I visited Crumlin yesterday, as it happens, and spoke to a number of families who have children and young people with autism. We spoke about lots of things such as school places and so on. The one issue that came up with them and that I hear again and again - it is not recent; it is a long-standing issue - is the means test for the carer's allowance. I spoke to one woman yesterday who recounted how her husband has forgone three different pay increases because it would tip them over the edge in terms of the carer's …

Well, am I speaking to the Order of Business or-----

Thank you. First of all, if you will indulge me, a Cheann Comhairle, if the Government wants to schedule statements on the important issues of child protection and safeguarding, that is in its gift. I want to be clear that, for our part, these unauthorised references to which the Minister of State has referred were unacceptable and reprehensible. Action has been taken. The two individuals concerned have lost their jobs and are no longer members of Sinn Féin, and that is as it should be. We take these matters very, …

I will be interested to hear what action you took. I am sure the parties will avail of that opportunity.

We will wait to see what the Government will do on that. Transparency goes both ways, ladies and gentlemen.

On the Order of Business, I wish to raise the issue of the ongoing genocide in Gaza and events as they have unfolded in Lebanon. We are now one year into this absolute catastrophe. Hell still reigns down on innocent civilian and refugee populations. We are now in a situation in which our own peacekeepers are really in the way of danger. The Taoiseach has left the Chamber. He will meet with President Biden in Washington. I can only hope he will say to him directly that the United States must stop arming and funding …

-----as we witness an ongoing genocide. He is not here to answer that.

I put it to the Chief Whip and the Government that we need time to discuss what is happening in the Middle East, not least the situation of our own peacekeepers.

The parents of children with scoliosis and spina bifida who have been waiting years for operations would have been listening intently to the Taoiseach's budget yesterday. They would have been listening in the hope that he might finally hear their calls for action and deliver the investment and change that their children so desperately need so that they might get their surgeries to end the nightmare of being stuck on a waiting list or struck off one. Although the budget book has 168 pages, there is no mention of the…

The clinicians give the clinical advice. I am not asking the Taoiseach for clinical advice. Why would I?

I am suggesting nothing of the sort.

I kindly ask the Taoiseach, when I raise the issue of a 13-year-old boy with a 120o curvature of his spine who has waited five years for his surgery, not to insult him or his mother, Keara - do not mind me - with smart alec, slick responses.

This child has waited five years. This child is suffering. This child can be treated in the United States. The clinicians have told Keara, his mother, that four weeks of halo-gravity traction treatment, which she cannot access here, and then another four weeks will be needed, at least, for the surgery, which will be complex but those surgeons can do it. She needs clarity. She has been given the runaround by a bureaucracy in love with itself, by paper pushers and by layers and layers of unnecessary complexity when t…

The child is 13. Boys who are 13 years old do not want to be mentioned on the floor of the Dáil. I know because I reared one myself. The last thing he wants is his name mentioned here. Yet his mother is so desperate now that she felt moved to put up a video of him and to ask that this matter be raised directly with the Taoiseach. He can get the treatment he needs in the United States.

She needs to know when they are travelling. The people in the United States need confirmation that the resources are available and the bill will be paid.

I am challenging the Taoiseach because if I were the Taoiseach, I would sort this out.

Sort it out today for that family.

It has been-----

Just like in Gaza.

It is actually mental.