Speeches: 15 April 2026

For hundreds of thousands of PAYE workers struggling to pay soaring bills, where is their support package?

The time for half-measures has long passed, Minister.

This is self-evidently an emergency and it's going to potentially get worse because of the warmongering of Donald Trump and I seriously hope the people who are cheering on Donald Trump are thinking about it now.

How can our government not demand that this game is boycotted and they are thrown out of international competition and make sure this game doesn't go ahead?

I'd be interested to know what they had to say about their human rights record but frankly they look like pussycats compared to threats to destroy civilizations coming from Donald Trump and what Israel is doing in Lebanon.

There was supposed to be a report done by the, in fact there was a report done by the prison inspector into the circumstances of his death, but that still has not been published.

I can think of no one more eminently suitable and qualified and experienced to take the job.

We now have a situation where we have a massive planning application for in excess of over 100 hectares for solar panels, of what is prime agricultural land, and again an area that has a very substantial amount of, most of the country's broccoli is grown there.

I can tell you unequivocally you will have my absolute support for this Bill.

If somebody wants to work and they can pass the tests that require their fitness to work, that they should be able to continue to work.

There was unquestionably a deficit of empathy, a lack of foresight.

Minister, you're still not listening. You're just still not listening. And you're certainly not listening to the people in rural Ireland.

Without statutory oversight and independent monitoring and systemic reform, Garda structures can shield perpetrators and undermine public confidence.

We need the national security strategy, and we need it urgently.

It's absolutely clear that there are, as has been pointed out, two superpowers in this world at the moment, but that the European Union and other like-minded trading nations need to keep their options open and develop new trade and new ties, based on international rules of trade and politics.

I also have to note that the shingles vaccine issue is a matter of equity.

I will never forget that and I believe most people will never get the scenes of those four young boys playing football on that pitch and how dare this government stand here and allow that game to go ahead.

When those words dismiss, denigrate or threaten entire peoples, religion or institutions, they do real damage, not just diplomatically, but morally.

For far too long the criminals in this country, particularly the drug criminals in this country, have been getting away with far too much and I'm absolutely delighted to see that you are trying to expedite the sale of these properties belonging to these criminals and drug barons in this country.

If we're banging the drum here in dull air and condemning the handling of the fuel crisis, and this is happening out on our highways and byways across the country, I think there's questions that must be asked of people who haven't been questioned yet.

We agreed the importance of international rules and open dialogue, as well as constructive and predictable relations on trade.

You have lost the confidence of the Irish people because of your arrogance, because you don't understand their lives, because you refuse to listen.

What exactly is the government going to do for those people?

It's 2026 Minister, not 1846, yet farmers in Waterford are being forced off land that their families have farmed for generations and government is making it worse.

We now must ask our Food Safety Authority to take the relevant steps to protect the health and safety of the people of Ireland, particularly those people such as students and pupils in schools and people in hospital who are on a daily basis receiving Brazilian meat products through third-party contractors.

What I want to raise with you today is the outrageous victimization of their shop steward, Sonya Borwick, simply for standing up for the workers that she represents.

The backdrop to the wars and the genocides and the interventions that we've seen over the past couple of years is the rivalry between the declining power of the US and the rising emerging power of China.

If they use it they can fight not just for higher wages but for universal free public services, real rent controls, increases in social welfare payments, universal measures on the cost of living crisis including breaking with the reliance on fossil fuels which has got us into this crisis in the first place.

Taoiseach, having spoken to many farmers, there is deep scepticism about the Department of Agriculture's capacity to deliver timely payments under the government's 100 million euro fuel subsidy support scheme for farmers, agricultural contractors and fishermen and women.

The current policy is absurd and self-defeating.

I am absolutely wedded to the acceleration of renewables and we are seeing good progress in that space.

This Bill reduces that period to two years, ensuring that criminals cannot continue to exploit their frozen, ill-gotten gains.

Will your government reverse the 2021 ban on oil and gas exploration and allow Ireland to at least give access to develop their own resources?

There is a real need now, in the light of what's happened in the last few weeks, to review public transport, to look at the level of its availability, to look at its availability, to look at the linkages between towns, the linkages to major centres of education, major centres of employment.

Every individual or family without a secure home represents a failure of systems, of supports and of supply.

Decent health care services for children shouldn't be too much to ask for.

Affordability of accommodation - the huge pressure it puts on students and their families.

There's no mechanism to deal with price gouging and I want to say this to you, the CCPC, the Composition, Consumer and Protection Commission, we need to either abolish that or give it some powers because their report out just this week says controlling prices in a competitive market is outside the scope of the competition and consumer protection law.

You need to go two steps further Taoiseach, and you need to be practical.

They are part and parcel of the community, providing a facility particularly for young kids and a feeder then to more serious soccer at older level.