I will go one further and argue with the Minister that he has a duty to publish that review, having sat on it for six months. Many people are going through agony, having been knocked off the housing list after years of waiting. This is not right. There are various schemes in the Housing for All policy which are really an attempt to reinvent the wheel. What we need is a massive investment in public housing that gives access to the housing list to those who need it and we need to stop, in the cruel way which the Gove…

I wish to ask about a Bill that I introduced last year. On 30 June, it will be a year since the Government amended the Second Stage motion on the Industrial Relations (Provisions in Respect of Pension Entitlements of Retired Workers) Bill 2021 on the basis that it would return the Bill to the House within a year, which would be next Thursday. Will the Taoiseach guarantee me that the Bill will be before the House again before next Thursday?

Next Thursday will be a year on.

In welcoming this proposal for a directive, I fully agree with the Minister that gender-based violence directed against a woman is because she is a woman. Such violence is a manifestation of historically unequal power relationships between men and women. We should bear that in mind every time we look at this subject because there are so many aspects of trying to address that problem in the sort of society that has grown up over hundreds of years of relying on women to reproduce the next generation at no cost, to do…

I want to follow on the discussion that has been going on. The question I am about to ask is quite significant because we are constantly being told that there are not enough resources to do all we have to do to deal with the various crises. Has the Minister of State looked at the recent Oxfam report that dealt with wealth taxes and the problems with previous attempts across the EU to introduce same? Does he have any plans in this regard in the coming period?

I do not want to go down a rabbit hole of arguing with the Minister of State about the significance of the property tax. He says people's homes are the biggest form of wealth but for many it is a struggle to keep the roof over their head, pay the mortgage, etc. Putting the property tax on those who can ill-afford it is obscene. However, that is not what I am here to argue. The Minister of State is evading my question on tax on wealth in this country because it is not directly in the Oxfam report. However, using the…

If the Minister of State reads the Oxfam report when he gets a chance, he will see it is looking at extreme wealth and how it has doubled, tripled and, in the US, increased tenfold in recent years. In the 1980s, we were told there was no money, we were bust and needed to tighten our belts. We know since there was plenty of it but it was held in Ansbascher accounts, offshore tax havens and brass plate companies. We have seen the studies from the Paradise Papers and the Panama Papers so we know there were and are way…

It is disingenuous of the Minister of State to keep referring to people's homes, farms and pensions. We are talking about an obscene level of wealth that is not properly taxed, as pointed out by the Oxfam report. The wealthiest in the globe have seen their wealth jump by €4.35 trillion during the pandemic. The report states that, globally, billionaires have had a terrific pandemic. With the investment in all the industries leading from that, we would have been able to see-----

The clock says I have 30 seconds.

Okay. I am sorry about that.

When I was listening to the Tánaiste's spat with Deputy Doherty earlier, I was thinking this House must be full of bowsies. I, too, went to jail, along with dozens of other ordinary people, fighting the cost-of-living increase in 2003. Bin charges, which are now privatised, are going through the roof and vast profits are being made, and this is one of the issues in the current cost-of-living crisis. However, today's ESRI report is really startling and shows that there are many more thousands of people living in ene…

There is a view, and it might be argued by the Ministers here, that if you give people a rise in their income, it leads to spiralling inflation. That is nonsense. There has not been a decent rise in income for most workers in this country for years. The ICTU reckons that over the past two years, workers have lost about €2,500 of their income because of inflation. The Tánaiste can say what he likes about the Government's interventions, but what we are talking about here in this cost-of-living crisis is a reality. We…

What about taxing profits? There should be an increase in tax on profits.

Abdullah al-Howaiti was a 14-year-old boy when he was arrested and tortured until he confessed to a crime he could not have committed. In November 2021, the Supreme Court of Saudi Arabia overturned the decision to kill him. On 13 June 2022, only three days ago, the court of appeal upheld the death sentence. Will the Tánaiste call on this despotic regime, which he recently visited, to reverse this unbearable cruelty on this young man and repeal the death sentence? Doing so would demonstrate, at the very least, that …

I will send the Tánaiste the petition.

I wish to draw a parallel. I attended at a meeting of the Joint Committee on Gender Equality this morning at which there were presentations from groups involved in care work and some academics. It was interesting that the same issue arose about not knowing the full extent of the care needs, the numbers of carers and those who undertake care work in the country. It is, therefore, difficult for those organisations and the supports around them to make plans. There is a parallel to be drawn with the NCSE and the lack o…

I will start by arguing this motion has nothing to do with energy security and everything to do with profit and the bottom-line security of Providence Resources. Perhaps the rural Deputies might considering altering their headed paper to say, instead of "I'm working on behalf of the people of this or that county", "I'm working on behalf of big oil and gas". It seems they really believe that Providence oil and gas will be the saviour of us all. If only we could free Providence from the nasty grip of the Green Party,…

Yes, I think he would be happy to be quoted.

It is okay for the Ministers to elaborate on it, though.

The announcement by the Irish Medical Organisation, IMO, on Monday that 97% of junior doctors had voted in favour of industrial action demonstrates how frustrated and demoralised they are with their treatment by the HSE and the Minister for Health, Deputy Stephen Donnelly. Figures today show that 1.3 million people are still on waiting lists. The average time spent waiting to be seen in emergency departments is 11 hours, and it is longer for those aged over 75. Therefore, it is no wonder that representatives of the…