The ambassador is very welcome.

Today is our last Order of Business before we break for the summer recess. I acknowledge the hard work and dedication of all the staff who look after us in this House, be they ushers, catering staff, those who clean our offices or those who keep us in check. I thank everyone for their hard work in the year to date. I wish colleagues a happy summer, a good rest and a lot of time in their constituencies.

The Order of Business is No. 1, the Wildlife (Amendment) Bill 2016 – Message from Dáil Éireann, to be taken at the conclusion of the Order of Business.

I join the Deputy Leader in wishing colleagues a very good summer holiday and time for important recreation so as to be able to come back with renewed vigour in the next term. I wish the staff of this House, led by Mr. Groves and Ms Doody and who are excellent and so supportive of us all, a good summer holiday. I also wish the ushers of the House a good holiday. They make life around the Houses so easy, and we do appreciate that.

In the context of wishing people a nice summer, it is worth mentioning that the summer always throws up tragedies such as drownings and various kinds of accidents. I appeal to people to be careful to swim in designated areas and to be careful in other respects over the summer. I appeal to local authorities to ensure the requisite staff are in place to give warnings, etc. It is a tragic reality that we confront tragedies every year, as in my community a couple of years ago.

Since we are entering the summer and a new academic year thereafter, I want the Deputy Leader to arrange early in the new term a debate on student accommodation. The Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, Deputy Harris, is very committed in this area and doing a lot of work, but we need to know where it is at. As a joint venture on every college campus, there should be accommodation, and it should be a lot cheaper than it is. This can be achieved through building using long-term loans. There is money available for this kind of thing. Every campus should have student accommodation. There are many educational reasons for this. What parents are paying to accommodate their children in Dublin and on campuses around the country is just criminal. It is reducing access to education and leaving many students with no option but to commute, meaning they lose out on the holistic experience of university. This needs to be addressed in a radical way. There are many sources of funding that could be explored. It should be done as a priority. I realise there is work afoot but it should be accelerated. Will the Deputy Leader consider making a debate on this one of our first items when we come back? It will be really seasonal. We are all negligent in that we should have been addressing this matter, although I did refer to it a few times.

On behalf of the Fianna Fáil group, I extend a warm welcome to the ambassador and his wife. We very much appreciate having them here today. I look forward to seeing them tomorrow evening.

The Leas-Chathaoirleach referred to Patrick Sarsfield. I remind him that Sarsfield was born and grew up in Tully, County Kildare. We have our own claim.

All the great people are born in Kildare.

I thank everybody who works behind the scenes to ensure the Seanad and the rest of Leinster House work. I thank Mr. Groves and all in the Seanad Office, the ushers and all those who work really hard behind the scenes to make sure Leinster House is cleaned and is hygienic. I thank all the catering staff, from those in the coffee dock to those in the self-service restaurant and everywhere in between. I hope they all have a good recess.

As we are now approaching our summer break, we have to think about the right of passage of the many children who will be starting early learning, primary school or secondary school in the next term. There will be students receiving their leaving certificate results and hopefully going on to third level, apprenticeships or the world of work. We must think about our whole education system. I congratulate the Minister for Education, Deputy Foley, on all the work she has done with the Minister for Finance on easing back-to-school costs, including those of primary school books and transport, and on the allowance for those who need it and the roll-out of school meals and DEIS.

It is really important that we do more. We need to finally grasp the nettle that is voluntary contributions. I honestly believe that capitation fees should be raised for primary and secondary schools, thereby allowing schools to scrap voluntary contributions once and for all. Their abolition is something I have been lobbying for, and I would like to see it implemented. I also want to welcome the publication by the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment of the draft specification for senior cycle social, personal and health education, SPHE. It is vitally important that our young people and children have access to the information and supports they need to navigate all aspects of life, including making healthy and safe choices about relationships and their own lives, and respecting one another. There is a three-month consultation period and I would like to encourage everybody who has a view on this to make a submission.

Finally, I am glad that the Tánaiste and Minister for Defence, Deputy Micheál Martin, has announced a number of important actions to progress the recommendations in the report of the independent review group on dignity and equality issues in the Defence Forces. I understand that work is under way on terms of reference for the tribunal of inquiry, but we also have the terms of reference published for the external oversight body of the Defence Forces in line with the recommendations of the independent review group. This is really important work. Once again I support and commend the Women of Honour on all the work they have done to ensure we got to this point.

The Mother and Baby Institutions Payment Scheme Act 2023 was signed by the President this week, the day before yesterday, thereby completing the cycle of this very important legislation. It will be no secret that I am committed to campaigning for further aspects of issues we touched on in this regard. It was disappointing that we could not secure any support from the Government Members of this House for amendments relating to two or three issues I will single out today, the first of which is the drug trials that were carried out illegally on children within State care. In many cases, they are still alive and cannot understand why they have been denied some form of justice. Second, many children, who are now grown-up men and women, were farmed out, sometimes illegally, as child labourers - slaves - in this country for agriculture. Again, we can nod our heads and we can shed a tear, but we did nothing about it. Amendments were put before this House on these issues. I wish those who will benefit from the scheme genuinely well because many aspects of the scheme are excellent. I acknowledge the important work of the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman. He did sterling work in getting this legislation over the line. My ask, to which I will commit during my remaining time here, is that we try to revisit the recommendations made by the children's committee. We should look at using some other track or some other legislation to support the people who were farmed out and the people who were exposed to drug trials. I am a pragmatist. We all must work together. I hope we can somehow look at some other scheme for them.

I thank the Cathaoirleach's office; the Leader's office, particularly Ms Orla Murray; and Martin and his team - the Clerk and Clerk Assistant of the Seanad - for the way they conduct the orderly running of this House and provide the supports necessary for us to do our work. I also want to put on record my thanks to the amazing Library and Research Service. Like most of us here, I simply could not do my job without the backup and support of the Library and Research Service team in this House. I hope we will continue to have a Library in this House in the current building it is in. I know there is a suggestion that this may change and I will strongly resist it. We need to stand up and be supportive of our Library and Research Service people, who are central to the parliamentary life of this House. We need to support them and demonstrate that support. I wish everyone well. I know that everyone will have loads of reading. I am particularly looking forward to reading the Electoral Commission's report on boundaries at the end of August. That will determine the political career of many people in this House and in the Lower House. I extend my best wishes to everyone for a very good summer.

The Senator is lucky to be immune from the commission's work.

I might have other ideas, now.

If anyone has any other recommended reading for Senator Boyhan they might sent it on, just to give him a break from political reading.

I wish the Cathaoirleach, the Leas-Chathaoirleach, the Leader, the Deputy Leader and all of our colleagues a good summer after what has been a fairly intense year. I thank them all for their courtesy and patience at all times. I thank the staff, including Martin, Bridget and the whole Seanad team, for the incredible job they do. I include in that all of our ushers and the huge team of support staff who enable us to do our jobs here. I wish all of them well.

I also want to acknowledge the particular help the Deputy Leader gave in relation to the Rehab dispute in Limerick, which has come to an end now that we have a settlement to that dispute. It is not everything it should be but it is a good settlement. I want to acknowledge the support the Deputy Leader gave on that issue and thank her for that.

On this last day before summer I request that when we come back we have a debate on the whole issue of a wealth tax. There was an excellent report by Mr. Jim Clarken of Oxfam in the weekend newspapers but it did not get any coverage because of everything that is going on with RTÉ and so forth. Mr. Clarken pointed out on behalf of Oxfam, which has done a huge amount of work on this, that there are approximately 21,000 people in Ireland who have a net wealth of €4.7 million, excluding the family farm and the family home. Oxfam has calculated that if we put a wealth tax on those people - do not forget that those with less than €4.7 million would not pay a penny - we could generate approximately €8 billion in additional revenue in this State. Think of the transformative effect that would have in terms of all the conversations we have each week in this House about investment in housing, health, and education. The potential is absolutely huge. We need to talk about this. Mr. Clarken is suggesting a citizens' assembly. I think a debate, in the first instance, would be very worthwhile in this Chamber so we can tease out how this could work. Mr. Clarken makes the point that the richest 1% of the population globally have gained 70 times more wealth than the bottom 50% in the last ten years. He also makes the point that the International Monetary Fund, which is hardly an organisation of the left, has pointed out that half of the inflation we are enduring as part of the cost-of-living crisis is caused by corporate profits. It is just greed that is driving so much of this. That is a fact we need to consider. Perhaps the starkest fact is that one person dies of hunger every 28 seconds across Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia and South Sudan. Mr. Clarken points out that over the last two years, the windfall profits of the largest 18 food and beverage corporations in the world were €14 billion. The funding gap we need to bridge to make sure people do not die of hunger is €6.4 billion. The current system is not fit for purpose. We need to talk about how we can implement wealth and windfall taxes at home and across the world to ensure justice and to ensure people actually live a decent life. It is a debate well worth having when we come back in the autumn. I wish everybody well.

I closely associate myself with the warm remarks made by fellow Senators as we approach the summer vacation and as the Seanad rises today. So much work goes on behind the scenes. It always looks like a seamless operation but I have no doubt that it involves countless dedicated hours of work, led by Mr. Martin Groves who sets an exceptionally high standard. The respect for process and procedure can be seen to reverberate among all his staff. I am sure he is very proud of them. We are very proud of the staff. We should also commend ourselves on respecting and having such a good mutual constructive relationship with the people, many of them faceless, who make the inner operations of this House carry on so seamlessly on a daily basis.

I was delighted to see the father of the House in the Chamber yesterday.

He spoke about the evil of cluster bombs and said some of them do not detonate immediately. A child could easily think these are toys. It has been proven that these munitions cause fatalities and, in some cases, almost instant death. This House should be united and loud in our opposition to cluster bombs. We can do that and fully support Ukraine in its battle against the tyrant who has waged this unprovoked brutal war. I commend our neighbours in the UK on having said "No" to cluster bombs. I hope we can use our influence with our good friends in America to have them also say "No" to cluster bombs. This war can be won without going there.

I commend the Leader and Deputy Leader of the House on facilitating a debate on the latest tragic unfolding of events last week in Jenin in the West Bank. The Israel Defense Forces once again, in a unilateral and unprovoked display of aggression, went in there. There was only going to be one result and there have been casualties and fatalities. The resulting loss of life included 12 Palestinians and one Israeli. As is always the case in war, it is the young people who suffer. In this case, the majority of those who lost their lives last week were aged between 16 and 23. Israel is clearly in breach of its international humanitarian law obligations. This House must do everything in its power to influence our Government, the EU and the UN to say "No" to such unprovoked acts of aggression that killed people and mostly innocent people.