What is the Government's answer to the European Union in terms of complying with that law?

What is the point of having the CSO provide figures and details regarding the population across the country if the Government keeps ignoring those figures when it comes to the delivery of key services? The CSO tells us how many older people we have, but we are not providing enough nursing home beds for them. The CSO tells us the number of younger people, but we are not providing enough school places for those children. We know that the CSO gives information about a cohort of people who are looking to buy houses, bu…

The Government has had four years to produce a review of the 2004 Act, and God knows how much it has cost. Ultimately, it tells us what we already know. The problem is that the review of this Act is now telling us to review another Act, the Disability Act 2005. It is an incredible situation. The Government talks about the need for a legal, rights-based, inclusive education system but we all know that when it comes to children with additional needs, this Government disregards those rights and actually breaks the law…

I move amendment No. 1 to amendment No. 1: To insert the following after "restoration and conservation of the National Monument at 14-17 Moore Street": "; and commits to: — respecting the heritage and legacy of the leaders of 1916; — ending the destruction of key National Monuments such as the O'Rahilly Home and Moore Street; — implementing the Moore Street Preservation Trust plan for Moore Street; — developing the GPO as a national cultural museum of the national struggle for independence; and — purposing part of …

I was sorry to hear about the Minister's ill health recently and I wish him the best of luck with it in future too. The basic income for the arts scheme is an initiative we in Aontú have supported for many years. Many artists live in poverty and deprivation and have lives full of economic anxiety. The basic income for the arts scheme is designed to reduce that deprivation and to help artists to create. Will the scheme be expanded in a manner that will encompass more than the current 2,000 recipients of this income?

First of all, it is interesting that we do not know the net cost. We know the cost but many of these recipients were on social welfare previously. I ask the Minister to speak to the other aspect of this, namely, the impact it is having on the creative sector at present. Much of the study, and the information, has been on the 2,000 recipients but there is a control group of 6,000 other individuals who applied for this income. I would be interested to know how those in the control group are experiencing being an arti…

One of the difficulties is that for many, in reality, being an artist is synonymous with poverty. While now and again on the news or in the newspapers we see people who do economically well from their art, they are a tiny minority of that group. Historically, we know of artists who died as paupers only to have their art appreciated after their deaths. It is important that there is an understanding of the value of the work artists do in reflecting back to society who we are and what we are about. There should be spa…

Aontú has supported the scheme from the outset. The reason we have done so is that, unfortunately, poverty and the arts are often synonymous. People who work in the arts probably have the most precarious work that exists in the country. Their lived experience is often the direct opposite of people's understanding of the glamour of the arts. The difficulty I have with this is that we have a project that has been going on for three years and we still do not have a decision on it from the Government. Absolutely we nee…

One of my biggest frustrations and that of Aontú, in this Dáil and the previous one, is the waste of taxpayers' money and the lack of proper investigations and accountability. The Galway 2020 situation is an example of that. The difficulty with regard to waste is that it often becomes a crisis for a couple of weeks until the media cycle moves on and people forget about it. In the context of Exchequer funding to Galway 2020 and the Government’s decision for that not to exceed 50%, the Comptroller and Auditor General…

I thank the Minister. The independent auditor and its outcomes are in direct contradiction to the Comptroller and Auditor General. The project had received more than €20 million in State funding by 2023. The Minister's Department provided approximately €15 million; Galway City Council provided €3.7 million; Galway County Council provided €2.6 million; and the EU provided €1.5 million. The outcome of that was a number of resignations. Several resignations happened and people took cases to the Workplace Relations Com…

It would be unfortunate if we were to insulate the expenditure from the Minister's Department from all of the other expenditure that came from this. A representative of Aontú in the area, Luke Silke, has done significant work on this matter. A large amount of money was spent. Taxpayers have had to fork out for this, even in the years subsequent to 2020. People were still paying for this in 2023. As soon as the Minister started his job, he came across the crisis in the Arts Council with the IT system that never func…

In fairness, Chair, that is not fair. A lot of us were waiting here for questions and the Taoiseach took an inordinate amount of time to whitter on with those answers. Do the same rules not apply to the Taoiseach as apply to everybody else in this House?

In fairness, we get a minute. It is timed and we are told to stop. There was no umpiring of the time on this occasion at all.

Normally, the time is split in a certain way to make sure the three groupings are taken in the 45 minutes.

It should cut both ways. That is the point I am trying to make.

I thank Deputies Brian Stanley and Catherine Connolly for their flexibility on speaking slots. I am delighted to speak on the motion. Often, we focus on the urgent issues, which are very important for sure, but forget about the important issues that pertain to this country and its development. Shockingly, an Irish citizen in the North can stand for election as President, campaign for election and win the election but is prohibited from voting in it. That is incredible. An Irish citizen living in the North with an I…

Today marks another dark day for the Government's housing record. The original target for 2025 of 41,000 new builds has been binned. The Minister, Deputy Browne, has cut the official target by 20%, stating that possibly only 34,000 homes will be built this year. Last year, only 30,000 homes were built, again far short of the Government's target of 40,000. This Government is in reverse in terms of the biggest crisis happening in this country. The promise in the programme for Government is that 300,000 homes would be…

When the Tánaiste talks about increases in the building of houses and increases in the building of social homes, he is talking about increases from a floor of the worst housing collapse in the history of the State. He is talking about a figure of literally zero in terms of those increases. On getting these figures wrong and duplications, you cannot be on two social housing waiting lists simultaneously. You cannot.

Let us talk about the figure-----

We will get to the homeless one. The Tánaiste is understating his figures. The official figures are understated by a population of 16,676. That is extraordinary. Either that is incompetence and an inability to count the number of people who are on waiting lists at the moment-----