Can the Taoiseach answer the questions?

Like I said, I am glad that the Minister and Government held the line. The reason many people were surprised to see the Government coming out to bat so strongly for public health is that we do not see that with regard to all aspects of Sláintecare. I hope that we see more of that now. For example, 80% of home care is private now. That is just going up and up. There is no money behind the 2025 plans for Sláintecare. There are so many things that need to be addressed. I asked the Taoiseach two questions and he did no…

Are the eight current patients aware?

I am asking about a different answer.

I congratulate our new Social Democrats TD, Daniel Ennis, and Fine Gael’s new Deputy, Seán Kyne. I warmly welcome them to this Chamber. Dan is going to be a fantastic addition to our parliamentary party team. We are all so excited to work with him. This is a huge day for Dan, Seán and their families. I welcome their families and supporters to the Gallery. I especially welcome Dan’s mother, Jacqueline, his brother Geoff and his fiancé, Chloe. None of us would be in this Chamber today if we did not have the support o…

The Taoiseach needs to stop and listen to himself when he comes into this Chamber week after week and tries to spin a positive message on housing when there are 17,000 people homeless, including more than 5,000 children. This is at a time when there are record budget surpluses. The only thing the Taoiseach has changed in his approach is to start blaming migrants for that failure.

It is shameful. The Taoiseach talks about every metric and fails to mention the most important metric, which is the increase, month on month, and the records being broken in the number of people becoming homeless. Instead of acknowledging that the approach has failed and changing it, the Government introduced legislation that we all knew would increase evictions and rents, which is exactly what happened. Will the Taoiseach at least acknowledge the staggering increase? The only success the Government has had in term…

Today we got news that we all knew was coming. The Government's new rent rules have already driven rents to a record high. They are rising at the highest rate in a quarter of a century. Year on year, rents are up 7% in Dublin, 13% in Cork and a whopping 18% in Galway. We told the Taoiseach this would happen and these measures would undermine renters and he said it was "a ridiculous assertion". Now it is renters who are paying the price. Lauren Keena worked hard, sat her leaving certificate in 2025 and got her dream…

The confidence with which the Taoiseach tries to slate the Social Democrats' policies on housing is honestly astounding, when we consider that he is coming in here on a day when there is news that rents have gone up more than they ever have since records began. That is in the context of a housing crisis that has turned into a housing disaster and then into a catastrophe, where there are record levels of homelessness, where rent prices, house prices and homelessness are all going in one direction under this Governme…

How long has the Government been standing over housing policy? It will be a decade of the housing needs review.

Why did the Government not do it four or five years ago? Better late than never. It is not too late.

I express my condolences to the family and friends of Yves Sakila. A video circulating online of an incident before his death is deeply disturbing. There must be a full, comprehensive and transparent investigation into what happened. Yesterday, Israel committed yet another blatant breach of international law. The Israel Defense Forces, IDF, boarded a flotilla in international waters and again kidnapped humanitarian activists, including 12 Irish citizens. They took this action not because the flotilla posed any kind…

Asking the Taoiseach to live up to his election promises is not attacking him. That should be the bare minimum. He said that he would enact the occupied territories Bill and all this Government has done for 16 months is find excuses to delay it. Back and forth to the Attorney General, over and over again, looking for advice that we know is the same as that from the Attorney General to the previous Government. We know the advice was to go ahead. Now the Government has run out of steam with that excuse so it is going…

There have been no sanctions.

I move: “That the Bill be now read a Second Time.” Eight years ago, Ireland voted overwhelmingly to repeal the eighth amendment. People voted for compassion and to end the cruelty of forcing women onto planes and ferries. They voted because we believe women should be able to access abortion here at home, with their families, doctors and support systems around them. While enormous progress has been made since then, the promise of repeal has not been fully realised. Many women who receive devastating diagnoses of fat…

We all know that this law is causing harm, and we have a responsibility to change it. We know women are being hurt by the gaps in our legislation in maternity hospitals, on overnight ferries and in hotel rooms in England, far away from their loved ones. Everyone in this Chamber knows about it, and everyone in this Chamber needs to address that reality. We have heard repeated references today to caution, to limits and to concerns about changing the framework too much. There also needs to be caution about the harm ca…

In the run-up to the last general election, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael were in panic mode. In an effort to distract voters from the Government's failure to deliver they began splashing the cash, giving nearly everyone in the country a one-off payment which hit bank accounts in the week leading up to the election. Not just that, but a range of cast-iron commitments were made to the electorate. Chief among them was a promise to cap the cost of childcare at €200 a month. We were told that childcare costs were at the to…

The Taoiseach seems to just think it is par for the course to make these big election promises to people and then completely, unashamedly renege on them afterwards.

He seems to think that plámásing the electorate and promising things is just part of electioneering. It is not. People believed the Taoiseach when he said there would be a reduction in childcare fees. People believed this Government when it promised to roll out a plan for a public model of childcare. I just hope that people watching will judge this Government not on its empty promises in the lead-up to the next election but on its actions now. The Taoiseach says I will not acknowledge progress and is talking about …

I think you should examine them.