–  If there is to be a debate on our policy on international defence and security I will advocate strongly for a continuation of our policy of military neutrality –   There are few political topics that can evoke as much raw passion and base misunderstanding as military neutrality. Indeed so deep and fundamental are

By Willie O’Dea TD – Minister for Defence 2004 – 2010 Last Wednesday the report of the Commission on the Defence Forces was published. It is an excellent piece of work. The Commission members have done the State a great service by avoiding the temptation to take the easy road and declare that all is

I have written to the Taoiseach and the Minister for Health urging them to remove all Covid restrictions by the end of January, as hospital and ICU figures have remained stable as a result of high levels of vaccination and natural immunity. Hospitality businesses should now be allowed to operate as normal & the use

The Minister for Education has informed me that she has given initial project approval for a large-scale development at the Laurel Hill campus on South Circular Road, Limerick. The building project will involve the construction of a new 1,000 pupil secondary school including two special needs classrooms for Laurel Hill Secondary School. The old school,

I raised the issue of the Aer Lingus announcement to permanently close its cabin crew base at Shannon airport directly with An Taoiseach, Micheal Martin during Leaders Questions in Dáil Éireann.  The video of Dáil proceedings can be viewed at the following link:  https://www.facebook.com/100000702333773/videos/4210621458971224/ Text of Dáil Éireann debate: Willie O’Dea TD “I will bring

I welcome the Bill. As a member of the Government that introduced the home care system initially, I recognise that we obviously did not get it completely right. It is very hard to get it exactly right the first time around. Several deficiencies emerged which are being effectively dealt with by the Minister of State

One of the less noticeable consequences of Covid has been to obscure a number of developments and decisions which have the capacity to be extremely damaging and possibly have fatal consequences for Fianna Fail. There are a number of those, but today I will just concentrate on one area – banks and financial institutions. In

In the ridiculously short time available to me I am not able to discuss Bank of Ireland but suffice it to say I agree with the remarks by Members on all sides of the House. I will confine myself, in the few minutes I have, to the situation with Ulster Bank. The key question with

I thank the Ceann Comhairle for allowing me to raise this very important topic. This State has expended enormous amounts of money as aids to businesses affected by the pandemic, and rightly so. The purpose of this has been to preserve businesses and jobs affected by the pandemic. More important is ensuring that as many

My article in the SUNDAY INDEPENDENT: Moyross plan and other broken promises cost us in loss of trust The Green Party leader has forgotten that in a coalition, no one element gets all that it wants, writes Willie O’Dea The late Albert Reynolds once said that you can get over the big issues-it is the