I thank the Deputies for their comments. The national centre will involve a collaborative spirit. I will come back to that later. In terms of the review of the north-east inner city initiative that Deputy McDonald has asked for, I have not gone cool on it but we wanted to work through it. We did the progress report, which in a way is a review of its own. I think the Deputy is looking for a more comprehensive review. I have asked senior officials in my Department, including an assistant secretary on social policy, t…

The whole thing really should be about changing the cycle.

I propose to take Questions Nos. 10 to 13, inclusive, together. Since taking office, I have issued one formal apology in the Dáil, on behalf of the State, for the hurt experienced by many former residents of mother and baby institutions and county homes. I apologised for the profound generational wrong visited upon Irish mothers and their children who ended up in a mother and baby home or county home and for the shame and stigma to which they were subjected. As part of that apology, I acknowledged that the State ha…

First, Deputy Tóibín raised the Grace case. That commission has completed its work and there have been interim reports. It is a shocking case and I want to await the outcome of the full, compete report. I have not seen the Alice report. From what the Deputy has just said to the House, it represents a shocking situation. I will engage with the Deputy again on the issues and see what I can do in respect of meeting Alice and so on, if the Deputy feels it would be of assistance. On the broader question, the establishme…

We support a referendum in that regard. It is important to note that we need more supply. Given the current crisis, not just in respect of housing but also in respect of immigration, including the arrival of Ukrainian refugees, which presents a big challenge to us all, I am still struck by the fact that, as a society, we take an inordinate amount of time to get projects through the planning system. Many groups feel they have the luxury of opposing significant housing projects.

Is it nonsense? I do not agree with the Deputy. I know I annoy people when I keep on saying that when we oppose projects with 1,100 units or 500 units-----

-----along with that, we still say there is a crisis. I did not mention Deputy Ó Broin at all but he interrupted. I am just saying that, generally, as a society-----

The Deputy's party is a serial objector. He knows that. That is just the bottom line.

The point is that we have a crisis in housing.

The fallback position of the Deputy's party is to say everything is Government policy. It is more than just a question of the Government.

It is more than just the Government. The Deputy did not ask a question so I respectfully ask him to respect the norms of the House. I am answering Deputy Boyd Barrett-----

-----who did raise a question about homelessness.

Family homelessness is down 34%. I am simply saying there are too many objections to too many housing projects.

It is about time people got real about the housing crisis.

I make no apology for saying that. The Deputy has form in this matter. I am making a general point because I believe we are in a housing crisis. Twenty thousand houses per year is not good enough. Covid was an issue last year. We want to get the number up but will not do so if we do not have more supply, get more planning permissions through and get the houses built in this country.

We need to do that. We are aiming to have 12,000 provided this year. Again, we have given the local authorities and approved social housing bodies the resources to build social houses. On family homelessness and Housing First, we are 34% below the peak recorded in July 2018. However, we need to do much more. We want all children housed. That is my objective.

We are not going to do that, however, if we do not ramp up housing supply. We need to prioritise what we want as politicians and as a society. People want more housing, particularly for younger people, who need access to affordable rent and affordable houses. We are not going to give them that access if we object collectively, and if various parties object at council level, to various projects. It is about prioritisation and realising and accepting the scale of the crisis and acting on it. On thalidomide, which Dep…

The Government has decided to effect reductions in excise duties of 20 cent in respect of petrol, 15 cent in respect of diesel and 2 cent in respect of marked gas oil to take effect from Thursday, 10 March.

The Government has been working on this in recent days. No one in this House has a monopoly on knowledge of what is happening out there in the real world.

Quite obviously what is going on here is the international-----