Eoin Hayes

My question is about administration fees and charges being imposed as part of auto-enrolment. My understanding is that these fees have not been agreed or released publicly. I have some reservations more widely about whether it is still the case today that the Department and Government are sufficiently prepared when this scheme goes live, which is just a few short weeks away, as the Minister said y…

I thank the Minister. I very much hope the fees will be under 0.1% of assets under management. It would be extremely concerning if they were anywhere near that. My understanding from the Minister’s answer is that the fees have not been detailed, and this goes to the heart of the question of whether the State is adequately prepared to introduce auto-enrolment on 1 January as the Minister said today…

That goes to the heart of the question here, which is around the digital literacy of the individuals we are putting into this scheme. I am very concerned there is no plan for what we are going to guide people with in terms of the lump sum they will get at the end of the scheme. For those people in their 50s or 60s approaching retirement age who will get that lump sum, there seems to be no pathway …

I thank the Minister and his officials for creating a task force for the Fastway workers. I am conscious that we are not just talking about people who are in typical employment situations. We are talking about people who are self-employed, who are contractors and who are franchisees. According to the information I have, about 1,000 people are in that category as opposed to the 300 who were employe…

I welcome the opportunity to speak on Science Week and the importance of the sciences to our country and to humanity. I first qualified as a chemical engineer, seeking that course because of my love of the sciences and mathematics. That education gave me much understanding of our world. Interestingly, it is helping me to analyse our wastewater treatment and energy systems in my work as a TD and I …

It has been a little over a month since the Minister for Finance and Minister for public expenditure stood in this Chamber and delivered to the country this Government's budget for 2026. We heard on that day all about the choices this Government was making - which industries it wanted to give tax breaks to, which boardrooms would be popping Champagne, and which food chains would see bumper profits…

I meant a year. Sorry.

I will discuss an epidemic in this country that one in five of us experiences, which is loneliness. A report recently came out from the European Commission that said that Ireland was the loneliest country in Europe. The effects of that on young men and older men are significant and have far-reaching consequences. The former US surgeon general said that loneliness was the equivalent of smoking 15 c…

Ten years ago this country proudly affirmed marriage equality through a referendum. The LGBTQI+ community in the United States also won equal marriage rights in that same year. I have been deeply concerned by the rising anti-LGBTQI+ sentiment there and elsewhere. One couple in my constituency were married in the United States and are particularly worried that if a state or US court invalidates the…

My constituency of Dublin Bay South is unique in many respects. We are standing in it right now. It stretches over approximately 10 km² in this wonderfully south-easterly corner of our capital. About 125,000 people live here, about 20,000 of whom are under the age of 18, and there are in and around 12,000 families. There is a relatively high proportion of people with no religion or a religion that…

I hope the Minister of State will relay my thanks to the officials in the Department of education for the hard work they do in the prioritisation of capital investment in developments in south Dublin city, which she has just described. My view is that education is a silver bullet. Schools should be palaces. In past centuries, we built cathedrals. I propose that our schools should be the cathedrals…

All around the country this evening, at this very moment, there are children sitting hungry at a table in a kitchen or in a cramped hotel room of emergency accommodation. They are hungry or their parents are hungry. That is the choice for too many families. Now, as the hunger rumbles in their bellies, the heating is off and those families are cold. The tables may be bare and rickety, the curtains …

On my first day in the Dáil last year, the Taoiseach quoted the former Governor of New York Mario Cuomo, saying, “You campaign in poetry; you govern in prose.” He then went on to say, “I am not sure that there was much poetry during the recent [general election] campaign”. I saw it differently. Poetry is not always uplifting. Sometimes it recounts sorrow. It is not always magnificent; sometimes it…

I endorse everything my colleague Deputy Quaide said. My secondary school history teacher is a wonderful man named Mr. Burke. He ignited in me a passion for history and politics. In his class, I learned about the invention of much of the welfare state in Germany in the late 19th century. It is hard for a society to imagine what things were like in previous eras but one of the welfare state's great…

As a chemical engineer and a former climate technologist I am gravely concerned by the problem of accelerating energy costs and energy poverty facing our people. In my constituency, the most pervasive reports of energy poverty come from disadvantaged communities in the south inner city, Ringsend and Irishtown. There is also the renter in Sandymount who correctly pointed out to me that he is powerl…

16. Deputy Eoin Hayes asked the Taoiseach when the Cabinet committee on children and education will next meet. [48904/25]

Last week, the Taoiseach published an op-ed in the Irish Independent declaring that the time to end child poverty is now. That sentiment is very welcome but his analysis was incomplete. Yesterday, my party leader rightly pointed out that consistent child poverty has doubled in the past two years to 8.5% when the Government's target is 3%. Earlier this month, the ESRI published a report that one in…

I never said that.

I did not say that.

The Taoiseach should not put words in my mouth.

I did not say it.

I am quoting the ESRI.

The Government funds the ESRI.

The OECD brought us that information. The Department of Finance gives it to us.

I told the Taoiseach about the-----