It is almost two years since Dr. Abu Safiya was detained by the Israeli occupying forces. His crime was to not abandon his hospital in Gaza. He is being held in solitary confinement. He is being kicked, beaten and tortured every single day. He has not been charged with any crimes. He is just one of hundreds of thousands of victims of Israel's genocide, brutality and occupation. It is scandalous that the Minister stan…
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
Do something then.
This Bill sums up everything that is wrong with the Government's approach to disability services in this country. We have a crisis, with families crying out for help, and here we have a Bill that is not about investing in the health and education professionals needed to operate a properly functioning system. The Bill is not about addressing that in Chamber House CDNT, where well over 1,000 files simply have not been …
On an annualised basis on a five-year-----
The Minister is defending the indefensible. That is why he did not really engage with it. He is defending the fact that, when 300,000 people are in arrears on their electricity bills, data centres owned by the richest and most powerful companies in the world are paying half the price the poorest people in the country are expected to pay. He is defending the absolutely indefensible. He is saying that we cannot possibl…
Why? It is because we cannot meet any of our targets. We are going to reach a point well under half of our targets, which are supposed to be legally binding, because the data centres have gobbled up all of the renewable energy. Sometimes when the Minister talks about this he gives the impression that, as long as we keep adding renewable energy, it is good for the climate. The climate does not care. The planet cares a…
Earlier, the Minister said that 19,000 are directly employed in data centres.
Does the Minister stand over that?
Great, because he will have to correct the record later as that is not what is in his record. The Minister knows he is fiddling the figures because that 19,000 figure - it is 19,500 - is coming from the KPMG report, on which the Minister spent €105,000 of public money to get. He told them we only want this outcome, that is, to say data centres are really important. Most of those jobs are construction jobs. There are …
They could be building houses. That is the other way this is affecting the housing crisis. There are more than 10,000 of these workers who are spending their time building data centres and they are purely temporary jobs. The KPMG report actually says these jobs will disappear once we have built all of the data centres. The workers could instead be building housing. What is the actual figure? How many people actually …
The Tánaiste told us we would have a budget for people who get up early in the morning to go to work but not if they get up early in the morning and go out to get a bus, Luas or train. The Government is saying those people will pay more than an extra €100 per year for the privilege of being on public transport that is inadequate and overcrowded. In the middle of a cost-of-living crisis, they are expected to fork out …
This Government is, in a way, in an envious position. It has the capacity, in terms of a massive budget surplus, to protect people from the cost-of-living crisis. It is probably a position that governments across the world would like to be in. The Government can protect people from the cost-of-living crisis but instead chooses to impose extra costs on people. It is quite incredible. It is a targeted attack on those p…
At this very moment, council tenants from Mac Uilliam are outside South Dublin County Council offices, together with activists from the local Community Action Tenants Union, CATU, branch, protesting because they are at their wits' end about the maintenance issues and the serious problems of disrepair in their homes. They do not want to be at this point. They have tried everything in terms of engaging with the council…
There is one lesson for me from today's farce, and it is that the Government is scared of the people. The only reason we are here today is that the Government is scared of widespread protests about the cost-of-living crisis. In response, we have a two-month stay of execution for petrol and diesel costs alone. It is completely inadequate when the cost-of-living crisis, driven by Trump's imperialist adventures in the M…
Could it be NATO?
I, too, want to ask about the senior Minister. This came up at the Dáil reform committee last week. It is very peculiar that a senior Minister is here and has answered previous questions on the triple lock today and then – no offence meant - we have the junior Minister answering these questions, which precisely prevents the continuation of the debate. The same thing happened previously.
Hopefully the junior Minister will be able to clarify. The Minister, Deputy McEntee, said earlier to Deputy Ó Laoghaire, "The people I speak to do not like the fact that Russia has essentially removed, or will remove in the coming months, all our peacekeeping troops from UNIFIL". I ask the junior Minister to clarify on the Minister's behalf that presumably she did not mean Russia but, rather, the US and Israel, and t…
Can the Minister of State confirm it can mean NATO?
Yes. Is that a "Yes", then? Thank you.
The Minister of State assured us we are bound by international law but then went on to talk about the fact that he wants to deploy troops outside the framework of international law. That is why the Government is getting rid of the triple lock. All the triple lock does is ensure that we only can send troops in line with international law. The Minister of State, Deputy Troy, stated, "Ireland's position on the use of fo…
Just by yourself.
The case for MetroLink south west is extremely strong. There are 350,000 people living between the Luas red and green lines. That is who will be served by this. What we are asking for is for the Government to live up to the commitment in the programme for Government to "[c]ommission an independent feasibility study into continuing MetroLink from the city to southwest Dublin." What appears to be happening from informa…
A couple of months ago, I was contacted by a grandfather whose granddaughter was told she needed to have an iPad in school and needed to pay €500 for an iPad. It is an absolutely crazy situation where we have free education in this country and yet many schools impose this massive burden on families, many of whom simply cannot afford it. I accept the Minister has written to schools saying they cannot make these compul…
10. Deputy Paul Murphy asked the Taoiseach if he had discussed the situation in Gaza with his Spanish counterpart, Pedro Sanchez, during his recent meeting with him. [51507/26]
I raise the case of Fergie Chambers, an American activist and heir to the Cox family fortune, who has spent millions of euro supporting progressive causes, in particular assisting Palestinian people. On Friday, he was arrested in Ibiza on foot of an extradition request from US authorities. According to the indictment, he has been charged with international money-laundering, riot and conspiracy to riot. It alleges tha…
I oppose this new cut to the accommodation recognition payment. This is the second cut to the payment, which was previously cut from €800 to €600, and now the Government wants to cut it further to €400. The Irish Red Cross has written to all of us outlining the devastating impact this cut will have not only on the 41,072 people who rely on it to keep a roof over their heads but, potentially, on the wider migration an…