A “For Sale” sign has gone up this week on the Christian Brothers monastery building on Synge Street in Portabello in my constituency. The property has a guide price of €3.75 million. For some time, I have been calling on the Minister for education to ensure that this building will be retained for educational use by the existing four schools on the street. Indeed, I have also called on the Christian Brothers in this regard. The area suffers from an acute shortage of local school places, particularly places where st…

Whether they will use the proceeds to compensate victims of abuse, we do not know.

I am asking the Taoiseach to intervene with the Minister for education in order to ensure this building remains in public usage as an educational campus-----

-----or at the very least that the money to the Christian Brothers is used to pay victims.

Hear, hear. Exactly.

We are increasingly seeing the consequences of this Government's failure to support working people. Today, National Ambulance Service workers are on picket lines across the country. Our ambulance drivers and paramedics, who do such heroic front-line work, have been driven to strike over pay and conditions. Like so many, they are struggling to make ends meet on their current pay rates. As a result, the ambulance service cannot recruit or retain the staff it needs. Crews are being asked to provide increasingly comple…

I made-----

I always acknowledge the global shocks and global context in which the Government has to make responses. I acknowledged that it was a different context to the 1980s, but the similarity is that we are losing many of our young people, who have come through medical school here and see a better life and future for themselves in Australia, for example. Here at home, it is the Government's response that has caused and exacerbated the cost-of-living crisis. Notwithstanding the global shocks, there are choices that the Gov…

To PAYE workers?

I acknowledged that.

Vótáil.

I said "Vótáil".

This week is national bike week. As conveners of the all-party Oireachtas cycling group, Deputy Ciarán Ahern and I were delighted to host a cross-party cycle around Leinster House today, and thanks to all the colleagues who took part. We need to see the Government step up and provide proper investment for cycling infrastructure. I ask that colleagues commit not to buy into an anti-cycling narrative. There has been a lot of talk recently about the cost of bike sheds, but we need to put that in perspective. The cost …

I am delighted to second this motion. I commend my colleague Deputy Ged Nash on proposing a mini-budget on behalf of the Labour Party in order to stand up, as he says, unapologetically for hard-pressed PAYE workers and their families, who have been left behind by the Government's policies. Ged has been a voice of reason as our finance spokesperson. He has consistently called out the crazy VAT cuts that the Government introduced for burger barons and big builders. Unlike the Government and uniquely among other parti…

Rising costs are blowing a €2,000 hole in average household budgets this year. That is in today's Irish Independent . The cost of food, health insurance and energy are all soaring. Ireland has the highest household electricity prices in the EU, as Eurostat has confirmed. The Government's words of sympathy for struggling families are meaningless because it is failing to take action to cut energy costs. It is hunting with the hounds and running with the hare and the hare has got its brains too, it seems. We saw a har…

Things are serious. They are serious for the many thousands of families and households in arrears on their energy bills. They are far too serious to be toying around with distractions about nuclear power when we know the solution lies in the scalable projects of renewables. The Taoiseach speaks about a Government focus on renewables, but it is clearly evident, particularly since the Green Party left government, how there has been a slowdown in Government commitments on climate and on renewables. Last week almost 60…

It is evident.

Today, parents from Ireland, including our Labour Councillor Ali Field, are travelling to Brussels to present a petition to the European Parliament and institutions asking them to investigate Ireland's failure to meet its legal obligations to children with additional needs. Under the Disability Act 2005, every child in Ireland is entitled to an assessment of need within six months. However, more than 21,700 children are now on waiting lists, overdue for assessments of need. The average wait time is two years and ma…

I welcome our Polish community and also a group of students who are with me from Trinity and schools in Dublin and Wexford. Far too many people in Ireland suffer the trauma of losing their home. That is a direct result of the Government's policy. It prioritises the market over people. It did it in March, incentivising landlords to evict with new rent laws, and it is doing it again now, this week telling 16,000 Ukrainian refugees to fend for themselves in an overheated rental market or return to a war zone. So much …

Tax breaks for-----