What is the Minister for Education doing to address the teacher shortage crisis in our schools, to attract new teachers into the profession, and also to retain the teachers we have currently?

I do not think we can step away from the fact that there is a teacher shortage crisis happening in primary and post-primary schools. To address some of the initiatives the Minister spoke about, the PME incentive of €2,000, for example, is very welcome, but the PME course down here is two years. A graduate who wanted to take on the initiative would still have to deal with rising rent costs. God help them if they live in Dublin where it would be eaten up and actually would not even cover the cost of a month's rent. T…

I appreciate the Minister will keep it under review but I also think that two years, for someone who has already gone through an undergraduate degree, is probably a little bit too much. Teaching is a profession and I know so many people who are in it and love the fact they are there, or would love to get into it. However, it is simply not affordable anymore to be a teacher in our cities and towns and to incur the cost of living which is crippling our public services as whole. The consequences of this include some s…

I want to return to the tragedy that is unfolding in Gaza at the minute. The Tánaiste previously mentioned two things which I would like to understand a little more about. My colleague Deputy Cairns asked about the response of the European Union and in particular the response of Ursula von der Leyen, who has completely shut her eyes to what is occurring in terms of the collective punishment and the bombs that are dropping on Palestine at the minute. That is concerning. I think the Irish State held itself well over …

I fully recognise the passion and bite in this debate are a reflection of the importance of the issue. At this point, however, I cannot for the life of me say I have witnessed an urgency in addressing this most important issue. The Minister of State referred to the potential for industrial action. I wonder whether that is an insight we do not have. When I talked and listened to union representatives, whether they are from SIPTU, the INMO or Fórsa, they had not heard from the State on this issue. Given she reference…

I am going to focus the majority of my speech on the education side of the budget yesterday, which was like the budget before it and the one before that, a budget of half measures. I do not use the term lightly. To describe a person, thing or entity as a half measure is not something I would like to do, yet that is exactly what we seem to get. It was the accusation that was levelled towards the Government's budget yesterday and, I would argue, since it came to power. Yesterday, it was announced that the free book s…

More than anything else, it is the hypocrisy that grates the most. The Taoiseach used the phrase again yesterday that Fine Gael uses repeatedly - "the party of law and order". It is almost Orwellian at this point that Fine Gael continues to refer to itself in those terms when after holding the Ministry for justice for more than 12 years, we have seen continued deterioration and increasing dysfunction in how our streets are policed and how our Garda stations are resourced. We all experience that as public representa…

As the Taoiseach referred earlier to this with so much passion I thought I would ask more about it. I hold in my hand the North Inner City Local Community Safety Partnership document, which was released a couple of weeks ago. It has been two and a half years in the making. It was well heralded in advance that this would make a difference. This is 52 pages of what I consider constitutes someone's stream of thought. There are 51 recommendations that have no resources behind them. The glossary of recommendations at th…

I had anticipated, given that it was raised several times last week by Deputy Catherine Murphy, that we would have statements this week on section 39 workers, who will strike in two weeks' time. I do not think there is a person in this Chamber representing a constituency who will not be affected if over 4,000 health and voluntary workers remove their labour to some of the most vulnerable people. This is not a decision they want to take but there seems to be a lack of urgency. We need statements and to reassert the …

Statements on school transport do not do justice to what we are being asked to speak to. More than school transport, I am being asked by parents who have contacted me on this issue to give voice to the fact that their children, often children with acute vulnerabilities and additional needs, are being excluded from their basic right to an education. I do not doubt for a second that organising school transport on scale is a logistical challenge, but nor do I feel for a second that it is one that should be considered …

I also want to ask the Tánaiste about his recent visit to Israel and Palestine. In particular I want to ask him if he used the phrase "apartheid" in any formal engagement during that recent visit.

I thank the Tánaiste for his contribution. I will begin by saying that I do not doubt for a second his care and passion for the issue and I do not believe anybody has a monopoly on such emotions in this Chamber. The term "apartheid" is not just a term but has meaning in international law which has been referred to most particularly in the 1973 International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid. How does it benefit the people of Palestine and the people in Gaza and in any of the ref…

We have had a number of exchanges on this issue. In a recent engagement the Tánaiste highlighted his predecessors in Fianna Fáil who took what I would argue was the brave position of being the first to call for the Palestinians' right to a homeland. In order to highlight where we have been brave in the past, and where some of the Tánaiste's predecessors were brave in the past, does the Tánaiste not think there is also a time for us to stand up unilaterally and say if the other 26 EU countries will not act in concer…

Language is important.

My question pertains to the Control of Economic Activity (Occupied Territories) Bill 2018, but it is really in reference to any action at all. I am really asking about whether we can advance the occupied territories Bill. What can we actually do in terms of providing sanction?

I am conscious, however, that when Deputy Brady brought forward the Illegal Israeli Settlements Divestment Bill 2023 around the withdrawal of investment through State investment funds in occupied territories in Israel, the Government did not advance it just a couple of months ago. It was the Minister, Deputy Micheál Martin, who brought in the comparison between our response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and said we have been consistent when it comes to the territorial expansion between condemning Russia's occu…

-----but I believe the meekness of the EU, in particular-----

-----has led to that coming further and further away.

I welcome the Minister's commitments to revisiting the Bill that was brought forward by Deputy Brady. Is that a commitment? Should we see some tangible action from that within the next three months, which I believe is when the timeframe is up? Should we see some tangible action on that by this time next year, for example, by the summer recess? When would the Minister foresee actual action coming from that Bill?

We have had them before.