Timmy Dooley (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

As the Acting Leader will appreciate, there is great concern across the world about the heightened tensions emerging in the Middle East. Iran’s reaction to provocation by Israel in recent days has brought the situation to a very serious level. It would be a welcome opportunity to invite the Tánaiste to the House at his convenience to discuss with us what he has been doing in recent weeks, not just at national and Government level but on the wider European stage.

It would also be timely to extend that debate to include a discussion on the war in Ukraine. It has been off the international media agenda for some time and the situation there is deteriorating. Members will have heard the request from various levels within the Ukrainian Government for air defence system support. They talk about needing seven or eight batteries of Patriot defence missiles to protect their cities and we understand there are some 70 or 80 of such batteries of air defence systems across Europe. Much public discourse has been about the failure of the US Administration to provide that $60 billion support but, in truth, it is within the capacity of the European to Union to provide air defence systems that will protect key infrastructure and key cities that are targeted by the Russians. There is a debate to be had. We have to focus a little more on what we can do at European level rather than just berating Congress for its failures to reach an agreement.

Another point many people would not necessarily be surprised at - but it would help to continue their annoyance - is what emerged in the courts yesterday around the telecommunications company Eir and the practice it has maintained internally that is clearly a strategy to discourage people from attaining their rights under domestic legislation with regard to the processing of their claims. I happen to sit on that committee and we have had a previous chief executive come before us and set out a whole plethora of reasons it had failed along the way - some of it had to do with staffing and some of it had to do with outsourcing that had not worked because it went to territories outside of the European Union - and how it was going to make good to the Irish consumer. However, we now discover it had prepared manuals internally effectively directing staff with the threat of sanction if they did not ignore Irish consumer law. It seems bizarre that something like that would find its way into a manual. We have heard of managers in certain organisations wanting to achieve certain targets going rogue. However, where the institution itself goes to the point of producing manuals against following domestic legislation, there is a serious problem. It is something that could be debated more broadly here with the Minister in due course.