I move: "That the Bill be taken in Private Members' time."
TDs / Paul Murphy
Paul Murphy
Portrait: © Houses of the Oireachtas (Oireachtas (Open Data) PSI Licence) · source file
1,527
questions asked
Oral and written, to government departments
205,529
words spoken in the chamber
Across 1,276 contributions
383
votes recorded
Each Yes, No or Abstained in a recorded vote
314
topics asked about
Across 20 departments
From the Dáil chamber only: committee meetings are not in this archive.
What they ask about
The subject headings the Oireachtas filed their questions under.
Who they ask
The departments their questions were addressed to.
Month by month
Low months are usually recesses, when the Dáil does not sit. The archive runs to 22 October 2026.
Questions asked 1,527 in all
Dec 2024Oct 2026
Contributions to debates 1,276 in all
Dec 2024Oct 2026
Show as a table
| Month | Questions | Contributions |
|---|---|---|
| December 2024 | 0 | 2 |
| January 2025 | 78 | 10 |
| February 2025 | 138 | 69 |
| March 2025 | 120 | 75 |
| April 2025 | 115 | 100 |
| May 2025 | 97 | 97 |
| June 2025 | 88 | 70 |
| July 2025 | 92 | 52 |
| August 2025 | 0 | 0 |
| September 2025 | 66 | 60 |
| October 2025 | 50 | 82 |
| November 2025 | 84 | 73 |
| December 2025 | 59 | 79 |
| January 2026 | 94 | 61 |
| February 2026 | 71 | 78 |
| March 2026 | 49 | 41 |
| April 2026 | 76 | 45 |
| May 2026 | 50 | 40 |
| June 2026 | 58 | 95 |
| July 2026 | 67 | 59 |
| August 2026 | 0 | 1 |
| September 2026 | 30 | 23 |
| October 2026 | 45 | 64 |
Debates they spoke in most
Plus 977 contributions in the regular slots, such as Leaders' Questions and Priority Questions. Speech from the chair is not counted.
Asked about similar topics
Worked out by computer from the subject headings of each TD's questions, giving more weight to headings few TDs use. It shows shared subjects, not shared views.
Party, constituency and offices
- constituency Dublin South-West 29 November 2024 to now
- party People Before Profit-Solidarity 29 November 2024 to now
The Government is barely a year in office and is already on track to be one of the worst Governments on record when it comes to public transport. It depends on right-wing rural TDs who could not care less about commuters in Dublin or elsewhere. All they want is more money for roads in their constituencies. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael Ministers are perfectly happy with that, relaxing in their chauffeur-driven Mercs and …
Why does the Government have it in for disabled people and carers? It had a budget where disabled people were singled out for a particularly cruel set of cuts, amounting to more than €1,400. Now we have carers being faced with substantial tax bills. One man in his 80s is facing a bill of more than €6,000. These people are not tax dodgers. They are saving the State billions of euro because of the work they are doing i…
Donald Trump is a monster. The one good thing about him is that he exposes the monstrous reality of the imperialist and capitalist world system we live in. It is a system that is ugly, bloody and brutal and in which might is right, profits matter for all and people matter for nothing. He has done away with the fig leaf of international law and exposed the US's naked and violent imperialism for everyone to see.
One o…
Check the record.
The Oxfam wealth report published yesterday exposed the stark class divide that exists in society between billionaires, the wealthy and everyone else. Ireland's 11 billionaires have the same wealth as 3.5 million Irish adults combined. It takes them just seven hours to rack up the annual income of an average worker. Oxfam shows how a tax on the top 1% of the wealthiest people in the country could yield €1 billion a y…
17. Deputy Paul Murphy asked the Taoiseach for an update on the implementation of the Dublin city task force report. [3923/26]
This morning, a powerful piece on "Morning Ireland" about drug-related intimidation described how families are confronted by drug dealers who say that their child owes them a certain amount of money and the family now owes this money and they will terrorise the family until it gives them the money. One woman said that 50% of the time, she feels a knot in her stomach as a result of stress. Another woman said that ever…
28. Deputy Paul Murphy asked the Taoiseach for an overview of his Department’s annual report for 2024. [3924/26]
The Taoiseach's Government and governments around the world have an important choice to make. The choice is whether the profits of big tech corporations are going to come before the health and safety of our children. For now, these interests are counterposed. We saw it in a stark way in the mass production of child sexual abuse imagery and sexual abuse imagery of women on Grok. There was a protest outside the offices…
Human capital.
11. Deputy Paul Murphy asked the Minister for Social Protection when he will introduce a permanent cost-of-disability payment as promised in the programme for Government. [2794/26]
The programme for Government promises an annual cost-of-disability support payment, suggesting that it will be incrementally increased. Instead of introducing that in the last budget, the Government introduced an incredible series of cruel cuts, totalling over €1,400 for disabled people. When is the Minister going to right this wrong? What level of payment is he going to introduce? When is he going to introduce this …
It says a lot about the priorities of the Government that it can have fast-tracking of VAT cuts for fast food giants and developers whereas, although it has this on-the-paper commitment to an annual cost-of-disability payment, the payment does not come in. Instead, the Government cuts disabled people's income substantially. We know and the Government acknowledges - it has commissioned the report itself - that it cost…
If the Minister wants to quote payments, we can quote payments. The Irish Wheelchair Association, Access for All Ireland and the Disability Federation of Ireland have done very good work in making people aware of the cruel cuts that the Government has introduced in the last budget. The disability support grant was €400 previously. It has been removed, meaning a loss of €400. The living alone allowance saw a loss of €…
13. Deputy Paul Murphy asked the Minister for Social Protection if he will introduce an emergency winter payment for disabled people to compensate them for the cuts imposed on them in the Budget; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [2795/26]
This follows on from a number of previous questions. I would say disabled people watching this at home are screaming at their television screens because they are being told by the Minister not to worry as a permanent payment is coming. What they are saying, and I quote Joan Carthy, is that people are suffering today and they cannot wait another day, never mind another four years. They desperately need an emergency €4…
I find it bizarre that the Minister is saying he has responded. He has not responded. There is an ask that has come as a consequence of his budget decisions, which cut a bit over €114 from disabled people. While it is true that the Minister has given a little bit of this back through the small increases, he has left people worse off to the tune of more than €1,000 per annum. Their ask is that they need, at the very l…
There was an interesting opinion poll a few weeks ago that showed only 27% of Irish people had a positive view of AI compared with 48% who believed that it would be a force for bad in the coming years. Research by RED C found that Irish people have among the lowest levels of trust in AI in the world. That demonstrates some good sense. Why? I think it is because people smell a rat. This is being forced down our throat…
I feel that every couple of weeks for the last number of years, I have been getting up here giving out about ghost buses, buses that are put out of order or are packed and people cannot get on them, buses that are cancelled, people waiting forever and people not being able to rely on basic public transport services in this country. There is no recognition by the Government of the fundamental issues. There are staffin…
It is Government policy to slice and dice and privatise our routes in Dublin. By every metric of reliability, punctuality and penalties incurred, Go-Ahead is much worse than Dublin Bus. Why then is the Government persisting with privatising routes and giving them to Go-Ahead? Why are they not returned to Dublin Bus? Will the Government call a halt to the plans to privatise even more routes to Go-Ahead, including rout…
I want to return to the issue of the €141 million paid by the public to the World Bank in advance of Paschal Donohoe taking up his new job. Yesterday the Taoiseach told me a formal business case was prepared by the Department of Finance and the low option was €141.4 million. I have read the business case. It lists a number of options. It lists option 3, which is the World Bank's envisaged level and what it was asking…
We need to urgently debate the threat that Donald Trump and US imperialism pose to the entire world. The Taoiseach was at pains to downplay it earlier. We have seen nothing but a boot-licking craven response by the Irish establishment. At the start of this year, the US bombed Venezuela. It killed multiple Venezuelans as well as Cubans and kidnapped Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores.
The response to that from the Tánaiste was to say that the kidnapping was complex in terms of international law.
The UN Secretary General has been very clear that it is a breach. We need to discuss this and if the Government thinks it is okay for the US to go around kidnapping presidents it does not agree with.