It is important.

It is about transparency.

Will he question the Minister?

I welcome the Minister of State with responsibility for sport to the House. Sport has always occupied a unique place in humane society. It transcends politics, religion, ethnicity and nationality. It brings people together in a way that very few things can. That is why I approached this motion with extreme caution. Let me be clear to this House: I condemn the horrific attacks that were carried out by Hamas against Israel on 7 October 2023, the murder of innocent civilians, the taking of hostages and the acts of ter…

While I welcome this debate, I am representing the constituency of Cork North-Central. In 2034, Cork city will be celebrating its 850th birthday. It is a maritime city, with strong harbour connections and great stories. It has a huge natural harbour as the Minister knows. Our tourism industry is doing well when it comes to the number of cruises, which is up this year. Seamus Heaney from Visit Cork has been doing a tremendous job with a very small team of staff. I am not sure whether the Minister has had the opportu…

The twins above in the Gallery can be very proud of their mother. She is a great parliamentarian. There is a growing sense in this community and across Ireland that the ordinary working people are being pushed to their limits, not just by one single crisis, but by continuous pressure every single day and every single week. Nowhere is that pressure more visible than it is in commuter towns - in commuters, taxi drivers and working people across the cities and suburbs. They are the people who get up before dawn, who s…

Under the previous Minister for Health, third-party insourcing was introduced and used by the HSE to reduce waiting lists and carry out additional procedures in public hospitals outside normal hours. Now, providers are being told the system will come to an end in June, despite no alternative plans being published. At the same time, the numbers on waiting lists have surged to 155,000 since December 2024. More than 126,000 people are now waiting for treatments and diagnosis. What is difficult for patients in my const…

We have seen from the Daft report that there have been brutal increases in the cost of rent. The average in Cork is €2,000 per month for a two-bedroom home. Behind those statistics are human lives. This week in my constituency office, I met a 79-year-old lady from the Mallow area who worked for decades, raised a family and contributed to the community and the State. She never asked the State for anything. Through no fault of her own, she had to sell her family home and has spent the past five years in private renta…

There is a moment in politics where the language we use in this Chamber becomes so sanitised and so carefully engineered that we risk losing sight of what we are actually talking about and debating. This is one of those moments because today we are not debating an administrative change or paperwork. We are debating whether the State should remove one of the last remaining safeguards before deliberation of ending an unborn human life. Before this House votes to dismantle that safeguard, we should ask ourselves some …

Yet, there was an argument before this House that does not remark on the tragedy of the loss of 10,000 human lives. The argument is that there is too much time to hesitate and we must remove that time. If the position of the Social Democrats is a moral certainty, then the question for it is why is it afraid of three days? That is three days for reflection, three days for people to speak to their family, three days to seek counselling and three days to escape the panic, fear, coercion or pressure that person may be …

I wonder why.

This week in Spain, they have called for the creation of a European army. They argue that Europe must develop a permanent common military capacity. Many Irish people are increasingly concerned that the long-standing Irish policy of military neutrality is being eroded step by step through deeper EU defence integration without a direct democratic mandate from the Irish people. Will the Taoiseach give us a clear commitment in this House today and to the Irish people that we will not participate in, support or move tow…

The defence minister.

On behalf of Independent Ireland and our TDs, I start by saying thanks to every nurse working across Ireland in the hospitals, nursing homes, community care, mental health services and emergency care. I thank every one of them for the tremendous work and their vocation in this State. Without them, we would be in a terrible situation. The irony is not lost on me as we are thanking nurses on this day for what they do for the State that there are nurses in Australia, the United Arab Emirates and Canada who want to com…

I thank my colleagues in Sinn Féin for introducing this Bill. It is a very good Bill and works quite well. I was kind of shocked when I was reading it because I wondered should this not have been done a long time ago by previous Governments. I welcome it in that sense. The cliché every Member in this House is using is the phrase "heating or eating", but that is the truth. That is what is happening in Cork, Dublin, Donegal, Galway, Kilkenny - anywhere in the country. People are choosing between heating and eating. R…

Well, I would like the Minister of State to listen to me and pay attention, if that is okay.

I am only asking for a small bit of respect-----

-----and for the Minister of State to have a small bit of respect for the Leas-Cheann Comhairle as well.

I thank the Minister of State. He will reply-----

-----and he will have his opportunity to do so. Fine. The reality is that there are people in this country who have never been worse off. The Government goes out and says every day of the week that it is doing fantastic and asks people to give it a clap on the back because it has this deficit and that deficit. You cannot eat a deficit. There are people now choosing between turning on their heating and eating and the Government is not listening to them. More than 300,000 people in this country are in arrears with th…