This morning, I attended the opening of the Dublin Climate Summit 2022 in UCD’s O’Reilly Hall. The Taoiseach was the first guest speaker to make a speech. He had a question-and-answer session with the organisers directly afterwards, which has already been covered by the national media this morning.

The Taoiseach pointed out that the climate change challenges are very stark. We need a debate and an update on this. We do lots of talking about it, put in carbon budgets and so on but yet, how do we implement all these things? How do we make sure we are making our move to active travel and to public transport? We heard Senator O’Loughlin complaining about people trying to use public transport and then the bus does not turn up. People are trying to retrofit their houses and they cannot find plumbers or people to do updated heating systems. They cannot get windows. They cannot get retrofitting for insulation and so on.

We therefore need not just a single-session debate but rather a series of debates to deal with the idea of climate change, with just transition and with the different sectors. The debate should address how we are dealing with it in agriculture, how we are dealing with in housing and how we are dealing with in transport. The challenges are stark and urgent and while everyone says that we must do it, we are not all doing it. We are perhaps not in a position to do it. This is about how we move to the new economy and about the circular economy discussion, which is about reusing, reducing and recycling.

All those points are really important matters we should debate in this House. There is an urgency to it, particularly in the context of rising energy prices. Fuel is getting more expensive but if we can manage to reduce people's fuel use that will save them money. Equally, people may not initially have the funds to provide for the construction themselves. Therefore, we need to be looking at how we can front-load the construction and then people can pay it back to their ESB bills or pay it back in other ways. There are also grants needed from the carbon tax and so on.

We need an urgency in this House. We need to take on board Mary Robinson’s challenge to us at the launch of the Seanad100 programme to take ownership of this topic. The sooner we have debate on the urgency of climate change in its broadest form, the better.

I know that I am out of time, but I also seek an update on how we are getting on with our new Ukrainian people. I have met people who have found them in retail and in hairdressers. They have been really impressed with their willingness to be involved and to integrate into the community and in schools. We might get an update on how we are doing on that soon.

Speaking of our new Ukrainian friends, the Cabinet subcommittee will be meeting today to review where we are at. We now have 29,000 Ukrainians living in Ireland. Many of these are children who are going to school and who have little English. There is also a quite a number of Ukrainians who were teachers in Ukraine. They have good English and are working in schools doing translation. Yet, it has come to my attention over the past few days that, so far, they have not been paid. The convoluted process to recognise their qualifications through the Teaching Council is causing them a huge amount of distress. Some of them are in a situation where they cannot get certain documentation from Ukraine for reasons that are clearly obvious. Yet, the Teaching Council is not showing any flexibility. The paperwork is complicated and convoluted. These people are in the schools and are providing support for the school community. Vitally, they are acting as a communication link between the children and the teachers. When will the Teaching Council cop itself on, reduce the red tape and resolve this problem? Will these teachers get their back payment to the day that they started teaching? They could easily go off and get jobs and cafes or in the hospitality industry, which badly needs them, but their top priority is to do what they are trained to do, that is, teaching and ensuring that the children who have come here from Ukraine get every possible opportunity to learn and to be happy. When you have hundreds of Ukrainian people, mostly women, in our schools who providing supports for nothing, because they are not getting paid, that is not acceptable. I would appreciate a debate on this, or at least a query to the Minister's office about whether they will get their backdated payments and when the Teaching Council will cop itself on.

Over the weekend, we learned of another member of the Defence Forces from the vital bomb disposal services who is leaving because he cannot afford to keep his family on his income. A payment of €35 for a 24-hour duty is hardly an incentive to stay. There are talks commencing with the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, ICTU, with respect to the current pay round because of inflation etc. For years, the Department of Defence and the Minister have dithered on whether they would allow affiliation.

The Representative Association of Commissioned Officers, RACO, has balloted its members and they also want to be affiliated to ICTU. The Commission on the Defence Forces, which was established by the Government and the report of which was given to the Minister last February, recommends that it be allowed to affiliate, but still no decision has been made. This is nonsense. It is a simple stroke of a pen by the Minister. I ask the Leader to write to the Minister to ask him if he would please make a decision, once and for all, and allow these people to have the same parity of esteem when it comes to negotiating on pay.

The second issue relates to Hong Kong and the human rights abuses taking place there on a daily basis. Yesterday, a Catholic archbishop was arrested in Hong Kong. Could we organise to have a debate on the situation in Hong Kong? I am fully aware of the sensitivities of anything to do with China, but we cannot sit on our hands and allow human rights abuses to take place in any part of the world purely because there are a couple of tonnes of beef on the other side of the equation. We just cannot do that. I ask the Leader if she would be willing to hold a debate on human rights, specifically in the context of Hong Kong.