Message from Party Leader - Edition 3 2025 - The Labour Party

These are the issues that we should be focusing on, in using our voices in seeking to build a fairer, better and more equal Ireland.

Instead this week we have witnessed a mess of the Government’s making, a desperate distraction from the issues that matter. What happened in the Dáil this week was without precedent. For us in the Labour Party, this debacle is the last thing any of us wanted. Indeed, we worked hard to find a resolution to avoid this week’s farce with no serious engagement from the Government. Instead, they have run roughshod over all basic standards of parliamentary accountability, all in the effort to placate Michael Lowry’s group of TDs and to create a new ‘sham opposition’ mechanism to give Lowry and his group the rights of Opposition TDs in all but name. In spite of this mess, our strengthened parliamentary party have been working tirelessly to work on behalf of the communities that we represent.

Last week, for example, we tabled a motion to support and recognise the work undertaken by the more than 67,000 young carers aged 10-17 in Ireland. Led by our Spokesperson on Social Protection; Children, Disability and Equality, Deputy Mark Wall, our Labour TDs took to the floor of the Dáil to highlight the struggles of young carers and to seek more effective supports from Government for their work.

To accompany the motion, we hosted a briefing session with Family Carers Ireland, where young carers shared their lived experiences of balancing school, home life and care responsibilities. Too often, these young people remain invisible to teachers, employers, health professionals, and policymakers. While the motion was unopposed by the Government, we need real action now to recognise the incredible work done by young carers.

The previous month, we put forward a Labour motion on housing in the Dail, demanding a radical reset in the State’s approach to tackling the housing crisis – as was the recommendation of the Government’s own Housing Commission. We shared our constructive proposals for a model of radical state investment through a scaled-up Land Development Agency – to build social and affordable homes and put roofs over heads.

Shamefully, the Minister for Housing was a no-show in the debate on our motion. In fact, no senior Government Minister showed up to contribute to the debate on our proposals, which offered a credible pathway to ramp up the supply of homes. Instead, two Junior Ministers were sent in to stand over the derisory Government countermotion, reading bland scripts, devoid of ambition.

Meanwhile, over 15,000 people in this country live in emergency homeless accommodation; 4,600 of them are children. The emergence in recent weeks and months of the revelation that the Government misled the public on housing completion figures has been accompanied by a tetchy and dismissive attitude by the Taoiseach and his Ministers to us during questioning in the Dáil. That is not good enough.

Deputy Conor Sheehan, our wonderful Spokesperson on Housing, along with the rest of our newly enlarged Parliamentary Party, will continue to use our Dáil time to hold this Government to account on the defining crisis of this generation. As will we on all the issues that matter – aiming to work constructively to see positive change for the communities we represent. While bombs rain down on the children of Gaza in Israel’s genocidal bombardment, while  Russia continues its brutal illegal war in Ukraine and while the threat of Trump’s tariffs loom over the Irish economy, there is important work to be done in the Dáil. Labour will continue to hold this Government to account and we will continue our work to Build Better, Together.