Results 1-20 of 525 for long speaker:Alice-Mary Higgins

Seanad: Research and Innovation Bill 2024: Committee Stage (23 Apr 2024)

Alice-Mary Higgins: ...seeks to insert a definition of "researchers' representative group" into the Bill. The issue of workers' rights for those working in higher education and research is one I have been raising for a very long time. In 2018, I launched the TASC report Living with Uncertainty, in whose foreword I highlighted how insecure contracts have become prevalent in the very spaces we rely on to analyse...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action: Ireland's Climate Change Assessment Report: Discussion (23 Apr 2024)

Alice-Mary Higgins: .... I will be bringing amendments to it later today. There is a chance for us to try to get research right through our new research infrastructure. How do we get that right so that it supports long-term thinking and public thinking? I am emphasising "public" because it can be the missing piece around long-term, public research for the public good and even public-public partnerships...

Seanad: Gas (Amendment) Bill 2023: Report and Final Stages (17 Apr 2024)

Alice-Mary Higgins: ...stated it wanted cash returns. The priority was not any of the environmental targets or any of the other issues we might expect from Coillte but to get cash returns. Again, the priority was not even long-term value for money from the State but the delivery of cash in the short term. Given that is the kind of thing that has gone into ministerial letters of expectation as shareholders in...

Seanad: Gas (Amendment) Bill 2023: Report and Final Stages (17 Apr 2024)

Alice-Mary Higgins: ...shown very little regard for climate and biodiversity and have opted for the prioritisation of profit. The Minister of State is aware that value for money is quite a wide piece. It is often about the longer term and the medium term and not just the short term. Value for money is relevant in terms of the implications if we fail to meet our climate targets or social targets. These are...

Seanad: Gas (Amendment) Bill 2023: Report and Final Stages (17 Apr 2024)

Alice-Mary Higgins: ...all kinds of positive things for the environment. However, when we actually looked at the letter, we saw that it does not do so. Rather, it works against it. It works for the short term, not the long term. We have a concern, therefore, that we may have a Minister making a call in public but, in effect, being ignored by Gas Networks Ireland, and then some other Minister writing...

Seanad: Gas (Amendment) Bill 2023: Report and Final Stages (17 Apr 2024)

Alice-Mary Higgins: ...the summer to ensure we do not have Gas Networks Ireland continuing on the same trajectory it is going on and that we do not find ourselves dug in with more connections, and more fossil fuel, long-term large-scale energy users, and that we do not embed ourselves further into fossil fuels, especially gas which is extraordinarily volatile in terms of price, its impact on the environment and...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Illegal Israeli Settlements Divestment Bill 2023: Discussion (20 Mar 2024)

Alice-Mary Higgins: ...is a contradiction in that. I would slightly contradict the line that the Department has been waiting and not really doing anything about divestment until the Oireachtas decides. This has been on the cards longer than this Bill. I am a co-sponsor of the Control of Economic Activity (Occupied Territories) Bill, which has been before the Oireachtas for many years. That Bill does not say...

Seanad: Nithe i dtosach suíonna - Commencement Matters: Energy Policy (5 Mar 2024)

Alice-Mary Higgins: The importation of coal from the Cerrejón mine in La Guajira, Colombia, has been the subject of long-standing serious concern especially when, having previously ceased imports, the ESB resumed purchasing coal from the controversial mine in 2022. Cerrejón is the largest open-pit coal mine in Latin America. There is a litany of documented human rights, and environmental harms and...

Seanad: An tOrd Gnó - Order of Business (14 Feb 2024)

Alice-Mary Higgins: ...as conditions of the EU-Israel association agreement. I welcome the fact that the Taoiseach has written to say he wants a review of that agreement, but a review is not enough. A review is a long process, and we are now at a point of urgency. Some 1.4 million people are trapped in Rafah, and an apparent extraordinary disregard for international human rights is being displayed. In that...

Seanad: Finance (State Guarantees, International Financial Institution Funds and Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2023: Committee and Remaining Stages (8 Feb 2024)

Alice-Mary Higgins: ...Act, lay a report before both Houses of the Oireachtas outlining the manner in which Ireland has ensured that European Union funding to Ukraine does not come with conditionalities which would undermine long-term social cohesion such as enforced austerity, privatisation or broader structural adjustment programmes.”. Amendment No. 6 seeks to insert a new section in the Bill which...

Seanad: Finance (State Guarantees, International Financial Institution Funds and Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2023: Committee and Remaining Stages (8 Feb 2024)

Alice-Mary Higgins: ...Act and outlining such steps Ireland has taken in order to ensure such conditionalities do not include enforced austerity, privatisation or broader structural adjustment programmes which would undermine long-term social cohesion, environmental protection and human rights and create greater obstacles for Ukraine in the achievement of social, environmental and human rights standards required...

Seanad: Local Government (Mayor of Limerick) and Miscellaneous Provisions Bill 2023: Committee Stage (8 Feb 2024)

Alice-Mary Higgins: ...elected mayor given in 2019 by the people of Limerick will be respected and properly reflected and that an election for the office will take place this year. The people have been waiting a long time, since 2019. The amendment provides that the necessary sections of the legislation on holding a mayoral election must be commenced within three months of the Bill's passage. This is to...

Seanad: Local Government (Mayor of Limerick) and Miscellaneous Provisions Bill 2023: Committee Stage (8 Feb 2024)

Alice-Mary Higgins: ...end up being a case of just the director general or other officials within the council being listened to. This is important. Amendment No. 7, which is also in this grouping, seeks to address an issue of long-standing concern, which is the power afforded to local councillors. We know, and it is very well documented, that the executive decision-making at local government level has for...

Seanad: Local Government (Mayor of Limerick) and Miscellaneous Provisions Bill 2023: Committee Stage (8 Feb 2024)

Alice-Mary Higgins: ...eight-page Schedule to this Bill listing all the areas in which powers we might expect the mayor to have will, in fact, be vested with the director general, the former chief executive. It is too long. I am going to have a long set of amendments later where I specifically identify some areas in respect of which it is very problematic that they be given to a director general who is, at...

Seanad: Death of Former Taoiseach: Expressions of Sympathy (7 Feb 2024)

Alice-Mary Higgins: ...thing and is a contribution.It is something that can be forgotten sometimes in the language of war and militarism, wherein military action is how one takes serious action, when we know that deep, long, difficult work for peace is extraordinarily brave. He was a strong example of someone who did the work of peace. His commitment to that process and to the EU was immense. Nationally, he...

Seanad: Digital Services Bill 2023: Second Stage (31 Jan 2024)

Alice-Mary Higgins: ...some amendments on Committee and Report Stages to see how we can address these risks. I start with illegal content, including child sexual abuse materials. I again note my colleague Senator Flynn's long-standing legislation to ensure that the inappropriate phrase "child pornography", which still exists in our legislation, would be replaced by the appropriate language, namely, "child sex...

Seanad: Local Government (Mayor of Limerick) and Miscellaneous Provisions Bill 2023: Second Stage (24 Jan 2024)

Alice-Mary Higgins: ...of that is that their vote and voice at local level helps to decide how we live together in our towns and cities. It is crucial, yet we have seen that it has been increasingly undemocratic for a long time. We have seen a slide towards Executive decision-making that is quite distant from that sense of the public having a voice, a say and shaping a common vision together. The model we...

Seanad: An Bille um an Naoú Leasú is Tríocha ar an mBunreacht (An Teaghlach), 2023: Céim an Choiste agus na Céimeanna a bheidh Fágtha - Thirty-ninth Amendment of the Constitution (The Family) Bill 2023: Committee and Remaining Stages (23 Jan 2024)

Alice-Mary Higgins: ...or not. By putting it in the Constitution, is it meant to be there as a motivation to encourage everybody to ensure they get into a neat, married family unit? That is what it was seen as, for a long time. Some of the motivation, and some of the actions that were taken to make sure we motivated everybody to get themselves into a neat, married family unit included disappearing those who...

Seanad: An Bille um an Daicheadú Leasú ar an mBunreacht (Cúram), 2023: Céim an Choiste (Atógáil) agus na Céimeanna a bheidh Fágtha - Fortieth Amendment of the Constitution (Care) Bill 2023: Committee Stage (Resumed) and Remaining Stages (23 Jan 2024)

Alice-Mary Higgins: To follow up on a point made by an earlier speaker, we need to do this but the wording should be better. We have been waiting for it for a long time and it has been coming for a long time. I started campaigning for this change in the Constitution long before I entered the Oireachtas. It has been campaigned for and pushed for a very long time. During that journey, the understanding of what...