I have read the Deputy's Bill, thanks, unlike other Deputies. There are also questions about the broadband infrastructure. I do very much have sympathy for the Bill but I have questions around it. It needs a little bit more tightening-up and a little bit more work. I would be quite happy to assist Deputy Lawlor in that way. The other side that I see goes back to isolation and loneliness. Many people who start off working in this country, in particular people who have come to this country, do not have an entire netw…

We do not do anything like that in our group.

I thank the Sinn Féin Party for bringing this motion to the House. This is not about stopping funds but about building enough homes for Irish families to be able to afford to live in their own communities. It is well worth noting that. We know that 41% of people aged 18 to 34 are still living in their parents' box rooms. That is a fact. Since 2020, house prices are up by 40%. Rents increased by 84% from 2020 to 2022. Some places are recording increases of between 150% and 200% in rents. Last week the Government bro…

I thank Aontú for tabling this motion. It is well put together, well thought out and well planned. I have mentioned these issues in the House on a number of occasions and brought them up when I was a member of Cork City Council regularly. Speaking of Cork City Council, 2009, the Minister of State may recall, is when Cork nearly drowned after the rivers burst their banks, waters in the dam had to be released and there was absolute destruction in the city. That was 17 years ago. We still have not seen flood defences …

You have to allow a point of order, Chair.

How long do I have?

I thank Sinn Féin for bringing this Bill to the House. It is an important, detailed and well put together Bill. The senior Minister referred quite heavily in his speech to Coco's Law. More than 12 months ago, I wrote to the Minister about expanding Coco's Law on behalf of a young gentleman who lost his life in the River Lee in Cork - he was 33 years old - Luke Hyde. I asked him to bring in an addition, known as Luke's Law. This young man drowned in the River Lee while hundreds of people videoed him in difficulty. T…

We have all seen both the impact of the cost-of-living crisis and the increase in the cost of living. When we go to the fuel tank at home or the petrol pump or when we go to Dunnes or SuperValu, we are seeing it. It is doubly affecting those people who are the most forgotten and most vulnerable in our society, namely those with a disability or an invalidity. The people who are choosing between heating and eating have been described as being obliged to decide whether to pay their fuel bills. I had a carer on the pho…

All brands of salbutamol nebulisers currently covered under the medical card scheme are out of stock nationwide due to a manufacturing problem and issues with the supply chain. Therefore, pharmacists, through no fault of their own, have to come up with alternatives, namely the prescription of an unlicensed product that is not covered by the HSE and that is not reimbursable. That probably costs about €30. I am getting dozens of calls to my office about this. When I put it up on Facebook and asked people to make cont…

I agree.

We will see what you do now.

We will see what you get.

I read the Government's plan. I read all 140 pages, plus the 17 pages of the Minister, Deputy Chambers's speech in which he called it an accelerated infrastructure plan. I have to say that if that is accelerated, I truly would hate to see the Government in reverse because this is a backward plan. That plan does nothing and delivers nothing. The Government's 140-page document barely talks about Cork. It does not talk about the northern distributor road in Cork. It does not talk about the Mallow relief road in Cork. …

I welcome the comments by Deputy Geoghegan about obligations to children. I am delighted to see that someone in Fine Gael is finally realising that we have obligations to children and, in particular the 6,000 homeless children in Ireland and that our obligation should be to them. Ireland's international protection system has been exploited for far too long. The problem has never been the compassion of the Irish people but the problem was the permissibility of the Irish State. The fact is we were too obliging and to…

Looking at this and how the Minister has explained it, it is slightly incorrect. It is not just a humanitarian support loan, which we have given generously to. This is a loan we are guaranteeing which we are somehow going to have to collect from Russia. Good luck with that and trying to collect something off the Russians if they lose. The reality here is there is no security. There is a huge problem when it comes to our neutrality. It brings us in the back door, without a shadow of a doubt, of supporting military a…

The motion actually has tremendous merit, in fairness. There are ups and downs in the motion and some things about which I would be very sceptical or cautious. It gives the Government a get-out-of-jail card at times. I will talk about my own constituency. Where is the Cork Luas? It was announced three or four times. There is no shovel in the ground. Where is the northern ring road around Cork? Where is the northern distributor road? It is seven or eight years away. Where is the Mallow distributor road? Where is the…

As every Deputy knows, if we put down a question in this House about Irish Water now, we will get a message back from the Ceann Comhairle's office telling us we are not entitled to an answer. Who, then, is responsible for Irish Water? Does the buck stop with the Minister or a State body? That is the first question that needs to be addressed in this House, and it needs to be sorted because somebody needs to take charge of Irish Water. I want to touch on the magnesium problem in Irish Water that the EPA and the WHO h…

I have read through the Bill entirely. When we look at the opening sections of this Bill, it is about people entering the home and the quality and standard of the type of person who comes in as a home carer. I find it amazing that we are now in 2026, and we are discussing that. This Bill should have been before this House 20 years. It is totally outdated. This Bill does not push for oversight. It risks more bureaucracy and costs for the people. I have been in the House for the entire debate. It has been mentioned t…

Like my other colleagues around the House and from the Government benches as well, I want to congratulate Deputy Ward on this Bill, which is well put together. I accept, as the Minister said, that a little bit of tweaking here and there and a little bit of change to X, Y and Z needs to be done. That could be achieved by leaving this Bill go forward to Committee Stage. I cannot help but think there is a bit of politics being played here tonight. As a previous speaker said, we are being berated here by a Government M…

The stated purpose of the Government rental reform package, including a six-year minimum tenancy to give tenants security and certainty, is something that we in Independent Ireland very much support. However, these measures now have produced seriously undermining consequences for families dealing with homes tied up in the fair deal nursing home scheme. Under the fair deal scheme, a loan secured on the family home generally has to be repaid within a one-year process. That would be the standard up and down the countr…