Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I completely support the calls we made in the House previously, of which the Leader will be aware, and the cross-party motion we all passed calling for proper pay and recognition for our secretarial assistants who do extraordinary work and are the key and only staff member of most Senators. I want to echo that reminder. I hope the message will go back to the Government that our secretarial assistants should not have to fight for something which has been very well established they need. Even in the previous Seanad, there was full cross-party support for a call for them to get a proper payscale that recognises their work and incredible contribution to our democracy.

There was mention of having a summing up debate on Covid. I do not think we are anywhere near that yet. The fact is we will continue to see new variants. One of the reasons for that is the European Commission and, sadly, Ireland, through the position taken by our Minister, Deputy Varadkar, are not supporting a trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights, TRIPS, waiver. They are not supporting a measure which could lead to an escalation and scaling up of supply. We are told it is not that simple. The World Health Organization is calling for this. It knows exactly how complicated and important a TRIPS waiver is. I have a recent edition ofThe Lancet, the most respected medical journal in the world, and its cover page reads "Rich countries behaved worse than anyone's worst nightmares". That is with respect to Covid. That is where we are right now. It is a huge indictment. We need for all our sakes to make sure the virus does not have infinite space to develop new variants in terms of the population of the world being exposed.

Time needs to be provided this evening to debate the other crisis we face, that of climate change. We saw what was described as a "portal to hell" in terms of the gas fire in the Gulf of Mexico. The amendments to the final sections of the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development (Amendment) Bill relate to whether we will continue to grant licences for oil and gas extraction. It is really important we have time to debate them. I hope the Leader can allocate additional time to ensure those crucial points are addressed. These are existential issues.