Transport is one of the top two emitting sectors of greenhouse gases. Most of this comes from private cars. To get these numbers down and improve people's lives on a daily basis, we need a massive modal shift away from cars, and people sitting in traffic for an hour on their way to work and for an hour on their way home, into quality public transport and active travel. This means investing many more billions to ensure public transport becomes frequent, green and fast for everyone in the country and provides a real …

Two days ago, the International Criminal Court prosecutor, Karim Khan, announced that he was pursuing arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the Minister of Defense, Yoav Gallant, for a range of war crimes. One of the war crimes he was seeking the arrest warrant for was that of starvation of civilians as a method of warfare. That is correct, in my opinion. It therefore is horrifying that the Israeli ambassador, the representative of a regime that is currently engaged in the war crim…

I heard the Taoiseach during Leaders' Questions trying to distract from the reality that, if the leaks are accurate, the Housing Commission's report is absolutely damning for the Government. The Taoiseach seems to accept the fact that it calls for a radical reset of housing policy. It would not be calling for that if housing policy was basically correct. It reveals we have "one of the highest levels of public expenditure for housing, yet one of the poorest outcomes". Why is that? It is because Fianna Fáil and Fine …

That is precisely the problem; the Taoiseach thinks housing can only be delivered primarily on the basis of profit. I have a few quick questions.

Has the Taoiseach any idea why or on what basis this report was leaked? If it had not been leaked, would he still have published it this week or would he have waited until after the upcoming elections? Will he accept the basic conclusions, for example-----

-----that we should be aiming for a target of 20% of our national housing stock to be social and cost rental?

Almost one in four applicants for international protection is a child. Some 6,755 children are living in direct provision. Their parents receive a payment for them of just €29.80 per week. The child poverty monitor 2024, published yesterday, reports that this falls well below a minimum essential standard of living. It says it is not enough, of course, to cover basic needs like food, healthcare, school supplies, clothing or footwear. It forces thousands of children with no responsibility for the situation that they …

A crucial element of well-being should be investment in our parks and green spaces. We had quite a successful campaign, led by Jess Spear, for investment in Watergate Park. We got agreement for bins, lighting and picnic benches, but one of the key issues was the issue of park rangers. The campaign was told by the local authority not to worry as the park rangers from Tymon Park take care of Watergate Park. We have since found out that this is not the case. The park rangers from Tymon Park never come to Watergate Par…

Does the Taoiseach agree that we need to have more investment and more park rangers to properly service and take care of our parks?

I will ask the Taoiseach to correct the record on something he said regarding the first group of questions. He said that when the tents were removed, all those people were offered other accommodation. That is not the case. A story published online in The Irish Times in the past half hour stated that tents on a Dublin canal had been cleared again, leaving approximately 40 men without accommodation this afternoon after another multi-agency operation. It could be said that just happened but the same thing happened - m…

What will it take for the Government to recognise that inviting in big tech to set up as many data centres as they want, to use huge amounts of electricity and water, is simply not a sustainable policy? The Government is now being warned by officials in the Department of enterprise that this is not sustainable. Colm McCarthy has said the data centre boom is using up the entire bonus to emission reductions that would otherwise be under way as wind and solar renewables are deployed. The Minister has been warned there…

To try to give money to the landlords.

I want to raise the issue of the large financial burden associated with supervised visits. This is a situation where a family court orders a parent or guardian to have supervised access to their children. The State does not provide this supervised access. The parents have to pay fees to a private company in order to spend time with their children. Some of these private companies are massively overcharging vulnerable parents who just want to spend time with their kids. One of my constituents states that her personal…

The link between child well-being and young people being active and playing sports is extremely well established. For young people to be able to play sports, though, we need sports facilities in local communities. We do not currently have the facilities we should have right across the country. I will give one example from the area where I live in Kingswood. It is a place where about 4,000 people live. There are about 16 or more local sports clubs. Most of them, though, have to go outside the area to train. There ar…

What is missing is funding. Does the Taoiseach agree that facilities like these need to be properly funded?

Tenants are putting up their own rent, Cian.

We did not predict conscription.

That is not true.

That is not true. You are telling lies.

Yes, you are-----