I do not believe in it.

I do not believe we should participate in European militarisation.

A region-----

Go back and read the debate from 2006.

I wanted a citizens' assembly like you wanted. You changed your mind.

Exactly.

I thank the Leas-Cheann Comhairle. I want to show the Taoiseach some pictures, and I can send them to him. I have a picture here of a series of staples and nails, and similarly in this photograph. This is meant to be a picture of the cremated remains of an individual, a guy called Johnny Fox. There are quite a number of staples, nails and screws in his cremated remains. Johnny Fox was Rhasidat Adeleke's first coach, was the founder of Darkness into Light and he died in April. When his family opened his urn to sprea…

It has now been two years since the Government received the report into the scale of defects in apartments and duplexes, revealing that a majority of the properties built between 1991 and 2013 were likely affected. There may be up to 100,000 apartments and duplexes whose owners face an average cost, which is probably increased since, of €25,000 to repair. It has been a year and a half since the Government announced that there would be a 100% redress scheme, with retrospection. It has been a similar amount of time, …

It is an absolute scandal that more than 4,000 children in this country are homeless. All of those cases are unnecessary or avoidable. I will give a current example of a child who is facing homelessness in an extraordinarily avoidable situation. The child, her father and his partner - the child's mother - live in an apartment in Tallaght. I first met them well over a year ago. They had a notice to quit because the landlord was selling the apartment. They were willing to sell it to the council under the tenant in si…

I am sure the Minister has seen the comments by the UN Secretary General, António Guterres, calling for a ban on fossil fuel advertising. He correctly calls the fossil fuel companies the godfathers of climate chaos, who rake in record profits while the most vulnerable are left stranded. I asked the Taoiseach about this a couple of weeks ago and he said he would speak to the Minister, Deputy Ryan, to ask him to share his view on the comments of the UN Secretary General. Has he done so, and what view did the Minister…

It is interesting that the Minister states his Department is not responsible. I got a letter from the Ceann Comhairle disallowing one of the questions I put asking if the Minister would support such a ban. It was disallowed on the basis that the Minister has no official responsibility to Dáil Éireann and that the Advertising Standards Authority for Ireland is a self-regulatory organisation. Does the Minister know if his Department had any hand in encouraging the Ceann Comhairle to disallow that question? It seems s…

It is at least as important, however, if not more. There is a public health element. One in ten children in this country is suffering from asthma and fossil fuel cars are a major contributor to that. Of course, there is also the biggest challenge facing humanity as a whole: climate catastrophe, for which the fossil fuel companies are the number one culprits. The Minister has been the subject of a personalised campaign by the number one polluter from this country. These companies use their influence, public presence…

And "The Late Late Show".

To whom is it being outsourced? Private companies.

The Tánaiste wants to tax ordinary households. It is a regressive tax.

How a society treats and takes care of its older people says a great deal about the values of that society. The way that older people are currently treated does not reflect well on the basic values that underpin our current for-profit, capitalist society. It is a society and an economy where care work is massively undervalued and under-provided. Where it is provided, it is on a for-profit basis, as Gino outlined, often with very high levels of exploitation of those who are providing it. These are older people who i…

To bail out the banks. Is that what the Deputy is thinking of?

I am going to share time. I welcome the motion and note that the Government has not tabled an amendment to it, which means it is going to allow the motion to pass with no intention of implementing its demands for dramatic reductions in pupil-teacher ratios, investment according to OECD averages and so on. It makes something of a farce of this place, to be honest. Our primary schools have been run on a shoestring for decades. It is simply not possible to run a school on the stingy capitation and ancillary grants tha…

I want to express the solidarity of People Before Profit-Solidarity with the Aer Lingus pilots who have begun their action today. These are workers who have not had a pay rise since 2019. The cost-of-living crisis has seen their wages being eroded by at least 24%. They are simply looking for their wages to go back, in real terms, to what they were in 2019. It should be noted that since then, senior executives at Aer Lingus have had pay increases of 66%. Aer Lingus does not like to talk about the enormous profits th…

It is utterly shameful that, after the rhetoric during the elections, after the raising of the Palestinian flag and after the criticism of Israel, the Government is supporting Ursula von der Leyen for President of the European Commission . It means that all of that was really for show for the Irish public. The Government was willing to criticise but then turned a blind eye to this woman who supports genocide, gave a green light to Israel's genocide on Palestine and continues to implement policies which see European…