I thank the Deputy. I regret that the local residents are experiencing such challenges with antisocial behaviour. As the Deputy said, that is worsening and exacerbated by the darker evenings. I will ask the Minister, Deputy O'Callaghan, to respond. Similar issues were raised by others earlier in the engagement. I will ask the Minister to reflect on the particular need for growing commuter areas to see the benefits of…
TDs / Jack Chambers
Jack Chambers
Minister for Public Expenditure, Infrastructure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation
Portrait: © Houses of the Oireachtas (Oireachtas (Open Data) PSI Licence) · source file
0
questions asked
Members of the Government answer questions rather than ask them
152,394
words spoken in the chamber
146,472 as a minister, 5,922 as a TD
358
votes recorded
Each Yes, No or Abstained in a recorded vote
From the Dáil chamber only: committee meetings are not in this archive.
Members of the Government answer parliamentary questions rather than ask them, so this page lists none of theirs.
Month by month
Low months are usually recesses, when the Dáil does not sit. The archive runs to 22 October 2026.
Contributions to debates 720 in all
Dec 2024Oct 2026
Show as a table
| Month | Contributions |
|---|---|
| December 2024 | 0 |
| January 2025 | 0 |
| February 2025 | 57 |
| March 2025 | 2 |
| April 2025 | 36 |
| May 2025 | 52 |
| June 2025 | 2 |
| July 2025 | 90 |
| August 2025 | 0 |
| September 2025 | 0 |
| October 2025 | 11 |
| November 2025 | 109 |
| December 2025 | 69 |
| January 2026 | 1 |
| February 2026 | 44 |
| March 2026 | 0 |
| April 2026 | 37 |
| May 2026 | 44 |
| June 2026 | 1 |
| July 2026 | 60 |
| August 2026 | 0 |
| September 2026 | 80 |
| October 2026 | 25 |
Debates they spoke in most
Plus 658 contributions in the regular slots, such as Leaders' Questions and Priority Questions. Speech from the chair is not counted.
Party, constituency and offices
- constituency Dublin West 29 November 2024 to now
- party Fianna Fáil 29 November 2024 to now
- office Minister for Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform 23 January 2025 to 4 June 2025
- office Minister for Public Expenditure, Infrastructure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation 5 June 2025 to now
I thank the Deputy for raising this matter. I know he has raised it a number of times with the Taoiseach and others. In terms of education funding more generally, there was a €5 billion allocation in the previous five-year cycle in the national development plan. We prioritised educational resourcing of a 50% increase in the 2025-2030 plan to €7.5 billion. The Minister for education has published the sectoral investme…
I thank the Deputy for raising this important issue. I regret that some students in Laois have had that direct experience. As a Government, we have all supported a significant expansion in this over the last number of years. There were around 120,000 children using the service in 2019. That figure is now 181,000 in 2026. Matched with that has been an unprecedented level of funding to support the service. There was €2…
I thank the Deputy. I acknowledge the particular instances of the children she has raised. We have sought to prioritise special education funding in the past successive series of years. In 2026, there is a €3 billion allocation for special education - the highest annual provision in the history of the State and a 58% increase since 2020.
That has allowed for a significant expansion of special classes, supporting inc…
I thank Deputy Nolan for raising this important issue. Like her, I met with the IFA last week at the Ploughing Championship and I acknowledged its concerns based on the current draft proposals for the multi-annual financial framework in Europe on which negotiation is continuing. The Taoiseach, the Tánaiste as Minister of Finance, and the Minister of State, Deputy Byrne, are all co-ordinating Ireland's position on tha…
This Government wants to give hope to young people and people who want to get an affordable home. It is the single biggest focus of the Government in everything we do. It is about building hope around delivering more home ownership, delivering an increased supply of social homes and ensuring that we bring affordability to all of our interventions. That is why all of the reforms that we have introduced are about tryin…
-----again promoting local objectives and NIMBYism over the greater good. That is Sinn Féin's policy, namely, opposition on the ground and attacking Government at a national level. It is just not good enough. It is not serious politics.
We need supply-side interventions which drive tens of thousands more homes and completions across the board and matching the record level of support in terms of social housing delive…
Sinn Féin policy is a complete and utter failure. It is a dishonest policy position when it comes to improving housing supply. It is populist waffle. In Dublin Central, Sinn Féin opposes housing project after housing project, day in, day out, which young people could be living in.
That is the issue.
We must have an honest conversation about how we improve supply across the housing system. For the Deputy to oppose housing every day and every week in her own constituency and then to lecture the Government on not doing enough shows a complete contradiction in Sinn Féin policy.
We see populism and NIMBYism on the ground and then waffle and rhetoric in here. You need to get real, Deputy McDonald, in terms of honesty around housing policy. We need to provide supply-side alternatives.
Supply, by way of the affordability interventions the Government is making, will improve affordability, which is something you continually oppose.
The Deputy's party has a complete contradiction in housing policy and it gives no hope for young people.
We will have fewer homes being built if we follow its model.
The Minister for justice has introduced an 8% increase in criminal legal aid fees payable to solicitors in the Circuit Court and higher courts from 1 July 2026. This represents total restoration of the criminal legal aid fees under the financial emergency measures in the public interest, FEMPI. As the Deputy described, the Minister has also introduced a fee of €520 for District Court criminal cases under the criminal…
The Deputy set out the need for reform but did not say anything about how she would reform it.
The Department of justice advanced a review. The Minister, Deputy O'Callaghan, has been informed by it and has taken the respective reforms and progressed them. There is a distinction between how the criminal legal aid system has been working with comparative cases and those who are not on criminal legal aid of five days to three. He is providing for a weighted payment of five and providing the FEMPI restoration acco…
I thank Deputy Bacik. I reject the Deputy's characterisation, which I think is unfair. If she thinks of the scale of public service growth in this country in the past five-to-six years, which this Government took positive action on, we have an additional 70,000 public servants working across health, education, disability services and many other areas of public service, which matter to all of us across our constituenc…
I am not going to negotiate a pay agreement with the Deputy in here. That is not going to work for anybody. What I would say is that our record stands clear. Since 2019, a teacher and a nurse starting their careers in the public service will have seen an increase of 26.9% and 31%, respectively. A clerical officer in the Civil Service will have seen an increase of 32.8%. That reflects a Government that cares about pub…
I will repeat what I have said. We have been clear and consistent in our position. We are willing and ready to engage with staff representatives with a view to reaching a new public service agreement. We want to engage now. We want to see a fair, equitable and sustainable agreement to ensure we reward workers across the public service, many of whom have been recruited over the last five years. The Government consider…
We are seeing strong levels of recruitment right across the public service this year, which is a very different story from what the Deputy has described.
We had the conclusion of the pay agreement with a 1% increase over the last number of weeks. Usually, when there is a conclusion, we engage in exploratory discussions. Typically, in the past, that happened in the December-January period. Obviously, the pay agreement that concluded finished at the end of June. We want to engage in good faith and in a constructive way to ensure we have an agreement we can afford in bud…
I thank the Deputy. I share her significant concerns around e-scooters. We have seen the shocking evidence coming from Temple Street and the traumatic brain injuries that have resulted from their use. I have been informed by the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, that a review of regulations is under way, particularly around helmets and high-visibility clothing, with a view to addressing the concerns that have been documented…
We have to be a bit more balanced than what the Deputy has reflected in the debate on data centres.
They are a central part of Ireland's economic and digital future and a key part of our value proposition for foreign direct investment and associated employment. In 2024, an estimated €104 billion in gross value added was enabled by data centre-dependent sectors. Approximately 170,000 people work in Ireland's ICT sector and 19,000 jobs are directly in data centre operations. The Government is committed to working wit…
What would the Deputy say to the 19,000 jobs that are reliant on them? Where would she find them?