Clonliffe Road is one of them.

The technology sector is going through a difficult phase globally and there are some manifestations of that here. As the Deputy said, Meta has made a global pronouncement that will have implications for Ireland but we have to facilitate and provide for proper consultation between the company and its employees. The employees who may be affected should at least be afforded - it is our understanding they will in this case - proper due consultation. Meta employs about 3,000 people directly in this country and 6,000 con…

All works must be treated with respect and dignity and in line with our law and employment law. I made it very clear in the context of the Twitter announcement that I was not at all happy with the manner of it. Respect and dignity are very important in communication terms. There are established frameworks for communication and there are obligations on employers in proposing collective redundancies, for example, which involve fines if they fail to consult with employee representatives or provide certain information …

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue. He is correct that the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, was to cover Leaders' Questions today. I was not sure I would get back on time. I flew through the night to get here. I managed to get back for the Cabinet meeting and I then took the opportunity to come to the Chamber.

Deputy Shanahan is correct regarding an announcement on funding for the Waterford North Quays project. It is a fantastic announcement, which the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, brought to the Cabinet today. The Cabinet approved the decision to invest, along with the local authority, more than €200 million in what is a groundbreaking project for Waterford and the North Quays public infrastructure.

I pay tribute to the local authority, the Minister and the Department for getting this development, which is the largest urban regeneration project in the country, to begin, paving the way for Waterford to enhance its offering as an attractive place in which to invest and enabling it to develop new transport solutions. This is great news and we are very pleased with it. I take the Deputy's point in respect of student accommodation. I have been very engaged in this issue with the Minister for Further and Higher Educ…

That is my understanding. That was a key ask, particularly to unblock the student accommodation issue. Some of the institutions have land but the schemes did not add up in terms of viability, as I said. That has slowed down much of the student accommodation in the past two to three years. The State has to get involved to bridge that viability gap. The Minister, Deputy Harris, is working on that. He established a dedicated unit which visited all the universities, both TUs and the more traditional universities, and i…

As I said, huge activity has been under way on the housing front, notwithstanding Covid-19 and the inflationary cycle that has come as a result of the war in Ukraine, which affected house construction. We will exceed our targets on the Housing for All plan this year. We will get more than 24,600 houses but that is not enough. We need to get to 33,000 houses per annum. Next year’s target is 29,000, as per the plan. That needs a collective approach from everybody in this House and from society. Our planning system wi…

We have to build it. We have to get more supply into the market. It is as simple as that at the end of the day. We cannot magic up houses but they can be built. We have to work on getting them built as fast as we possibly can. We will work with the representatives of the residents and the county council to see what can be done.

In terms of Ukrainians who fled war, the vast majority are being housed in hotels and various collective accommodation. They are not in houses right now, but they are in pledged houses that individuals who, having seen what was happening in the war, decided to make their homes or vacant houses available to Ukrainians. Therefore, Ukrainians have not affected the social housing market and that impression should not go out there - they have not and that is as clear as night follows day.

I just want to make the point that the rapid build is only started. In terms of Ukrainians, we developed a new scheme. I told the Deputy that we have to consider rapid build for social housing and the housing issue more generally to get the numbers of houses that we can build up significantly. We need to build more houses than we are building. The past two and a half years have seen very significant progress on the housing front. The foundations have been built now legislatively as a whole range of schemes have bee…

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue. The issue is basically that the patrons and trustees of both schools have set this process of amalgamation in train. A fundamental principle of partnership in education is consultation. Parents are clear that they have not been consulted enough in respect of this proposal. I was not in the Chamber yesterday evening - I was in Cairo - so I did not hear the Minister for Education's reply. I will follow up with her again. My view is that there should be full and comprehensive…

We have changed the curriculum and prioritised physical activity in schools. We need to be careful that we do not compartmentalise this into one 45-minute period of the day. One of the big problems with primary schools is curriculum overload because there are so many core subjects, with science and other subjects having been added in the past 20 years. Physical activity should be part of every school day. It should be part of the social, personal and health education aspect. It should be integrated into the entire …

The Deputy took me to many places when I was in Carlow last week, but I am very annoyed that she did not introduce me to Laz Murphy's sausages.

The Deputy might send me a pack of sausages.

I occasionally indulge in a sausage, notwithstanding what you might think.

I heard that. Clonakilty is listening in. The serious point is about microgeneration. I will talk to the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, regarding the first point the Deputy made in respect of farmers, where microgeneration can be used for energy within the farm but also for selling on to the grid eventually. That is the objective of the scheme. We want farming to become more involved on the energy side. Farming has very strong potential on the energy side. In fact, from the most recent consideration of this, the cont…

The Government maintains ongoing contact with the haulage industry. We have had a number of schemes from the time of the Covid pandemic and onwards to try to support the haulage industry. We are acutely aware of the impact of energy price rises on the industry. The Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, has provided some supports and initiatives. I will talk to him in respect of what the Deputy said and revert to her.

There needs to be a meeting of the ways here because the new funding model in operation since September offers ECCE providers public funding of at least an additional €9.75 per child per week. That is 40% more than the €7 increase in capitation sought by the federation. The change in the funding model increases investment in session and pre-school services from approximately €14 million per year last year to €27 million per year on top of standard capitation, an almost 90% increase. Under core funding, therefore, t…

I get the point.