We were not.

This Labour motion offered the first opportunity in the Thirty-fourth Dáil to address and debate the question of housing. The motion set out a constructive and ambitious set of proposals and a pathway to reform housing policy and ensure Government could provide a resolution to undoubtedly the biggest challenge facing it and all of us and the biggest civil rights issue of this generation. We set out a credible pathway. We heard seven first-time Labour TDs speak with energy, passion and ideas about tackling the housi…

I want to raise with the Taoiseach gaps in the education system for children who require additional supports. We are all very conscious of the serious shortfall in this area. In particular, I want to speak about children who are failed because the education system lacks support for those with dyslexia or dyspraxia. In schools and in our State exams, people continue to be let down. During State exams, readers are often restricted in the assistance they can provide to students and the National Council for Special Edu…

It is both issues: reading schools and reading classes.

I return to the biggest immediate challenge facing the Government, namely housing. Despite the bluster from Government, it has admitted that last year it built nearly 10,000 fewer homes than it previously stated. We all hear from our constituents in communities around the country that housing is the single biggest issue facing families and individuals. We hear this from people who are homeless, from families who are living in housing insecurity and from people who cannot move out of their childhood bedrooms because…

The Minister spoke about an uplift in housing delivery, but the only uplift likely this year it seems is an uplift in the rents people are being forced to pay. People tell all of us that they can barely afford to meet their monthly rents. Can the Minister give certainty to renters that RPZ laws will be retained or that there will be an equivalent safety net? There is nothing coming from Government except uncertainty and, it seems, tax breaks for developers. We know from the ESRI that tax breaks for developers do no…

He would not accept our proposals.

They were not.

We have a serious issue with waiting times for ambulance arrivals - 500 times in six months last year, ambulances took longer than an hour to arrive on the scene of a high priority case. These can be cases of life and death, literally. The Minister for Health may wish to respond. I have just been informed of a very sad case in my constituency in which an elderly woman suffered broken bones and a head injury at her home, which is ten minutes from a hospital. The ambulance took three hours to arrive and the delay, th…

I will supply those.

The world looked on in disbelief this week as US President Trump made his outrageous and brutal proposal for the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people from Gaza. I think we all agree that the people of Gaza have endured an horrific bombardment by Israel over many months. We have seen tens of thousands of civilians, including many children, killed and injured. The entire infrastructure in the enclave has been destroyed and devastated. At this time, it is all the more important that we in Ireland stand firm in o…

Today at last and after an unnecessarily long break, we have arrived at the first Leaders' Questions session of this new Government term. I want to raise the emergency situation affecting communities all across this island, that is, the ongoing fallout from Storm Éowyn. At the outset, my thoughts and those of my Labour Party colleagues are with all those families and households that have been so severely impacted by the storm. Many households are still continuing to suffer the consequences of the storm itself along…

We all appreciate just how ferocious this storm was. I join with the Taoiseach in expressing sympathy to the family of the young man, Kacper Dudek, so tragically killed. It is simply unacceptable, however, that we still have 18,000 homes, farms and businesses without power so many days on from the outbreak of the storm. It is clear that much more urgent action is necessary from the Government to invest the money we in the Labour Party called on it to invest in the grid. We called for investment of some of the Apple…

Right through the election campaign, the Taoiseach and Government Ministers claimed that 40,000 homes would be built in 2024. We now know that this was a wildly exaggerated claim. In fact, the actual number built last year was almost 10,000 short of that figure. That 40,000 was a bogus figure. Earlier today, the Taoiseach rejected the suggestion from Opposition parties that he was deliberately misleading the country by repeating this figure of 40,000. That raises a very serious question, however. Did he and Governm…

It was very constructive.

I am happy to respond to that.

A Cheann Comhairle, I welcome your ruling this morning. I welcome the statement by the Government Chief Whip this morning and, in particular, the acknowledgement by the Government that there is a need to ensure clarification in differentiating between Members of the Opposition and the Government. That is the core democratic principle that we, across the Opposition parties and groups, united on yesterday and it is fundamental to our democracy. We have no difficulty with the Order of Business proposed and, indeed, we…

I wish Deputy Martin well as the presumptive incoming Taoiseach. Today will likely be a proud day for him, his family and his supporters, and I acknowledge that. I also wish Deputy Harris, the outgoing Taoiseach and incoming Tánaiste, well. Increasingly, this feels like Groundhog Day, or groundhog week, not just with Deputies Martin and Harris swapping roles and not just with President Trump reinstalled in the White House, but because here in Ireland in recent weeks it has felt like we have been returning to the ba…

I am very glad that we have reached agreement today and the Chief Whip read out an agreed form of words acknowledging what was a self-evident truth, namely, that a TD could not be in government and in opposition at the same time. That was the core democratic principle that we, across the Opposition, united on yesterday. The situation in the Dáil yesterday was deeply regrettable but it should never have come to that. This was a chaos of the Government's own making. I am glad that the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste reach…

As Trump might say, "Roads, baby, roads." That is what we are going to see from this Government.