The road funding for the N2 from Clontibret to the Border was pulled this year.

Is that as good as the Taoiseach is getting?

Record house prices, record rent costs, record and growing levels of homelessness and the lowest home ownership rates in Ireland for generations; whatever spin the Minister wants to put on it, that is the legacy of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil housing policies in action. Not content with creating a financial crash precipitated by a property bubble, they somehow managed to emerge from that crash with a housing crisis which, in turn, has become a housing emergency. This was not an accident. It happened because of a conc…

The twisted logic behind the decisions of this Government can often be mind-boggling but the defence of the concrete block levy we have just heard would send the head spinning. In the midst of a housing crisis that has merged with an inflationary crisis the Government is proposing a measure that will make houses more expensive. It has essentially proposed a defective funding mechanism to pay for an under-funded defects remediation scheme that, by the Minister of State's own admission, is going to cost ordinary work…

The people who are on social housing waiting lists do not want to hear about reports or promises. They want to see the Government take action that has been long-promised in respect of income limit thresholds. The income limits were introduced, in my view, as a measure simply to reduce the waiting lists. In the interim, they have caused undue hardship to those people who are waiting for housing. My office has advocated for a single parent who is working in a low-paid job. She is currently living in her parents' home…

I have lost count of the number of couples I have been working with who have been removed from the housing waiting lists because they exceeded limits by just a couple of hundred euro in some instances. The system as it applies to County Monaghan is designed so that any couple of whom a single party is working will not make it onto the social housing waiting list. The income limit for County Monaghan for a family of two adults and two children is €27,500 per annum. Those people will never qualify for a mortgage. The…

Hear, hear.

This budget has not given people the certainty they needed. People on middle and low incomes who were worried about energy costs at the start of the week will are still going to be worried at the end of this week. There is great concern across the board that we will see increases in rent in the coming months. It is incredible that, at a time there has been so much talk about the squeezed middle, 1.8 million workers will not get a single cent from the Government's main tax proposal. In the midst of a health crisis, …

Cé mhéad bomaite atá agam? How long do I have?

I move amendment No. 1: 1. In Schedule 2, inserted by paragraph (1), by the substitution of the following for the row dated 12 October 2022: “ ”. For the purposes of saving time I want to record Sinn Féin's support for the Labour Party amendment to Financial Resolution No. 2. On Financial Resolution No. 1, in respect of the fuel excise reduction extension, I have to say that the commentary during today's budget that probably caused workers to shake their heads today more than any other was that of the Minister for …

It is not progressive when there are no alternatives.

It is as regressive as one can get.

On a point of information, are the amendments not being put to the floor?

I did not know until the Leas-Cheann Comhairle said it.

The Minister's colleague in government promised a full independent assessment of the potential to underground the North-South interconnector. Rather than deliver this, the Minister commissioned a review of previous reviews, something nobody had asked for. Has the Minister received the findings of the review? Does he plan to publish them? Importantly, will he now ensure we can move towards delivery of the North-South interconnector by delivering what communities have sought, which is a full assessment of the undergr…

I was at the ploughing championships today and the Minister's name came up quite an amount. I am not one for personalised attacks but he has become the figurehead for the perception that the Government does not listen to communities. The North-South interconnector is a good example of this. Communities have been very clear, as have we in the Opposition, that we understand the rationale for a North-South interconnector and we want to see it delivered. We have also pointed out to the Minister and his predecessors on …

I am sure the Minister's colleague in the North will be delighted to hear an interconnector is some clandestine mechanism to deliver Irish unity. To be quite clear, absolutely Sinn Féin wants to see an all-island integrated electricity network. That is why we want to pursue this infrastructure in a way that will have community support precisely so that we can deliver this interconnector. The Minister has told me he recalls his previous time in government when this issue was first mooted. He should also recognise we…

That is what we have under the Government.

The Minister is missing the vital component of community acceptance.

The Minister has never answered my questions on community acceptance. Why is that?