are hardest to reach are a part of this process from the very outset. They are the ones who will ultimately feel the impact of this commission of investigation in their own lives. That leads me to my second point. We still need a real paradigm shift in how the State treats victims of State wrongdoing. There is still a mechanism by which they are treated with suspicion and not cared for in the way the State needs to. We should be looking at people in these situations with compassion and care and we should be recognising the power relationship between the State and these children, as they were when these wrongs were done to them. It is not one person at fault here.”
“I welcome the establishment of this commission of investigation. While I have hope for it I am concerned that while the Commission of Investigation Act 2004 does allow for human rights compliance in the establishment of tribunals, inquiries and commissions of investigation, unfortunately in the two decades since the levels of compliance make a patchwork quilt when it comes to domestic and international standards of human rights compliance. I am concerned that these terms of reference need absolutely to be critically drafted in thinking about human rights compliance and making sure they are trauma informed and meet the needs of survivors. They are the people this is for.”
“Assurances from these businesses that it is not that loud or that they will take care of privacy are not enough for the Dundrum community and they do not wash with me. The responsibility for this problem and for solving it lies with the Government. What is being done to ensure commercial drones are not given free rein over our homes and our communities?”
“A huge number of residents of Dundrum and nearby locations contacted me recently. They are worried about privacy, noise and disruption and they are worried about drones. After several trials around Dublin and complaints from residents going unaddressed by this Government, a new drone depot is proposed for Dundrum. Let me be clear: I do not blame a company that, in the absence of regulation, has decided to take over our skies. That is what businesses do when we leave a regulatory gap. They take advantage of it. In the past few years, local authorities, An Bord Pleanála and the Irish Aviation Authority have each in turn pointed to the clear gap in regulation that needs to be filled to stop the space above our homes being flooded with commercial traffic.”
“Any solution through the Department of justice appeal process leaves them too late. The €40,000 they paid for flights will be gone because they had to pay beforehand. We need to discuss this, and the broader issue of visas from Palestine, today.”
“Continuing to have that gendered order in our society and having a patriarchal system allows all of this to be facilitated and to continue to be hidden. That is before we reach how this amplified in the online space. We have much to do as a State and the Minister has much to do as Minister for justice, but we also have to address the society culture that needs to change.”
“People in hairdressers', doctors' offices and so many different situations need to be trained and equipped to meet women where they are and help to bring them to safety. We have to provide the accommodation. Until we do that, we are forcing women to stay in these situations. Beyond that, I also want to speak to the societal issues at play here. The reality is that we live in a patriarchal society. That should not be a controversial thing to say, yet many people jar and react to it when I say those words. Because we live in a patriarchal society, we essentially facilitate everyday sexism. We also facilitate what I would say is a smaller group of people who actually practise and have misogyny in their lives. A smaller group again translate that misogyny into actual violence against women. These things are all connected.”
“Domestic, sexual and gender-based violence is a scourge on our society that continues to grow. I commend the focus the Minister's predecessor brought to this issue in her term of office as Minister for Justice and the establishment of Cuan as an agency, but we have so much work to do in the Minister's portfolio in the justice sector to continue to equip the courts and front-line services to recognise and support women who want and need to exit the incredibly difficult circumstances they are in. It goes beyond the justice sector, however. We have to meet women where they are. It is such a delicate thread that brings people from situations of violence into safety and we have to protect it.”
“Of course, if this was a group of Israeli kids, they would enjoy visa-free travel here because the rules-based system has different rules for different groups. The entire nation wants the Government to resolve this.”
“Many of us in this Chamber use sport as a form of escapism. For those 33 kids who we are talking about from the West Bank, this is a potential escape from hell, a living hell that has rained down on them for 20 months at the hands of the Israeli genocide. It gives them a sliver of hope in their darkest hour. At the last minute, the Government has shattered their dreams and tried to extinguish that hope by denying them entry to the State for a trip that has been meticulously planned. This morning and again now I have heard the Tánaiste defend this fiasco by talking about a rules-based system. GAA Palestine, however, is adamant that their paperwork is in order. The embassy in Tel Aviv has said it did not put any barriers in place.”
“Speed is of the essence because they have reached their wits' end with support from the UK. That is why Heather has turned to Ireland, essentially, for help. At the 93rd session of the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention in 2022, it found Ryan Cornelius to be arbitrarily detained. There were massive procedural issues with the original conviction in 2008. There are a huge number of issues to deal with. Meanwhile, Heather remains separated from her husband, raising her children alone. The legal team around her has provided incredible support. While it has kept this case at the top of its agenda and kept the pressure on the UK Government, it has received little response. I am delighted to hear the Tánaiste's Department will meet with Heather to provide her with the support that we can as a country.”
“They have been very frustrated with their experience. While the family has asserted, as the Minister said, that the Irish Embassy in Abu Dhabi has been helpful, the weight of the Department of foreign affairs needs to be put behind this issue.”
“I welcome that the Department will meet with Heather, her legal team and her brother-in-law, who is assisting her. When I wrote to the Minister about this matter on 13 May, I received a reply similar to what the Minister has just outlined, that is, that the responsibility for this case lies with the British consulate. Heather is an Irish citizen, as we have established. She is a victim of this injustice and is raising her children alone as a result. She has been separated from her husband, who has been arbitrarily detained for 17 years. She now faces the reality that, at the age of 71, she may experience him dying in prison. We have to help her, as a citizen of this country. Although the technical consular responsibility lies with the UK, we can help her. I do not agree that the UK has supported Heather and her family.”
“Is the Tánaiste's Department aware of the case of Ryan Cornelius, who is married to an Irish citizen and has been detained arbitrarily in the UAE for the past 17 years? What steps is it taking to provide consular assistance to Mrs. Cornelius and to seek Ryan's release from arbitrary detention?”
“I have to say that again and again, on various topics but on this area in particular, that what is put forward is that we have to consider Irish jobs and the economy, but we have to prioritise the moral obligation that we have to cease the genocide. For me, that means that we set in place a Bill right now to stop trade with Israel that includes services. I am terrified of the domino effect that we are going to set off if we do not include services. Because Ireland is the first country that is doing it, it will mean that every country that follows also introduces weak legislation.”
“I am glad the Tánaiste clarified that. That is exactly the case. The occupied territories Bill is not designed to stop the genocide in Gaza. It would simply put pressure on Israel but its actual function, as drafted in 2018, long before the current genocide erupted 18 months ago, is to cease trade with illegal settlements on stolen land. We all know that. Whether the US or a US state likes it or not should not inhibit us in prohibiting the trade of stolen goods and services. I understand the Tánaiste taking into account how to support business in the wider context of tariffs. However, I am asking the Government to be clear that it is not a justification for not complying with international law and banning trade with the settlements.”
“We do not engage with them because they are illegal and because they are wrong, and that again is the context in which I ask these questions.”
“My concern relates to whether we are saying that the wishes of the House and the Irish people on this matter are subservient to legislation passed in, say, Alabama or New Jersey and whether we are unwilling to fulfill our obligations under international law because state-level law in another country means it might cost us something. When it comes to international trade and sanctioning of Ireland on this, we are properly protected from rebuke by EU-level reciprocity of sanctions. I must say clearly here in this Chamber that when it comes to fulfilling our obligations under the UN Charter and the genocide convention, there is no caveat that says it does not apply if it will cost you. Some of the worst violations of international law are very lucrative.”