No, but I am in this House four or sometimes five hours a week. I am constantly heckled.

Sometimes by you.

Sometimes by you-----

-----just as you are doing now, and often by Members opposite, and I have never talked down to somebody, particularly a female Deputy across the way, like that and say "I am not listening to you".

Again with your brass neck. Do you not see the irony of it? I am criticising you for talking down to Deputy Carroll MacNeill, for heckling her, and then you are heckling me.

A Cheann Comhairle, is the Deputy not out of order?

Thank you. The Deputy-----

Anyway, let us deal with the substantive issue now that we have dealt with the nonsense.

What we need is more private and more public housing. The constraint does not relate to who owns the company; it relates to getting workers with the necessary skills and the materials. That is where the constraint lies.

I thank Deputy Canney for raising this very important issue. It has been raised with me by other Deputies, including very many here on the Government benches. When any change is made to how resources are allocated to schools, it can cause worry for students, parents and the schools in question. Inevitably, when a change is made, there will be schools that gain hours and schools that lose hours, but that is based on objective criteria and, most importantly, on the needs of the children in the schools concerned. Spec…

I thank the Deputy again for his contribution. What is happening here is that the amount of resource for special education is increasing, but it is shifting from primary to secondary. That is the right thing to do because that is where the population is moving. As I mentioned previously, in the county of Galway alone, there will be 300 fewer children in primary school next year and ten fewer classes and, of course, that means fewer teachers. Logically, it would mean that. However, we are not reducing the number of …

I will have to inquire about that. My understanding is that the Israeli ambassador has been summoned to Iveagh House. She certainly met with the Minister and Secretary General in some location about these matters. I will follow up on that. I will also follow up on the numbers with regard to the waiting list. The numbers I have here are from the Department of Health. I believe them to be correct and Deputy McDonald's to be wrong. That publication might be incorrect or out of date, but we will clarify that.

I think Drogheda is a great town. It is a town I have a personal affection for, because when my father came to this country, when he was dragged back to Ireland by his Irish wife, he needed to find a job and found it hard to get one. He found a job in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital working in the paediatric service there. He always speaks fondly of that town and the people who live there. I know it is a welcoming town to migrants. It is a town that has its troubles, but one which we have put a lot of investment into …

I think that says a lot.

I fully agree with the Deputy on one point. There is no referendum that will in itself improve services and there is no referendum that is going to build any more houses or anything like that. I totally agree with the Deputy in that regard. It can only ever be a certain part of the picture. We are putting record amounts of resources into disability services. Approximately €2 billion per year goes into disability services. I know there are huge gaps around the country. I meet the same people who are affected and hea…

I thank the Deputy. There are delays in An Bord Pleanála at the moment and that is particularly the case with SHDs. Some of that is linked to a court case, the outcome of which the board needed to know before it could decide on these applications. I met with the new chairperson of An Bord Pleanála about this and with the Minister. The board is getting the additional resources and staff it needs but it will take a bit of time to get through the backlog. Having met with An Bord Pleanála, I am now confident the backlo…

I am very familiar with the town of Clonmel as the Deputy knows. I am not familiar with the particular roads project so I will have to ask the Minister, Deputy Ryan, to come back to him directly on that. We have an issue around the country which we have to have a think about. There are a whole load of towns that have a bypass that are now seeking a bypass of the bypass. We have to ask ourselves if we are getting it wrong in terms of road planning that the bypass was not the right one in the first place or whether t…

I thank the Deputy. We can certainly give that consideration. I would have to talk to the Tánaiste about it as it is, ultimately, his budget to manage rather than mine. However, we have increased funding for UNRWA, of which the Deputy will be aware. That was an important signal. Other countries suspended their funding. We said we were going to increase it. It is alleged that some UNRWA staff were involved in the terrorist attacks, but that should be proven. It has not been proven yet, despite what the Israeli autho…

My office is trying to set up those meetings as we speak based on our conversation last Thursday or Friday. I put on record that Drogheda is a town that welcomes migrants and has done from all parts of the world for all sorts of different reasons. I understand the concern that taking out such a large hotel will have a major negative impact on a town, a town that has come on so much in recent years. The solution on which the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, is working is a dual use option where some of the hotel will prov…

There is only one thing by which we are being led and that is the reality around the world and the realities on the ground. More people are on the move now than at any time since the Second World War. Millions of people have left Ukraine and people are leaving Africa and the Middle East for lots of different reasons such as poverty, conflict and war. Approximately 1.5 million or 2 million people entered the European Union irregularly last year. It is not a surprise that 1% or 2% of them might come to Ireland. I am …