Mr. Fiachra ? Luain:

I have not had the opportunity to speak with the Taoiseach, so I will let him speak for himself on that. I will say I interacted more with the people in his Department and my concern was around the real public health concerns, the fact the reasons did not reflect reality and that was not taken into consideration. When we proved that the Minister was deceived, we were told there would be consequences but we did not see any consequences. We were kind of told that we should not go there and prove this to be the case. On 21 June 2021 many people came into the country for the purposes of studying the English language. They were not the existing cohort. People, who had not had the chance to be vaccinated, were mandated to share classrooms with new arrivals coming from different countries. When we tried to prove this, and when we did prove this, we were not invited to further meetings after proving that the Minister had been deceived. We were concerned about that.

There have been a number of agency frauds. There is no oversight. There is no discussion about it. What we have seen in the sector is that the English language has been weaponised as it was done to the native Irish.

This State is showing its true character in assuming that, somehow, we all use the English language. If you do not have a firm grasp of the English language, then you have fewer rights in this country. It was true in the 1800s and it is true again in 2024.