The important point is we have produced the most comprehensive plan and we are implementing it. Deputy Doherty has not. I will make the point to him that 400 first-time buyers each week are now buying their first home. Listening to the Deputy, one would imagine that nobody was. Some 25,000 first-time buyers drew down mortgages in 2022. That is the highest number since 2008, and over 41,000 homes were purchased between January and August of this year, with 27% of those by first-time buyers. We have developed schemes…

----- I put it to Deputy Doherty that his policies and approach in this House have been negative.

He has opposed measures that would improve the situation for first-time buyers.

Sinn Féin has been anti the first-time buyer initiative.

First, I acknowledge that there are very significant challenges facing families with children who have disabilities, particularly with regard to access to therapies. There has to be a balanced perspective regarding overall disability provision. I would argue that over the last three years, there has been very significant progress, and in the years before that, on special education, which the Deputy did not refer to her in her commentary. While that is always challenging, I think it has been a key priority and deliv…

It is not pitiful; it is an 8% increase in pay, agreed through-----

The Deputy had her chance. The investment in education is not pitiful either. It has been significant over the years and major advances have been made, particularly at primary level. Yes, there needs to be progress at second level. We have provided stronger legislative obligations on all second level schools to take in children with special needs. The core rate went up €12. It is not a once-off. The core rate has gone up €29 since the Government came to office in terms of the core rate relating to the disability pa…

I thank the Deputy for the question and the issues that he raised. This year's overall health budget is about €22.5 billion. Allowing for the €2 billion that has been removed and transferred to the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth for disability services, that is the highest ever allocation for health. Since this Government came to office in June 2020, there have been increased budget allocations of approximately €7.4 billion. That is since 2019, and does not include the funding f…

-----but also value for money, efficiencies and looking at the drug budget, for example, of €3.3 billion. He will bring in independent experts to analyse that. I will come back to the Deputy on regionalisation at the end.

The Deputy is correct to say recruitment and retention have been a very significant issue, notwithstanding the fact we have recruited 22,000 in three years. In home care, for example, 53,000 people receive that every day now and there have been huge improvements and expansion. Eventually, we were expanding so much in home care that recruitment became an issue towards the latter part of that expansion. The work environment and the whole human resources practice within the HSE needs to improve and focus more on reten…

First of all, I addressed this issue before the budget. I spoke to the Minister for Health about community cancer support groups throughout the country that came together to seek additional supports for organisations that were established as voluntary organisations. As we all know, significant fundraising efforts in communities countrywide have underpinned these support groups that provide very valuable services to cancer patients and their families. They provide tailor-made, psychological, social and community sup…

To be fair to the HSE, it has enormous challenges in budgets, but it should be working with these organisations. The consultant, Professor Seamus O'Reilly, in our city, has been leading the charge for these centres. As a consultant and a clinician, he sees the value of organisations such as ARC in that context and advocates very strongly for them. By the way, the €3 million has to be additional to whatever existing funding CHOs in different parts of the country are allocating to these organisations. We do not want …

The Government has been very clear, and I have been very clear, that adherence to international law is a prerequisite and an essential need and imperative. We have also increased our funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, UNRWA, in particular. I met other member states during the week, on Monday, bilaterally, specifically asking for additional aid for UNRWA. I spoke to the Israeli foreign minister on Monday and made it clear that we want a humanitarian pause. At the subsequent Foreign Affairs Counci…

What is happening is unacceptable. Without question, the human suffering is unacceptable. Too many women, too many children are dying. We have asked for that humanitarian pause in the first instance to enable us to get fuel in there because fuel will fuel the desalination plants, it will get the water pumps going to get water going, and every human being is entitled to water and food.

We are pushing very hard for that. At the FAC meeting on Monday, I articulated very strongly the need for a humanitarian pause and for very coherent humanitarian aid, and that there be no obstacles to that or to development aid going into Gaza. For the first time in a long time, the European Commissioner of Humanitarian Affairs was at the Foreign Affairs Council and he gave a very clear, clinical presentation to all Ministers on the dire situation in Gaza. The EU has people on the ground in Gaza at the moment from …

There are two fundamental facts the Deputy did not reference. About 2,500 tenant in situ purchases are now progressing at various stages from assessment, sale agreed to closed. That is 2,500 people who have been prevented from going into homelessness by direct intervention and action by the Government. We are building far more social homes than we have in decades. Last year, we provided more than 10,000. This year it will be closer to more than 12,000 social homes provided by the Government, and that is not countin…

The other key thing is to enable people to work and get them out of homelessness as quickly as we possibly can. We do not want people homeless. Our population is growing. There are many factors to homelessness and that has to be borne in mind. We are working very hard to shorten the time people have in homelessness or in emergency accommodation.

The Deputy has been a long time in Cork.

I am surprised it has taken the Deputy so long to introduce himself to Mallow. I have been in and out of Mallow an awful lot. We have to deal with derelict sites and we are very focused on doing that. I believe the Deputy was in Mallow for the opening of the 49th dementia daycare centre. It was good for him to bear witness to the industry and hard work of the Minister of State, Deputy Butler, who really has made a big difference in dementia care in the country with the increasing number of these dementia care centr…

That is unacceptable and I will follow up on it. People need to implement laws when they are passed. This issue has been aired in the House for quite some time. We want to crack down on illegal dumping and litter and in my view, CCTV should be used for that purpose to get the culprits.