The Taoiseach says there will have to be forward planning in the future. Why is that forward planning not taking place under this Government? Why did it not take place under the previous Government? The crisis in special education is simply getting worse under the Taoiseach's watch. There are now hundreds of parents who do not know if their children will have a school place in September. One mother in north Cork, Sheila Casey Jones, told the Irish Examiner that her son Patrick has received 29 rejections for a schoo…

Does the Taoiseach see something wrong with parents who have a huge amount on their hands being cast into the role of project managing to try to get a school place for their child? There is something fundamentally wrong with that. What is the Taoiseach doing to sort this out? Parents should not be put in that situation. The Taoiseach said 400 special classes have been promised to be opened this year but he has also said that only 218 have been sanctioned. There is a huge gap between sanctioning places and classes f…

I also welcome this. It is very important. Like others, I have spoken to people who have been treated absolutely abysmally by some of these credit servicing firms. These include people who have been harassed or who have tried to get out of the situation and tried to sell. On contacting the firms to say they want to sell, they have been told that if they want to talk about that, then they will be charged a fee. They have not had recourse. These people, who have been trapped in these situations - that is their langua…

I ask the Minister of State to reconsider this. The case for this amendment has been made strongly. Yesterday in the audiovisual room, Members of the House from Opposition and Government parties heard directly from women who are survivors of domestic abuse and have gone through horrendous situations. They spoke passionately about the lack of support for them and the lack of refuge places that have trapped survivors of domestic violence in horrendous situations. Their clear message to all of us as legislators is tha…

I endorse Deputy Nash's request for that commitment from the Minister of State that he will look at this and work on getting a solution to it. It would be very welcome if he would do that. I will make a point to him. I accept his bona fides in what he is saying about the Supreme Court ruling on the Zalewski case. What is pertinent in that ruling is that, because of the quasi-judicial role involved here, there must be cognisance of the need to follow fair procedures. Deputies Nash and Doherty, the Minister of State …

Since the United Nations was founded, Ireland has stood steadfast for peace, multilateralism and acting only through a United Nations mandate. These have been core pillars of our international policy. This was something the Taoiseach used to recognise. He said attempts to dismantle the triple lock were "an out-of-touch ideological obsession on the part of Fine Gael which ignores the facts of Ireland’s international standing". Fianna Fáil has now been in government with Fine Gael for so long that their ideological o…

The Government is ripping up a multilateral approach. It absolutely is.

It absolutely is. We have a multilateral approach and ripping up the triple lock would bring us into a unilateral approach. That is absolutely the case.

The UN mandate gives a legitimacy to peacekeeping missions which would be impossible to replace. The blue beret our troops have worn with pride offers them a huge level of protection, and instead of acknowledging that, the Government is undermining this. In the election, Fianna Fáil promised reform of the triple lock, not to tear it to shreds. Yet another election promise is in tatters. On Friday, as parents of children with additional needs without a school place slept out on the streets, the Tánaiste advocated sp…

This is what the Taoiseach told the Dáil when he was in opposition: Earlier this year, the Minister for Defence signalled that he would try to water down Ireland's commitment to the triple lock, which is at the core of our neutrality. He presented the idea it was contradictory and that we were giving unsavoury countries a veto over our actions. This argument has been behind the efforts of a wing of Fine Gael to erode neutrality over the years. This is what the Taoiseach said. I could not put it better myself. He we…

Why has the Taoiseach capitulated to Fine Gael on this?

I want to ask the Taoiseach about the well-being of CIÉ pensioners. For decades, former CIÉ workers had their pension payments rise in line with wage increases. However, when the economic crash happened, CIÉ halted both pay and pension increases. While pay rises for current staff have been restored, pensioners have had their income frozen for over 16 years. This is leaving pensioners out of pocket following an unprecedented cost-of-living crisis. Independent actuarial analysis carried out by Willis Towers Watson fo…

I recently met the campaign group Access for All and one of the issues they raised with me was how the housing crisis is affecting disabled people in particular. As the Taoiseach will be aware, the Ombudsman has said that more than 1,200 disabled people under the age of 65 are living in nursing homes. Nursing homes are a completely unsuitable setting for younger people. It affects their independence and mental health. What is the Government doing to address the scandal of the 1,200 disabled people under the age of …

Radie Peat of Lankum and Dan Lambert, manager of Kneecap, recently spoke about their experiences as parents of a child with additional needs. Speaking with Oliver Callan on RTÉ radio, they described the challenges that they, and thousands of families like them, face in battling to get supports for their child. Since their child was 17 months old, Radie and Dan realised she was autistic and non-verbal. Despite this, she will not get the supports she urgently needs until she is six and a half years old. The story Rad…

There continues to be a huge level of vacancies that need to be filled. The Taoiseach keeps on blaming the 2022 High Court judgment which found the Government to be in breach of legislation. When will the Government get children the access to what they urgently require rather than blaming that judgment? This Friday, a group of 50 parents will hold a sleep-out outside the Department of Education because their children cannot get the school places they need. Parents should not have to sleep out in order to assert the…

There are now 14,864 people living in emergency homeless accommodation. This includes 4,510 children who are growing up without a home. Almost every month the numbers climb higher, but record levels of homelessness are now so commonplace that these numbers no longer seem to shock. They rarely appear on the front pages of newspapers. This is because the numbers do not tell the stories of the thousands of people whose lives are being damaged and destroyed. Last night, thanks to some excellent public-service journalis…

I appreciate that the Taoiseach did not see the programme. If he had, he would have seen the family in question applied for medical priority and had been refused. That decision is under appeal. They are in the same situation that thousands of other families with real medical needs who are not able to have their housing needs met and who are not prioritised. The Taoiseach dismissed a ban no-fault evictions as if it could not work. In fact, such a ban is the norm in most European countries. Not only is it the norm, b…

The Social Democrats are strongly opposed to the proposals the Government is bringing forward. It is very important that the Opposition can hold the Government to account. The Dáil is already one of the comparatively weaker parliaments in terms of its ability to hold the Government to account.

It absolutely is. We have one of the strongest executives. In other parliaments, the executives do not always get everything passed by virtue of the majority they have. We have one of the strongest Whip systems in western democracy, which makes it one of the strongest executives. We need to have more accountability, not less.

We need more Government accountability rather than creating new slots where only Government TDs can ask questions of the Government.