Tag Archives: Oireachtas Committee

Senator Lorraine Higgins has written to the Oireachtas committee on communications to request that representatives from facebook and Twitter be called before it Senator Higgins has sought their attendance at the committee in order to answer questions about their practices in light of the outcome of a recent survey by Vodafone, which found that one in every four children in Ireland have been cyber bullied, with 51% believing the issue to be bigger than drug abuse amongst young people and 45% feeling totally helpless when it happened to them. Senator Higgins said, “This is an issue that I not only have been talking about but have introduced legislation on to curb abuse, threat as and cyberbullying online. While legislation is only one way to deal with the issue there are others like education and awareness within schools. However, that is not to say that social media companies should get off scot free when it comes to legal and moral responsibility …

THE current Aer Lingus ownership structure gives no guarantees on the provision of Shannon-Heathrow services, group strategy director of Shannon Group, Patrick Edmond said at the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Transport and Communication. Various political interests have called for the State’s shareholding in Aer Lingus to be retained, claiming it ensures connectivity for the Clare airport. However, Mr Edmond said that is not the case, pointing out that in 2007, Aer Lingus management, under the same ownership structure as exists now, transferred all of the Heathrow slots serving Shannon to Belfast. While Clare TD Timmy Dooley challenged him, Mr Edmond stood firm on his observations. In his first contribution to the sitting, Mr Edmond said that if the Government does opt to dispose of its 25% holding, it should make sure it gets some guarantees around connectivity. “We would, therefore, expect that any Government decision to sell the State’s Aer Lingus stake to IAG would be conditional on an enforceable …

The Oireachtas Joint Committee Agriculture, Food and the Marine agreed of Tuesday evening to progress farmers’ concerns around the designation of Special Conservation Area to protect the hen harrier. In addition to Clare and Galway, there are hen harrier protection areas in Tipperary, Limerick, Cork, Kerry, Laois, Offaly and Monaghan. As part of the process to deal with farmers’ concerns, the committee intends to call officials from the Departments of Agriculture, Food and the Marine and Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht. The committee was meeting with representatives from Irish Farmers with Designated Land (IFDL), who outlined how changes of designation under EU Directives have served to dramatically devalue the land of about 4,000 farmers. Committee chairman, Deputy Andrew Doyle said, “The meeting with IFDL representatives illuminated the difficulties that many farmers have endured in light of the designation of 169,000 hectares of land to protect the hen harrier. The committee heard that farming and the hen harrier have coexisted for …

The Oireachtas Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade, chaired by Deputy Pat Breen, will meet Dr Nader Hashemi on this Wednesday to discuss the on-going civil war in Syria and the rise of Islamic State there and in the remainder of the Middle East. Dr Nader Hashemi is Associate Professor at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver. Chairman of the committee, Pat Breen said, “The Committee has been gravely concerned at the continued actions of Al-Assad’s regime and of other extremist militias, as well as the rise of the radical Jihadist force ISIS, which has resulted in a further deterioration in an already precarious human rights situation in Syria. Tomorrow, we will have an opportunity to hear from Dr Nader Hashemi, who will outline the roots of ISIS and the threat that their rise is posing a global security challenge. We will also have an opportunity to consider with him at tomorrow’s meeting the most …