I propose to take Questions Nos. 21 to 37, inclusive, together.
I note the announcement of the resignation of the Uniter Kingdom Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, earlier this week, and acknowledge the very significant role he has played in resetting the Irish-British relationship, as well as relations between the United Kingdom and the European Union, during his time as Prime Minister. Since Prime Minister Starmer took…
TDs / Micheál Martin
Micheál Martin
Taoiseach
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questions asked
Members of the Government answer questions rather than ask them
688,766
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686,628 as a minister, 2,138 as a TD
197
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| December 2024 | 11 |
| January 2025 | 6 |
| February 2025 | 438 |
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| April 2025 | 317 |
| May 2025 | 426 |
| June 2025 | 424 |
| July 2025 | 344 |
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| September 2026 | 198 |
| October 2026 | 222 |
Debates they spoke in most
Plus 6,426 contributions in the regular slots, such as Leaders' Questions and Priority Questions. Speech from the chair is not counted.
Party, constituency and offices
- constituency Cork South-Central 29 November 2024 to now
- party Fianna Fáil 29 November 2024 to now
- office Taoiseach 23 January 2025 to now
Deputy O'Rourke asked about the EU asylum pact and the common travel area. The European Union asylum pact creates a structure that is positive, firm and robust. It has critics on the left and it has critics on the right. One side is saying we are not going far enough and the other is saying that we are going too far in terms of the returns aspect. We need to protect the common travel area because it is of enormous va…
Deputy Tóibín then went on to give a precise figure. I will just leave it-----
The point is I think it is high. I am not arguing the figure, but the point I would make is there is a need for data on this. There are also less and less coming in through airports because of controls and so on that have been implemented over the last two to three years. There is an issue, but I am not clear. Could the Deputy flesh out his proposals and send me a paper on the Irish Sea border, and how that would ope…
-----is particularly important. In that respect, I would make the point that in terms of the Narrow Water Bridge project, a lot of people were talking about it for a long time and nothing was done-----
-----both in the North as well as the South, including members of Deputy Ó Murchú's party, but the point is that this Government has done it and we have put a scheme in place to enable that.
Deputy Moynihan raised the cross-Border directive. We are going to do more work on that. We have identified that as an area generally under the Labour Employer Economic Forum, LEEF, and also in terms of North-South relationships. We are asking Departments about tax, treatment of workers and so on. Have I picked up the Deputy's issue correctly?
I am going to get everyone done.
Anything is possible. In response to Deputy Smith, I want to say that legacy issues remain a very top priority, particularly with a new Prime Minister coming in. The legislation is in the UK and they need to implement it. We will pursue the Monaghan and Dublin bombings, although we are waiting for Operation Denton to perhaps bring more clarity to that.
In response to Deputy Ó Murchú, the amount of research that has …
We are working. We are working flat out. I am substance all the way. I am not about slogans.
I am not saying someone else give me the solution.
Sorry, the Deputy is always saying that Sinn Féin's view is that "Everybody else must do the Green Paper except ourselves". That is the bottom line.
In any event-----
In response to Deputy Boyd Barrett, again, I do not have the specifics on the strike. Industrial relations mechanisms are there to resolve issues between companies and workers and they should be utilised.
In response to the Deputy Murphy's comments on the British commentariat, to suggest that Prime Minister Starmer committed genocide, as Deputies Murphy and Coppinger did, is outrageous. He did not commit genocide. I…
There is a tendency on the far left and on the far right to say that no one else can meet but themselves. I have no truck with these people. I have no interest in whatever is going on there, but-----
-----citizens of different countries are entitled to come to Ireland. If they get visas, they are entitled to meet and organise. We have a very good democracy here. In the international transparency index, by all measures, we score very highly because of our approach to these issues. That is generally a positive, and we should not try to undermine that either.
I disagree with Deputy Coppinger's remarks on former Pri…
We recently endowed a chair for history in Cambridge university to try to strengthen the academic partnership in the humanities between the UK and Ireland.
In response to Deputy Whitmore, I will actually go the Minister and ask him for a timeline. He is committed to plug-in solar. Deputy Heneghan has spoken about this quite a lot as well. The Minister is worried, and he is getting feedback that we have to make sure …
The abuse carried out by Leo Hickey was evil, horrific and deeply harmful to many people who were children at the time that he was in Dunderrow National School in the 1960s. I do appreciate and I am fully conscious of the enormous trauma experienced by the survivors of sexual abuse in that school and abuse carried out by Leo Hickey. It is important that their voices are heard and listened to. In 2014, the European Co…
To set the record straight, back in 1998 and 1999 the issue was industrial schools. I created a commission into abuse that happened in industrial schools.
I want to put that on the record. It was the first time ever any Irish Government established a commission of inquiry into abuse in schools and that was in the context of industrial schools.
I want to make that point. It was many years later when this particular case came to the Irish courts and then it went on to the European Court of Human Rights. That said, various ex gratia payment schemes were developed in respect of Dunderrow and others who were party to the case at the European court. As I said earlier, about 193 applications were made. About 128 were approved under the ex gratia payment scheme. W…
First of all, I thank the Deputy for again raising this issue. As I have said, the abuse committed by Leo Hickey was horrific and unconscionable. The suffering and trauma people went through because of him has been life lasting. The Deputy is correct that in 2019, I advocated very strongly that the original redress scheme of 2015 was far too limited. That led to the appointment of Mr. Justice Iarfhlaith O'Neill to re…
It is not delay, delay, delay in respect of the mediation that has been sought by the representatives of the survivors of the abuse by Leo Hickey. We will engage in that mediation. There is a wider redress issue that has to be examined in the context of schools in general across the nation over the last number of decades. That is the point I am making. This has been in a legal framework for quite some time as well. I…
I thank the Deputy for raising this issue. If we look back over the last three decades, we have had numerous episodes or revelations pertaining to institutions both public and private in respect of child sexual abuse. It has been quite horrific. I refer to governments from about the late 1990s onwards and the 1999 period onwards when we first initiated the inquiry into industrial schools. I recall the anger when the …
The legal representatives of the Dunderrow survivors have written to the Government and to the Minister inviting the Government to enter mediation with their clients with a view to resolving their claim against the State. That is what I said this morning. We will respond positively to that invitation. Those are the specifics of the request. This correspondence arrived in the past week or ten days. That is the factual…