I thank Deputy Healy-Rae. I will certainly speak to the Minister of State about it. In the round, decongregation does work. Not having people living in institutions and instead living in small houses or community houses does work better. I know the difficulties it can cause, particularly if people have become settled in a community. As the Deputy said, it does not have to be the case that one size fits all. I do not know enough about it to profess on it here, but I will certainly speak to the Minister of State.

I propose to take Questions Nos. 1 to 10, inclusive, together. The Cabinet committee on children and education oversees the implementation of commitments in the programme for Government in the area of children and education, including further and higher education, with a specific focus on child poverty and well-being. The Cabinet committee on children and education met on Thursday, 13 July and Monday, 16 October. The next meeting of the Cabinet committee on children and education is due to take place before the end…

I thank the Deputies for their contributions. Deputy Murnane O'Connor raised the issue of the school building programme, with particular relevance to County Carlow. We have an extensive school building programme under way throughout the country. More than €1 billion per year is spent on new schools, extensions and refurbishments. In my constituency last Friday I had the privilege to carry out the official opening of the new Pelletstown Educate Together National School. Anyone who has been in a newly built school or…

I propose to take Questions Nos. 11 to 15, inclusive, together. The Cabinet committee on EU and international affairs oversees the implementation of programme for Government commitments and considers policy matters in relation to the EU and international issues. The committee met most recently on 2 October, when it reflected on the attendance of meetings at the UN high-level week in September and looked ahead to meetings of the European political community and of the European Council that took place in Granada on 4…

I thank the Deputies for their comments. It is important, when we engage with our European partners in the 27 member states of the European Union, that we always try to understand the positions they are coming from. We may disagree, we may criticise each other and we may compromise but shouting and pointing the finger really does not work in international affairs or in forums such as the European Council. We have to understand where different countries are coming from. Every country sees the situation in the Middle…

We need to keep channels of communication open. It would be of no advantage to Palestine to throw out the Israeli ambassador. There would be no advantage to Ukraine in throwing out the Russian ambassador-----

-----but it would cut us off. We need to be able to talk to countries, particularly countries where we have citizens and people, because we need to make sure they are protected.

I propose to take Questions Nos. 16 to 20, inclusive, together. The economic policy unit is part of the economic division of the Department. The unit assists me, as Taoiseach, in achieving sustainable and balanced economic growth and in advancing the Government’s economic priorities. The unit also advises me on a broad range of economic policy issues and provides me with briefing and speech material on economic and related policy matters. It seeks to promote the Government’s economic commitments as outlined in the …

Deputy Dillon raised the really important role of the tourism industry in our economy and society. I remember very well that back in 2011, when I was Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, we had just experienced an appalling economic crash, with mass unemployment, mass emigration, empty houses and falling incomes. Three industries lifted us out of that, namely, the multinationals, farmers and the food industry, and the tourism industry. I do not think we could have recovered in the way we did without them. The…

I am sorry but I will have to come back to the Deputy on that.

I thank the Deputy for raising this really important issue which I think is on the minds of everyone in this House and everyone in the country. On behalf of the Government, I condemn unequivocally the bombing of the Anglican Al-Ahli hospital yesterday in Gaza. It was an atrocity. It violated the rules of war and violated basic humanity. It might yet prove to be a war crime but whatever has happened, the violence must stop and we stand in full solidarity with the people of Israel and Palestine who want the violence …

We know from recent history and, indeed, the history of the past few decades that both the Israeli Defense Forces and Hamas and Islamic Jihad are all capable of terrible atrocities. As a Government, we condemn them unreservedly and unequivocally. I want to be very clear about that. As I have said, we call for three things to be done: an immediate ceasefire to be observed by all sides; Hamas to release the hostages; and Israel to turn the water and power back on and allow humanitarian corridors to be created. The De…

I thank the Deputy. I have not had a chance to see those amendments yet but I met the Tánaiste this morning and I know he is working on it. If we can agree an all-party motion on this matter, that would be beneficial and would send a very strong statement beyond this House to the people and to the world more widely, but it needs to be balanced. It needs, as the Deputy has done, to condemn Hamas, to recognise the atrocities that have been committed by it, as well as others. I will point out, once again, we condemn w…

I thank the Deputy. We had a video-conference of the European Council - the 27 Heads of State and Government - yesterday. It was a good meeting. It built on the statement that was released by the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, on behalf of the European Council on Saturday, puts us in a better place as a European Union and is a more consistent approach. The European Union can have more influence acting together than any member state can on its own. We agreed very clearly to condemn the terrorist …

We will always consider good proposals from other people and the Opposition. I think we have shown that when it comes to housing policy. We have taken a number of steps in recent years and months that we might not have done previously. We will always consider these things but we must be careful around demand-side measures. I am not against demand-side measures but we must be careful because of the risk of putting up property prices. I did read David McWilliams’s article. He is a very good commentator and a very int…

When I first became Taoiseach in 2017, we were only building around 14,000 new homes a year in the State. That has more than doubled. We are up to 30,000 and I would like to see it double again by the end of the decade. I believe that is possible. The target we set of building 29,000 new homes this year is a target, not a ceiling. We intend to exceed it, just as we did last year. The Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Deputy Darragh O’Brien, is working on revised targets for the coming years. We h…

I am familiar with the directive; I was involved in putting it together in my last job in government as Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment. It has two aspects. One relates to the national minimum wage and the other to collective bargaining. On the first part, relating to the national minimum wage, we are way ahead of it already. We established the Low Pay Commission during the Fine Gael-Labour Government a long time ago. We are now very much en route to having a living wage in Ireland, calculated at 60% …

The real minimum wage, the national minimum wage, is set at 60% of median earnings. That was the recommendation of the Low Pay Commission, which the Government accepted. It was the consensus view of employers, unions and academics and it is the fairest way to calculate it. That is the target we will achieve, if not next year, then the year after. That is a big change just in the past five or six years. We are introducing a living wage, have introduced statutory sick pay and paid parental leave and, this year, we al…

I have only read the headlines, I have not had a chance to read the report but I will. I hope the Deputy has read it too. I hope she also will read other reports and look at the Central Statistics Office, CSO, and ESRI analyses of these matters because, as she knows - even though she refuses to admit it - in the past three years, while 80,000 Irish citizens have gone to live abroad for many different reasons, 90,000 have returned. That is a fact. Every year, tens of thousands of people come to Ireland from other pa…

As the Deputies know, it is not my practice to organise meetings in the Chamber. If somebody wants to meet me they can write to me in the normal way and I will provide time to meet them if I can. I would always meet people with the Minister. I join the Deputy in congratulating junior cycle students on their results today. It is a great day for a lot of young people. We are seeing the highest number of children and young people ever completing the junior cycle. The education budget for 2024 is the highest budget eve…