I am sure we can. Certainly in my constituency service, we try to help people directly-----

-----but where we cannot do so, we often advocate going to the local authority or a body such as Threshold. That can be very helpful to people in terms of giving them the advice they need. We can certainly take that into consideration. As regards Renault, we do not have any plans to ban fossil fuel advertising. We will certainly consider any Private Members' legislation that comes before Cabinet. We always do so. At the moment, there are many people who do not have a choice other than to use fossil fuels because th…

I do not know as much about this as I used to know when I was the Minister for Health. There are existing restrictions on the advertising of unhealthy foods, for the want of a better term. I acknowledge that not all processed foods are unhealthy, as the Deputy does, but there are rules around advertising at certain times and it being targeted to children. I am not up to date on what those rules are but I will certainly take it into consideration.

I propose to take Questions Nos. 6 to 15, inclusive, together. I attended the meeting of the European Council on 29 and 30 June in Brussels and I will report to the House in detail on the meeting later this afternoon. We discussed Ukraine, economic issues, security and defence, migration, and external relations, including with China. The President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy spoke via video conference, updating us on the situation on the ground, including following the destruction of the Nova Kakhovka dam. We r…

On migration, the discussion we had at the June European Council was a follow-on from the detailed conclusions agreed by the Council in February, and much progress has been made since then. We could not agree on conclusions at the most recent meeting in Brussels because of the objections of Poland and Hungary. Sometimes it is better to have no conclusions than a formula of wording to which everybody can agree but does not mean very much. Nonetheless, President Michel felt it was important for us to discuss the issu…

I propose to take Questions Nos. 16 to 20, inclusive, together. As I announced in March, the Government intends to hold a referendum in November this year on gender equality, as recommended by the Citizens' Assembly on Gender Equality and the special Oireachtas Joint Committee on Gender Quality. The decision to hold one or more referendums on this issue is in line with the commitment in the programme for Government to respond to the recommendations of the Citizens' Assembly on Gender Equality. An interdepartmental …

Arising from the programme for Government, there are commitments to hold constitutional referendums on the following matters: extending the franchise of presidential elections to Irish citizens living in Northern Ireland and overseas; housing; and Article 41.2 of the Constitution, that is, the referendum on the role of women in the home and gender equality. Consideration is also being given to other possible referendums. In June 2022, the Government reaffirmed its commitment to participate in the unitary patent sys…

I attended a meeting of the European Council on 29 and 30 June in Brussels. The agenda covered Ukraine, economic issues, security and defence, migration and external relations. The Minister of State, Deputy Burke, will provide further detail on some of the external relations issues discussed, including work towards a new partnership with Tunisia, relations with Türkiye, the ongoing situation in Kosovo and relations between the EU and the African Union. I will deal with all other issues. In advance of our meeting, m…

I thank the Deputy. The new children’s hospital will be an incredible state-of-the-art hospital, one of the best in the world, and nobody will be sorry that it was built. When people see it and parents experience the treatments their children receive there, nobody will say it was not worth it. I guarantee the Deputy that. It will be Ireland’s first digital public hospital, with 380 individual en suite rooms with rooms for parents to stay overnight in each room, 60 critical care beds and 90 three-day beds. There is …

It is clear the cost of the hospital was substantially underestimated back in 2015 or 2016 at around €600 million. That was seven years ago. It is not a revelation to anyone that the hospital will take a lot more than the original €600 million estimate which was an underestimate at the time. We know what it costs now to build a massive hospital of this scale and it is a lot more than €600 million.

To answer the Deputy's questions again, the hospital will be complete and handed over to the Government next year.

We would anticipate patients using the hospital in the latter part of next year or early 2025. I am confident that those timelines will be correct. The budget allocated to the hospital is €1.433 billion. That is the budget allocated to it in 2018. It is going to cost more than €1.433 billion. Why do we not know how much more it will cost at this stage? First, the longer this goes on, the more it will cost to build because of the inflation clause in the contract and, second, we are standing up to the contractor. The…

I strongly condemn any cruelty towards animals. The incidents in the clips shown by RTÉ were repugnant and have been widely condemned across the farming and dairy sectors. The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine has sought the footage used in the programme to commence an investigation into these events. As Deputy Cairns rightly said, the reputation of the dairy and beef sector rests on complying with high standards of animal welfare, and the vast majority of farmers, processors and other workers have a s…

I do appreciate where the Deputy is coming from, but I really think she has got this wrong. She is making excuses for people who engage in animal cruelty and break the law. She is making excuses for hauliers and truckers who break our road safety laws and laws in other countries by driving their trucks without breaks.

The Deputy is making excuses for them, and I think that is the wrong approach.

It does not matter if someone engages in animal cruelty - it is the Government's fault. It does not matter if a trucker does not take rest breaks - it is the Government's fault.

The Deputy should not make excuses for people who perpetrate cruelty against animals-----

-----and she should not make excuses for truckers who breach our road safety rules. It is totally the wrong approach, Deputy.

We had a Cabinet meeting today. I think there were 67 items on the agenda. I can absolutely guarantee the Deputy that more of those items were about housing than about RTÉ and that we as a Government spend a lot more time concerned about the housing crisis than we do about RTÉ, important as that issue is. I am happy to reassure the Deputy of that. With regard to housing, this morning the Government published its report for the second quarter of 2022 on the progress that has been made to put right the housing crisis…

I thank the Deputy. Anybody having to spend a prolonged period in emergency accommodation is unacceptable and undesirable. The vast majority of people who are provided with emergency accommodation by the State are there for less than the year. For very many it is for in and around six or seven months.