This is a democratic Parliament.

The comments from the Opposition are deeply disingenuous. Sinn Féin is the wealthiest party in Ireland with over 200 staff, 50 properties and a network of fundraising in the United States, as well as an inheritance that would be illegal here in this Republic. With the greatest respect to the Deputy opposite, he has some neck to start lecturing other parties on fundraising. There is nothing wrong with political parties having legitimate means of fundraising. If that is by a raffle, there is nothing wrong with that. …

If the Deputy looks back at Sinn Féin's history and the history of his movement going back over decades, I would love a similar level of transparency in respect of the historical fundraising his movement engaged in over the decades. I really mean that. If Sinn Féin wants to hold other parties up to scrutiny, it should hold itself-----

Sinn Féin has raised $15 million in the United States over the last number of years. It received €4 million of an inheritance.

God only knows what happened when Sinn Féin and the Provisional IRA were one and the same thing. No one knows where the money went then or how it was translated. That is the bottom line.

I really would love scrutiny and transparency in respect of all of that. When I come to Deputy Nash, his party has had alternative means of fundraising through a proportion of trade union subscriptions down through the years as well. Many of those trade union members were Fianna Fáil supporters and voters as well as anybody else.

Let us not pretend that this was some sort of stroke or whatever. It is not. We have some of the better legal frameworks governing political fundraising in this Republic.

Yes, thanks to Fianna Fáil, actually, and other parties in what has transpired over the last 20 years in terms of this Legislature.

The comments have been overstated. It struck me that when Deputy Fitzpatrick raised what for him and others in the north east is a legitimate issue, he was shouted down by everybody because he was not obeying the dictatorial attitude of everybody. In other words, because he was not discussing the issue the Deputies raised, all of them were saying he was out of order. All he wanted was time to discuss Navan hospital.

That is democracy - shout down the Independents because they are raising issues of legitimate concern to them but that do not suit the agenda. It is a sign of what is to come if we do not toe the line with certain agendas on a given day, politically and democratically speaking.

In response to Deputy Boyd Barrett, there will be a full debate after committee in respect of the issue he raised, namely, participation in four PESCO projects as opposed to one. I have no difficulty with that. We need interoperability and we need to work on a whole range of issues, from peacekeeping to peace enforcement, and making sure we have the capacity to do all that. Deputy Mattie McGrath raised the issue of An Bord Pleanála. There is a review under way in respect of the specific issue, which the Minister ha…

First, as I have said, the cost of living is bearing down very heavily on people. We are acutely aware of that in government and we have brought in approximately €2.4 billion of measures already. As I stated earlier, we cannot chase inflation like we did in the 1970s, when we had a decade-long inflationary cycle that went out of control and undermined people's real incomes, jobs etc. The forthcoming budget will be a cost-of-living budget. We want to do things that target those in need but also deal with a range of …

Of course, Deputy Bacik is correct. The Minister for Justice, Deputy McEntee, has worked with a range of stakeholders in respect of this. These figures are shocking. The Minister is leading work on a whole-of-government approach to domestic, sexual and gender-based violence and to develop and to publish the strategy as soon as we possibly can. The Minister engaged with all of the stakeholders in that regard. I will ask the Minister to engage with the Deputy and others in respect of the timelines around the publicat…

The Government has already taken measures. We accept that people are struggling. We accept the need. There has to be targeted measures, particularly for families and directed towards children in need and children who may be vulnerable, but the budget gives us the framework, but also the opportunity in advance of it to engage with many stakeholders and people who have views on this to make sure that we deal with this strategically. What is happening is unprecedented because of the war in Ukraine. We cannot just have…

First, the Government has taken significant steps towards reducing the fares on public transport, in the most recent cost-of-living measures we took but also in the budget in October last in terms of young people's fares being reduced by 50%, which was a radical move. I welcome the Deputy's welcome for the 80 electric buses.

What is significant is that they come from a high quality factory, in terms of rights, in Ballymena. The NTA has secured the capacity there. That illustrates the synergies North and South that have developed economically to the benefit of all on the island. That is a very practical example of that.

Actually, over the past two years we have had record numbers of recruitment into our health service. We have invested very significantly in nurse education in this country and transformed it over the past 20 years. I was involved in it myself at the time, in the degree programme, the advanced nursing programmes and the postgraduate programmes. We need to continue to invest in nurse education and in all aspects of professional education within our health services. We are increasing annually the number of people work…

I commend the Minister for Education, Deputy Foley, on taking the decision to expand DEIS. This has been the largest and most significant expansion of the DEIS programme. A recent ESRI study has shown the programme, since it was first initiated, has been a very significant contributing factor to better outcomes in education in the Republic, as opposed to outcomes in Northern Ireland. There is a shared island research study in that regard. A separate, independent body assesses who qualifies and who does not. It will…

The HSE established the task force and the team to go into University Hospital Limerick. It is obviously reporting back to the HSE.

No, I did not. That is nonsense. We saw during the pandemic the value of a single body to manage a pandemic. God forbid if we had 15 separate regional bodies trying to manage a pandemic and all that would have unfolded. There are pluses and there are minuses. Medical advice, royal college advice and so on, have all been of the view the configuration-----