Dáil contributions January to June 2026
- Feb 5
- 10 min read
This is the location for all my Dáil contributions for this half-year period, mainly in video with some text. As you can see I am a bit behind in uploading these but will try and catch up and also to have short cut links put in shortly. As of now I do not have a resources to put up contributions in my two Committees, EU Affairs and Enterprise, Tourism and Economic Development; these are searchable on the Oireachtas website.
Seanad Reform - 5th February 2026 (thanks to 5th Year Politics and Society students of St Joseph's College)
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FEBRUARY 2026 ABOVE (several videos to come so far)
JANUARY 2026 BELOW
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Child Care (Amendment) Bill 2025 - 29th January - uploading shortly
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International Protection Bill - 28th January - uploading shortly
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Statements on Infrastructure Plan - 28th January - uploading shortly
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Emergency Winter Payment for Disabled People - 28th January 2026 - uploading shortly
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Emergency Mental Health Services - 27th January - uploading shortly
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Leader's Questions 27th January 2026 - Need for investigation into McGinley Children Inquest input from HSE so as to learn lessons and help prevent further deaths in the future
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Questions on Policy or Legislation - EV car rentals at airports and expanding use of Ireland West Airport to minimise congestion heading west on M50 and N4 - 22nd January 2026
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Leader's Questions - Iranian executions - 22nd January 2026
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Statements on Water - 21st January
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Statements on International Developments - 21st January (text below)
I welcome the opportunity to speak on international events, however brief my time. The Government has quite a bit of input from the European Union perspective. We have President Donald Trump addressing the World Economic Forum. He said he is not going to use military force today, but he is putting pressure. As the Tánaiste said, we have some aces up our sleeves as well. The Government are dealing with a narcissist and a big baby supported by a vice president who is worthy of less admiration because he lambasted the current US President and then when he got into office, he acted like a coward. The current administration will hopefully be out of office in a while, but we have to keep our links with our friends in the US because there is sanity in that country among the vast majority of the population but we have to get through these troubled times in the meantime. All we can do is speak softly and act with one united European Union voice. Unfortunately, many times we do not have that united voice, but I urge the Minister of State, the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste to use whatever influence they have, not just in relation to the Greenland issue but the ongoing issues in Israel and Gaza, as well as Iran, something I will return to during Leaders' Questions tomorrow.
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Commuter Delays (in Flexible Work debate) - 21st January 2026 (text below)
I live in the wonderful constituency of Dublin Mid-West, which has some fantastic people, but it is also the congestion capital of Ireland. That goes back to when Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, sometimes with dodgy backhanders, were rezoning land on greenfield sites left, right and centre. They built houses everywhere with no facilities and infrastructure. Then, when we had a chance with strategic development zones like Clonburris, Sinn Féin, People Before Profit, the Labour Party and the Social Democrats accused me and others in Lucan, where we were trying to put in playing pitches, of being snobs and trying to move houses to Clondalkin instead when we were trying to move houses to Kishoge train station so people could walk down and get a train. We tried to put in measures that would open the train station before any houses were built. That was not passed, and the board did not uphold our appeal. As a result, the train station in Kishoge had to be totally revamped at a cost of €4 million. The car park that was at Kishoge train station is now gone for housing development, so they had to narrow a lane and put the car parking spaces alongside for the National Transport Authority, NTA, to permit it, and that has led to additional congestion.
As someone with a green background, I know that the more roads we build, the more that cars are going to fill them. We are always going to have a congestion equilibrium but if we put the investment into public transport, we are going to have a lower equilibrium. We are still going to have people driving. If the buses are flowing freely and the traffic gets easier, people are going to start driving again - that is human nature. Now, we have the Government asking South Dublin County Council to rezone more and more land all around the county yet Dart+ South West has been put on the long finger. BusConnects is a shambles. I have said before that the NTA is not accountable to anybody. The train service in terms of extra carriages is not being provided, but the Government is asking people to move into places where it cannot guarantee they can get to work. That is why we need flexibility in terms of working hours. It is so people can bring their kids to school or try to find a crèche, if they are lucky enough to bring their kids to a crèche as well. We need more investment, and we need more flexibility.
We also need a change in industrial policy. I mentioned before that in one estate in my constituency, 90% of the people who are paying top dollar for those houses are not from Ireland. They are from abroad. They are working and paying taxes and contributing here. The issue is, though, that they have not grown up in the area. People who have grandparents who could help mind their kids are being priced out of the market. Meanwhile, software companies are saying they want to go to Dublin. There are rural areas that could do with kids in schools and with the added investment and the industrial policy has not been firm enough to say that if people want to set up their software company, they can set it up with the broadband hubs in rural areas. Keep the population and keep the post offices and banks open.
The entire spatial strategy in this country is for the birds. We need a new town in the midlands that is designed properly. We need to redesign city living and build right up in Dublin city centre in order that people can walk around and go to the shops. We need to bring in all the public sector workers, including gardaí, by giving them incentives to live and work in the city centre. We must stop building out in the suburbs unless we can guarantee the infrastructure is there. In fact, the infrastructure situation is getting worse. In Adamstown, Clonburris and other areas like them, residents are now being given restricted parking spaces. They are told there are 0.75 spaces per unit because this is an area with active travel initiatives, a public transport hub, etc., except it is not. The 15-minute cities will be 50-minute ghettos in 20 years' time because people will not be able to get out of the place if they have a car and they might not be able to have a car because there is nowhere to park it. Three lads renting a house, say, and trying to get from A to B across the city cannot get on a train in the first place and have nowhere to park a vehicle. We need to rethink the whole thing and think a little more cleverly.
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Sale of Nitrous Oxide and Related Products Bill - Tuesday 20th January (text below)
I support fully this Bill by my Sinn Féin constituency colleague, Deputy Mark Ward. In terms of its efforts to restrict the sale, possession and supply of nitrous oxide products, it has added to the whole debate. It should absolutely be lauded. In that context, while I take on board what the Minister, Deputy O'Callaghan, said about EU legislation and having to give notice and having to look at the legislation because it was seen only in the past while, we know that Second Stage Bills coming from Opposition parties cannot proceed to Committee and Report Stages unless the Government facilitates that in any event. There is a lot of time, even up to nine months, that could have been used to prepare the Bill for the next Stage and have that proper debate, so I do not see the excuse as being particularly valid. I do take on board what the Minister said about the existing legislation that makes it an offence to sell nitrous oxide if it is for unpermitted use as a drug product. The question I ask there is that if that is the case, how come that legislation has not been enforced to the extent we would like it to be enforced over the past ten years? That is a question that has not been answered. If this legislation, as proposed, makes it a little heavier and puts greater onus on the supply chain, it can only be a good thing.
There is the question, as others have mentioned, if this were to go through tomorrow, no matter what way it were to be amended, as to whether the Garda has the resources to follow up. Will the inspection authority have the resources to follow it up and prosecute where required? These are questions that have not been answered.
There is a wider issue as well, as Deputy Gannon and others have referred to. I go back to one of the comments made by one of the Sinn Féin contributors, who quoted Ciara Murphy, project leader at the Finglas youth service, who highlighted on "Prime Time" how the price of alcohol is actually driving the use of nitrous oxide. If anything, that should be seen as a slight positive in the sense that alcohol still causes a significantly higher number of deaths among young people than nitrous oxide. Alcohol is one of the biggest risk factors for death and disability in 15-to-24-year-olds in Ireland, and one in four deaths of young men aged 15 to 34 is directly related to alcohol. With 50,000 children starting to drink in Ireland every year, anything we can do legislatively through the pricing mechanism - the minimum price, etc. - is a good thing. Almost 50% of young driver fatalities - I am going back now because I do not have the up-to-date legislation - from 2013 to 2017 had toxicology for alcohol. More recently, we have toxicology for drugs as well.
Nitrous oxide usage is a growing public health concern. I and my team, when we go around, are picking canisters up left, right and centre. We have been told by the local authority that you can put them into domestic bins. Where they go after the domestic bins, however, is definitely another question because they can cause safety hazards for workers sifting through that rubbish, so it is better to bring them to recycling centres. I mentioned the other day, in relation to nitrous oxide but during debate on the vaping legislation, that there is a different angle in terms of the storage, supply and monitoring from a safety and environmental perspective in relation to nitrous oxide canisters. Tonight is not the time to digress too much in that regard but we have all seen them all over the place causing a blight on our landscape, so it is not just the numerous health issues, for young people in particular, but also the environmental damage. The environmental aspect needs to be brought back.
I will talk for a second about the issue of the addiction in general. I note that this legislation deliberately, and rightly, seeks not to criminalise young people for possession of nitrous oxide canisters but no more than people caught with bottles of vodka or bottles of gin, there seems to be no mechanism for intervening from a public health perspective. When we had some of the debates at local authority and national levels about decriminalisation of cannabis, for example, the Portuguese model was often cited where it was seen as a health issue. In the context of this, I am not sure about the technical nature of this proposed legislation or if it can be worked in here but if people are caught in possession of nitrous oxide canisters, or indeed bottles of alcohol, it should be recorded, not as a criminal offence but to ensure that there is some form of intervention, whether it is through youth services, an education programme or some sort of mental health service, depending on whether the community gardaí are involved and know the individuals concerned. Too often, addiction spreads out. It covers a multitude. This just happens to be the addiction of choice for a lot of people in the current age. If we clamp down on this, they will find something else. There was an incident recently involving a poor young lad in relation to aerosol usage, for example. No matter what, people will try to find ways to get that buzz. It is the why people want to get that buzz as well as the how people want to get that buzz that needs to be tackled in the wider context. I am not trying to say, "There are other issues we need to look at; therefore, this Bill is not important." This Bill is extremely important. It needs to be brought to Committee Stage as soon as possible so we can have a proper debate on it. I thank my constituency colleague, Deputy Ward, along with other colleagues and the service who worked with him on this, for bringing it forward because it is very useful legislation. That has to be recognised.
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Health (Amendment) (Home Support Providers) Bill 2025 - Tuesday 20th January
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Statements on Artificial Intelligence - Thursday 15th January 2026
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Questions on Policy 15th January - Single Use Cups (text below)
Deputy Paul Gogarty
In Ireland, we use over 200 million single-use tea and coffee cups a year. That equates to at least 20,000 cups an hour. That is a staggering figure. Coffee cups are, according to Irish Business Against Litter, among the top five most littered items in the country according to a recent survey. Most of these cups cannot go into recycling bins because of the polyethylene lining used in the paper, making them non-recyclable. The Government had proposed a 20 cent levy as well as other measures. As the Minister knows, the litter issue is one thing, but the long-term environmental damage is another. When is the Government going to use or amend the Circular Economy and Miscellaneous Provisions Act 2022 to bring in a refundable deposit? Along with other products that I have referred to before such as the vaping material and nitrous oxide canisters, they are littering our country and we need to have something with a behavioural impact as well as increased fines.
Minister Peter Burke
The Government has made significant progress in this area, particularly with the deposit return scheme, which we can see has had a very significant impact in our country. I will raise the Deputy's specific issue with the Minister in relation to the circular economy. A lot of retailers are taking action themselves. That is one area where customers can choose a more sustainable model. I will raise the Deputy's concerns with the Minister.
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Gas Safety (Amendment Bill) 2025 14th January 2026 - Including issues of general gas safety
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Mercusor Trade Deal 13th January 2026
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Public Health (Single Use Vapes) Bill 2025 - 13th January 2026
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