Hear, hear.

The Taoiseach set out the road to government of the Lowry TDs. He emphasised their willingness to serve, their forensic analysis of the programme for Government and then their accession to high office - all of the building blocks that define them categorically as Government TDs. The Taoiseach is quite right. After an election there is of course a necessity to assemble a Government and you did that - Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and the Lowry group. You get to define the Government. You do not get to select the Opposition…

Robust opposition.

Do not preach the Constitution having done what you did. Spare us the homily, Micheál.

It is a reflection on you, Taoiseach.

Yes, it was.

He is allowed to make a point of order.

Is there a copy of the Taoiseach's statement?

With all due respect, it is hardly convincing for the Taoiseach to warn us about the impending difficulties for the multi-annual framework for the budget when out of the other side of his mouth, he has lauded what amounts to a weapons race and a hyper-militarisation of Europe. It is also ironic to note that the origins of the European project going back to the European Coal and Steel Community were all about demilitarisation, deconstruction of the apparatus of war and creating continental security and contributing …

The Taoiseach is hell-bent on upending the democratic functioning of the Dáil to protect his grubby deal with Deputy Michael Lowry. Today the Taoiseach will try to ram through unprecedented changes to Dáil rules to allow Deputy Lowry and his group of TDs to sit in Government and Opposition at the same time. These are TDs who have pledged to support his Government in good days and in bad, to use their own words. It is a farce and it is making a mockery of this Dáil. Frankly, the lengths to which the Taoiseach has go…

What exactly does Deputy Lowry have over the Taoiseach? What debt does he owe him? The former Fine Gael Minister, a rogue politician as the Taoiseach described him, is now kingmaker for the Government. This is a man the Taoiseach wants to sit in both government and opposition at the same time. The combined Opposition has repeatedly sought to meet with the Taoiseach to resolve this matter. Our offers have either been rejected or ignored. He acts in bad faith. To meet his narrow short-term need to placate Lowry and C…

A Cheann Comhairle, with the greatest of respect, we are on the same ground. Micheál Martin can spare us and the nation his sanctimonious homilies on democracy. He has been here since 1989, which is a political lifetime. Never has such a brazen stroke been attempted. In all of the peculiar shenanigans of this place, there has never been something like this. The Taoiseach was quick enough to throw his own people under the bus in the last Dáil when it suited him. It is incredible that he will go to these extraordinar…

We are asking why. We should have an answer to this. It is as simple as this: the Taoiseach should not take people for fools. People know that for their interests to be protected and for politics and democracy to work, the Government has its prerogatives to discharge. We respect that. The Taoiseach needs to respect the duty and the prerogatives of the Opposition but he does not want that. He wants a blunt Opposition because he does not want to be held to account. If he is worried about his backbenchers, he should l…

Yes.

During the general election campaign, the Taoiseach, along with the Tánaiste, Simon Harris, and his Ministers, repeatedly claimed that 40,000 homes would be delivered in 2024. This was a ploy to fool people into believing that the Government had made real progress on housing. Of course, we all knew it was bull. We now know that, in fact, 30,330 homes were delivered in 2024. That is less than the previous year and far short of the Government's 40,000 election brag - a failure, by the way, that is set to continue, as…

The Taoiseach is spoofing. The Department of Finance analysed all the available data which the Taoiseach cited and more. The Department told the Taoiseach's colleague, the Minister, Jack Chambers, that 40,000 homes in 2024 was not happening. We have the documentation to reflect that fact. The Minister knew and the Government knew - I assume the Taoiseach knew - yet the Government spun the fiction again and again of 40,000 houses in 2024 to, as it were, take the bad look off things. Shame on you for doing that and f…

I ask the Taoiseach to reflect on that and on the fact that his sniggering-----

-----caused real hurt. The Taoiseach should genuinely reflect on that fact. Perhaps he has not. I now ask him to do so and accept also that he misled people in the general election campaign.

Hear, hear.

Hear, hear.