So are waiting lists.

There is an old joke about the weather that everyone talks about it but no one ever does anything about it. It feels the same with the transition. Everyone is in favour of it. Even the usual climate denier Deputies in this House talk about how and when the transition should happen. My main concern is that despite the rhetoric there is no actual transition taking place. What progress there is in any area is akin to Sisyphus pushing the boulder up the hill. For every step forward we see the boulder slip down again. F…

Deputy Fitzpatrick is out of order.

I welcome the announcement today of the 80 electric buses to be provided this year and the plan to go to 800 over the next eight years. Much more needs to be done. It is welcome but it is a drop in the ocean compared to the urgency that is needed to deal with climate change and the cost of living. I note the Minister of State, Deputy Troy, has endorsed the People Before Profit policy of provision of free public transport, given he had a lovely trip to Luxembourg recently and had the experience of free public transp…

My question was about the policy for free public transport.

I note from the Taoiseach's reports that he spends a lot of time at meetings and travelling to visit various delegations and discussing the horror, as he described it, of the war in Ukraine and the extraordinary inhumanity being imposed by Russian forces on the people of Ukraine. I ask him to perform a very simple act of solidarity that would go a long way towards alleviating that horror. There are tens of thousands of Ukrainian people living in Poland, having fled Ukraine since the start of the war. Many are women…

No. I was talking about the Polish Parliament. The Left in Poland has an amendment seeking to give raped Ukrainian women access to abortion.

Whatever powers the Government has to condemn-----

It should use whatever influence it has. The Taoiseach seems to be talking to many people about the war in Ukraine a lot of the time.

I know. I am not stupid. I know the Government does not have powers in the Polish Parliament.

Perhaps the Government could raise the issue of women who are raped as a weapon of war being given access to abortion.

Good.

An amendment will before the Polish Parliament next week.

Is the Minister aware - I am sure he is - of the recent media reports of further delays to the Department's plans to abolish the direct provision system? I ask him to make a statement on the matter. In respect of the answer he just gave to Deputy Daly, please clarify how many of the 37 centres are commercial and run for profit.

The Minister did not answer my question about the number of commercially run centres, but I hope he will come back to it. First, we both agree that the scrapping of this inhumane system has to be achieved. If the Minister achieves this, he can be proud but I contend that the entering by the Green Party into a coalition with Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, which have an appalling record on housing, the dispensing of public housing and lands into the private sector and pandering to the developer-led models they have, was …

We agree on many things and I am sure the Minister does not get verbal or even officially written opposition to the commitment to end direct provision. The problem is that the Minister is in a Government with parties that are dominated by their links to international finance, developers and the idea of private property for rent and ownership. They have handed over public land and facilities that could have been used not just to house refugees but to end the housing crisis and take the people off the streets; today …

This question is on the sectoral carbon budgets, but more in line with how these fit with the building of a liquified natural gas, LNG, terminal. It is clear from the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, report this week that we have a serious problem in this regard. It stems not just from the failure to implement the Government's plan but from the Government's plan itself. Even if the sectoral carbon budgets are to be set at the high end of our ambitions, that will still leave us with a serious emissions gap. The…

It was LNG.

Therefore, pending the review where the energy security issue will be examined in light of all the hype around the war in Ukraine, we may, indeed, have an LNG terminal. I think there is a disconnect between what is happening and the rhetoric we are getting. The Government's inaction is clear on things like data centres in respect of their huge consumption of our energy. In this context, there is the strong possibility of an LNG terminal at Shannon. This is because there is ambivalence and ambiguity among all the pa…

I am just stating a fact. The leaflet was signed by the very man, Wes Edens.