Ruairí Ó Murchú

5. Deputy Ruairí Ó Murchú asked the Taoiseach to report on his recent visit to China. [14464/26]

The Taoiseach said he had conversations in relation to multilateralism and, obviously, questions in relation to economics. I understand this was very early on in January and, with Donald Trump's regime, we are not entirely sure what the future holds other than it goes from terrible to even worse. We have since had an illegal war with Iran, we have the fact that the Israelis are continuing with the…

12. Deputy Ruairí Ó Murchú asked the Taoiseach when the Cabinet committee on justice, migration and social affairs will next meet. [14260/26]

Louth County Council is trying to update its tenant engagement and antisocial behaviour strategy, and I sat in yesterday for a short period on a consultative event. We can imagine the conversation. It is all about having a multiagency approach, strengthening community safety, embedding tenant engagement for the first time, improving well-being and neighbourhood cohesion and ensuring fairness, tran…

Yes. This is about how we can get to having a proper, multiagency approach to deal with the complexity and early intervention and policing aspects. The big worry when we are talking about drugs and all that causes that problem is the national drugs strategy and the fear of moving away from the drugs and alcohol task forces and such community involvement.

I will repeat what everyone else has said, that if we are to get serious about soccer - we have seen the absolute success of the League of Ireland lately - we need to put the money required into academies. We all know about the deficit in infrastructure. Many of us see it on a weekly or bi-weekly basis and it is not good enough. It is not good enough for all those who attend. The Minister of Stat…

I know that. Everyone here has properly commended Joanna Byrne-----

-----for standing by the Palestinian people and the Lebanese people-----

-----and it is a disgrace what has been done.

She has paid a price but we have to commend her volunteerism and her commitment to justice.

The Minister of State is saying we should just trust this Government on the basis the investor court system is now better than ISDS and all we know that is wrong there. The Energy Charter Treaty and the fact that everyone with any element of sense is moving away from it has been mentioned by many. The Antin versus Spain case relates to giving big business the ability to take a state to the cleaner…

That is the reality. What I am saying is that the one thing we have seen, and whether we call it ISDS or the investor court system, with all the nuances, changes and added bells, it is still a rose or a briar by another name. That is all we are talking about here. I am asking the Minister of State whether he can ensure us that all the worries on this side of the of the House will not happen. Can h…

That is all I am saying. I suppose it had a chilling effect of sorts. I want to know from this Minister of State what advantage there is to us, the Irish people, to this Government or to any future Irish Government of having the investor court system in play. With other treaties, we have seen states walking away. Do we intend to do it ourselves in relation to not being shackled by what you can on…

I get what the Minister of State says about the right to regulate and having certain protections. He has already stated that he believes the investor court system is an improvement on the old ISDS but I still have not heard anything that settles me in regard to the fact that there is any advantage to us signing up to this and that it does not leave this State open to the possibility of big corpora…

I will not take very long. There is an element of repetition at this stage. I would ask, as Deputy Ó Laoghaire has, that there would be an answer on how we ended up with a guillotine at the close of business. A lot of us enjoy playing soccer and wanted to talk about volunteerism and the need to invest in football but we could have done that at any other time. This is legislation with incredibly wo…

The fact is the Government did survive today, but that was not down to any conversation anybody had out there with people who were actually at the pin of their collar. It has been said by many but I am going to repeat it. Out at the protests were people who had never been seen on a protest before and who did not want to be anywhere next or near a protest. We are talking about agricultural contrac…

On diesel, petrol, home heating oil-----

-----not enough has been delivered. It is too little, too late.

It is what we had in Dundalk.

Bomaite amháin. We have lost the clock. The Deputy has six and a half minutes. I will indicate two and one minutes with my fingers.

I agree. We all know where there have been deficits in infrastructure. We know the issues that have existed where people have played the system. That is undoubted. We have also seen situations where we have not seen perfect engagement, be it from the State or developers. We have all seen it in our constituencies. We have seen where pre-consultation and consultation have been done well, where they …

-----and any time it rains heavily we are in danger of flooding.

It will be years before this is upgraded.

The Chair is putting pressure on me. I was in Scoil Bhríde in Síolach the other day. It is an absolutely fabulous school. It has been okayed for two extra teachers but not okayed in any way, shape or form for the two extra rooms that are needed, and that is before the second sanctioned ASD class.

I would probably need about 25 minutes to go through all of this and I would still leave some projects behind.