When I visited Gaza, I could see for myself that if you bomb a residential block, children and women will be killed. I do not need, with respect, any lectures or tutorials from the Deputy as to how I express and articulate myself in respect of the Middle East. I ask him to unreservedly condemn Hamas.

Would he describe what happened------

-----last Saturday as a war crime?

I am just asking him if the Deputy would do that or has he done it?

How many?

Now that Deputy Shanahan is not in the Chamber, you could go down to Turner's Cross in County Cork. We made a lot of incremental investments there to provide a fine little stadium there over the years. I will talk to the Minister for Education about the issue Deputy Whitmore raised.

To get the issue resolved is the main thing. CIÉ should be talking and people should be talking on the ground locally. On the matter raised by Deputy Higgins, across the budget area, about €250 million has been allocated in terms of business schemes. The precise details have yet to be worked out. Equally, in areas relating to mental health, older people and disability, people come to us saying they could do with more. We have to weigh all of this up. This is a huge budget. In any scheme that has been announced, the…

The budget is a fair, progressive and ambitious response to the needs of Ireland today and in respect of the challenges it will face in the years ahead. It marks a decisive moment when Ireland signals its intention to build and protect public services well into the future. It is a signal to those who invest in Ireland that we are serious about delivering our radical investment plans. It gives a commitment to those who work hard and pay taxes to fund services today that those services will be there when they need th…

I thank the Senator for raising this issue in respect of recruitment and retention plans for the Naval Service. I acknowledge and pay tribute to the joint task force on its work last week in successfully detaining the cargo vessel MV Matthew , working with the Revenue Commissioners, the Customs and Excise and An Garda, which has overall responsibility for the prevention of drug trafficking and crime. The Defence Forces across the three services – it is important to stress the three services – demonstrated their uni…

Those two new vessels are further evidence of the Government's commitment to investment in the Naval Service and in capacity and capability more generally across the Defence Forces. The C295s that have been ordered, one of which has come in, give a far greater maritime surveillance capacity to the Air Corps as well as a potential strategic airlift capacity. The investments are in train. The Chief of Staff, working with the flag officer, is working on operational maximisation of the existing staff in terms of deploy…

First, I appreciate the Deputy's raising of this issue. I am very well aware of the historical nature of this, particularly in the context of the differentials between public service employees following the restoration of the financial emergency measures in the public interest, FEMPI, cuts and those who are working in section 39 organisations who did not get the same level of restoration. Yet, it is a more complex terrain in terms of the multiplicity of organisations, as well as the scale and size of organisations.…

-----in respect of future pay agreements. That has to be in an overall context because the trend that has occurred over the last decade has been that the public service pay agreement is first settled and then we enter into discussions with the section 39 organisations. It is my view that the overall framework has to be sustainable into the future for these organisations, because they are providing vital public services. I acknowledge that. Within that framework, there should be mechanisms to try to resolve this. No…

First, in the context of the use of the word "hope", I believe this issue can be resolved. As recently as Tuesday, officials from the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth engaged with the trade unions on the issue, and there will be further engagement next week. The Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, has informed me of that. The Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte is very strongly over this. As far as I am concerned, this is a priority issue that we need to resolve. I have been a strong advoca…

I am listening to Deputy Whitmore.

First, I would have thought the Deputy would have been more generous in her commentary in respect of the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, and childcare generally. Without question, the last two to three years has witnessed a transformation in the scale of funding to childcare, in particular in terms of workers within the childcare sector, when the joint labour committee, JLC, agreement was arrived at, which was accepted by the social partners as a very significant breakthrough, as well as when one adds the fees freeze la…

Through the Chair, the context is very important because there is a huge difference between €5 billion or €6 billion and €17 billion of expenditure, which is what the Social Democrats are proposing. The credibility of that needs examination. I accept that Deputy Whitmore's party is proposing tax hikes of €1 billion to pay for this, and a new tax rate of 43%. That is fair enough. Her party is saying it wants to tax much more to create revenue. What we are saying is that we want to prioritise childcare, which we have…

That is an outrageous assertion to make to say that the needs of children have been forgotten by this Government. It does not stack up at all across the full range of measures that we have taken in the last three budgets in respect of childcare more generally but also in terms of support of maternal care leave and so on. We have introduced a whole range of measures. It is not a credible-----

Through the Chair, I do not believe the assertion the Deputy just made is a fair or credible one.

It defies any realistic understanding. In respect of childcare costs, over the last two years we have met our commitments.

The more significant commitment is improving the status, pay and conditions of workers, in conjunction with the social partners in terms of a new JLC framework for people working in the childcare sector, which gives sustainability and continuity to the childcare sector in terms of a career pathway. That is key and crucial. In terms of the reduction in childcare costs, parents did feel the fee freeze last year in their pockets. They have said this to me. Probably one of the most significant cuts in childcare costs h…