The attendance of the Taoiseach’s predecessor, Deputy Varadkar, at the Munich Security Conference, was significant. It was part of a drive that has been ongoing under Deputies Varadkar and Micheál Martin to erode whatever is left of our neutrality and to display to the world that we are serious about this stuff, and that they should not worry because we will grow out of that immature neutrality. My basic question is regarding whether the Taoiseach intends to continue in the same vein. Deputies Varadkar and Micheál …

I have heard the Minister for Finance speak about the future Ireland fund and say that he hopes it will have accumulated up to €100 billion in assets by 2035. Obviously, we often talk about big numbers in this place and they can lose a sense of meaning. When you consider it, though, €100 billion is a phenomenal amount of money. It could make a real difference to people's lives if it is invested when we have it. All of this is predicated on the idea that there may be a rainy day at some point in the future and that …

You support von der Leyen.

You are missing all your targets.

Yes. On Saturday, together with residents and housing activists, I was outside a house in Swiftbrook in Tallaght. It would make a fine home for a family but, instead, it has been vacant for ten years. It is owned by Pepper Finance, a vulture fund that is notorious for hiking up interest rates on mortgage holders. It has been sitting empty for ten years. It is one of more than 50,000 homes in the State that have been vacant for six years or more, and one of more than 1,500 vacant homes in Dublin 24. Someone asked me…

Welfare cheats cheat us all.

Hear, hear.

There are 20,000 members of Fine Gael. They make up 0.4% of the population. They are people who - no offence to them - are disproportionately older, disproportionately richer, disproportionately-----

To the programme for Government, it is. They are disproportionately more conservative than the average person in society. Does the Taoiseach think that it is appropriate for this group of 20,000 people to decide who will be the next Taoiseach to implement the programme for Government? Does he not think it is repugnant to the notion of democracy that it is those 20,000 people, and the parliamentary party disproportionately within them, who will get to decide as opposed to the people? The Government was formed in an …

When will we get legislation for 100% redress for those affected by apartment and duplex defects? It has been almost two years since the Government received a report that revealed the scale of this problem. Up to 100,000 families have been affected as a consequence of a regime of self-certification introduced by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. It has been more than a year since we had a very welcome political commitment by the Government that we would have a 100% redress scheme. However, we do not have a Bill, heads of …

I want to ask the Taoiseach about the weapons coming through Irish airspace. They shot up in October of last year. They went from an average of about 100 exemptions for the carriage of munitions of war on civil aircraft per month to about 200. There were 190 in October, and they have stayed at a consistently high level since then. What happened in October? There was 7 October and then the genocidal onslaught by Israel on Gaza. At the very least, it seems strange and coincidental that the carriage of munitions on ci…

Did the Taoiseach ask him not to?

Did the Taoiseach ask him to stop sending weapons?

Did you ask him not to send weapons?

Yes.

We in People Before Profit welcome the passing of the nature restoration law. If we had an MEP, which we hope to have at least one of after the forthcoming European election, we would have attempted to strengthen it but would have then voted for it. I will set out the reasons we would have done so. First, it is very simple. It has been laid out by a bunch of people so at least the basic facts are not, apparently, in dispute in this debate but the consequences of those facts clearly are. We are in the middle of an i…

It will be about three minutes and five minutes. I thank the Labour Party for bringing forward this motion. We agree with a lot of what is in the motion, including better security for tenants, compulsory purchase of vacant and derelict buildings by local authorities, and bigger housing targets. The only thing is that it is a shame the Labour Party did not do any of that when it was in office. Deputy Kelly was Minister for housing from July 2014 to May 2016 and during those three calendar years, fewer than 500 socia…

Last week during Leaders' Questions, Deputy Micheál Martin was outraged when I suggested that is a policy choice by the Government to put more than 1,000 people seeking asylum onto the streets. Over the weekend, we got definitive proof that it is a very cruel policy choice. On Friday, when the snow came down and the tents collapsed, the Government came under pressure and beds were found for people. They were told that they would have beds for two nights but they did not get that. The very next morning, they were ki…

There were plenty of beds in the facilities. There are pictures.

Labhair mé cúpla uair sa Teach seo maidir leis an éileamh do pholasaí don Ghaeilge sa chóras oideachais ón réamhscoil go dtí an tríú leibhéal a fhorbairt, mar atá á mholadh ag an bhfeachtas Gaeilge4All. Ní hamháin nach bhfuil dul chun cinn ar siúl, ach tá rudaí ag dul in olcas. Bhain an Roinn Oideachais 30 nóiméad sa tseachtain ó mhúineadh na Gaeilge i mbunscoileanna. Tarlaíonn sé seo nuair atá brú agus fadhbanna cheana féin ó thaobh foghlaim na Gaeilge i mbunscoileanna. Ach inniu, táim chun labhairt ar fhadhb eile…