For the Department of arts to wash its hands of a vibrant and vital artistic and cultural space, home to hundreds of artists, is crazy. Whatever about the finer points of demarcation between the OPW, the Department of Finance and local authorities, for the Department of arts to be indifferent or to say, "It is nothing to do with us" is not good enough. It needs to be banging heads together. A crisis meeting is happen…
TDs / Richard Boyd Barrett
Richard Boyd Barrett
Portrait: © Houses of the Oireachtas (Oireachtas (Open Data) PSI Licence) · source file
1,583
questions asked
Oral and written, to government departments
153,844
words spoken in the chamber
Across 941 contributions
216
votes recorded
Each Yes, No or Abstained in a recorded vote
278
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 1,583 in all
Dec 2024Oct 2026
Contributions to debates 941 in all
Dec 2024Oct 2026
Show as a table
| Month | Questions | Contributions |
|---|---|---|
| December 2024 | 0 | 1 |
| January 2025 | 12 | 11 |
| February 2025 | 65 | 141 |
| March 2025 | 31 | 67 |
| April 2025 | 100 | 31 |
| May 2025 | 109 | 2 |
| June 2025 | 97 | 0 |
| July 2025 | 127 | 0 |
| August 2025 | 0 | 0 |
| September 2025 | 56 | 0 |
| October 2025 | 50 | 0 |
| November 2025 | 82 | 62 |
| December 2025 | 71 | 54 |
| January 2026 | 107 | 95 |
| February 2026 | 125 | 83 |
| March 2026 | 98 | 48 |
| April 2026 | 57 | 62 |
| May 2026 | 58 | 114 |
| June 2026 | 73 | 53 |
| July 2026 | 131 | 12 |
| August 2026 | 0 | 2 |
| September 2026 | 97 | 62 |
| October 2026 | 37 | 41 |
Debates they spoke in most
Plus 666 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 Dún Laoghaire 29 November 2024 to now
- party People Before Profit-Solidarity 29 November 2024 to now
I ask the Government to urgently review social housing income limits. The situation is getting worse and worse. One of the biggest phenomena I am coming across is people who are on working family payment, a payment that has given to people precisely because they do not have enough income to live, getting the payment and then being knocked off the list as it takes them over the threshold. It is unbelievable. In most o…
That is no good to people who are off the list.
One of the biggest atrocities and national security breaches was the Dublin-Monaghan bombing carried out by the Glenanne gang. There were headlines yesterday stating that there was no collusion in the Dublin-Monaghan bombing. First, the Kenova report yesterday dealt with Stakeknife, not the Dublin-Monaghan bombing. The Denton report will not be published until January.
The report states that the British Army had the names of the killers on the night of the bombing but nobody was ever arrested. The representatives of the families think that smacks of collusive behaviour. The authors were also extremely critical of the Irish authorities, including the Garda, and the British authorities for destroying much of the files and evidence so that the people compiling the report could not gat…
I am assuming my amendment was ruled out of order on the basis it goes beyond the scope of the Bill or something to that effect. I understand why, technically, this might have been ruled out of order. To my mind, however, it very much is, or should be, part of the Act this Bill is amending to make the grants and loans the Irish Film Board gives out for film productions far more strictly conditional on the film produc…
Exactly. The actors, writers and performers do not know where their rights have gone. These are their intellectual property rights. Equity has been campaigning on this and is asking for contracts similar to the PACT Equity in the UK, where there are superior contracts. Often, a guff answer is given back by the producers, that the PACT Equity contract is an English agreement and not suitable to Ireland. That is just n…
Thank you, Minister.
I do not know if the Minister has an answer to these matters and I would appreciate it if he would look at them. The aggregate is over a very long period but it is €20 million to €30 million a year and then another arm of the State gives about €100 million or more. It is a lot of money each year and it builds up. One point I will make, and the Minister really needs to consider it, is that for all that money added up …
We used to own one third part of Ardmore Studios. I would be in favour of that.
With the money we are investing, is it not worrying that, at the end of it, we have nothing? It is not just section 481. There was a slight batting off of the thing and saying this is section 481, and I understand this is the film board, although the idea that these two things are completely separate is a bit ridiculous. They both go to the same film producer companies. Every single film produced here gets money off …
In the minute that is left, I want to make it absolutely clear that nobody here is saying it is about quantifying arts in terms of pounds and pence, or whatever the expression is. A lot of art has to be subsidised because it gives a big cultural benefit, but it should not be the case that people who work in the industry and are increasingly getting degrees, qualifications and all sorts of things have absolutely no se…
I joined disabled activists and disability groups in a protest outside the Dáil this morning. They were protesting over the fact that the recent budget has plunged them into poverty. One disabled person described how, for example, he has to sit down and consider whether he can put one bar or two bars on the gas heater that he sits beside. He described his own personal humiliation at having to go to food banks to get …
This innocuously named Arbitration (Amendment) Bill is a sell-out to the corporations. It is the definition of the corporate takeover of Europe and the Government wants to sign us up to this. If we do, it will be very difficult to get out of it. As Dr. Oisin Suttle in the Maynooth department of law wrote in a thing I was reading this morning, in other areas of international law, where a state signs up to them, you ca…
It is there.
I thank Sinn Féin for tabling this motion. I thank, in particular, Cara Darmody and her father for their fantastic campaigning. It is an absolute shame that Cara is out there in this weather at the moment and that she feels the need to do this in storm conditions because of the failure of the Government to vindicate the legal rights and entitlements of children with additional needs and disabilities. It is absolutely…
The residential zoned land tax, RZLT, was introduced with the intention of trying to deal with land hoarding and to activate land that could be used to build housing. The first liability date was 1 February this year and payments were due in by May of this year. How much revenue has been generated? How many landowners who sought exemptions from the tax? How many were granted? What percentage of the overall land cover…
Eight per cent was deemed exempt. Am I right in saying that a significantly higher proportion has been deferred?
Which means that about a quarter got referrals. That is a significant rate of deferral. Will the Tánaiste indicate the reasons for those deferrals? Will he provide any information he has on them? Obviously, the whole point of this is to activate land in order to deliver housing and deal with the scourge of land banking and speculation. As we know, both are widespread. If one quarter of those involved received deferra…
As I reflect on the figures, I can see that the main purpose is to activate land and to deal with land hoarding. If three quarters of the people involved paid the tax, that means they are not acting on it. They are willing to pay the tax. We have said from the outset that we thought 3% was too low because the appreciation in the value of land that people are sitting on is probably significantly in excess of 3% at the…
75. Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett asked the Minister for Justice, Home Affairs and Migration to provide an update on pathways to resettlement for Palestinians in Gaza who wish to come to Ireland. [68957/25]
There would be hell to pay.
I welcome the opportunity to speak on this Bill. As I understand it, it is about raising the aggregate amount that Screen Ireland can give out, presumably because we are near the limit of €500 million. The Bill proposes to raise this to €800 million.
I have long and repeatedly argued that we should increase the amount of money that we put into artistic and cultural endeavour generally, and into film. At one level, I…
6. Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett asked the Taoiseach for a report on his recent meeting with the UK Prime Minister. [65778/25]
The Taoiseach said he discussed Gaza and Palestine with Keir Starmer. A standard tactic of the Israeli state has been to say that anybody who criticises Israel for genocide, apartheid, ethnic cleansing or the persecution of Palestinians, is somehow antisemitic. Keir Starmer, of course, has a record of going along with that nonsense and attacking people like Jeremy Corbyn, who is one of the most long-standing anti-rac…