This is the 11th time since I have been elected to the Dáil that I have been asked to agree to give tens of millions of euros, now almost €100 million, to the horse and greyhound racing industry. I added it up and, over the time I have been in the Dáil, the Dáil has voted time after time, all in all, to give almost €1 billion to the horse and greyhound racing industry. This year, as in every other year, the funding is being increased by €6 million. Coincidentally, €6 million is the same amount as the total amount o…

Deputies Bríd Smith and Cian O'Callaghan send their apologies. I thank the House for selecting this slot and the Minister of State for taking it. This really flows from an audiovisual room briefing that we hosted last week. It was with a group of principals from about 30 schools in some of the most generationally disadvantaged areas in the country, including Tallaght, Ballymun and Darndale, who have been pushing very impressively for the establishment of a new category of DEIS+ for primary schools. I pay tribute to…

That is quite far from saying we are going to agree to introduce a DEIS+ categorisation. At best, it is kicking the can down the road and continuing to look at it. This idea has been out there for a number of years, thanks to the principals who have been pushing it. Everything was pointed towards the OECD report but these principals are not happy with the OECD report. They say that it relied on asking questions of the Department of Education and that when the Department was asked how it was doing, it said it was no…

What does the Minister say to those families who are facing yet another 10% price increase in bin charges by Greyhound? It is outrageous price gouging. Going back three years, the company was charging €16.50 per month. Now it is up to almost €30 per month, or €300 per year. Incredibly, Greyhound is claiming that one of the reasons it is increasing prices is that people are returning their bottles and cans under the deposit return scheme. People are doing as they are asked and behaving as we want them to, yet the co…

That will help pay the bills.

Did the Taoiseach ask him to stop sending weapons?

Did you ask him to stop sending weapons?

Did you ask him to stop sending weapons?

Did you ask him to stop sending weapons?

Did you ask him to stop sending weapons?

Answer the question, which you have been dodging from the media.

It would be nice to get an answer.

First, I wish to object to the use of a number of guillotines this week. Second, I make the point strongly that we need a debate or a question-and-answer session this week on the issue of munitions flying through Irish sovereign airspace. We have been requesting this debate, as have others, since the Dáil came back and all the evidence suggests that munitions continued to fly through Irish airspace on their way to the Israeli army to be used in the horrific, barbaric genocide that is unfolding before our eyes invol…

Two years ago this week, tens of thousands of third level students led by USI walked out of lecture theatres to protest over the student accommodation crisis and the cost-of-living crisis. Two years on, they will do exactly the same this Thursday, 17 October at 11.30 a.m. Most of their problems have only got worse. The housing crisis has got worse and the cost-of-living crisis has got worse. In reality they face a profiteering crisis with big landlords and private companies seeking to make money. They will be march…

The programme for Government states, "We do not support the impartation of fracked gas" and "[W]e do not believe that it make(s) sense to develop LNG gas import terminals importing fracked gas". The Government received legal advice three years ago that fracked gas import could not be banned under EU law. The only way to stop fracked gas imports is by not building the LNG infrastructure to receive them. The Government voted last Thursday to designate LNG as strategic infrastructure that could be fast-tracked to an c…

One of the issues that is having the greatest negative impact on the well-being of children is the rising number of children who are forced to grow up in emergency accommodation and overcrowded hotel rooms, staying there for months if they are “lucky” or even for years. The scourge of child homelessness is worsening no matter how often we are told that the situation is going to get better, the plan will work and so on. I will provide an example of what this looks like. It is a case I have raised with the Taoiseach …

Did the question of housing come up at the competitiveness summit? It is clearly a major issue in workers being able to have affordable housing somewhere in some sort of achievable commutable distance from their work. It seems that a key issue continues to be the fact that councils are taking public land and selling it off for very low prices to private developers as opposed to having a State construction company able to build social and affordable homes on public land. Last night South Dublin County Council voted,…

The Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, opened by saying that child protection is simply too important to be used as a political football. In fairness to the Minister, he did not engage in political football through his speech. He set out some issues regarding child protection, which I will get into because his Department's approach is very inadequate. That approach of not using this issue as a political football lasted for as long as the Minister was speaking. All subsequent Government speakers were all about using it as a…

I first object to the guillotining of this Bill. It is a sign of the arrogance of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael that after 100 years in power, either together or by themselves, they routinely ram important Bills through the Dáil without proper scrutiny. I suspect we will see more of it next week as well. They do it because it is politically convenient for them. I turn to the details of the Bill. I note a sneaky little cut that the Minister was quiet about. It did not get mentioned on budget day. The Government is going…

I thank Sinn Féin for tabling this good motion. I have not been able to be present at this debate until now because I was at an online meeting with a range of campaigners on disability services of various sorts, including parents of children with additional needs, parents of children with scoliosis who are being badly failed by the State and disabled people themselves. What is brewing is a powerful alliance of all these groups. They are not small groups. If we consider the number of people affected, we are talking …