The Government is against raising corporation tax.

The Government could raise corporation tax. We are a tax haven.

I am not sure if the Minister saw the student protests yesterday but the slogan they had was "It's raining now" - I think it is raining right now. In other words, there is no excuse for the Government not acting to protect people from the cost-of-living crisis and the housing crisis at a time when there is a very significant surplus. There is no excuse whatsoever and that is the message that will be heard loud and clear from the Cost of Living Coalition protest at 1 o'clock this Saturday on Parnell Square. We were …

I agree about providing for the future. However, providing for the future means getting off the current tax haven model. It is not a sustainable model because we can be undercut by anybody else. Onshoring could happen in the US. At a certain point in time the corporate tax revenue will collapse. The question is now, to use the revenues that we have to invest, to have public investment in the key challenges we face in terms of the housing crisis and the climate crisis. The Minister wants to have a debate about why w…

There was a powerful briefing yesterday in the audiovisual room by Long Covid Advocacy Ireland and Long Covid Kids. We heard about the devastating impact of long Covid on some of the hundreds of thousands of people who were affected by long Covid in this country, the children who were unable to attend school every day and the adults unable to work. It is almost a year since this Dáil passed a good motion on taking long Covid seriously, but the people affected feel, understandably, that the Government and the HSE ar…

The River Poddle was the main source of Dublin's drinking water for more than 500 years but if one were to drink it now one would be in danger of going to hospital. It is polluted so often that it is a danger to wildlife and children in the parks that it runs through in Tallaght, Crumlin and Kimmage. For years local people, environmental activists and the Save the Poddle campaign have reported the pollution to South Dublin County Council and to the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, but to no avail. The most rec…

I want to raise with the Taoiseach the participation of Irish soldiers in the EU's military assistance mission of Ukraine. We opposed Ireland's participation. We explained that this was a full-spectrum military training mission and a clear breach of neutrality. In response, Government representatives repeatedly said that Irish soldiers would only be involved in non-lethal training. A statement that went out from the Department after a Government meeting during the summer again stated that Ireland would be involved …

The question was lethal not defensive.

There was a striking article by Fintan O'Toole in today's edition of The Irish Times where he is drawing upon research by the OECD to put the fiscal cost of child poverty in Ireland at something like €20 billion, around the scale of the health budget on a yearly basis. That, of course, is on top of the moral shame and human impact of people growing up in poverty and all the impact it has on people. One aspect of that which Deputy Boyd Barrett has spoken about is the whole question of homelessness. There have been l…

Will the Minister of State confirm that the Irish Government will support the establishment of an obligatory, compensatory and grant-based loss and damage fund at COP28 that does not include market-based mechanisms like the Global Shield? Crucially, will the Government push for it to be available to all countries in the global south impacted by climate change and for contributions to be the sole responsibility of the governments and corporations of the global north, which have historic responsibility for the climat…

That is a bit of a worrying response. I am sure the Minister of State understands why. It all sounds very good - the Government says it is committed to loss and damage and doing good work and so on - but the Minister of State did not answer the question and the language contained in the answer, which I presume was prepared by civil servants, points towards the Irish Government not pushing for this fund to be 100% grant-based or for it to be available for all countries in the global south impacted by climate change …

If we are a high-ambition country, will the Minister of State answer my question positively and give a commitment that Ireland will push for loss and damage to be available for all of the countries in the global south impacted by climate change? Some of the worst impacts of the climate crisis and some of the worst poverty exist side by side in countries such as India and South Africa but northern governments, including in the European Union, are insisting not only that these countries will get nothing from a loss a…

Why are we, at the start of another Dáil term, debating something the House debated previously and passed, namely, our Bill? We are here again because the Government is deliberately blocking it. It is leaving the Bill in committee or not even progressing it to committee because the Government is opposed to the reintroduction of the eviction ban, despite the fact the Dáil passed this Bill to have a proper eviction ban to prevent people from being made homeless. At the root of that is the conscious decision of the Go…

That is tenant in situ . That is right.

We proposed it and it should be done everywhere. Instead of saying that we have to give these people tax breaks to stay in the market, we should tell them that if they want to leave there is no problem, the State will buy the property and we will expand our public housing. This needs to be expanded throughout the country. I want to raise the cases of illegal eviction in this country where gardaí are doing precisely what was depicted in Spicebag's art, of which there was so much condemnation, which is standing by wh…

No, you do not.

Is it a family split? Are two brothers set against one another?

What action is being taken to prevent the catastrophic ecological collapse of our lakes and rivers, as has happened north of the Border with Lough Neagh. Successive governments, many with Sinn Féin ministers, have enabled the ecocide of the largest lake on this island. A combination of sewage and agricultural run-off, commercial sand dredging, climate change and invasive species is responsible. Ecosystems that have thrived for hundreds of thousands of years have been destroyed by the profiteering of modern capitali…

The EU-CELAC summit discussed global peace and security. Did the issue of the crisis in Nagorno-Karabakh come up? What is the Government's position on that? Ethnic cleansing is happening before our eyes while the authoritarian Aliyev regime remains an EU ally. Von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission, flew to Baku last year to sign an agreement to double the supply of gas from Azerbaijan to the EU, yet Aliyev was threatening as long ago as October 2020 to ethnically cleanse Armenians from the region …

I want to ask the Taoiseach if he has seen the film "I, Daniel Blake". It is heartbreaking.