Speeches: 1 July 2026

The frightening thing for me is that you started in 2016 and we're no further on.

The reason we have a cost of living crisis in this country and across the world for working people is because of the greed of billionaires and multi-millionaires and warmongers and the governments that back them.

The European Union exports 800 million worth of armaments and weapons to the state of Israel while it is massacring and engaged in a genocide against the Palestinian people.

There are enormous challenges around the certification.

Dear guests, the Irish Presidency will be guided by the spirit of Ní Neart go Curle céile, strength in togetherness.

During our Presidency term, Ireland will lead the work of the Council, engaging with our fellow Ministers of State, with our Member States and with the EU institutions to take forward an ambitious and a very ambitious policy agenda.

While Ireland remains military neutral, neutrality cannot mean vulnerability and for decades you will know that the Defence Forces have been neglected.

It is amazing how the public service can step up to the plate at a time like this and show Ireland at its very best.

They have the capacity from a staff point of view to treat 150 cases a week and this is really, really important because they are constrained by the infrastructure in which they're working in.

We're talking about the right of citizens and taxpayers to get value for their money and that contracts that are freely entered into are fulfilled.

Private maternity care has to be safe and private maternity care cannot exist where women might not be safe.

It needs the state it really does need the state and I wouldn't always say that but it needs the state on this occasion to join that link

But he is absolutely right, until it's moved out of health into agriculture, that's the first, that's the rate limiting step at this time.

It is simply outrageous, it should not happen, and it is absolutely tone deaf to the concerns, the frustration and the worries of the Irish people right across the state.

That means the rents are rising more than four times faster than wages and this government knows that that is completely and utterly unsustainable.

That's a damning statement of any country.

Because you're letting the people down.

People need a break, Minister, and they need it right now.

Supporting Ukraine in every way we can.

This is Europe's moment. This is Ireland's moment. This is our moment to lead together.

It's time to get rid of the carbon tax, full stop, fuel is dear enough.

We need, and it's never more important or more timely than now in the upcoming budget, to make sure that the supports that will be made available for energy and for the general cost of living will be very, very targeted to help the people who are really struggling.

We are the most expensive country in Europe for housing, for health, for energy and alcohol.

There is a major problem, Minister, and we need to investigate it.

Holding the Presidency is an honour and a responsibility, and we are ready to give it our all.

Today friends, together with strength in unity, let us turn ambition into action.

In my opinion, the bureaucracy of the European Union has run away with itself, it has become more important than European states, and it has put the citizen in a second class place.

This is a perma-crisis for the want of a better description.

To ignore that time and again, to pass a budget that took those supports away and didn't replace them with targeted measures for people that need them most was nothing short of cruel.

If you keep doing the same thing over and over again and there's no change it's a sign of madness and you've got to learn from the sign of madness.

Abolish the universal social charge and let every worker in this country keep what they earn.

Every child deserves the opportunity to thrive, whether they attend school in Dublin City Centre or a rural school in County Common.

Imagine that you're a data centre and you're absolutely sucking the life out of the grid, you pay cheap electricity rates but you are a lone parent ... you get punished by being put on to a higher rate of electricity.

The key, most fundamental way that we can reduce energy prices for the people of Ireland is ramping up renewable energy.

We need to bring in a windfall tax to be imposed on the large energy companies, including the windfarm owners, where there are high profits.

So at the heart of the cost of living crisis in this country is the Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, independent government tax gouging the people of Ireland and allowing for dysfunction to reign in terms of the infrastructure and the spend in this country.

We should be celebrating the success of people like that rather than demonising it here on the floor of the Dáil.