Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I want to raise a number of issues today, the first of which is the Irish Coast Guard service. There is significant concern among the members of the Coast Guard about a threat to their future and helicopters being moved away from their bases. They call for legislation to put the Coast Guard on a statutory footing. As the House knows, there are four primary response agencies in the State: the fire service, the ambulance service, the Garda and the Irish Coast Guard. The latter is the Cinderella in this arrangement, and we need to put it on a statutory footing and resource it adequately.They are being asked to save lives around our coast every year and they are not getting the support they need. Will the Acting Leader bring this to the attention of the Minister? What is interestingly is that the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, Deputy Shane Ross, who is responsible, is in this Chamber next week. When he makes his statement to the Chamber, I ask that he would address the issue of the Coast Guard service to reassure us on that.

I support the comments of Senator Frances Black. I also viewed the documentary "The Atlantic" last night. There is also huge food for thought in regard to the map presented recently to the Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine by BIM. The map showed British waters in the context of the post-Brexit scenario and it can be seen that Irish waters will be squeezed further. It is potentially a calamity for our fishing community who are extremely angry at how they have been squeezed over the years. Will the Acting Leader bring that matter to the attention of the Minister, Deputy Michael Creed, who I hope has watched the documentary, in particular the issue of Ireland's territorial waters and how our fishing community will be affected by Brexit.

To those who are devastated by the election of Donald Trump, I would say they have to ask themselves why working class communities in their droves backed Boris Johnson on Brexit in England and why they have backed Donald Trump in their droves in the United States. It is because of the failure of mainstream politics to address the concerns of those communities, which have been raised repeatedly. Rather than all of us making statements such as have been made today, given we all feel deeply concerned about what is evolving due to the two votes on Brexit and the US presidential election, the challenge for all of us is to reassure working class communities, communities who have been left behind and minority communities as to what we are going to do to help them and how we are going to put in place policies. Rather than looking at Donald Trump, we need to look at ourselves collectively and see how we change the direction we are heading in.