This is all related.

On any of the occasions Government Ministers have left the country, have they been in receipt of Lariam, or was a different drug prescribed for them?

I have no problem with that. I am only asking if they had Lariam.

I have been 18 years in public life, having served as a city councillor in Cork and as a TD for almost a year in this House. Not a day or week goes by when I do not meet a parent with a child with a special need or difficulty, or a child in need of an operation. They are put to the pins of their collars and are desperate. Although I am not a parent myself, I see from my brother and in-laws how they rear their kids. They would kill for their kids. If you could take on their pain, you would. I see parents struggling …

Today comes as a slight surprise to me. After listening to the whispered conversations in the hallways for the past number of weeks, I suspected it might have been Micheál Martin resigning today rather than Paschal Donohoe.

On a personal note, I wish Paschal well. He has been nothing but respectful, decent and honourable in our exchanges across the House in the short period I have been a Member of it. I offer my sincere best wishes to him, his family and his wife Justine as he takes up his new position as the managing director and chief knowledge officer of the World Bank. It is the second most senior role in the institution. It is an enormous position to achieve and one of which to be extremely proud. All of us Irish people should be…

Ireland has a long record of goodwill. When families fled the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we opened our doors and we opened our hearts. That was the right thing to do. However, goodwill must behold its shape. It must be fair and it must be sustainable. Across Europe, governments are adjusting their supports as the conflict continues. Germany has applied the same means test to those of its own citizens. The Czech Republic limits free accommodation to 90 days and has set modest monthly allowances. Poland has withdra…

In light of the RTÉ documentary series, "Trackers: The People v The Banks", the first part of which aired on 3 November, revealing ongoing devastation from Ireland's largest consumer banking scandal, new Central Bank figures showing 42,000 impacted mortgage accounts and the banking industry and banks facing more than €1 billion in fines and redress, is the Tánaiste aware of any tracker mortgage legacy issues currently affecting customers in AIB or PTSB? Has he and his Government methodically satisfied themselves th…

I would like to be associated with the words of condemnation of what happened in Drogheda, as my party colleagues have pointed out. I speak for the 82% of Irish people who feel unheard, unseen and forgotten in this country. The Government has lost control of migration, lost control of enforcement and lost the confidence of the nation. What we have now is a system without fairness and without end in sight. Appeals have surged by 46% in six months from 9,700 to 14,134. Deportation orders had been issued but from June…

I am sorry, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle. Those policies are not making any economic sense and would not promote anybody. It is economically unsustainable.

Once again, we are asked to hand the Government and the ESB a blank cheque of €5 billion in borrowing authority and €1.5 billion more in taxpayer capital, with no plan, no accountability and no guarantees of benefit to the Irish people. Let us be honest in this House: the Government record on energy policy is a record of failure. Ireland now has the second highest household energy prices in the entire European Union. Eurostat confirms we now pay around 48 cent per kilowatt-hour, compared with 31 cent across Europe,…

I support the Bill not because it is a radical idea, but because it is basically decent. No parent should go into debt to send a child to school or to educate their children. This Bill only exists because the Government has failed in the most fundamental of duties to make education genuinely free and fair. We have heard many times that Ministers roll out free books, free books and free books, but parents are still being hit with hidden charges. Many schools today had contacted families earlier this year telling the…

I raise an issue that goes to the heart of the fairness and equality of public service employment, which is the treatment of single teachers under the revised spouse and children's pension scheme, introduced by the Department of Education and Youth under Circular PEN14/05. Since September 2005, every teacher appointed in the public service has been automatically enrolled in the scheme. Membership is compulsory. It deducts 1.5% of gross salary from take home pay every month to fund the benefit, payable only to survi…

I thank the Tánaiste for his reply. The policy itself offends the basis of fairness in the State. I am delighted that the Tánaiste has recognised that I have brought up in this House the unfairness when it comes to inheritance tax and when it comes to single couples. There are 36,000 single couples who do not enjoy the same benefits as the married couples, and 1 million people are childless in this country. If this was a private company doing this to its employees, there would be hell to pay, because it would be in…

I congratulate and thank Deputy Charles Ward for bringing this to the House. I have gotten to know him since we were both elected on the same day. He is an honourable, decent gentleman. The majority of time he has spoken in this House has been about this defective blocks issue, and he has been a lone voice at times on this matter.

Sorry, I thought I was speaking. Deputy Ward has been a great inspiration to me and my constituency and has really brought this to the forefront. People in Cork are stopping me and talking to me about what the Deputy has brought up and about the injustice. The one thing this Government is very good at is drawing divisions in society, setting people against one another, whether it is the private sector against the public sector or this against that. We can see it today in this motion. For years we have seen thousand…

As my colleague suggested, we have to be fair. A child's life is involved in this. His parents are not in the Public Gallery and have not, from what I understand, requested any motion to be brought in this House but have requested a multidisciplinary statutory inquiry. I sit on the the Opposition benches and I argue with the Government on many matters, but the Government has agreed to meet with that family and has engaged with them over and over again. I think political strokes are being pulled, not just on the Gov…

In response to my colleague's last comment about common-sense thinking on planning, I think he will find in Ireland that common sense does not apply to planning agencies and planning permission being granted at the moment. He is 100% correct. It needs an entire overhaul. I will support this Bill on Second Stage to keep the Housing Finance Agency operating without interruption. This is a matter of great importance to families who are waiting for a home. The lifting of statutory borrowing limits is a technical step, …

A few weeks back, newspapers revealed that the Irish Prison Service paid almost €25,000 of taxpayers' money for a single podcast by The 2 Johnnies. There are also reports of other podcasters receiving payments of almost €100,000. At the same time, we see extraordinary capital spending on ten single modular homes at Shelton Abbey at a cost of €640,000 each. At Loughan House in Cavan, units housing just one prisoner each are being built on publicly owned land at a unit cost of €520,000. Coincidentally, we see that se…

After listening to the Taoiseach and his Government speak about balanced growth and fiscal responsibility, I have to ask whose balance, whose growth and whose responsibility? The ordinary worker and the small business owner feel that this budget has punished their efforts of a good, honest day's work. It is the same for the vintner or pub owner, the shopkeeper in Mallow whose electricity bills have almost doubled, the self-employed electrician in Mayfield who rang me last night and has not had a day's sick pay in 2…