That will not be much consolation to those who are homeless.

We will not.

It is not agreed.

Several weeks ago, before any Private Member's motions were put forward on the issue of the eviction ban, the Chief Whip agreed that we would have debate on the implications of the eviction ban being lifted and the impact on homelessness. After that was agreed and presented to the Business Committee last Thursday, that debate, which was supposed to take place later today, was withdrawn. That shows complete disrespect for the Business Committee and solemn commitments that were given on successive weeks to have that …

As the Taoiseach will be aware, there is quite a considerable shortage of taxis at present. One of the demands that the representative taxi groups have made is that taxi plate owners who are no longer using their taxi plates would be allowed to sell them to others, sometimes family members, who want to become taxi drivers. Otherwise, people can only get plates if they can afford expensive disability-accessible taxis which cost €65,000. That is way in excess of what huge numbers can afford. There are a lot of plates…

They used to vote for Fianna Fáil. They do not anymore.

Frankie is nearly four years old. A year ago, as he was non-verbal, he was referred for an assessment of need to the HSE on 3 February 2022. On 4 February 2022, he got a letter saying his assessment would be on or before 4 May. His parents rang the HSE at the end of May because he still had not got his assessment and were told it would be two years before he got an assessment. Nearly a year later, there are no services for this child, who remains non-verbal. His parents made an official complaint via a solicitor, w…

It is absolutely shocking that hundreds of people coming here, whether from Ukraine or elsewhere, are not being given accommodation. The Government needs to seriously step up its efforts to provide emergency accommodation and repurpose empty buildings, of which there are very many. When we look at the nuclear poker being played by Putin, which raises the very real prospect of another Chernobyl, does it not give the Taoiseach a bit of pause for thought about the essentially "victory or death" response that the weste…

Enormous protests over the attempt by the far-right Netanyahu Government to interfere with the judicial process have rocked Israel. For Palestinians, there is a pretty grim irony in all of this. While it might be legitimate to worry about political interference with independent judicial workings, for the Palestinians there is absolutely no recourse to justice whatsoever because, as many human rights organisations have reported, they are victims of an apartheid system, crimes against humanity, war crimes and ethnic …

They are Jewish-only trade unions.

There are no sanctions.

I thank Sinn Féin for bringing forward this Bill. We are happy to support it. If it gets to the next stage, we would propose it is amended because we in People Before Profit have long held, as Deputy O'Callaghan, who obviously shares the same opinion, said, that people who pay rent and have done nothing wrong deserve security of tenure and under no circumstances should be evicted when they have done nothing wrong. That is our review. It is not just about the emergency, although that is the most imminent danger. In …

That is not what I said.

I am waiting for the microphone to be turned on.

I have just come from a protest by hundreds of postgraduate researchers, organised by the Postgraduate Workers Organisation. The slogans at the protest, which was very angry, were “Research is work”, “Researchers are workers” and “We demand a living wage”. It is shocking that 7,000 to 10,000 PhD researchers in this country, who do innovative and often ground-breaking research and teach in our universities, and without whom our further education and university systems would grind to a halt, are paid less than the mi…

Unusual but agreeable.

There is a big disconnect between what we are being told by those who work in the health service, and those who use the health service, and the tone and content of the Minister's narrative. He painted a very rosy picture of the health service and the success of the Government in addressing the staffing crisis - that is what it is. Every single report we get from people using the health service, from those trying to get into accident and emergency departments or from patients in hospitals refers to this unsafe and u…

I thank the Ceann Comhairle for selecting this Topical Issue matter. We are increasingly a country of waiting lists. We have shocking waiting lists for social housing of up to 20 years in my area and we have shocking waiting lists for surgery in our health service. Gaelscoil Phádraig in Loughlinstown has possibly endured the longest wait of all, which is not a record it is happy with. It has waited 27 years for a permanent school building, which is almost unbelievable. The school has been accommodated in prefabs on…

It is grimly ironic that the response of the Government and the Minister of State is that it is "a question of timing". Talk about stating the bleeding obvious. It has been 27 years so it is exactly a question of timing and it is beyond belief that a school could be waiting for 27 years. We often hear Ministers trumpeting the fact that they have approved new schools and so on. What we do not often hear is that schools do not have permanent buildings and in some cases they do not have any buildings at all. That this…

The programme for Government commits to ensuring we develop an education system that serves everybody, whatever religion they are or if they have no religion whatsoever, and that commits to advancing the divestment programme. As we know, currently 90% of schools are in the hands of the Catholic Church. The schools run with their ethos, which is hardly appropriate for a country that is increasingly more religiously diverse and where indeed there are people who have no religion. Nor, for that matter, is it a great ad…