Deputies, please.

Deputies, please.

Deputies, please.

The Deputies have completely ignored the Chair.

I ask them to stop interrupting and let the Minister finish.

I call Deputy McAuliffe and ask that he be allowed to speak uninterrupted.

Does Deputy Ó Broin wish for his colleagues to speak to the motion?

Can I have a little co-operation, please?

A little more, perhaps.

Go raibh maith agat.

Here we go again, wishing the senior Minister was here, while acknowledging the bona fides of the Minister of State, Deputy Noonan, who is present. It has come to a point where the Green Party must make a decision. What is the homelessness figure at which it will recognise that Government housing policy is utterly failing? The figure for today, while this debate is taking place, is 10,975 people recorded homeless, of whom 3,342 are children. That number is going up. It does not record the homelessness of people sur…

My question is very specific. It is to ask what engagement the Minister has had with his counterparts in other EU countries on the recent draft resolution, on which Ireland voted in support, by the UN Special Political and Decolonization Committee requesting an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice on Israel's occupation of Palestinian land since 1967. The resolution is very detailed. It is nine pages long and includes serious language.

I take it as a forgone conclusion that the Minister will support it when it comes before the UN General Assembly.

I thank the Minister for clarifying that. On the matter of Palestine, I know the Minister is on record as being a strong advocate of the Palestinian people but while that is the case, it seems that we wait for Europe on an awful lot of occasions to see what its position is. On this occasion, the position is divided, although I see 98 countries voted in favour of it, 17 voted against, and 52 abstained. I ask the Minister, while on the UN Security Council - temporary and all as it may be - to stand up for the Palesti…

Democracy is not working when it comes to Israel and the problem is the possible effects of that on the ground. The organisations that have been designated as terrorist organisations have been directly affected. They have been raided, ransacked and forcibly closed, with their equipment confiscated. How long more are we going to wait before we do something about that designation? It has to be lifted. How long more is the Government going to wait before it gives a response to the Amnesty report that said Israel opera…

I withdraw those words in the interest of making progress on this serious issue.

Am I allowed to speak?

This is a serious issue. I attended a very civilised protest in Galway a few weeks ago. We were asked to ask the Minister, as a member of a Government which has a place on the UN Security Council, to call on the Islamic Republic of Iran to immediately stop the use of lethal force and unlawful suppression, to stop subjecting Iranian citizens to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, and to stop unlawful and arbitrary arrests and detentions. The figures are rising. Deputy Howlin already mentioned some of t…

I welcome the fact the Minister has called in the ambassador and spoken to him, but since then we have all got a briefing document from the ambassador that clearly contradicts what we are being told on the ground. I have it here. Has the Minister's attention been brought to that?

We all got it this week. On the Human Rights Council, I understand there will be a special session on the deteriorating human rights situation in Iran on 24 November. I understand also that we have observer status at that special session. Will Iran be represented at that? On the UN Commission on the Status of Women, there have been calls by countries, including America, to have Iran removed from it. I do not agree with that straight up because Afghanistan is represented on that, along with other countries that a ha…