I am talking about the lived experience of 500,000 retired workers who are represented by the people who met the previous Minister of State, Deputy English, with me. There are quite a few retired workers' organisations. They represent a significant cohort of retired workers, but these people are not retired voters. They paid into occupational pension schemes, which basically comprises their deferred wages. Whenever that is being tampered with in order for the Government or another party to achieve other means, they…

Yesterday, the Minister told us he had not yet decided what to do regarding extending the partial eviction ban. He said it was complicated, that the Attorney General will have to be consulted, that legal opinions will have to be sought and that a balance must be struck between the rights of landlords and of tenants. The real solution, he again told us, is supply. I will help him. My clinic, like that of every Deputy in this House, including the Minister's Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael colleagues, is out the door with h…

On Tuesday Top Security, which has blocked a meagre wage increase for security workers for the last 21 months, will be in court in an attempt to continue to block that cost-of-living increase, which would bring all 15,000 security workers up to €12.90 per hour, which is not exactly a king's ransom for workers doing one of the most dangerous, most antisocial and toughest jobs in the country. Those workers also worked throughout the Covid pandemic. I am referring to Top Security and a small wage increase it blocked u…

The Government has allowed it not to.

That is an unbelievable answer.

I will share time with Deputies Gino Kenny and Boyd Barrett. I will make a couple of comments on the opening speeches from the Taoiseach and Tánaiste, both of whom focused heavily on the role of the European Union, the great European Union we have, the shared agenda and co-operation in dealing with what they see as a Europe-wide problem. Indeed, we have many problems across the globe but those of us in the First World have far fewer than the people who are fleeing war, famine and climate-related disasters. I though…

The Minister needs to explain how I did that.

If the Minister can show us how he is really concerned about those social challenges, maybe we could talk about it.

The Minister needs to show it.

Because they are connected.

If we did not have a housing crisis-----

A long way to go.

That is just not true. We have the highest homeless figures ever.

Crisis? What crisis?

And a healthcare crisis.

And a hospital crisis.

That is what we are doing and-----

-----we are calling out the failure of the Government to house people. Over 11,000 people are on the streets in this country without homes.

I ask the Minister to provide details of the total allocation of extra funding to community welfare offices to deal with applications for additional needs payments and to make a statement on the matter.

I believe we will be able to say with confidence that it is unlikely that the increase the Minister has allocated for exceptional needs payments is going to cover the demand. We are increasingly seeing, as the Barnardos report showed yesterday, that people who are earning substantially more - I know the CWOs have discretion - are also running into real difficulty with the energy crisis in particular and mortgage increases. I will draw attention to one particular cohort, namely, people living with district heating s…