Results 6,701-6,720 of 7,975 for speaker:Joe Higgins
- Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Bill 2006: Second Stage. (2 Jun 2006)
Joe Higgins: I do not agree with this. I agree with the Minister. It is ridiculous.
- Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Bill 2006: Second Stage. (2 Jun 2006)
Joe Higgins: The Minister should decriminalise 16-year olds.
- Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Bill 2006: Committee and Remaining Stages. (2 Jun 2006)
Joe Higgins: As only 15 minutes remain and most of the amendments will not be reached for the inexplicable reason that only 30 minutes has been given to Committee Stage of this serious Bill, the Minister should now indicate his attitude to all 28 amendments so we know where we are going when 2.30 p.m. arrives and the vote must be held. I agree with the Green Party that the interests of the child should be...
- Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Bill 2006: Committee and Remaining Stages. (2 Jun 2006)
Joe Higgins: I will vote against this Bill at 2.30 p.m. if the Minister keeps that provision in it. In two or three years a 16 year old who has participated in a relationship in good faith and had intimate relations will find himself in the dock with a sentence of five years being sought.
- Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Bill 2006: Committee and Remaining Stages. (2 Jun 2006)
Joe Higgins: What will the majority of people say to that? They will say the whole thing is ridiculous. I spoke to many parents yesterday at a number of functions around my constituency and I asked what they thought of 16 year olds being criminalised in this way and, to a person, they disagreed with it.
- Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Bill 2006: Second Stage. (2 Jun 2006)
Joe Higgins: The Minister can do this another way.
- Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Bill 2006: Second Stage. (2 Jun 2006)
Joe Higgins: The Minister should not criminalise teenage boys either.
- Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Bill 2006: Second Stage. (2 Jun 2006)
Joe Higgins: That is nonsense.
- Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Bill 2006: Second Stage. (2 Jun 2006)
Joe Higgins: Can we take 16 year old children out of the equation?
- Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Bill 2006: Second Stage. (2 Jun 2006)
Joe Higgins: Decent people, young and old, throughout the State are outraged that a male of more than 40 years who grotesquely abused a child of 12 years should walk free from jail. Anybody guilty of abusing a child should be in jail for a very long time. However, in hammering down that these abusers of children should go to jail for a very long time, as is correct, the Government should not include in...
- Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Bill 2006: Second Stage. (2 Jun 2006)
Joe Higgins: What about teenage fathers?
- Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Bill 2006: Second Stage. (2 Jun 2006)
Joe Higgins: They will be more likely to conceal themselves as a result of this Bill. It will drive them underground.
- Order of Business (Resumed). (1 Jun 2006)
Joe Higgins: Apart from the utter incompetence, probably acknowledged everywhere, of the Government in not being prepared for the outcome of the Supreme Court judgment, the matter outraging decent people around the country is the sight of adult men who abused a child walking free or about to walk free from prison. The Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Deputy McDowell, in the Seanad yesterday,...
- Order of Business (Resumed). (1 Jun 2006)
Joe Higgins: Presumably that was with their peers, for example, if they were aged 16, with other 16 year olds. Under what I understand the Government will come forward with today, it is providing for them to be sent to jail for five years and if a 16 year old girl gets pregnant by another 16 year old, which should not happen, she is liable to be sent to jail for five years. The Government cannot simply...
- Leaders' Questions. (31 May 2006)
Joe Higgins: I and the Independent Deputies want the Dáil to meet next week for a comprehensive discussion on these issues. The Tánaiste's Government is now a hobbling paragon of incompetence, exceeded only by its arrogance. This week it was forced to back off from bullying FÃS workers into involuntarily decentralising to the constituency of the Minister for Finance. Some time ago, when the Tánaiste...
- Leaders' Questions. (31 May 2006)
Joe Higgins: Admittedly, there was no blusher, as this Government is incapable of blushing.
- Leaders' Questions. (31 May 2006)
Joe Higgins: The Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform seems to have applied a shade of purple this morning.
- Leaders' Questions. (31 May 2006)
Joe Higgins: Inevitably, in the first glare of searching lights the whole thing disintegrates into running rivulets. They could be wet boreens around Caherciveen. The Government has put in charge of this a colleague of the Tánaiste, a Minister of State whose first thought was to show up in his constituency in Offaly thinking that he had been cast to play a bit part in a remake of the man from Marlboro....
- Leaders' Questions. (31 May 2006)
Joe Higgins: Is it any wonder that this opportunistic and cynical approach would leave communities throughout the country cheated? Is it any wonder that it would leave thousands of public sector workers about as enthusiastic for it as veteran Fine Gaelers dragooned into playing the anti-treatyites in "The Wind that Shakes the Barley"?
- Leaders' Questions. (31 May 2006)
Joe Higgins: What does the Tánaiste say to these communities this morning? What does she say about State agencies, the professional and specialist staff? What does she say to the thousands of public servants who have opted to leave but now find themselves in limbo? May we have an honest debate from the Government, for a change, on the mess which has been created?