News

AN AUSTRALIAN POLITICIAN made global news recently for breastfeeding her child while speaking in parliament. It’s worth taking a minute to look behind the vaguely titillating headlines. Australian Greens politician Larissa Waters was categorically not the first female politician to feed a child in her place of work. What’s unusual about the situation was not […]

The Social Democrats have said the government’s appalling record on tackling corruption has led to it being rebuked today by the Council of Europe’s anti-corruption body, GRECO. The party co-leader Róisín Shortall TD was commenting on a GRECO report which found that Ireland’s level of compliance with its recommendations were “globally unsatisfactory”. The anti-corruption body […]

The Minister for Housing is sitting on a major fire safety review completed over a year ago while today announcing a separate review in the wake of the Grenfell Tower blaze, the Social Democrats said today. Dublin Bay North Councillor Cian O’Callaghan said: “Mr Murphy is saying that the Grenfell Tower fire is going to […]

The new Taoiseach and government must spearhead changes to deliver real equality for LGBTI people, the Social Democrats said today. Speaking ahead of the annual Pride Parade, the party’s co-leaders Catherine Murphy TD and Róisín Shortall TD said the struggle for equality is not complete and it is vitally important to build on recent progress. […]

According to new figures obtained by the Social Democrats, Fingal County Council has acquired only 33 vacant dwellings in the first five months of the year. Commenting on the figures, Social Democrats representative for Castleknock and Blanchardstown, Aengus Ó Maoláin said: “Astonishingly, this paltry number actually puts Fingal ahead of every other local authority in […]

The Social Democrats today invoked a little used Dáil procedure to seek urgent answers from the Taoiseach about the hasty approval of the former Attorney General to the Court of Appeal. In a Special Notice Question submitted today, the party’s TDS Catherine Murphy and Róisín Shortall are asking the Taoiseach to publish any correspondence between […]

  The new Taoiseach must halt the appointment of the former Attorney General as a judge and come before the Dáil next week to answer questions on all the circumstances surrounding the filling of the Court of Appeal vacancy, the Social Democrats’ co-leader Róisín Shortall TD said today. Deputy Shortall said: “This issue is a […]

The Social Democrats’ Galway representative has called on gardaí to step up safety measures for minority groups following an attack on a mosque in the city last night. Niall Ó Tuathail described the incident as cowardly, and said he had recently written to local gardaí to raise concerns about the emergence of an apparent neo-Nazi […]

NAMA’s concerns about the hoarding of land which should be used for housing could be tackled with increased penalties and incentives contained in an already published Social Democrats’ Bill. The party’s co-leader Catherine Murphy TD said government support for the legislation would show that the Minister for Finance was serious about tackling this problem, which […]

The Social Democrats today publish a Bill to free up more vacant land for housing. Publishing the Bill today, Social Democrats co-leader Catherine Murphy TD said: “The housing crisis is not caused by a shortage of land to develop. It’s down to the fact that we are not building on the land that we have. Urban […]