Holly Cairns

The Taoiseach says he is listening but he has inadvertently told us very clearly that he is not. I ask again whether the Government will introduce a €400 winter payment. Investment in services is welcome and absolutely essentially but, with respect, it is not what I am asking about. For example, investment in special schools will not put food on the table, pay bills or pay people's rent. Ireland h…

A permanent costed disability payment.

That is not relevant to what I am asking.

I thank my colleague, Deputy Jennifer Whitmore, for all of her work on this issue and all of her passion on it. Ireland's dog breeding system operates without any real oversight or much compassion and it desperately needs to be addressed. Something many people are not aware of is that we are the puppy farm capital of Europe. Thousands of dogs are exported from here every year and flown all over t…

Yesterday, the High Court heard details of a deeply disturbing case of child abuse. A 13-year-old boy who abused his six-year-old sister was given a tablet at the age of five. There was no parental controls on the device and he had totally unsupervised access to the Internet. By the age of just six he was viewing pornography for hours every day. This boy ultimately uploaded child abuse images of h…

This is something governments across the world are grappling with and in many ways the horse has already bolted. Social media companies have been around for 20 years and they have never been properly regulated. To date, it has been self-regulation which has amounted to no regulation at all. Now we are playing catch up. One things is clear; the algorithms are increasingly dangerous. Violent, racis…

I am asking what the Taoiseach is doing.

Go raibh maith agat, a Cheann Comhairle. Disabled people have been failed by this Government. In its record €9.4 billion budget, developers and fast food chains were prioritised. They have been handed tax breaks that will cost the State nearly €5 billion over the next four years. To help pay for that, the income of disabled people was slashed. According to the Disability Federation of Ireland, peo…

The question is whether the Government is going to listen to them and whether it is going to act. These cuts were callous and cruel and should be reversed.

Will the Government introduce a winter payment for disabled people and-----

-----will it finally introduce a permanent cost-of-disability payment?

The Minister is saying there will be a committee to start looking at schemes. I want to highlight the fact there has been committee after committee after committee on disability, and there has been report after report after report, and they all have the same finding: there is a huge added cost to having a disability. We know that people with disabilities in Ireland are living in consistent poverty…

Yesterday's historic visit by President Zelenskyy allowed us to reaffirm our solidarity with the people of Ukraine. It was also an opportunity to mark the huge efforts of people here who stood with Ukraine. Since Russia's illegal invasion nearly four years ago, 120,000 Ukrainian refugees have been welcomed here. In every corner of the country, Ukrainian men, women and children are now valued membe…

Are there any plans for a campaign to highlight the positives of migration and what is being done to support migrants and people of colour who are now living in fear?

This Government is playing with fire and I think the Taoiseach knows it. It is choosing to frame migration in an overwhelmingly negative light.

Multiple Ministers are now saying that net migration is too high but net migration reduced by 25% last year to fewer than 60,000 people. Of the people coming here, about 50% are Irish, UK or EU citizens. The vast majority of the rest are those who are here on work permits to keep our hospitals open, build the homes we desperately need and keep our hospitality sector afloat. Claims for internationa…

What is the Taoiseach going to do to address it? The campaign he is talking about is the EU migration pact one. Is there going to be a Government campaign to create awareness about this issue?

The Government is saying that the numbers are too high.

On Monday, a man with an axe attacked a woman in Leixlip in her home before setting it on fire. The man, her former partner, was out on bail for previously assaulting her when he broke in and attacked her. She managed to escape and is now being treated for serious injuries in hospital. Yesterday morning, there was another vicious attack. A woman who answered her front door in Dublin was doused in …

What the Minister proposes to bring forward in relation to people's counselling notes is basically a new version of the status quo. It is that people's counselling notes can be used against them in court. I feel the need to very clearly break this down. We know that the court process retraumatises victims of sexual assault and rape. We know that the percentage of women who get justice for rape is …

It would still be brought into-----

I did.

But still allowing it in courts.

This is a part of that.

These are the words of a remarkably strong words of a teenager from west Cork after her rapist was jailed yesterday for six years: I could see my house just before he dragged me down the shortcut and started doing unimaginable things to me ... It made me feel so defeated - if it can happen so close to home it can happen anywhere. Aged just 17 when she was attacked as she walked a short distance …