-----and everyone else is for the bombing and the assault to stop. The more pressure on Israel, and the more isolation of Israel, the more pressure that will be put on Israel to do precisely that. The best thing we can do, precisely, is to expel the ambassador and to send a signal to them and to the whole world.

It is more than 15 months since the Government received the working group report on building defects in apartments and duplexes. It revealed the scale of the crisis that up to 100,000 families are facing. They are facing serious fire defects and other defects with an average remediation cost of €25,000. The responsibility for this crisis lies with Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael and the regime of self-certification for which they are responsible. At the time, the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, responded to the report, promisi…

Yesterday, the Taoiseach spoke about the need for the International Criminal Court, ICC, to have a proper investigation into the alleged war crimes which we think are very clearly, openly and brazenly being committed by Israel in Gaza. I asked the Taoiseach about it earlier in Leaders' Questions. I suggested that the Government should use the power that it has under Article 14 of the Rome Statute to make a referral to the ICC so that an investigation will immediately take place. The Taoiseach suggested there is no …

Britain has seen very sizeable protests of hundreds of thousands of people in solidarity with the Palestinians and in opposition to the genocidal assault by Israel on Gaza. That has happened in the context of massive repression and threatened repression. A letter from the Home Secretary to police constables suggests that flying a Palestinian flag in Britain may be a criminal offence and that the chant, "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" may be a criminal offence. Now we see attempts to ban the comi…

The Department of the Taoiseach is responsible for co-ordinating the State's climate action plan which obliges the State to cut greenhouse gas emissions by half by 2030 but last week he and the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine jetted off to South Korea to flog beef exports to that country thousands of miles away while simultaneously signing a new deal for a data centre in this country. Already, data centres swallow up 18% of our electricity consumption and increasingly huge amounts of our water supply …

Using gas.

It will burn fossil fuels.

I raise the case of the death of Margaret Bracken, whose body was discovered at her home in Dundalk on 16 December 2019. The Garda very quickly concluded that there was nothing suspicious about the circumstances of her death. That conclusion was reached extremely quickly, with the sergeant and inspector having spent less than ten minutes in the house before doing so. However, they ignored all of the evidence, which strongly suggested that a robbery and struggle had preceded the heart attack the post-mortem found sh…

Last week I hosted a meeting in Tallaght for parents of children with disabilities and additional needs. We had campaigners, activists and lawyers present. The room was packed with parents telling heartbreaking stories: stories of being on long waiting lists for assessments of need, stories of waiting more than a year for therapies, stories of waiting for mental health supports, stories of waiting for respite and stories of waiting for appropriate school places. It is not only heartbreaking but also maddening and i…

I raise the scandal of historical child sex abuse at St. John Ambulance. It is now more than seven months since Dr. Shannon's utterly damning report. It found that a past culture had facilitated the potential grooming of children and that the organisation had failed to intervene despite the knowledge that boys were at risk of abuse. It concluded that the organisation had failed to act against the perpetrator for years despite "a significant degree of organisational awareness" of the risk he posed to children. Why h…

What is the Government doing to ensure that asylum seekers who are here and staying in State-provided accommodation are safe? I understand that a new accommodation centre was opened in west Donegal recently. There are people there who have fled horrific wars in Syria and Libya, as well as some Palestinians. They have been subjected to physical threats. There have been threats to attack the building where they are staying. There have also been threats to local public representatives who have spoken out to support th…

On 19 October last year, President von der Leyen made a speech in the European Parliament where she said: "Russia’s attacks against civilian infrastructure, especially electricity, are war crimes. Cutting off men, women, children of water, electricity and heating with winter coming - these are acts of pure terror. And we have to call it as such.” Then when Israel began to do precisely that with attacks against civilian infrastructure, especially electricity, cutting off men, women and children of water electricity …

Or by the Irish State in the foundation of the State.

The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has blood on her hands. She has the blood of over 6,500 Palestinians who have been killed by Israeli airstrikes and bombardment over the past two weeks on her hands. She has the blood of over 2,700 children on her hands. She should resign, and if the Government seriously represented justice, peace and opposition to genocide, it would demand at the European Council that she goes. She went to Israel with no mandate and declared that Israel has the right …

We need to have a debate this week about the role of the Israeli Embassy in Ireland, in particular its justification and lies to cover for the genocidal assault taking place on Gaza which has been responsible for over 5,000 people, including more than 2,000 children, being killed. There have been outrageous comments from the ambassador about the President, accusing him of spreading misinformation for pointing out the truth that Israel was in breach of multiple Geneva conventions, and a tweet from the deputy head of…

Losing a child is the worst thing a parent can experience or even imagine. Aaron and Laura have, unfortunately, had to live this horrible reality. Their little girl, Ada, passed away suddenly on 26 October 2022. She was just two days short of being 20 months old. In Aaron's words, "she went to bed happy and healthy, such a great little kid. We have no concrete answers yet why she passed but we were told we will probably get none and it will be put down to SUDC. There are no supports in Ireland for this type of deat…

The nightmare in Gaza is worsening day after day, hour after hour. There is no water, no food, no fuel for the hospitals, no electricity and no basics. The bombs are raining down at an increasing intensity. In the last 24 hours more than 700 people have been killed, bringing the total to over 5,000, including more than 2,000 children. It is really a sick joke to have 15 trucks entering Gaza when on a regular day 500 trucks would be going in. The starvation policies of Israel continue. This may be about to get even …

It is a week until the scheme of temporary special leave with pay for healthcare workers with long Covid is due to expire. This is a scheme for healthcare workers who contracted long Covid as a result of their work on the front line. It is due to expire in a week and there is still no announcement, as far as I know, as to whether it will be extended. These are workers who got a round of applause in here and from ordinary people across the country. Now, in the words of one of the workers affected, they are getting a…

The Government does not do that, however. It is not counted as an occupational illness.

I have spoken about the budget already on a number of occasions. It is very clear the budget works very well for the wealthy in this country and particularly for the big landlords, the corporations who will avail of the research and development tax credit, and the well paid, but it does not work for ordinary people. Today, I will focus on a few different groups of ordinary people and how they are failed, the first group being people with disabilities. It is scandalous that the Government has a record budget surplus…