Could the Minister respond to the suggestion that has come from Government backbenchers that, effectively, there is some parish-pump parochialism going on in terms of the inclusion of certain schools in these tranches? There are ten projects in Galway, which has 5% of the population of the country, compared with 22 in Dublin - approximately 21% of the projects - where in the region of 27% of the population lives. The Minister might want to take the opportunity to respond to that suggestion, which, I again stress, i…

I want to stress the point about St. Aidan's in Brookfield. A previous Minister visited the school and agreed that the building is simply not suitable. It dates from the 1980s. There was an article in The Irish Times about it that contained a series of pictures that I took when I visited the school previously. If the Minister visits the school, she will see that the building is not acceptable. There is a kind of penny-wise-and-pound-foolish approach to these emergency works to patch up roofs that just cannot be pat…

What we have seen over the past few weeks shows how desperately unprepared the State was for the extreme weather we have experienced. This was not unpredicted. It was predicted 20 years ago that the impact of climate change was precisely going to be much wetter weather. The latter expresses itself in extreme events. Unfortunately, this is the music of the future. This is what climate change looks like in Ireland, and it is going to get worse and worse. All over my constituency, people have told me about the damage …

This Bill should be called the raise the rent Bill. The purpose of the Bill is to raise people's rents. That is literally it. The Government likes to pretend that there is some greater, deeper meaning going on. It likes to talk about security of tenure but the purpose of this Bill is to raise people's rents. People's rents have already almost doubled in the past ten years but the Government thinks that for the people it represents - the big landlords, the so-called institutional investors - the rents are not rising…

I will briefly respond to some of what the Minister said, though first I will note that we can see the impact of the guillotine. We are still on the first amendment and we are going to run out of debating time relatively soon. When the Minister made the point that the Government is not ramming it through, his excuse for how it is not ramming it through is because it announced the legislation last year, in August, but that is precisely the point. He announced the policy proposal last year, which is fine, and absolut…

Last week at the public accounts committee we heard that the Department of agriculture last year killed 7,735 badgers. It killed over 60,000 badgers in the course of the past decade even though they are supposedly a protected species. They are first trapped in snares causing internal organ damage, ruptured bladders and disembowelment. Pregnant and lactating badgers are killed leaving their cubs to starve to death. Snaring badgers is banned in Scotland and Wales. Two-thirds of people want it banned here. We are the …

Badgers.

The bulk of it is not vaccination.

Most of it is not vaccination.

There were more killed than vaccinated last year.

Why has the Attorney General's advice changed? What legally has changed? The ICJ decision that all states must abstain from entering into economic and trade dealings and prevent trade or investment relations with Israel stands. That was the basis on which the previous advice of the Attorney General was made. In the previous advice of the Attorney General, he made no distinction between goods and services because legally in international law there is no distinction between trade in goods and services. Instead, he ma…

Let us remind ourselves that last year saw not only the continuation of the genocide in Gaza, but a record number of home demolitions, settler attacks and orders for new illegal settlement construction in the West Bank. That is all continuing this year. The urgency of this Bill has never been greater. Since the so-called ceasefire, well over 500 Palestinians have been killed. Yesterday 18 Palestinians were killed. It is the position of the foreign affairs committee that the Government should include the question of…

First, I want to express my condolences to the family of the person who has died and those who were injured in what sounds like an awful crash in the north inner city. I hope there are no more deaths as a result. We are obviously here because of the tragic and awful death of 16-year-old Grace Lynch. I want to express my condolences to her family and friends. I also want to pay tribute to her mother, in particular, for the way that she spoke out so bravely and strongly and as a consequence we are now going to have G…

I want to get into some detailed points about this Bill, some points that I do not think have been raised yet, including the double blow that is presented here for homeless HAP tenants who are already being hit in many areas with council rent increases. Before that, the basic point which cannot be driven home hard enough is that this is a Bill for rip-off rents. That is the purpose of it. It is not an accidental outcome of it; that is its purpose. The Government strategy, explicitly, is to get rents to rise higher …

I thank Deputy Seamus Healy for tabling this excellent motion. People Before Profit obviously fully supports it. Next week, though it was supposed to be today but was cancelled because of the orange weather warning, Seamus, People Before Profit, Sinn Féin, other left Independents, the Social Democrats and the Labour Party will be launching the affordable Ireland campaign. That is a campaign that will be launched together with, supported by and involved with a broad coalition of disabled people's organisations, trad…

This is very simple. We need extreme weather legislation to protect workers. We do not have it now and the result is workers' lives and health are put at risk. One worker responded to the Unite survey about how their employer acted during Storm Éowyn stating: The company were more interested in production than employees' safety. Because there is no clear legislation around extreme weather events, it is left to employers' discretion to do what they want. Unfortunately, employers only concern is profit so they will c…

The Minister of State is satisfied that strong protections already exist. He should look at the evidence. Unite carried out a survey. Is the Minister of State satisfied about the 48% of workers who went to work during Storm Éowyn who said they did not feel safe? Is he satisfied that 53% of those who worked outdoors during the storm felt their employer had not taken all reasonable precautions to make their work safe? These are unionised workers. That means it will be a lot worse for non-unionised workers. If the Gov…

In November 2012, Elon Musk wrote to Jeffrey Epstein: "What day/night will be the wildest party on your island?" Epstein was already at that point a convicted child abuser and Musk was looking for an invitation to the island where horrific child abuse by ultra-rich paedophiles took place. Musk has turned Twitter into a machine for the mass production of child sexual abuse imagery and image-based sexual abuse of women. We know the horrific, traumatising impact this abuse has on victims. It is why image-based sexual …

The only thing they care about is maximising profits by selling more ads online. That is why they have these toxic algorithms. Opinion polls show 68% of people want these toxic algorithms turned off.

Will the Taoiseach support People Before Profit's Bill to do so?