Liam Quaide

I commend my colleague, Deputy Whitmore, on introducing this important Bill, which, if not obstructed, will greatly strengthen our dog breeding regulations. Unfortunately, it seems the Government is kicking the Bill into touch, which means it will be in limbo for 12 months at least. It is important to say that the Government is prone to frequent whinging that if only the Opposition could make cons…

A group of approximately 120 healthcare workers face the termination of their basic pay on 31 December. They have been receiving their basic pay in recognition of the fact that they contracted Covid at the peak of the pandemic in high-risk settings such as hospital wards and have paid an enormous price in the form of ongoing long Covid symptoms, including debilitating post-exertional malaise. Whil…

I want to pay tribute to Cara Darmody's determination on the assessments of need crisis and welcome Cara and her dad, Mark, here today. There are now over 18,000 children whose assessment of need is overdue. The Government is spending many millions of euro fighting in the courts some of these families who are trying to have their right to an assessment of need upheld. At the same time, the Governm…

Investor courts are a serious threat to progressive public policy. They cast an ominous cloud over climate action at a time when climate action has never been more urgent or consequential. Ratifying CETA would see the introduction of investor courts that bring no benefit to the Irish people but allow foreign companies to extract money from the Irish taxpayer based on their perceived loss of profi…

The crisis in assessments of need sits within a much broader picture of chronic neglect, by successive Governments, of the disability sector generally and, within that, the front-line disability services and children's disability network teams, as well as, more egregiously, the primary care services. We cannot meaningfully address the crisis in assessments of need in the absence of a reckoning wit…

8. Deputy Liam Quaide asked the Taoiseach for a report on his recent meeting with the British Prime Minister. [67526/25]

When I asked the Taoiseach about flood relief for east Cork villages last week, he accused me of being sly in how I had raised the question. That adjective could be more fairly levelled at his British counterpart, Keir Starmer, who built his political career on the basis of being a human rights lawyer and unifier of the left. In power, he has enthusiastically supported the imprisonment of people f…

22. Deputy Liam Quaide asked the Taoiseach for an update on his Department’s plans to co-ordinate a range of actions aimed at regulatory reform. [67527/25]

There was a health committee session last week on the regulation of counselling and psychotherapy. In standards it has published, CORU has adopted a position that is entirely at odds with the main representative groups of those disciplines, which will reduce supervision requirements and remove mandatory personal therapy for trainees. These changes, if implemented, will degrade professional standar…

7. Deputy Liam Quaide asked the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade if she has engaged, or plans to engage, with the UK authorities regarding the treatment and prosecution of members of Palestine Action and those who have expressed solidarity with the group; if she will raise concerns about the protection of the rights to peaceful protest, fair trial and humane conditions of detention; and if s…

Has the Minister, her immediate predecessor or anyone in her Department engaged with the UK authorities regarding the Palestine Action group, which was proscribed as a terrorist organisation by the UK Government in July? The group was blacklisted for instigating a number of direct action protests against weapons manufacturers involved in selling arms to Israel in the context of its campaign of gen…

The UK Government has, in an Orwellian inversion of truth, conflated protest against genocide with terrorism through its proscription of the Palestine Action group, placing it, absurdly, on the same blacklist as organisations such as al-Qaeda and ISIS. Since the Palestine Action group has been designated a terrorist organisation, at least 2,300 people have been arrested according to the group Defe…

The acclaimed and best-selling Irish author, Sally Rooney, was unable to collect her recent Sky Arts award for literature in person as she did not feel safe entering the UK due to the risk of arrest for her public support of Palestine Action. She has even had to cancel all future public engagements in the UK and has expressed concerns that because of her intention to support Palestine Action finan…

Yesterday, residents of Mogeely, Castlemartyr, Killeagh and Rathcormac presented to the Oireachtas petitions committee on the infuriating lack of progress on flood relief for their villages. When I raised their situation with the Taoiseach in late October, he responded in an almost disdainful tone, as if I was asking a naive question. He said: "The Midleton flood relief scheme is a complicated sch…

It might be good to revisit.

When will there be action?

10. Deputy Liam Quaide asked the Taoiseach when the Cabinet committee on Northern Ireland will next meet. [65438/25]

27. Deputy Liam Quaide asked the Taoiseach if he will report on the programme plan for his Department’s new disability unit for 2025-2027. [65439/25]

I commend People Before Profit on its motion. The obstruction of the Occupied Territories Bill for the past six years since it was passed by a majority of TDs has shown up the utter hypocrisy of the Government when it speaks of the rule of international law, of the sanctity of human rights and of the importance of protecting our democracy from interference by nefarious regimes such as Russia. Ther…

12. Deputy Liam Quaide asked the Taoiseach when the Cabinet Committee on water quality will next meet. [63177/25]

I know the Taoiseach will reject the claim that rural Ireland is being left behind by his Government but many residents of the village of Ballyhooly in my constituency beg to differ. They have good reason to. The very basic need for a consistent supply of water to drink, bathe in or use in appliances such as dishwashers and showers has been denied to them for many years. Residents in Ballyhooly ha…

26. Deputy Liam Quaide asked the Taoiseach for a report on the work of the shared island unit. [63178/25]

In recent times we have seen an alarming escalation in racist violence against immigrants and minority communities both North and South of this island. According to An Garda Síochána statistics, race crimes and related incidents rose by 24% between 2021 and 2024. There were similar increases in such crimes in the North between July 2024 and June of this year. Amnesty International has described th…

The crisis in primary care services for young people was back in the news again this week. It took persistent follow-up to parliamentary questions from me earlier this year to reveal its scale. The fact is that children throughout the country were routinely waiting several and sometimes many years, not just for psychology but for occupational therapy, speech and language therapy and physiotherapy.…

Not in these services.