Paul Murphy

On the question of jobs, the Minister of State might confirm how many jobs are directly in data centres. Would I be correct in saying that there are fewer than 3,000 jobs in data centres? For a sector that is going to be using 30% of our electricity by 2030, the waste of electricity and water, and the impact that has on housing construction and other issues, is quite incredible. We recently found …

No, it is not. It is not at all.

Does the Minister of State know how much extra energy we are going to need?

12. Deputy Paul Murphy asked the Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications when the climate action plan for 2025 will be published; the way in which the actions in it for this year can be implemented when it is four months into the year and it has not yet been published; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [17928/25]

I am sure I will be very satisfied with the Minister’s answer. We are in April, the fourth month of the year, and the Minister still has not published the climate action plan for 2025. Will the Minister tell me when it is going to be published? What has the Fianna Fáil-Fine Gael-Lowry Government taken out from the draft plan that was submitted last December, before it came into office? What are th…

Some 3.5 million pigs are slaughtered in Ireland every year. We do not see them much because they are largely confined indoors, in big metal sheds. However, thanks to undercover investigations by the National Animal Rights Association and Animal Rebellion, we know what is going on inside these sheds, and real horrors are happening to these pigs. Six farms have been randomly selected and have had u…

Does the Minister think this kind of treatment of pigs is acceptable, and will the Government bring in legislation to stop it?

I move: That leave be granted to introduce a Bill entitled an Act to amend the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act, 1992 to provide for minimum Building Energy Rating (BER) standards for private rented accommodation and for related matters. My office was first approached by the Irish Green Building Council about bringing in minimum BER standards for the private rented sector. I thank the coun…

I move: "That the Bill be taken in Private Members' time."

It is incredible to listen to TD after TD from the Opposition but also from the Government give out about all the failures of Irish Water, which are very real, and appeal for intervention by the Minister. I will do the same in a moment, but it speaks to the failure of Irish Water as an institution, the only real rationale of which was to take the public assets previously in the hands of local auth…

While there is a lot of rhetoric in this debate about protecting workers, it is necessary to take the veil away from some of that rhetoric from the Government and some Opposition parties. Behind that veil, what they are really talking about is protecting the big US multinationals that have operations here, acting on the basis that big pharma and tech have the same interests as workers. That is sim…

We really need to take time this week to debate the HIQA report and to try to learn some lessons from the horrific abuse of some children at Temple Street hospital. The Taoiseach made the point earlier that the insertion of springs should not have happened and that responsibility lies with the surgeon. I agree 100%. The question, however, is how that was allowed to happen and to continue. If it wa…

4. Deputy Paul Murphy asked the Taoiseach to report on the work of the child poverty and well-being programme in his Department. [12378/25]

I want to raise the crucial issue of child well-being in terms of children with scoliosis, in particular three children who had unauthorised metal springs inserted in them by a surgeon. The report was published at 12 noon, so I have only had the chance to read the executive summary so far but it makes for pretty horrifying reading, including making the point that the type of metal is "known to cor…

25. Deputy Paul Murphy asked the Taoiseach when the Cabinet committee dealing with transport will meet next. [12379/25]

Just last week, a plane from Lufthansa flew through Irish airspace carrying about a tonne of munitions to Israel to be used in the horrific genocide in Gaza. I watched a video just yesterday on social media of a beheaded baby in Gaza. Tens of tonnes of munitions have passed through Irish airspace on their way to Israel to murder innocent people. This is not legal. Unless these flights have exempti…

We were battered off the roads in Rossport.

There was Rossport.

I am sure the Minister of State has probably been inundated as I have - probably more so than me - with emails from worried leaving cert students, parents and teachers about the unfair disadvantage that this year's students will be put at due to the Government's grade deflation proposals. This is not just a question of next year or the year after. It is something that will have an impact on young …

Does the Minister of State accept there is an unfairness here? There are students this year who, with a given set of results, will not achieve a college place they would have achieved last year or the year before or whatever. There is a fundamental unfairness here. I accept that within this artificial scarcity - an effectively fake market being created for the points system - it is difficult to ha…

The Taoiseach was very exercised on Tuesday by the suggestion that the Irish State was complicit in genocide. One of the ways we are complicit in genocide is by the authorisation by the Central Bank of Ireland of Israeli war bonds for sale in the EU. Despite all the evidence that these are used to fund the genocide, the Governor of the Central Bank has refused to act. If this continues, will the G…

Shameful. The Minister says he is not complicit and yet he is saying he will do nothing about it. The Central Bank of Ireland allows Israeli war bonds that are used to commit this genocide to be sold in the EU. The Minister repeats the excuses of the Governor of the Central Bank that its only framework is to check whether the prospectus meets the standards of completeness, comprehensibility and co…

It is not a question of language. The Minister might find it offensive for it to be said that he is complicit in genocide but it is the truth. He says he condemns what is happening in Israel. That is good but then the Central Bank is allowing this to happen. It is helping it to be financed. That is a fact. We can see the way these bonds are advertised online as facilitating its "war" in Gaza but t…

I am not about tolerance of genocide or civility towards genocide.

Answer the question, Minister.