You only care about corporations.

I find it extraordinary that you support it.

The EU and Canada have a security agreement.

We are part of the EU.

Yes.

No, we are part of-----

The tenant in situ scheme is the only thing that lies between thousands of families and homelessness. The Government, by starving councils of funding for it, is, in effect, abolishing the scheme. It is incredible. Dublin City Council's programme is now officially over as it has run out of money. Fingal County Council is the same. Carlow County Council has now run out of money for its scheme. South Dublin County Council is just about to run out of money. I am sure other councils are only a matter of weeks or months …

The population has doubled.

I welcome that the commission is being established. There are real issues with the very long delay in getting here. There are issues with the timeframe proposed, which is another delay. There are very serious issues with redress and, as I read through it, there are issues with how survivors' testimonies are to be treated. If I get time, I will come back to all that. I pay tribute to all the survivors. I have met survivors of Creagh Lane school in Limerick a number of times. The abuse they suffered is obviously horr…

Last Tuesday, I introduced a Bill to ban pig mutilation, sow stalls and farrowing crates, which the EU has already committed to phase out and for which the Minister is already giving grants to farmers to move away from. The question is whether he will take a lead on this, as the Government did under pressure from campaigners on fur farming, where it moved ahead of the rest of the European Union to ban fur farming. Will the Minister act now to ban the most inhumane practices in the pig industry?

What provoked me to introduce this Bill was undercover investigations carried out by the National Animal Rights Association and Animal Rebellion Ireland. There were two separate investigations on six different farms, chosen at random. Video evidence was produced, which I watched. It was horrendous. The Department has been sent the footage but I do not know if the Minister has had a chance to watch it. I encourage him to do so. Sick and dying pigs with open wounds and weeping open sores were left to suffer and die i…

Pigs are highly intelligent, sociable creatures. The farms were selected at random and all of them demonstrated horrific conditions for pigs. They were in a desperate state. Dead pigs were just lying there, as were pigs that were severely injured and heading towards death. Pigs were trapped in very small spaces. They are in grim indoor spaces and they never go outside in their whole lives. Some 3.5 million pigs are in conditions like that and are slaughtered in Ireland every single year. Pig farming takes place on …

Yesterday, 94 Palestinians were killed in Gaza. Forty-five of them were killed while waiting for aid from the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Today, so far, 87 people have been killed, and every day has a similar horrific number of casualties. In just one month, 600 Palestinians have been killed and more than 4,200 have been wounded by Israeli fire near aid distribution sites. A new low in this genocide is the use of aid as a weapon to ethnically cleanse large parts of the Gaza Strip and to assemble people …

Every time we raise this issue, we get the same response from the Government, which is, basically, to ask why we are not thanking it for all it is doing and for not being as bad as the western states that arm, fund and enable this genocide? I am sorry. We, and the public, have a higher standard of no complicity in the genocide. That is not only a moral standard; it is a legal standard. Under international law, all states have an obligation not to assist in any illegal situation, such as occupation, illegal settleme…

Constantly.

As the Minister will know, there is a two-tier system in place in respect of homeless HAP. Those who entered the scheme after July 2022 are able to access a higher rate than those who entered before that time. This has resulted in an unjust situation where people are faced with the prospect of renewed homelessness in order to be able to access the higher rate. I will give an example from my constituency. A young woman who works very hard every day lost her car because she had to sell it. She spends over an hour on …

We in People Before Profit are strongly opposed to the two safe country motions we have before us and that I will focus on in the time available. These are draconian motions that designate countries with appalling human rights records, such as Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia, as safe. The motions allow for people to be deported to so-called safe third countries even when they have no connection to that country. Once a country is designated as safe, a yellow-pack accelerated asylum process is used. Member states can appl…

I want to raise the inexplicable decision to cut SNA hours at Firhouse Educate Together National School. The school is already struggling to cope, with only eight SNAs catering for more than 90 children with additional needs. One parent wrote to me to tell me that her son started in the autism unit and with the amazing support of his teachers and SNAs was able to transition to a mainstream class and is proof of how early intervention and the correct support can help a child to integrate with his mainstream peers. S…

The year 2024 was the hottest on record. Temperatures were 1.6° above the historical average. Europe is now in the grip of another heatwave. In France, 300 people have been hospitalised, and two people have already died from the heat. They will not, unfortunately, be the last to die this summer across Europe. We urgently need to stop pumping more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Fossil fuels must be completely phased out as fast as possible. This is what the science demands. We know transport is our second big…

It is another week of unspeakable horror in Gaza, with scores of people killed every single day, many of them - maybe most of them - while queuing for food. Another week of aid being used as a weapon of war against starving Gazans by the Israeli, US-backed, so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Another week of distraction, reframing and excuses by most of the western establishment who enable, fund and arm this genocide. "Death, death to the IDF". That should be a statement of good sense. Dismantle the army that i…