Aidan Farrelly

I thank the Minister for that update. I hear sincerity in her response and I give her my assurance that, from a Social Democrats perspective, whatever we can do to support the Government in trying to seek that legislative change in this instance, I think it would be really important. If we are going to do it, why not do it right in this instance in respect of 12-year-olds and 13-years-olds who exp…

On a point of clarification, the final few words of this definition are "for reasons which are not beyond the applicant's control". Could the Minister outline what those reasons might be, who will determine what those reasons are and if there is a threshold given that is part of the definition?

Notwithstanding the merits of this amendment, we should be clear first that we should not be legislating for the detention of children who have done nothing wrong. That should never be a part of legislation and certainly not legislation that has been described in this House today as rushed in nature. It has not been thought through. There will be amendments forthcoming on other Stages. We have no…

I thank the Minister for his response. Today we are misjudging in an overwhelming fashion the vulnerability associated with children and young people who are experiencing this process. In doing so, I have lost count of the number of bodies with acronyms that have come out and said that it is never in a child's best interests to be detained. Notwithstanding the fact that the Minister has included p…

I wish to pick up on what the Minister said that judges or Tusla will quite often make that determination. I struggle to think of an example where they would make such a determination in a child's best interests - to detain them simply for existing. There are no behavioural issues, crimes being committed or laws being broken. There is no rationale for that decision. It is quite disingenuous to say…

With regard to amendment No. 20, I am fully supportive of amendment No. 10. We will take another run at it in a definition in terms of Article 14.1 of the Eurodac regulation. My concern equally with this legislation, and it speaks again to the somewhat rushed nature of it, is that it could even be at odds with domestic legislation with regard to Children First and young children and young people's…

I thank the Minister for coming in. With regard to amendment No. 10 and equally the one in my name, amendment No. 20, I want to highlight a couple of aspects of amendment No. 14 that went into detail on this matter. It has since been ruled out of order. It is essentially just an extension-----

-----of what amendment No. 20 was. It is the same amendment essentially without the detail. The Minister can see that. Long before I ever considered or entertained a career in politics or had an opportunity to do so, I was a youth worker in Kildare. I worked with children and young people who were living in direct provision centres. I would love to be here appealing for legislation to enshrine mea…

I have tried to listen attentively to this. This has been a really interesting conversation over the last hour or so. I have mixed emotions on it, I have mixed views on it and I do not really know where I stand on it yet. Ultimately, proposed centres were never set on fire because of a lack of GP services, a lack of school places in a community or because the traffic congestion was too bad, and th…

The ways by which successive Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil governments have handled flooding over the past ten years is an example of gross incompetence. In March 2025, I put a parliamentary question to the Minister for housing - it is a shame he has left the Chamber; he has abandoned ship on this issue - asking about the national flood forecasting and warning service. I asked, in particular, why this…

On Monday, nurses began a work-to-rule in Naas General Hospital over what they say are unacceptable and unsafe staffing deficits. These include a failure to comply with the agreed safe staffing frameworks, a failure to increase staffing to meet a 25% increase in attendance at accident and emergency and maternity leave posts not being filled. Will the Taoiseach and the Minister for Health reach out…

Taoiseach, you know full well comments are through the Chair. We will move on to Deputy Bacik.

Deputy Hearne will have an opportunity to come back in.

We will not have a back-and-forth, Minister. If the Deputies let the Minister finish, they will have the opportunity to come back in. The Minister should direct his comments through the Chair.

It is not a back-and-forth.

Under Standing Order 35(3), I wish to amend to Thursday's business to include statements on the failed Government election promise regarding €200 per month for childcare. We were told by Deputy Simon Harris that we would see a roadmap within 100 days. The action plan produced before Christmas was really useful in some ways but completely ignored this €200 per month plan. We have announcements with…

I am thankful for the opportunity to speak on the Bill before us today. As I start, I acknowledge that we all speak on important issues like this from a place of bias. Personal experience, our values and our world views all incorporate much of what we say on these issues. I spent a great deal of time as a youth worker working in direct provision settings with children and young people. While I spe…

The Bill has not put any children's rights safeguarding measures in place whatsoever. It does not speak about children first or rights. It speaks of detention in the same breath as talking about the best interests of the child. The Bill legislates for the detention of children. Section 24 specifically relates to the detention of children in the screening procedure. Section 24(10) states that if a…

I thank the Minister for his statement in response to our motion this morning. I worked in disability services as a social care worker for many years. We have heard many voices, specifically of those with disabilities, come through this morning. I would like to share a common trend among family members of people with disabilities who often shared a consistent experience of having to navigate the m…

Before discussing the merits of the Bill, I take this opportunity, the first since her announcement last week, to applaud the Minister and her officials for embarking on what appears to be quite an exciting venture in regard to a public model of childcare. I reiterate the opportunity they have in respect of the very effective work the joint Oireachtas committee, of which I am a member, is doing. I…

Fintan O'Toole wrote a piece in the Irish Times this week about why Ireland is, in his opinion, governed so badly. One of the points he raised was that elected representatives of all parties and none spend so much time making representations to various services and bodies on behalf of constituents when our priority should be policy-making and developing legislation, whether nationally, regionally …

The potential for Maynooth education campus is being greatly limited by a lack of investment. On site we have three phenomenal schools, Gaelscoil Ruairí, Maynooth Community College and Maynooth Post Primary School. Maynooth is one of the very few towns in Ireland where a student could attend primary, post-primary and third level education entirely as Gaeilge. According to my friend, Councillor Pet…

I thank the Minister of State for being here. I appreciate him and the other Ministers of State present giving of their time this evening. The Minister of State will be well aware of the outrage that met the Minister's announcement regarding the decision to defer the delivery of DART+ South West, a project costed at €1 billion that was set to increase the capacity on rail services running from Ha…

I was preparing myself to get back up to criticise the Minister of State for giving me a blank reply but, in fact, what he has done is given me a very detailed reply and I thank him for it. There is a lot that I can take back with me to constituents and to my colleagues, Councillors Peter Melrose and Nuala Killeen, who have been working tirelessly on this for many years. I had not seen confirmatio…

I have been keeping an eye on the statements. Many of the issues have been raised and I do not want to go over them, so I will give these two minutes over to young people's opinions on AI for the Minister of State, Deputy Richmond's, interest. The National Youth Council has been leading a programme where it has had youth juries on AI, specifically on themes such as education, the environment, jobs…