Micheál Martin

They do not concentrate on the job at hand.

The Deputy just pressed it now again.

Deputy Connolly raised the issue of the importance of having children and young people involved. I agree with that. Deputy Paul Murphy and Deputy Connolly raised the issue of what happens at 15 or 16. The education piece is very important, but it is the scale and the overwhelming nature of social media that seem to me to be quite different from the scale associated with earlier restrictive practic…

-----particularly in health diagnostics, in terms of what it can do in disease prevention or understanding pathways in getting to develop medicines and interventions that could accelerate really better treatments for people in a whole range of areas. Therefore, there are opportunities. I visited Analog last week, and it is very clear to me that it is already looking towards the next era, when sens…

The events of the last few days in Northern Ireland have filled us with horror. The attack on that young person two nights ago was absolutely savage and horrific. Our thoughts are with the victim and his family. It is beyond our comprehension that a person could wield such violence on another individual in such a manner. The very graphic representation of that on social media has shocked many peop…

There never can be any attempt at rationalisation of it either. Nobody has the right to take the law into their own hands or to say to someone,“You are not living here any more”.

Such threats are appalling and must be roundly condemned. Unfortunately, it has become a phenomenon in this era that there are increasing numbers of threats to public representatives across the board. To threaten the Lord Mayor in the context of yesterday and the day before is appalling and has to be condemned. All threats to public representatives have to be condemned. Unfortunately, both the Gar…

-----in all communities to pursue these people who seem to think they can create an alternative-----

-----framework to get their way. They must be resisted by all of us.

The Government does acknowledge and takes very seriously the role of carers in our society. I acknowledge that we have made commitments in the programme for Government, particularly the commitment in terms of the weekly income disregard and that we would eliminate the means test, essentially. Already, as part of the most recent budget, and from this July, the weekly income disregard will increase …

As I said, we are going to do it. We did give the commitment that it would happen over the lifetime of the Government. I would not underestimate the step we have already taken because I think that when this lands in July, the increase in the income disregard will actually be quite significant, maybe more significant than people thought. We will make a further significant move in the forthcoming bu…

-----therapies, as we are doing in the school-based therapy service, which will take some pressure off carers.

First of all, I want to say without equivocation that the crimes committed by Bill Kenneally were absolutely horrific over a prolonged period of time and caused immense trauma and suffering to many people and families. I am reading through the report, like Deputy Bacik. The judge, Michael White, has been very clear in terms of the central finding of a failure and a dereliction of duty in relation …

-----by those who knew also.

It is a damning report in that respect. We will follow through on it.

We hope to arrange time in the House to have a proper consideration of this report.

We need to let the report speak for itself. It does not have a finding of a cover-up, a conspiracy or collusion. We have to be true to the report of the commission. However, it does have a finding of gross dereliction of duty and the need to reform the law in that respect, which the Minister will now be pursuing with the Law Reform Commission, as recommended by the commission. Yes, we can do bette…

In my view, in the first instance it bears rearticulation that any abuse allegation should be reported to the Garda.

At the outset, the Deputy made an assertion in respect of the Minister. She kind of made a few leaps and sort of said that the Minister is saying that women lie in court cases. That is outrageous and should be withdrawn. There is no room for that in debates of this kind. We are all coming to this issue in a bona fide way. That is the first point I would make. There is no agenda here. We agree that…

I appreciate the Deputy has acknowledged that it is not easy and that there are difficulties in terms of framing legislation within constitutional parameters here. That is at the core of this. I would have much empathy with the broad argument in terms of the disclosure of counselling notes. However, this legislation represents a very significant improvement and strengthening of the legislation on …

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue, specifically in respect of the industrial activity and the IDA's performance in attracting investment into County Laois. I must say that I find the figure of 150 jobs quite extraordinary. When we look at Laois geographically it is on the motorway. It has critical mass in terms of population and one would have thought that there would have been a natural g…

Laois is a beautiful county but the Deputy's points about investments there are well made. I would give the example of Carlow. For many years, Carlow had an IDA site. When I was Minister for enterprise the IDA even gave up and wanted it to be used for indigenous companies. I advised patience and that we keep going. Eventually Merck Sharp and Dohme arrived to Carlow. It, along with others, has tran…

In the minute available to me, I will make the point that at one level the Deputy says that she is not asking us to usurp but she is, really. I do not understand the logic of what she is saying.

We are not members of UEFA. The FAI has to navigate UEFA in the same way it has to navigate FIFA. The Irish football team has had a lot of success recently.

The bottom line here is-----