As the Minister said, it is over a year since the brutal Russian invasion of Ukraine. That is over a year in which the Government could and should have pulled together a more coherent, co-ordinated and joined-up response to this crisis. She spoke of a cross-governmental approach but there is no sense of leadership from the Taoiseach on this matter. Instead we heard him seeking to deflect blame, it appears, onto policing and the Garda when this issue is about cross-departmental supports for the Department of Childre…

Not enough.

Yes.

This week.

Just two hours ago, along with fellow Oireachtas Members, a large number of us took to the streets on our bicycles to mark National Bike Week. I thank all those Oireachtas Members who took part, along with Oireachtas staff and cyclist.ie . Bicycles are the transport of the future. They are good for the planet, good for cities and towns and good for our health. Right now, far too many people in Ireland are reluctant to cycle. They feel it is not safe to do so. There is too little provision for cycling and too little…

I being by acknowledging the presence of the Palestinian ambassador and that it is the 75th anniversary of the Nakba. I offer my condolences and sympathies to all those who have lost family members and friends over those years. I thank my colleagues in Sinn Féin for putting forward this important Bill to which we in Labour our delighted to offer full support. I also acknowledge the ongoing work of our colleague in the other House, Senator Black, who has done so much to forward bring forward the occupied territories…

Earlier this week I raised with the Taoiseach the desperate case of Micheline Walsh and her husband, who are in their late 70s and facing eviction. I said then they were not alone and, very sadly, today we see a report from Alone and Threshold on older and ageing persons in the private rental sector. The report notes 40% of older people who are now renting expect to have to continue renting in the private market for the rest of their lives. Many of them are reporting high stress as a result of the housing insecurit…

I thank the Minister for the response. I commend the authors of the report from Threshold and Alone, because they have shone a spotlight on what is, as the Minister has acknowledged, a problem we are going to see increasing with an ageing population and the ticking time bomb resulting from the chronic housing shortage. However, the Minister's Government needs to do something about this. Once again we are hearing a lack of urgency from the Minister when it comes to actions. On pensions, we have called for them to be…

This morning, my Labour Party colleagues and I met with Cara Darmody and her father, Mark, from Ardfinnan in County Tipperary. Cara is only 12 years old but she has already become an impressive and powerful advocate on behalf of children with autism, autistic children, who are being denied services in this country. She has spoken out on behalf on her family about their struggle to get adequate services for her brothers Neil and John, in particular Neil, who is now ten and a half. She was the youngest witness to giv…

Hear, hear.

I do not know if the Taoiseach has ever read the classic text The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by the Irish author, Robert Tressell. We celebrated Tressell’s legacy in Liberty Hall at the weekend, with Mick Lynch, the leader of the British union, the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers, RMT, speaking at the event and reminding us of the money trick under capitalism. That money trick that Tressell described so well explains why supermarkets continue to keep food prices high and to maintain foo…

I join with others in calling for a re-municipalisation of waste services, including green waste services. I will host a briefing by the Fórsa union in the audiovisual room at 3 p.m. on precisely that topic. Fórsa will present research it has conducted into this issue. I ask the Taoiseach to engage with the union on that. I also raise the issue of offshore wind and the concerns I am hearing from many stakeholders regarding the lengthy delays in developing the necessary infrastructure by the Government to ensure, in…

I want to raise another problem with the tenant in situ scheme that has come to my attention, along with the difficulties with a lack of capacity in local authorities. Owing to the chronic shortages in housing in Dublin, including in my constituency of Dublin Bay South, many people are in house-shares with different types of tenure and lone parents, older people and a mix of full private rent and housing assistance payment, HAP, tenants are often living in one house. When a landlord goes to sell, however, all of th…

I wish to return also to the issue of offshore wind. I have raised already the frustration among stakeholders with the delays in getting the infrastructure up and running, particularly for floating offshore wind. We constantly hear from the Government about the enormous potential of offshore wind, but there has been such immense delay in getting these projects started. What is the State doing to speed up publicly owned offshore wind projects. Is the ESB appropriately resourced to speed up development? It says it ha…

Finding solutions of course should be the priority but the Taoiseach's Government has patently failed to find necessary solutions. Time after time we hear the Taoiseach say that family homelessness and child homelessness is a stain on our society as if he was an observer. The Taoiseach is in government and has been in government for several terms. The Taoiseach needs to ensure that action is taken. If it takes a Bill to ensure that local authorities will make the best interests of the child paramount, then that Bil…

The Government could have done something.

Prices of groceries, food and basic commodities are rising, and workers are struggling. Yet many corporations are not supporting the struggles of their staff. Several Tesco workers who work on the front line in packing and delivering food to people in communities across the country have come to me to share stories of how their wages are being cut due to roster changes. One employee told me they will lose almost €3,500 per annum. That person does not know if they will be able to pay their mortgage because of this ro…

In recent months, we have seen announcement after announcement of layoffs across many big technology companies, in particular, in Dublin. The impact of these redundancies has obviously been huge for those directly and indirectly impacted, not only in my own constituency of Dublin Bay South but across the country. The impact is more worrying where there are concerns regarding a lack of compliance by companies with redundancy rules, such as the 30-day statutory consultation period. I encourage all tech workers to joi…

On Friday we learned that homelessness figures have risen yet again to almost 12,000 people, which represents a 2.1% increase month on month. These figures relate to the period just before the lifting of the eviction ban took effect. I shudder to think what the figure for next month will be, as the evictions allowed to proceed by the Government come into force. These figures show that the Government is divorced from reality, detached from reality. In light of consistently rising homelessness figures - rising yet ag…

I agree with the Taoiseach. I think he is right. Of course homelessness is a stain on our society. It is shameful that we have nearly 12,000 people in homelessness at a time when the country is running very significant budget surpluses, with a surplus of over €5 billion last year. I disagree with him, however, on the eviction ban. We have heard from all of those working with people who are homeless that the homelessness figures would have been much worse had it not been for the existence of the temporary ban. It sh…