Pádraig Mac Lochlainn

He is doing his job.

The Taoiseach will know the international activists on board the aid ship Madleen have been kidnapped in international waters and taken to Israel. Some have been deported and others will be deported, but at least they took action. All we hear from the Taoiseach are words. He said in the Dáil the Central Bank is not facilitating the sale of Israeli bonds. Will he correct the record? Will he support…

Will the Taoiseach correct the record on the Central Bank's role------

The question was not answered.

Okay, fair enough. We will have a vote then.

A deeply disturbing opinion poll was recently published in the Haaretz newspaper of Israel. Some 82% of the Israeli public supports the ethnic cleansing of the 2 million people of Gaza from their homeland. This is an almost entirely refugee community. Furthermore, 65% support the biblical Amalek command that all men, women and children should be killed and cleared from the land. That is where we a…

There was a figure of 40,000.

As the Chief Whip will be aware, every Thursday at the Business Committee in recent weeks, I have raised the issue of the defective concrete blocks scheme. Last October, the Government confirmed it was going to increase the cap by 10%. Families are tens of thousands of euro short of 100% redress. This cap must be available to everybody undertaking this scheme, not just new entrants. That amendmen…

Not agreed.

I acknowledge the O'Farrell family, who are in our Distinguished Visitors Gallery. I acknowledge Lucia and Jim, Shane's parents, and Gemma, Pia, Aimee and Hannah, his beloved sisters. I first met Lucia and Jim many years ago here in Leinster House. I was serving as the Sinn Féin justice spokesperson at the time. I will never forget that meeting. Lucia had a framed picture of Shane. She took me thr…

We have a model of assistance for older people in their homes in Donegal that we are very proud of. It is a publicly delivered system in the main and we have not delegated it out to the private sector. Some tremendous people are working in those services in Donegal but they are being held back by the Government. Its pay and number strategy is basically a recruitment freeze. The Government and HSE…

You are breaking your own law.

When the Dunnes Stores workers made their stand in the 1980s in Ireland, the Government eventually followed suit. It led the way in confronting the South African apartheid regime internationally with sanctions and eventually that regime and apartheid in South Africa came to an end. The Palestinian people recently commemorated the Nakba, the catastrophe, the ethnic cleansing of them from their lan…

Not agreed.

We read with interest the comments of the Taoiseach's Government's kingmaker, Michael Lowry, in The Sunday Times, where he boasted about the rota of Ministers who come before his group. He chairs those meetings. Is it not about time the Government published the deal it did with Michael Lowry's group for the programme for Government and took statements and questions and full accountability about t…

I asked a legitimate question about the Order of Business-----

-----as did the Members who raised Standing Order 35(3). They are totally within their rights to do that. Those questions have not been answered. Four different questions were not answered.

109. Deputy Pádraig Mac Lochlainn asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine his views on the need to urgently review the relevant parts of Sea-Fisheries and Maritime Jurisdiction Act 2006 that cover the structure and operation of the Sea-Fisheries Protection Authority to ensure a harmonisation of regulation with the rest of the European Union (details supplied). [25830/25]

This question asks the views of the Minister of State, Deputy Timmy Dooley, on the Sea-Fisheries and Maritime Jurisdiction Act 2006. The Minister of State will know already from his brief the serious concerns of people in the fishing and seafood industry about the approach of the Sea-Fisheries Protection Authority, SFPA, in comparison to other regulators across Europe. I want to have an exchange …

I shared with the Minister of State my direct eyewitness account of the incredible level of oversight that the SFPA has of the industry. I witnessed in a fish factory in Killybegs CCTV cameras and access to the building at any time. Even that was not enough. I do not know of any industry where there would be cameras literally in the workplace every day, with images going directly from the factory …

The committee met earlier today. We looked at our work plan. We will be bringing in the fishing representative organisations, the Irish Fishing and Seafood Alliance, the National Inshore Fishermen's Organisation and the Irish Islands Marine Resource Organisation, which represents the inshore and islands, in order that they can have their say in how this is being implemented. We will look at how it…

Scoil Mhuire Milford, County Donegal, is a school that was built in the 1950s. It sits right on the corner of a very busy road junction but the facilities are completely inappropriate. You would have to see it to believe how bad it is. Somehow, the school delivers an incredible education to its children. It has secured a new site at no cost to the State. It is within the control points of the town…

Last year, the then Government finally announced an increase in the cap. It was in line with the recommendations of the Society of Chartered Surveyors Ireland, who examined the real costings on the ground. The reality is that the Government did not apply that to people who are going through the scheme already; it was only for new entrants. That was cruel. The Government made it clear that it was g…

He is absent.

I am really concerned with this response written by the Department officials. The people who wrote this were present in Donegal in recent days. They know the urgency of this. Now they are talking about adding other issues to the amendments. This could go on forever. This is straightforward. It is a simple amendment to the legislation to make sure that the increase in the cap is available to every…