Results 1-20 of 285 for likes to work speaker:Mary Lou McDonald

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Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (29 May 2024)

Mary Lou McDonald: ...they or their children have gone without or cut back on the basics over the past six months. This includes food, clothes, medicine, electricity and heat. Some 47% of parents say they are forced to cut back on social activities for their kids. The vast majority of those surveyed say they worry about not being able to provide the daily essentials for their children. These are the stories...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (28 May 2024)

Mary Lou McDonald: At a Fine Gael press conference, the Taoiseach told reporters that as he canvasses around the country, he has heard too many examples of the bulk-buying of homes by wealthy property funds, but, of course, he already knew this was happening and that it is not happening by accident. Property funds bulk-buying family homes is a direct result of Government policy. Over a decade ago, Fine Gael...

Acknowledgement and Apology to the Families and to the Victims of the Stardust Tragedy: Statements (23 Apr 2024)

Mary Lou McDonald: For young Dubliners in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Stardust Ballroom was the place to be. It was a huge venue that hosted cabarets, concerts and discos at weekends. Such was its popularity that you could get a bus from the quays in the city centre directly to the nightclub in Artane. With three bars, a stage and a large dance floor, it was a wonderland for night-time revellers. At...

Ceapachán an Taoisigh agus Ainmniú Chomhaltaí an Rialtais - Appointment of Taoiseach and Nomination of Members of Government (9 Apr 2024)

Mary Lou McDonald: Today, the name on the Taoiseach's office door changed for the third time in four years, but nothing has really changed for workers and families. How could it? This Government was formed to block the change that people voted for in the most recent general election. Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Green Party clubbed together to ensure that the hopeful votes of so many for something new...

Taoiseach a Ainmniú - Nomination of Taoiseach (9 Apr 2024)

Mary Lou McDonald: Fine Gael has the backs of the rack-renting corporate landlords, the financial speculators and those at the top. That is the Fine Gael way and today it proposes more of the same. Today is proof positive that we need change like never before. We need a new direction. We need a new Government that will put workers, families and communities first, a new Government with the determination to...

An tOrd Gnó - Order of Business (20 Feb 2024)

Mary Lou McDonald: I welcome the announcement by the Cabinet this morning of a significant commitment to jointly fund crucial all-Ireland infrastructure projects in partnership with the Northern Executive. This is an example of what we can achieve working together for the benefit of all people on the island. The delivery of projects like Casement Park, the Narrow Water bridge and the Battle of the Boyne site...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (20 Feb 2024)

Mary Lou McDonald: The ongoing controversy at RTÉ serves no one well, least of all the members of the public who rely on it as a source of factual and accurate news and current affairs. It is damaging to people's trust in public broadcasting that the fallout from what the Taoiseach has described as a culture of arrogance and entitlement at RTÉ continues to play out. This issue is not going away...

Confidence in the Minister for Justice: Motion (5 Dec 2023)

Mary Lou McDonald: ..., drug-taking, on-street nuisance drinking, and constant and threatening antisocial behaviour. It is in this abnormal atmosphere that people go about their daily lives. People make their journeys to work and parents do the school drop-offs with the ever-present hum of menace, risk and an overriding lack of personal safety. Over the course of Fine Gael’s 12 years in government,...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (8 Nov 2023)

Mary Lou McDonald: Across the State, tens of thousands of homeowners and tenants are living in homes built during the Celtic tiger era that have serious building defects. These homes typically have no fire stopping measures, causing significant fire safety concerns. At the most extreme, they have no adequate fire escapes. Many properties have water ingress, that is, moisture seeping into the structure of the...

Financial Resolutions 2023 - Financial Resolution No. 4: General (Resumed) (11 Oct 2023)

Mary Lou McDonald: It will be felt by the hundreds of thousands of people who are waiting to get a hospital appointment, by the children living in agony as they wait and wait for life-changing spinal procedures and by the older people and sick people being left on trolleys in overcrowded and unsafe hospital corridors. One would not think that we have a recruitment and retention crisis across the health...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (20 Jun 2023)

Mary Lou McDonald: ...’s hospital. It is an essential piece of infrastructure. Families’ hopes are on this hospital opening its doors and providing the state-of-the-art healthcare their children need. We all want to see this hospital opened without further delay. The project has been mismanaged from the start. It is already cited as the most expensive hospital in the world. Its opening has...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (13 Jun 2023)

Mary Lou McDonald: As I speak, retained firefighters are on strike. Rolling work stoppages will see half the fire stations in the service shut. Tis will be followed by all-out strike action next week outside of emergency calls. The strike is unprecedented and certainly has not been undertaken lightly. Retained firefighters have been pushed to the very brink by the Government and feel they have been left...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (31 May 2023)

Mary Lou McDonald: ...that nature as tragic. It is certainly evident on witnessing the absolute bewilderment of a survivor of this violence. In this regard, I am thinking of Kathleen Chada. When I first met her, she told the story of losing her two boys. How to make sense of that is beyond any of us, I am sure. What families tell us is that they experience not just the trauma of a tragedy but also that of...

Ceisteanna - Questions: Departmental Offices (30 May 2023)

Mary Lou McDonald: Despite Ireland’s progress in digital skills, the OECD skills strategy assessment found that many do not have the necessary skills to progress in a modern economy and that participation in lifelong learning falls well behind other EU countries. Digital and green transitions will transform the type of skills required in society and society. SOLAS has advised that higher levels of...

Anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement: Statements (26 Apr 2023)

Mary Lou McDonald: In fact, it was the Taoiseach's speech I was about to read; it was not actually the Tánaiste's speech. Some 25 years ago, the signing of the Good Friday Agreement transcended the past and changed the future for us all. After more than three decades of a terrible conflict, the agreement delivered a peace that had looked impossible. It ushered in a new era of hope, opportunity and...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (19 Apr 2023)

Mary Lou McDonald: Fine Gael has been in power now for more than 12 years. In this time we have seen Government make decision after decision that have escalated the housing crisis into a full-blown emergency. Rents are out of control and a whole generation is locked out of home ownership. Homelessness has reached a record level that we could only have imagined. This is the dire situation seven years after...

Confidence in Government: Motion (29 Mar 2023)

Mary Lou McDonald: Fine Gael has now been in power for 12 years. For seven of those years, it has been joined at the hip to Fianna Fáil. On its watch we have gone from housing crisis to housing emergency to housing disaster. The policies Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil have implemented together over the course of the last decade have brought us to where we are today. They have followed an agenda that...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (21 Mar 2023)

Mary Lou McDonald: When Deputy Varadkar re-entered the office of Taoiseach in December he said housing would be his priority. Now his first major housing decision is to put thousands of renters at risk of losing their homes. With his eyes wide open, the Taoiseach intends to lift the eviction ban knowing that it will spell disaster for so many. It will mean people losing their homes. It will mean some...

Ceisteanna - Questions: An Garda Síochána (8 Mar 2023)

Mary Lou McDonald: I hope we would all accept that the critical building block for a policing service for our future is actually the people working within the service, in other words, the gardaí themselves. The Taoiseach's response did not reflect the fact gardaí are resigning in increasing numbers, with nearly three times the number resigning from the force last year when compared with 2017....

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí (Atógáil) - Leaders' Questions (Resumed) (8 Mar 2023)

Mary Lou McDonald: ...a roof over your head or not; having rent that you can afford or not; having a Government that will stand up and defend renters or not; having a Government with the basic intelligence and cop-on to know that one does not create more uncertainty for renters at a time when supply is that tight and rents are so high and people are to the pin of their collar. People are afraid now. There are...