6. Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett asked the Taoiseach for a report on his recent meeting with the UK Prime Minister. [65778/25]

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The Taoiseach said he discussed Gaza and Palestine with Keir Starmer. A standard tactic of the Israeli state has been to say that anybody who criticises Israel for genocide, apartheid, ethnic cleansing or the persecution of Palestinians, is somehow antisemitic. Keir Starmer, of course, has a record of going along with that nonsense and attacking people like Jeremy Corbyn, who is one of the most long-standing anti-racists and an absolute opponent of antisemitism. It is an outrageous accusation. We have now seen an instance of our own ambassador being dressed down by an Israeli minister, who accused the Irish people and the Irish Government of antisemitism. I would like to know what the Taoiseach thinks about that. Is he capitulating to that bullying by the Israeli state by intervening on the proposal to rename Herzog Park? This is an entirely justified proposal, given Chaim Herzog's history of involvement in ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

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The Taxi Regulation Act 2013 clearly gives the Minister the power to impose regulations around the activities of dispatch companies. Today, for the third time in two weeks, taxi drivers in Dublin are protesting. There is a widespread protest against this across the country by taxi drivers over the behaviour of Uber, a multimillion euro company, that is trying to undermine the livelihood of nearly 20,000 taxi drivers by introducing a fixed fare system. This will undermine the regulated fare structure and therefore the livelihoods of taxi drivers and ultimately the industry itself. In the long run, as is clear from Uber's behaviour elsewhere in the world, it will not benefit the customer. Once the company gets hold of a market, fares and charges go up and the livelihoods of taxi drivers get smashed. Will the Taoiseach ask the Minister for Transport to impose such regulations to prevent Uber destroying the industry and livelihoods of taxi drivers around this fixed fare system and enforce the taxi regulation and meter stuff?

Sentiment score: -0.19