As today is budget day, I will have an opportunity to address the House later on my views on the budget that has just been announced.

I wish to raise two items on the Order of Business. The first is a radio interview I heard as I was driving to Leinster House. I am not sure if other colleagues heard it. One of my colleagues beside me is nodding. It was the story of a young boy, Adam Terry, and his mum, Christine. It was one of the most heart-breaking radio interviews I have ever heard. This boy who is ten years of age has been waiting for years for scoliosis surgery and he can no longer go to school because of the pain. He was told he would have his surgery in February of this year but it has again been kicked down the road a little further. The most heart-breaking and devastating part of that interview was to hear the news from his mum that because he did not have the surgery sooner, the surgery he will have at the some point will not produce the same outcome that it could have done. He will never be as well as he could have been had he got the surgery when he was meant to get it. He spoke on the radio, which was an incredible act of bravery for such a young child, about the pain he is suffering, that he cries himself to sleep and that he wants his voice heard. The reason he and his mum, Christine - they are a very private family - have done this is that they want those in a position to be able to do something for them to listen and to hear their story.

I ask that a letter go from the Cathaoirleach’s office to the Minister for Health asking him to contact that family immediately, to sit down with them and give them a date for surgery. I do not care what it takes. If we have to send that little boy to the UK and bring him home for the aftercare - whatever it takes to get him the surgery - that is what needs to happen. The word "disgraceful" does not cut the mustard, having listened to that boy's story and what his mum has to endure as she watches her child in pain every day. That is so wrong in a First World wealthy country. It should not be happening. They deserve to have that contact directly with the Department and the HSE.

The second issue I want to raise is Brexit. People will be aware it is back on the agenda, not that it ever went off it. Today, the UK's Brexit minister, David Frost, will deliver a speech. Unfortunately, it is a day in advance of when the EU will publish its new proposals on the Northern Ireland protocol. That has been the subject of many months of negotiation, engagement in Northern Ireland, in particular, with citizens and businesses understanding the crux of the problem and what it will take to make the protocol work more smoothly, using what flexibilities we have to make what we have work better. That can be done.

It is unfortunate that here we are yet again - it is almost like Groundhog Day - at another cliff edge with another ramping up of tensions between both sides, but at the end of the day who loses out? It is not the politicians at the table making the decisions. It is the ordinary citizens and businesses on this island and in the UK.

An update on Brexit from either the Minister of State, Deputy Byrne, or the Minister, Deputy Coveney, at the earliest opportunity would be welcome. We will see what happens over the next couple of days. One of the strong messages coming back from the engagement Maroš Šefčovič has had in the North and with the Irish Government is that people are worried about matters such as having food on supermarket shelves, the customs union and imports and exports, essentially the general day-to-day working of the protocol and trading in what is a new environment. What they are not concerned about, or have not raised issues about, is the European Court of Justice having a say over the protocol, which was built into Article 12 of the Northern Ireland protocol. It was there from day one. Its job is to adjudicate on matters of European Union law, which is what the Single Market and customs union are. It is unfortunate that at this late hour a new issue has been thrown into the mix, which makes it very difficult to see this being solved in the near future.

I too want to raise the heart-wrenching interview that I heard on "Today with Claire Byrne" this morning. Any parent who heard that interview could feel the pain that family is in.

My wee girl underwent an operation in Crumlin children's hospital some years ago. Everything went smoothly, but I remember waiting for the date. It is terrible that a child who has been on the urgent list since August 2019 and who was told his surgery would take place next spring has now been told that he must wait another six to nine months. That is despite the fact every day his parents can feel the pain he is in and can see that his quality of life is not what it should be. I completely agree with my colleague that we need to send a letter to the Minister for Health. That would let this family know that they have been heard and that there is a solution. The family are considering travelling to London but it would be better if the procedure took place here because this is where the little boy's family and friends are.

I take this opportunity to welcome the budget and the focus it has on quality-of-life issues such as remote working. There are incentives relating to the latter, including extending the personal tax relief to 30%, not just for broadband but also for heating and electricity. That is a positive step. At the same time, however, we are in a period of transition whereby employers are trying to figure out what their offices and teams will look like into the future and identify where they can make savings. Ideally, if employers make savings then they should pay for people's utilities. You can claim a €3.20 expense tax-free if it comes from your employer. We need employers to think seriously about that because it might become mandatory at some stage. However, we need to know what savings employers are making. Let us not forget about the hubs. By supporting hubs, we are supporting towns and villages. I am sure there is more in the budget relating to the opening and supporting of local hubs. Let us not forget how important they are to local communities.

At the outset, I wish to remember Paddy Moloney, who sadly passed away earlier today at the age of 83. Paddy was a great ambassador for Ireland and for Irish music.

Chinese aggression towards the democratic island of Taiwan is intensifying and should be giving rise to concerns that China will try to take over the island by force. We have already seen how Beijing used a heavy-handed approach to impose its authoritarian ways in Hong Kong. Ireland is a member of the United Nations Security Council and must speak out against any and all aggression by China. As an act of solidarity, now might be a good time for the Government to open an office in Taipei. In addition, we have spent months if not years talking about the fate of Richard O'Halloran who is still in China. It is simply not good enough that he continues to be detained there at this stage.

The Irish Coast Guard and its volunteers, the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, RNLI, and the search and rescue helicopter service form the backbone of first responders for rescue at sea. At the weekend, one of the Sunday newspapers carried a headline, "Coast guard 'has to fix toxic workplace'". I was not surprised to see this headline because for some time I have been receiving reports of problems within the Irish Coast Guard. Despite the fact that the acting director of the Irish Coast Guard has rejected the claim that volunteers have been targeted or subjected to unfair disciplinary inquiries, the evidence suggests that he must be totally out of touch. As a result, the Irish Coast Guard is now in a crisis situation and there has been a complete breakdown of trust between volunteers and management. The volunteers have been forced to set up their own representative body because they are so afraid of the way things are going. Coast Guard members voiced their concerns following two separate incidents that shook the organisation. First, a report by the Marine Casualty Investigation Board, into the death of Caitríona Lucas in September 2016 off the coast of County Clare after an inflatable boat she was in capsized during the search mission, was critical of the safety management systems in place at the time. Second, the long-awaited report on the accident involving Rescue 116 in March 2017 with the loss of four crew will, I believe, be damning of the corporate governance of all of the organisations involved with search and rescue, and will be particularly damning of the oversight of the Irish Coast Guard.

Equally damning is the fact that the officers in charge of a number of stations around the country have been forced to resign or have been dismissed. The officer in charge of Dunmore East was dismissed in 2019 despite having served for more then 20 years with the Coast Guard. The officer in charge of the station in Youghal, County Cork, having spent ten years in the position, resigned in January 2019. At the time, he complained about the poor treatment of volunteers in recent years and wrote in his resignation letter, "I feel I can no longer serve an organisation that values its volunteers so poorly". Another officer in command of the station at Killala Bay, County Mayo, resigned after 20 years of service. If this is not a crisis, then nothing is. We need urgent action to bring about a resolution in respect of this matter.

Finally, on behalf of those of us who visited the naval base in Cork last Friday, I want to thank the flag officer for his downright openness and honesty with respect to the crisis that is in the Naval Service. That is a matter I will raise in the coming days.

Ba mhaith liom comhbhrón ó chroí a dhéanamh ar bhás Paddy Moloney, comhbhunaitheoir an bhanna ceoil The Chieftains. Ba laoch mór ceoil agus chultúr na hÉireann é atá imithe anois ar shlí na fírinne agus go ndéana Dia trócaire air.

I thank the Leader for outlining the Order of Business. As other colleagues stated, we will have an opportunity to outline our views and perspectives on the budget in the allocated time this afternoon. For now, I want to raise a number of issues. I welcome the announcement by the EU that it will provide free rail travel passes to 60,000 18- to 20-year-olds across the Union . As they say in Irish, bíonn siúlach scéalach. This is a fantastic opportunity for young people to broaden their horizons, and it is particularly good when it is free. I am sure that the initiative will be welcomed across the board. I will make my own inquiries in this regard, but I suggest that it would be useful to find out if people across the Thirty-two Counties will be able to apply for the passes allocated to this State. It is important that people aged 18 to 20 in the North will not be not excluded from this very welcome and exciting scheme.

Yesterday, the High Court in Belfast found that the refusal by Democratic Unionist Party Ministers of the Executive to attend meetings of the North-South Ministerial Council - a core component of the Good Friday Agreement institutions - is unlawful. That should give us all cause for concern. We should all recommit ourselves to ensuring that we work the institutions of the Good Friday Agreement to the fullest extent. I look forward to attending, along with colleagues from across this House and from across the Oireachtas, the plenary meeting of the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly next Monday. The meeting comes at a crucial time for relations between Britain and Ireland. It is also a time of great challenge and difficulty, but we must remember that it is always better to talk.

My colleague, Senator Currie, spoke about remote workers. I again met with representatives from the Cross-Border Workers Coalition this morning. Senator Currie and others have previously mentioned the potential for double taxation in respect of people from this jurisdiction who are employed in the North. We need to ensure that workers can work from home as much and as efficiently as they possibly can. For people who live in Letterkenny, Milford, Muff, Dundalk or wherever and who work in the North, we must ensure that they are protected and that there is no threat of double taxation coming at them down the line. Is é sin an méid atá le rá agam.

Likewise, I am going to refer to the measures that were taken in the budget during the allocated time we have. Today, I want to raise the issue of the prohibition on men who have sex with men from donating blood in the Republic of Ireland. The remit of the Irish Blood Transfusion Service is to provide safe, reliable and robust blood supply for the health system and it can continue to perform this role and minimise the risks while removing the 12-month automatic prohibition. The ban is not reflected in many countries across Europe, including our closest neighbours. In fact, because of the pandemic, I understand that this year, the Irish Blood Transfusion Service bulk-imported blood from England due to a shortage of blood here. It came after Britain had moved to an individual risk assessment system for all prospective donors, and the same has recently happened in Northern Ireland. As England accepts blood from Irish donors, this means that an Irish man who has sex with men could have donated blood in the Irish supply system in Manchester but not in Dublin or anywhere else in Ireland.

I was contacted earlier this week by a man who has been travelling to donate blood in Northern Ireland and London since he has been able to do so, in a hugely altruistic act. At the end of August this year, that person gave his 18th blood donation. He has O negative blood, which is always in great demand and short supply because it can be given to any blood group. These 18 donations could not have been given in the Republic of Ireland and 18 patients potentially would have gone without the blood they needed.

It is unreasonable that the men who contacted me, who are so willing to help others and who would much prefer to donate safe and needed blood here at home, cannot do so in their own country because of the very outdated viewpoint of the Irish Blood Transfusion Service. We have not adopted an individual risk assessment system. I call on the Minister and the Irish Blood Transfusion Service to reassess the 12-month automatic ban on blood donations for men who have sex with men and to assess the individual risk assessment management system in order to ensure the safest and most reliable blood supply is available in Ireland and that we get the blood we need within our own system.

I ask the Leader to consider holding a debate in due course on antisemitism in the Republic of Ireland. Most Members here will have seen the type of toxicity that is on Twitter and other social media in regard to members of the Jewish persuasion. A recent report by David Collier highlights this in a very serious way. If Members want to research him online, I assure them they will not find it very pleasant reading, given that some of the comments, tweets and posts are of the most heinous nature.

We all know the history of antisemitism. It is as old as time. It has been throughout Europe and all over the world, culminating, naturally, in the Holocaust, which was the worst example of it. We see the programmes all the time on the concentration camps and I hope they will be continue to be seen on our television screens so younger generations will know what the Jewish people had to undergo at that time.

I am happy to be from Listowel, which is one of the few places in Ireland which has a Holocaust memorial, which was erected about 20 years ago by the late, lamented Mervyn Taylor of the Labour Party, who died just recently. Most Irish people are very reasonable about racial differences and all the rest of that but there is definitely an element somewhere that seems to be unable to escape this atavistic anti-Jewish sentiment that is so evil.

It is in that context that I have to express regret at the decision by our very well known, popular and successful author, Sally Rooney, to deprive her fans who like to read in Hebrew of being able to read her any further in Hebrew because she is not allowing her books to be published in Hebrew hereafter, ostensibly as a protest against Israeli policies. First, not all Hebrew readers are living in Israel, so it seems a very ill-judged protest to me. It sort of opens the door to that sort of cultural hatred that we have witnessed in the past. Book burning was one of the most prominent ways of attacking people of the Jewish persuasion and whereas this is not book burning, it is not altogether unaligned to it. I think it is ironic that this should be her decision. Are we going to have a situation where authors will disallow their books from being published in Chinese because of the totalitarian regime in China, or in Russian in Russia? Will Irish authors stop allowing their books to be published in the UK because of the despicable English Brexit policies? Where is it going to end? The Leader might be able to organise such a debate for us at this time.