----and openly and repeatedly violates international law. If the European Union is a Union of values, of peace, then the EU must be to the fore in forming a global movement against Israeli apartheid in Palestine with the same international determination and momentum that defeated apartheid in South Africa three decades ago. Tá a fhios againn nuair a oibríonn muid le náisiúin an Aontais Eorpaigh go bhfuilimid chomh láidir agus is féidir. Bainfimid an rath is mó amach nuair a oibríonn an Eoraip mar fhórsa ar mhaithe …

Hello to everyone from Ballymun in the Visitors Gallery. Yesterday the Taoiseach admitted to the Dáil that he was, in fact, briefed on Government legal strategy on nursing home charges. This was 24 hours after he stated that he was not involved in the strategy and sought to put distance between himself and it. Not only did he admit he was briefed and that his predecessors and successors in government were also briefed, but he also stated that he stands foursquare behind this plan, this strategy. His expressed view …

Yesterday, the Taoiseach expressed incredulity at what was suggested. Here are his words so that I am not accused of misrepresenting or misquoting him. The allegation here is very clear. It is that four or five Governments, four or five Attorneys General, any number of Ministers and former Ministers, some of whom are now in the Government and some in the Opposition, and dozens of officials all conspired to deny people refunds they were entitled to. That is as far-fetched as it sounds. It is not what happened. Howev…

That is exactly what happened. It happened in respect of preventing those who had been illegally charged in nursing homes from going to court, having the matter adjudicated and getting their money back. It also happened in respect of these citizens who, by the way, were entitled to that allowance. It was illegal. It was judged to have been ultra vires , illegal, for the State to deny those people that money. Again, the same strategy was used to keep it quiet, say nothing and not to raise the hare. The worst aspect …

Where is the care for people? Where is there evidence of a government standing up for people rather than facing them down-----

-----many of them in the most vulnerable circumstances imaginable in society?

The strategy was the same.

The State settles before the case goes to trial.

We cannot protect the past by attacking the vulnerable.

The strategy is the same.

The Taoiseach and his Cabinet colleagues were advised in a secret memo in 2011 that the withholding of the disabled persons maintenance allowance from people with disabilities was illegal. In the words of the memo circulated to the Taoiseach and the Government, the regulations were "plainly ultra vires and void". The State had not, as the Taoiseach said, a leg to stand on and, therefore, a strategy was pursued to keep these matters under wraps and out of court. Given that the State did not have a leg to stand on an…

The Taoiseach was briefed on it, though.

The Taoiseach was briefed on it, was he not?

It is all in the one memo.

For more than 30 years, the State and successive governments have ripped off hundreds and thousands of elderly citizens and their families by unlawfully charging them for nursing home care. Despite consistent, repeated legal advice that those charges were illegal, the Government continued to force vulnerable people to pay up. This created real financial hardship and pushed many into poverty as they struggled to afford the charges. At the weekend, we discovered in the Mail on Sunday that successive governments to th…

In fact the Taoiseach acted in bad faith, as did his colleagues, his predecessors and, it seems, his successors. The Taoiseach has confirmed to the House that he was wrong yesterday, that he knew about this strategy and that he had been briefed. Can he confirm that other members of the Government - the Ministers, Deputies Simon Harris and Helen McEntee, and the Tánaiste, Deputy Micheál Martin - were similarly aware of this strategy and were briefed? Will the Taoiseach also respond to my other question on the public…

There was no legal entitlement to charge.

I am sure people will have heard very clearly that not alone had the Taoiseach been briefed on and overseen the legal strategy to frustrate those who had been illegally charged in getting their money back but that, in fact, he supports that strategy, and I assume that stands for his colleague, the Minister, Deputy Simon Harris. It needs to be said that neither the Ombudsman nor the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission shared the Taoiseach's confidence in the State's legal position. As a matter of fact, the st…

That is contested.

I asked how many cases there are, as of today, that are still live.