I am trying to be helpful here.

I introduced the breast cancer provision in 2001 in which we made allocations so I was a bit taken aback yesterday. I am glad the situation has been sorted and clarified. There is no loss of service in that respect. That is the way it should be. There are Department of Social Protection grants, I understand, for wigs and other hairpieces for specific issues. For the first time this year, we provided an extra €3 million for cancer support centres and various organisations, such as ARC, which were traditionally funde…

-----material, the argument the HSE gave back has been a long-running thread of debate within the health services for a long time.

My late mother, God rest her, always responded.

If it was not approved by the mother, you were in deep difficulty in getting any subsequent approval. I am a great admirer of the hen harrier project. It was outstanding, as was the Burren Life project. We achieved meaningful gains. The challenges with ACRES and new schemes is that these schemes became somewhat of a victim of them in the levels of support available. I spoke to the Minister. I will speak to him again. The Department of agriculture needs to be more innovative in these matters. The farmers like them. …

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue. It is commendable that he has done so. We are at a difficult period in the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the war on Ukraine. It is a good idea. I defer to the Ceann Comhairle but I heard President Zelenskyy last Saturday at the Munich Security Conference. He was appreciative of the supports he has gotten across Europe and elsewhere but spelled out to us, as did foreign minister Kuleba at the Foreign Affairs Council, the huge challenges facing Ukraine. There is an offensi…

Go raibh maith agaibh, a Chathaoirligh and Senators. In Gaza we continue to bear witness to a brutal conflict: 136 long days of war, 100,000 dead, injured or missing, 1.9 million displaced and 90% facing acute hunger. These are numbers but they describe a human reality of mass suffering on an industrial scale, a humanitarian disaster unfolding before our eyes. More than half of the population of Gaza is now taking shelter in Rafah. Almost 1.5 million people are displaced from their home and seeking refuge. Crammed …

I met the children on the way in. They were also in the other House, where I was speaking on the war in Ukraine. I hope the school does not mind me saying this, but is it not saying something that the two debates they have witnessed so far are debates about unspeakable wars? It is a sign of our times, but you are our future and we hope we can give you a more peaceful legacy than the one we have inherited.

Why not?

I appreciate the opportunity to participate in this important debate as we mark the second anniversary of Russia's unprovoked, illegal, full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Over the past 24 months, indescribable suffering has been inflicted on the people of Ukraine. Millions have been forced to flee their homes, thousands have been killed and thousands more, including children, have been kidnapped, tortured or arbitrarily imprisoned by Russian forces. Villages, towns and even entire cities have been completely destroyed…

RTÉ is funded by a combination of the licence fee, taxpayers' money and advertising revenue. Essentially, the RTÉ licence money is the public's money. Where public money forms the bulk of any organisation's revenue, there should be full transparency and accountability to the public. What has happened is unacceptable. There should be no secrecy in respect of any package which any executive received from RTÉ. All such packages should be in accordance with proper frameworks, procedures and controls that exist in an or…

Yes, hands off. Government can never interfere with a public service broadcaster. There has always been a hands-off and an arm's-length approach. I can remember as a young student when people accused governments of the day of interfering too much in RTÉ in terms of editorial control or saying that RTÉ should not publish this or should not criticise that. That was an earlier debate in society which I thought everyone had agreed to, that we should keep at arm's-length from the broadcaster in respect of editorial cont…

The Deputy clearly did not listen to my original reply. I said there should be full transparency in respect of everybody who got a package from RTÉ. That is my view. It is public money; it is licence fee money and taxpayers' money. There must be full transparency in respect of any individual. I said that already.

In terms of the licence fee, Sinn Féin's alternative budget for last year, which was published only four months ago, did not mention, let alone budget for, its plan to scrap the licence fee.

You did not.

It would cost in excess of €150 million.

The other point I will make is that the other fundamental problem with the amnesty proposal is that for the hundreds and thousands of people who paid the licence fee down through the years, it is an incredible insult. "Fools you were to pay" is what Sinn Féin is saying to them. What does that mean for other bills that people pay? What Sinn Féin is saying to people is, "Don't bother paying your bills. Don't pay any kind of bill."

That is what Sinn Féin is saying.

"We will look after you at the end of the day." That is what Sinn Féin is saying. It is saying it does not have to provide for it in alternative budgets.

For those who have paid their licence fees over the years, that was an incredible slap in the face. The Deputy has basically-----