Let us be honest: many parts of this great capital are now in decline. Moore Street, one of the most important battlefield sites in the country, the headquarters of the 1916 Rising and the ground zero of the independence struggle, was supposed to redeveloped ten years ago in time for the 1916 centenary commemorations. Maybe the bicentenary will be a better timescale for the Taoiseach's Government to do anything in relation to Moore Street. Instead of being a cultural or historic quarter, Moore Street is now a locat…

What about Moore Street?

This Government has significantly neglected older people for many years. We saw during the Covid crisis the number of older people who were moved out of hospitals and into nursing homes were in their thousands. It happened all of a sudden. It happened on the direction of the HSE and it had the effect of bringing older people from hospitals, without testing them properly for Covid, and placing them into nursing homes. It seeded Covid in nursing homes throughout the country. It led to hundreds of deaths, no doubt. I …

Aontú is a long-term critic of AI and its gross under-regulation in this country. We were the first party to call for an Oireachtas committee on AI. We believe there should be far stricter democratic oversight of AI. There is little regulation if we are honest and that is because a lot of governments are afraid to stand up to the oligarchs who own the technology. In many ways, AI, like nuclear power, can be used for good but for sure it can be used for serious damage. However, imagine the damage nuclear power would…

One of the biggest problems of this Government over the past ten to 15 years has been its absolute inability to build infrastructure. Probably the biggest legacy element of the Government is that it cannot deliver necessary infrastructure and could not deliver it on time. Regardless of whether we are looking at housing, healthcare and hospitals, transport infrastructure like motorways, rail lines and roads or water infrastructure, it is a hallmark or fingerprint of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael that they simply cannot …

The Government is one of the most significant drivers of rip-off Ireland. Many of the costs affecting families currently are being driven up by the Government. To take electricity as an example, Ireland has one of the highest electricity costs in the whole of the European Union and the gap between retail price and electricity costs here is one of the largest in the world. The ESB is a semi-State company. It operates under Government policy. It is one of the biggest players in the market and is profiteering to the t…

First of all, real income fell in 2021, 2022 and 2023. We are talking about a marginal recovery on those particular years. The Taoiseach talks about fuel allowances. The Government is giving money with one hand but picking the pockets of people with the other. The Government is taking more in fuel taxes than it is giving back in allowances. What we are talking about here is the working poor. In the budget for this year, the Government increased income taxes on the squeezed middle. Property taxes will increase for h…

We have the highest electricity costs.

I wish to raise neutrality in the European context. Incredibly, there was an article published in The Times in the last few weeks that reported an allegation made by British intelligence that Wexford fishermen have been approached by the Russian army to pull cable-cutting tools behind their trawlers to cut Irish cables. It is an incredible allegation that besmirches and blackens the names of those fishermen. It basically states those fishermen in Kilmore Quay are in some way traitors and acting against the national…

Will the Minister of State raise the issue of the shocking allegations being made by British intelligence against fishermen in this country about the cutting of cables off the coast of Ireland? Will he demand the British ambassador and Keir Starmer's Government provide evidence and information about these allegations, desist from making them and withdraw them? Will he also call out the objective behind these allegations? It is in some way to push Ireland into a European defence union, a European army or NATO, three…

The Taoiseach’s record on Mercosur has been a disaster. Last week saw one of the most incredible flip-flops in political history. One day, the Taoiseach was in support of Mercosur, saying it could be of benefit to the State and the next day he came out against it as well. I am not sure if that flip-flop came as a result of instability within Fianna Fáil and the backlash from its TDs or because Fine Gael basically outmanoeuvred Fianna Fáil just at the last minute also or because Italy gave the Taoiseach cover to mak…

We have not discussed the changes or why the Taoiseach changed his mind on Mercosur within 24 hours.

The Taoiseach changed his language, then.

It is still an existential threat to rural Ireland.

For many, it will be.

I wish to raise the decision by Paschal Donohoe to excessively fund the World Bank to the tune of €10 million. There is potentially a serious conflict of interest in relation to this. That a former Minister for Finance would provide an extra €10 million of funding in excess of what the World Bank sought and in excess of what his own officials in the Department advised, an increase of 33% in funding just seven months before he landed a job worth €600,000 a year, is highly problematic. When we ask for money for peopl…

It was €148 million.

That is not what the FOI states.

The housing crisis has had varied and wide ramifications in Irish society. One of them is a serious fall in the fertility rate in this State. There has been a 30% fall in the number of births annually. There has been a 20,000 fall in the number of births annually since Celtic tiger times. Some 69% of people aged 25 years or under are living with their parents. Well over 40% of adults who are under 30 are living with their parents. That is changing the very nature of Irish society. The ability for adults to form rel…

They are; 30 schools are falling this year. And childcare.