I do not want "not ruling out"; I want a commitment.

I presume the Taoiseach saw the horrific video of a six-year-old girl burning in Gaza. Her name is Ward. Thankfully, she actually survived but her family did not and approximately 20,000 other Palestinian children in Gaza have not. It is time for action to go with the words. It is time to stop the overflights. It is time to ban the sale of Israeli war bonds and it is time for full sanctions on goods and services. We need action from the Government and we need it now.

I wish to pay condolences to Dr. Ali al-Najjar who works in Sligo University Hospital. On Friday, his sister-in-law, Alaa, a paediatrician in Khan Younis, said goodbye to her husband Hamdi and their ten children before she went to work to care for injured babies who barely survived Israeli attacks. However, after Israeli air strikes a few hours later, seven of her children's charred bodies came to her hospital, while two could not be found under the rubble. Only one of her ten children survived along with her husba…

The Taoiseach and the Government are using Trump's tariff threats as an excuse to exhume the full ratification of CETA and bring it back from the dead. There are good reasons that the Supreme Court buried it back in 2022 when it ruled that the ratification of CETA would be unconstitutional because it gives extreme powers to shadowy private investor courts that have no democratic oversight and cannot be overruled by Irish judges. If CETA is passed and fully ratified as the Government wants, big multinational compani…

We do not have to sign up to the ICS.

You just said we had signed up already.

The main thing I want to do is to pay tribute, as has been done by many others, to Lucia, Jim and Shane's sisters. For 14 years, you should have been able to grieve and live your lives. Instead, you had to fight for justice. We should remember that the family was not fighting for justice against nobody. The State was on the other side and was blocking the search for justice. The State apology is a vindication of what the family has been fighting for for 14 years. It has to be over ten years ago that I met Lucia bec…

I have several questions. Why are the surgeons who performed hundreds of unnecessary surgeries on children still operating? Surgeon B could go into Temple Street tomorrow and do an osteotomy. Those surgeons are not being prevented from doing that. There is a lot of talk about rebuilding trust and so on, but all that seems very previous to me when, literally, the surgeons who are responsible are still operating in Temple Street and Cappagh. I think they should be suspended, but, at the very least, they should be sus…

What is mentioned here at the moment in the CHI press statement, for example, is that all the operations are being studied from 2010 in Temple Street. We know these novel osteotomies started in 2002. It does not seem to me there is any good reason to leave them out. The argument is they have reached skeletal maturity. They still deserve to know if they were wrongly operated on. That may have implications for their health into the future.

I move: That leave be granted to introduce a Bill entitled an Act to amend the Planning and Development Act 2000 to exempt external wall insulation from planning permission, with the exception of certain limited circumstances. This Bill is inspired by a particular case, that of Clive and Samantha Ryan, who live in Kilnamanagh, Tallaght. In the past week, thankfully, they have finally been granted planning permission for external wall insulation that they installed on their home six years ago. This news is, of cours…

I move: "That the Bill be taken in Private Members' time."

The Palestinian people are being starved to death in Gaza. We have heard again and again, rightly, about the 14,000 babies who face death from deliberate starvation in the next 48 hours. This is while the Israeli Government is openly boasting about the ethnic cleansing being carried out. Let us not forget that the bombing continues, with 82 Palestinians killed by this indiscriminate bombing in the last 24 hours. We should not allow a few late weasel words in the West to obscure the fundamental truth that this is a …

I welcome the Minister of State’s enthusiasm and fine words. The question is whether we are going to get the action to go with it. I raise a concrete case with him today and seek action on it. It is an issue where the State is not only failing to do enough to protect biodiversity, but is actually destroying it. The issue relates to the ongoing slaughter of badgers by the Department of agriculture. The Minister of State will have seen “The Journal Investigates” report in which it states that the Department has kille…

I have another minute.

These beautiful and innocent badgers are being made a scapegoat for industrial farming practices where dairy herd sizes have ballooned. With bigger herds and more intensive farming comes more disease. The Department of agriculture admits that killing badgers is not sustainable in the long term due to its ultimate impact on badger ecology. It knows it does not work to control bovine tuberculosis. Why on earth did it then slaughter more than 7,000 badgers last year, which was the highest number in a decade? Will the …

Fine Gael's manifesto for the previous general election stated it would "Stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes." It would, it said, "unequivocally support Ukraine". That promise, like all the other promises of this Government, lasted approximately 100 days. It was not worth the paper it was written on. One of the first things the Government is doing is slashing supports to Ukrainian people who have fled to Ireland, by cutting the ARP from €800 to €600 per month. The Government started kicking Ukrainian refugee…

Not agreed.

The average rent is now more than €2,000 a month. Rents are rising faster than ever. It is a nightmare for renters and it is getting worse. The Minister for housing is speaking to the media, saying there has to be a change in the rent pressure zones. Extra fear is being felt by these renters that a landlords' government will allow landlords to hike their rents even faster. It is happening in the media; it is not happening here. Every week over the past month or so, I have been asking for statements on housing-----

The Minister needs to come into the House, outline his plans and allow them to be debated.

Residents in Applewood in Swords are facing eviction by their corporate landlord, LRC. There is no good reason for these evictions. These are no-fault evictions. LRC is refusing to offer further Part 4 tenancies, through a legal loophole which allows landlords to evict tenants without reason at the end of a tenancy if it was created before 11 June 2022. This is a tried and tested tactic by LRC. It issued 100 notices of termination on these grounds between October 2022 and April 2024. The impact on the tenants is ho…