Barry Ward

122. Deputy Barry Ward asked the Minister for Defence the position regarding any formal agreements in place with any other EU country and the UK to ensure that there are sufficient defence and security mechanisms in place during Ireland’s Presidency of the Council of the European Union; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [52705/26]

There is little doubt about the positivity we associate with membership of the European Union. Some 82% of Irish people favour membership of the European Union, the highest rate of approval of any European state. However, a lot of people talk down the European Union in the public discourse, suggesting that it is somehow a bad thing or that it does not do things the way they would want it to. I wou…

I acknowledge all of the factors the Minister of State set out. I welcome them all and it is really important that we spread that message. The second part of the Minister of State's response is really important and that is the EU jobs part. I would not necessarily limit it just to the European Union. There are other international institutions within Europe where there is a transmissibility between…

Cuirim fáilte aireach roimh an mBille seo. Níl mé cinnte go bhfuil gach rud atá sa Bhille i gceart. Tá roinnt fadhbanna agam leis freisin. I give a cautious welcome to the Bill. I recognise what it is attempting to do but I want to raise a couple of issues with the Minister of State. The first one is something I raise in general about legislation, which is a drafting issue. It is not specific to p…

I might start by recognising a very strong European who was a former Member of this House and who passed away on Monday. David Andrews was a TD for Dún Laoghaire and was somebody who showed on a number of occasions as Minister for Foreign Affairs his commitment to the European project and his commitment to the ideals of Europe. He is a great loss. I wanted to pay tribute to him. I have not had an …

I was going to say I welcome the Bill, but I do not welcome it; it is a necessary evil. Its purpose is to secure the provision of energy to this country in the long term, at a time when the provision of energy and resources to generate energy are tremendously volatile and precipitous in terms of our access to energy. I listened to Deputy O'Gorman say security of supply should be achieved by domes…

I thank the Minister for coming in to take this issue. It is important, particularly in this week of Pride, that we acknowledge there are still issues concerning the LGBT community and the confidence it might have in the prosecution of offences or the following up of allegations related to events that clearly have a hate motivation to them. In June 2024, when I was a Senator, I raised an issue in…

I thank the Minister and appreciate the acknowledgment that this behaviour is ongoing. It is important to say clearly that there is a problem. I also appreciate what the Minister said about the legislation that was passed and commenced in 2024. However, I am not convinced that it is sufficient. What it does is to give greater discretion to a judge to consider a particular hate element to be an agg…

I am very pleased to be able to speak on this issue. It is hugely important. There is so much to be said about Pride and the importance of expressing pride and of facilitating that expression of pride but I will focus on two particular issues. The first is conversion therapy, which is not banned in this jurisdiction. This practice is there to "convert" or "cure" people of their sexual orientation…

I welcome the Bill. Regulation in this space is perhaps more important than any other regulatory Bill we will pass in this House this year. Any new technology poses problems, difficulties, challenges and threats and, undoubtedly, that is true of artificial intelligence. It does not mean we cannot regulate to protect ourselves and it does not mean we cannot put measures in place to protect ourselve…

I broadly welcome this Bill. It is, however, correctly contentious and controversial in circumstances where we as a country and as a planet face an extraordinary challenge in terms of reducing emissions and dealing with the consequences of climate change, which we see today as we all schlep around here in suits, sweating. I do have reservations about the de facto setting aside of the climate actio…

The terrible thing about this subject is that it comes down so much to economics and it should not. It should come down to individuals and everything that we can do for them. I want to echo what many speakers have said in this debate about how we need to accelerate the progress in relation to the provision of treatments for rare diseases. The fact that they are rare diseases should not mean that p…

I acknowledge that the Minister is here in person. It does not always happen for Topical Issues but I am grateful for the fact that she is here. It is probably a reflection of the fact that she is getting the same emails I am getting from people in our constituency who are affected by Duchenne muscular dystrophy. I am sure the Minister already knows about it but Duchenne muscular dystrophy is a c…

I thank the Minister. I join with her in thanking the HSE for the work that has been done and also acknowledge her commitment to this. Anybody who has dealt with families who are suffering with this disease understands both the heartbreaking nature of it and the urgency involved. Listening to what the Minister has said in relation to the progress and the managed access protocol, do we have a time…

Cuirim fáilte roimh an mBille seo. Déanaim comhghairdeas leis an Aire freisin as ucht an luais a bhí leis. Nuair atáimid ag labhairt faoin dlí ag an leibhéal Eorpach, is gá dúinn na rialacha mar sin a chur sa dlí sa tír seo. Déanaim comhghairdeas leis maidir leis sin. Ag an am céanna, bhí mé ag éisteacht leis an díospóireacht anseo freisin. Tá a fhios agam go bhfuil daoine sa Teach seo a bhfuil im…

9. Deputy Barry Ward asked the Minister for Climate, Energy and the Environment the position regarding any Departmental review of the deposit return scheme; the mechanisms in place to measure the success of the scheme; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [43426/26]

I support the Bill. This is not an issue to which I am a stranger. I have spent quite a lot of time in the occupied territories in the West Bank and Gaza. I have witnessed the way the Israeli Defence Forces have behaved. I have thankfully never been a direct victim but I have had stones thrown at me by Israeli settlers in Hebron, so I have seen first hand what is there. I have seen sonic bombs bei…

I will start by saying something relatively controversial. I do not think RTÉ does a bad job; I think it does quite a good job. As a public service broadcaster, the difficulty it faces is that it is so often compared with international counterparts like the BBC, which is not perfect and which receives funding vastly beyond what RTÉ could ever expect to get in a small jurisdiction like ours. On the…

I agree with much, if not everything, that has been said in the course of the debate by those on all sides. Balancing our skills need and development is important. I want to come at this from a slightly different angle, however. I am chair of the European affairs committee, and a delegation from the committee recently visited Luxembourg and met some of the people involved in the European instituti…

I welcome the Bill. The expansion of the terms in the legislation is welcome. We have to recognise that those who seek to access Dublin are not just necessarily from the county of Dublin or the immediate area, but come from further away. I am not sure about the wisdom of placing two Dún Laoghaire constituency Deputies one after the other because I listened to Deputy Devlin's speech and he hit on m…

This is an issue that I have raised previously relating to a gap in the provision of the passport services. We are very lucky with the Passport Office. It does amazing work. I know from the work that my office does that the response that we get from the Passport Office is consistently excellent, co-operative and helpful. The Passport Office does not decide what goes into the passports insofar as a…

I thank the Minister of State very much. I know he is providing the House with a response that has been prepared on behalf of the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade. He has described it as an "update". It is far from an update. I read through the transcript of what was said in the Seanad on 7 March 2023. There are so many similarities as there to be no update whatever so ever. It is exactly th…

Gabhaim buíochas leis an Leas-Cheann Comhairle. I join Deputy Aird in acknowledging the work that is being done by people. He mentioned a number of different projects; bees were one of them. That kind of apiculture is really important. We know how much danger there is associated with the native Irish bee. There is an organisation in my own locality called Open Hive, which not only locates hives in…

Gabhaim buíochas leis an Aire Stáit as teacht isteach chun déileáil leis an gceist seo. In the election in 2024 his party and mine made a commitment to reduce the cost of childcare. This is an important tenet and in the Dún Laoghaire constituency childcare was one of the major issues people were talking to me about. They were essentially paying a second mortgage to put their children into childcar…

I thank the Minister of State. I do not doubt his bona fides on this topic. I started by acknowledging the work that has been done. I believe the commitment to reduce the cost of childcare was a serious and sincere one. Insofar as I have had any dealings with the people who fund the programme for Government, I believe that. I recognise the progress, the increased funding and all the rest. However…