Before I call on the Leader to announce the business of the day, we will all have been deeply saddened and shocked to hear of the sudden death of our former colleague and friend, a former Member of both the Dáil and the Seanad and of Roscommon County Council, the late John Connor, which Members will have heard about over the weekend. As Members will know, John was involved in a road traffic accident on Saturday and sadly passed away afterwards. A native of County Roscommon, he was an outstanding public servant for the people of Roscommon, whom he served for over a quarter of a century. First elected to Dáil Éireann in the 1981 general election for the Roscommon-East Galway constituency, he went on to serve in this House in 1983, having been nominated to the Seventeenth Seanad by the then Taoiseach, Garret Fitzgerald. He was subsequently elected to the agricultural panel in the following Seanad election. John was re-elected to the Dáil in the 1989 general election, winning back his seat and heading the poll in the Roscommon constituency. He served in Dáil Éireann until 1997 and then served in this House from 1997 until 2002. During this period, he was also elected to Roscommon County Council in 1999, thereby serving his constituents at both national and local level. As Members will know, he retired from public life, leaving this House in 2002 and the local authority in 2009.

As the Taoiseach said at the weekend, "John had an unwavering commitment to the people of his area and brought a considerable expertise to politics at local and national level." We will all agree with that. As those Members who knew him will be aware, he was a man of keen intellect and a wonderful orator who was very interested in international and European affairs and matters and served on many overseas trips as a Member of the Oireachtas. He was always deeply rooted in agriculture, in his local area and in rural Ireland. If you canvassed him on a Seanad campaign, as some Members of this House did, you certainly got interrogated and questioned not about the weather but about policy, the future of Ireland and your own future as a candidate.

He was a very popular man on all sides of the House. We lament his passing. At this very sad time, we think of his family. On my own behalf and on behalf of the Senators, I express our deepest condolences and sympathy to his sisters, Margaret and Anne, his brothers-in-law, Gerry and Brendan, his nephews and all his cousins, relatives, neighbours and friends from the parliamentary community and beyond.

I call on the Acting Leader to outline the Order of Business.

I would like to express my own deepest sympathy to the family of John Connor, and indeed, to the people of Roscommon, who were very well represented by John. I also express my sympathy to the Fine Gael Party. When you lose someone who is such a stalwart and a source of huge wisdom and experience for everybody, it is a huge loss. Following the Order of Business, we will be moving a motion of sympathy.

The Order of Business is No. 1, motion regarding Tribunal of Inquiry into Certain Matters Relating to the Complaints Processes in the Defence Forces, to be taken at 3.15 p.m. and to conclude at 4.45 p.m., if not previously concluded, with the time allocated to the opening remarks of the Minister not to exceed ten minutes, those of group spokespersons not to exceed ten minutes and time may be shared, and the Minister to be given no less than ten minutes to reply to the debate; and No. 2, Coroners (Amendment) Bill 2024 - Order for Second Stage and Second Stage, to be taken at 5 p.m., with the time allocated to the opening remarks of the Minister not to exceed ten minutes, those of group spokespersons not to exceed ten minutes and time may be shared, and those of all other Senators not to exceed five minutes, and the Minister to be given no less than ten minutes to reply to the debate.

On behalf of the Fianna Fáil group, I would also like to express my sympathies to the Fine Gael Parliamentary Party, to the wider party and to the family, friends and community of John Connor. It must be an awful shock to lose somebody so suddenly like that, so they have our sympathies.

I would like to welcome the deal that was backed by the DUP overnight. It was great to wake up to such news after having such high hopes over recent weeks that a deal would finally be arrived at. It was great to wake up and hear this good news. We would all love to see the Assembly and the Executive in Northern Ireland re-established. We have to remember that all these MLAs were elected in May 2022 and they, like all of us, stood for election to represent their communities, see change, see progress and deliver. They have been hamstrung over the past almost two years in relation to that, so I look forward to seeing them getting to work, as I am sure they will do. The absence of the Assembly and the Executive meant that the communities in Northern Ireland suffered. The public services suffered, as did the public servants. Very recently, we saw how they felt the impact of that. Let us hope that this news today will see a new dawn for Northern Ireland so we can move ahead and see some progress. I am sure the Government here will offer all the support it can with the obvious teething issues that will occur over the next couple of weeks. We look forward to a First Minister and a deputy First Minister being elected.

I wish to raise the issue of the January bonuses and the double payment that 1.3 million people received this week. This is really welcome. It was part of the budget package to help people with the cost of living. People such as pensioners, carers, people with disabilities, lone parents and people on low incomes received a double payment this week. That is really welcome. It is a huge boost for them and their communities, because we know people who receive social welfare spend it in their local communities. This helps support local businesses. Yet, there is one glaringly obvious gap in the list of many recipients who will receive this, namely, people who receive maternity benefit. It is often the only income that women who are on maternity leave will have. Quite often, many employers do not top up that payment. It is a very vulnerable time for women, both personally and financially. As we know from the statistics, there is an increase in domestic violence and coercive control during pregnancy and immediately after giving birth.

I think a double payment of maternity benefit would really benefit people. It would give them a lot more stability and a lot more financial freedom. It is a pity the Minister did not include that. Will the Acting Leader write to the Minister for Social Protection and ask for maternity benefit to be included if the bonus payment is to be repeated? The double child benefit payment was very welcome and will help this cohort, but this is one big gap and I would like to see it corrected.

On our group's part and our party's part, I express the real sadness we felt about the news we got about John Connor's passing on Saturday. I will not outline again his esteemed career, which you have just outlined for us, a Chathaoirligh. He was undoubtedly a public servant to his core. While you are correct in saying he was a man of real intellect, he was probably one of the most humble people you could talk to. There was no hifalutin loftiness about him. He knew as much about international affairs as he knew about what was going on down the road or around the corner from him. That epitomises the kind of person he was and the interest he had in people and anything and everything that affected people. I do not know this from personal experience, but I am also told by my colleagues that he had an absolutely wicked sense of humour and that is why he was liked by all and every party in this House and in the chambers he shared in Roscommon. I put on the record of the House how sorry we are. We extend our sincere condolences to John's family, his very wide circle of friends in his community and the people he served. It was a privilege to have had him as a member of our party.

I and, I am sure, all members of my group join others in expressing sympathy to the Connor family. It is a tragedy to lose somebody in a road traffic accident.

Two and a half years ago, after the cyberattack on the HSE, I started to involve myself in matters cyber. Initially, I worked with Louth and Meath ETB. That spread out to the University of Galway, Munster Technological University and many other education centres around the country. I have had the honour of leading two delegations to Estonia to visit CCDCOE, which is the advisory centre in cyber, and CR14, which is a major national infrastructure cyber range, and I have been instrumental in bringing together a memorandum of understanding with a company called CybExer, which will provide cyber range technology to Irish centres that are running cyber-awareness programmes.

Why am I bringing this up today? I believe Ireland should be at the forefront of cybersecurity. We should be one of the leading nations, given the amount of information technology infrastructure there is in this country. To that end, I would like a debate in this House. I believe we should fund cyber-awareness programmes. We have coming online a programme developed by National Geographic for national school children which we want to pilot in the near future. We also have a number of cyber-awareness programmes for chief executive officers, chief financial officers and so on down through the business system. If we are to get on top of cyber, however, we have to start delivering cyber-awareness programmes and we have to do so as a State service. To that end, I know Pat Larkin, the chairman of Cyber Ireland, has taken on the call with me that we should ring-fence €1 billion over ten years to deliver cyber programmes. All we need is a serious attack in this country, and if that happens, we will lose some of the major foreign direct investment.

I put on record my deep appreciation for Commandant Frank Hickey, who works with CCDCOE in Tallinn. It was such an honour to be there, to find a member of our Defence Forces, and before him, in the earlier one, Rónán O'Flaherty, a Galway man. I also record my appreciation for our ambassador there. I know everybody in this room will say that, when we go abroad, the ambassadors we meet do a fantastic job, but James Sherry pushed himself beyond. He had a Minister, Paschal Donohoe, visiting at the same time we were there and he found time for all of us. It is wonderful representation for Ireland abroad. I would like a debate with the Minister for further and higher education, Simon Harris, on cyber and the delivery of cyber-awareness programmes.

This afternoon I want to call again for strong hate crime legislation. Unfortunately, due to the volume of emails received over the summer and in the last few months about its hate crime legislation, the Government has paused it, ignoring the fact that many NGOs and people from minority groups, including the Irish Traveller Movement and Migrant Rights Centre Ireland, have been fighting for years for strong hate crime legislation to be passed. We were more than half way there, with the Bill due to be debated on Committee Stage in this House. I am very fearful that because it is unpopular with far right organisations and individuals, it will not be progressed and I am very worried for minority groups in this country. The Government should at least give us a date. Indeed, Fianna Fáil should give us a date because I understand its Members have been tabling amendments to the Bill. We need to have a set date for moving the Bill forward in this House. I understand that it may not be important to many Members of this House, but for me as a member of the Traveller community, it is crucial. Before I was ever a Member of this House, I did an enormous amount of work on getting hate crime legislation introduced in this country. We are talking about keeping up as a society. We have a hate crime Bill and all we want to do is to keep up as a society, just as we are doing on 8 March with the referendums. Let us keep moving forward with this legislation. All I am looking for from the Minister is a date so that we know the end is in sight and know that we will have good, strong legislation in place. It will not stop people from being nasty and calling people from minority groups names and so on. People will still have the right to be offensive but the legislation will make them think twice. Most importantly, it will make minority groups, including people of colour and people with disabilities, feel more protected in this country.

I want to begin by joining with others in offering my condolences and those of my party to the family of Mr. John Connor.

The restoration of the Executive and Assembly is very good news for all of the people of Ireland. It allows for the full operation of the Good Friday Agreement and all its interlocking institutions, especially the all-island North-South institutions. It is an opportunity for Ms Michelle O'Neill to fulfil her promise to be a First Minister for all the people of the North. It will provide hands-on leadership from all of the parties to help the people of the North to deal with the day-to-day challenges facing them, including the rising cost of living, the underpayment of public service workers and the under-funding of those services. It will assist reconciliation between the people of the North and across this island and will provide opportunities for those advocates of constitutional change. I want to put on record our welcome for that announcement and hopefully everything will go well over the next week.

Last week, along with the Acting Leader, I took part in a debate in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe on Palestine. It was, without doubt, one of the most depressing moments, to be in that assembly as we saw an attempt to call for a ceasefire undermined by the far right. Unfortunately, politicians from almost all groups rallied around the far right call to block the calls for a ceasefire. It was appalling to witness that happening.

The International Court of Justice ruling is extremely welcome. It makes it clear that Israel has been ordered to prevent genocide. The court made an extremely powerful call but what happened afterwards is really telling. The allies of Israel, including the USA, Britain, Germany and Italy, immediately moved, in a very co-ordinated way, to undermine the work of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, UNRWA. Ten countries have now withdrawn funding from UNRWA on the basis of allegations, without evidence, against 12 employees out of a total of 30,000. The work of UNRWA enables the people of Palestine to survive and stay in Palestine. We are witnessing an attempt by various countries to undermine the ruling of the ICJ and the evidence given in that court, which is despicable. The fact of the matter is that one in four Palestinians is currently at risk of starvation and that is only going to increase.

What does that tell us about the actions of these countries? They are effectively condemning the Palestinian people to starvation or else forcing them to leave their country, which is of course the real aim behind all of this. Indeed, if one looks at Netanyahu's statements, he has been very clear about that. He wants the Palestinians gone from Palestine.

The situation continues to get worse. We urgently need to see action. I call on the Irish Government to join the case with South Africa at the International Court of Justice. There is no excuse at this point for not doing so. We need to do more, we must do more and I call for an urgent debate on this issue.

Míle buíochas. Anois, an Seanadóír Aidan Davitt.