Excuse me, please.

Do not be getting annoyed now.

The Minister of State is a good man to heckle but it is good to listen too. This is why you have two ears and one mouth-----

-----so you can listen to twice as much as you speak.

If the Department only employs three testers for the whole of Meath this means that at best each tester can get through 40 tests a week and 120 is a total that the county can achieve. If they are doing it at a rate of 120 a week it will take 40 weeks just to get through the existing waiting list never mind the number of people who will join that waiting list in the interim. That is an incredible statistic. I believe the Government has caused some of the difficulty here. First of all, like many aspects of modern soc…

The Government has collected €2.2 billion from M50 tolls since 2008, according to a report on "The Pat Kenny Show" this morning. The two bridges were built for £58 million. The toll company made back all of that money in just one year of tolls. It then sold those bridges to the State for €600 million. The State has charged the people using them €2.2 billion in that period. It is incredible that last year, commuters paid a whopping €212 million on M50 tolls. These are tolls that this State owns. This is a tax on wor…

It is startling; €2.2 billion.

Three weeks ago, I asked the Taoiseach to set up an Oireachtas committee on the issue of AI. He said "No" and that he has no responsibility for the issue. This is a big mistake because this issue is of such importance that we need the whole of the Oireachtas working towards it. We talk about minute procedural issues, which affect nobody, forever and a day in this House, yet the biggest issue looming in society at the moment is AI and we just have this debate on it. While I welcome it, it is not nearly enough. The M…

I wish the Ministers of State good luck in their roles in this important space. I will detail the experience of Damien. He has had schizophrenia for the past eight years and has been in hospital for a number of months in those years. In the past year, things have got worse for the family and they have gone to great lengths to get help. Their son is in the fields until 3 a.m., up to his eyes in muck and battling demons and devils. The family have found Damien eating his own excrement and vomiting. They tried to get …

Ireland is the most exposed country in Europe as regards the potential changes in tariffs and corporation taxes with the United States. We are enormously exposed. Our dependence on a bargain-basement corporation tax economy which has been built up by the Government over the past ten years means we are now under significant threat. What actions is the Minister taking to engage with the US Government on the tariff issue and the corporation tax issue?

It is related.

For 2023, income tax was roughly €33 billion, corporation tax was the next largest, at €24 billion, and VAT came in at about €20 billion. Those figures and the figures the Minister has just outlined show that there is a significant exposure for this country. Because of the potential changes with the US Administration, we could be looking at significant job losses, significant corporation tax losses and a significant fall in income taxes in this country, as well as austerity being brought into place because of the l…

Foreign direct investment, FDI, is considered a transitional economic policy. It is usually developed from a non-developed economy to try to get into a developed system. When that economy has developed to a good stage, most economies then try to develop indigenous economy because it is usually much stickier and less mobile as regards threats internationally. Obviously, they use strong indigenous economy and a decent FDI input. This country has never moved on from FDI in terms of its economic policy and, therefore, …

-----given Ireland is the most exposed country in Europe?

They are transitional because the Government has made them transitional.

That is not what I am saying and the Minister knows that.

It is not. The Minister is being facetious now.

The Government has made us dependent upon it-----

-----by not progressing it to the next stage and developing it.

That is the point I am trying to make-----