I want to ask about corporate capture of the Government, enabling landlords to build shed-sits with no planning permission, to rent them out with no legal protections, to evict tenants at any time with no right of appeal, no reason and no basis to go to the RTB. Where did this dystopian idea come from? A corporate think-tank set up by the billionaire Collison brothers. Plugging the idea two years ago, Progress Ireland boasted that there could be 350,000 such shed-sits, and it said they could be built based on wheth…

It is its idea.

It is its idea.

The World Economic Forum is a place where billionaires and multimillionaires gather together with Heads of Government and Ministers. It is a place where the policy interests of the billionaire class are transmitted to their political representatives, the likes of the Taoiseach. In this country, the richest billionaires we have, who obviously are not resident, are the Collison brothers. They, like many of the tech bros, share a libertarian ideology about deregulation of everything, so-called YIMBYism, which has the …

Deputy Boyd Barrett spoke about the workers today.

He has to repeat the Kilmainham workers, though.

They are one of them.

For the family members, not for renters.

The new cost-of-living crisis underlines the need to get to 100% renewable energy as quickly as possible. For Ireland, that means developing offshore wind. It is quite incredible that for the past 20 years, successive Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael Governments have been in power and have failed to add any offshore wind energy to the grid. We have less offshore wind energy today than we did 20 years ago, despite all the talk of climate crisis and so on. Why? It is because the Government is relying on the private market a…

-----dependent on fossil fuels. We cannot control what we do not own.

Will the Government change course and switch to a public model?

Fianna Fáil was in government for a long time before that.

Will the Tánaiste join with me in calling for An Post to reverse the disastrous decision to move the sorting office for Dublin 16 out of Dublin 16, moving it from Edmondstown to Lucan. It makes no sense whatsoever. It is not clear where the public who miss packets and parcels are going to have to go to collect them. They may have to go all the way to Lucan to collect parcels that they miss. It certainly is clear that it will result in a worsened service for the public. The postal workers are going to be stuck on th…

This is very simple. The school building, as it is, is simply not fit for continued use. There are serious health and safety concerns. When we visited there was very clearly water still coming through and sitting on top of tiles. You could see water coming in beside an interactive electric panel, which clearly represented a danger. A couple of years ago there was a partial ceiling collapse while children were in a class. There is mould. It is simply not suitable as it is. What is frustrating is this was recognised …

There is lots in the roof report carried out by Morris Roofing and Cladding. The key point is the roof has gone beyond economic repair due to its nearly 50 years of age. The fundamental problem is the school is over 50 years old and needs a new replacement building. That is not just the opinion of some teachers, students or parents but of the architect originally appointed by the Department 12 years ago. There is an additional issue in that when the new school building opens, there will be 36 extra places in specia…

I thank Deputy O'Gorman and the Green Party for tabling the motion, which we support. We have also tabled two amendments, which I will mention later. The main point is that history will not treat this Government kindly, if history gets to be written. Maybe that is what it is counting on. One after another, the Government is ripping up its climate commitments relating to LNG, data centres, public transport, nitrates, marine protected areas, MPAs, forestry, you name it. The Fianna Fáil-Fine Gael-Lowry lackey Governme…

It has been a bad week for the Government; it is been a good week for people power. The fuel protests caused the resignation of a Minister of State and the sudden appearance of the young Turks of Fianna Fáil. Those protests led to the majority of the Government being reduced and the Government being destabilised. That is before we get to the by-elections in just over a month's time. It is often said that power comes from the barrel of a gun, but in this country it often seems to come from the cab of a tractor. The …

I do not think the Government gets it. If it got it, we would not have seen the scenes we saw over the past ten days. That is a result of the Government not listening and not acting. One in five people is at risk of poverty. Two in five parents have skipped meals or cut back on what they are eating in order that their kids can have enough to eat. Hundreds of thousands of people are in arrears in on their electricity or gas bills. That is what drove the protests. The common cause I and People Before Profit make is w…

I want to remind the Government that the group which led the way on the cost-of-living struggle until the past week or so was disabled people. Outside the Dáil they again led the Affordable Ireland campaign protest a few weeks ago. Why were they to the fore? It was because they were the ones who were hit hardest in the budget with €1,400 worth of cruel and targeted cuts. For months, despite all of the pleading, protest, argument and stories about people having to choose between heating and eating, the Government ig…

The backdrop to the wars, the genocides and the interventions we have seen over the past number of years is the rivalry between the declining power of the US and the emerging power of China. That is the context in which the Government has tried very vigorously to draw Ireland more and more openly into the US-led NATO camp. We can see now in terms of the war crimes being committed in Iran what that means. It is why the vast majority of people defend our neutrality, want to protect our triple lock and do not want to …