This Friday at 1 p.m., the Save Our Forests Save Our Lands alliance will hold a protest outside the headquarters of Coillte in Newtownmountkennedy precisely to address what more than 30 different environmental and rural organisations that have joined the alliance believe is the risk posed to biodiversity, to farmers, to local communities, to water quality, to sustainable forestry and to addressing our climate objectives by the policies of Coillte. Coillte has most recently attempted to pursue a forestry model that …

What of the mandate of Coillte?

We will also be moving an amendment. We will support Deputy Pringle's amendment. To make it clear, our amendment is additional to the Government amendment so it does not require the deletion of anything that is in the Government amendment but adds to it. Specifically, there is a condemnation of NATO's role in escalating the war, of increasing militarisation in Europe, a call for a reassertion of Irish neutrality, and a commitment that we will not be joining NATO. We in People Before Profit absolutely share, as we h…

I will speak to it then.

Perhaps the Minister could explain why he is not accepting the amendment. It has been a week or two since the last time we debated this legislation, so perhaps the Minister might explain his reasoning. It is seeking to speed up decisions of the deciding officer to prioritise older applicants and to set out how the deciding officer should do this. Will the Minister explain why he is opposing this amendment, because it is a reasonable?

Some of these amendments are technical in nature. Some of them deal with the right of people to appeal. As others have already done and given that I was not sure I would have a chance to speak, I will take this opportunity to make some points in what is really a last-minute appeal to the Minister. I will connect what I have to say to the amendments before us. I find it quite extraordinary that we have a whole series of forensic, technical amendments and that the Government can go to such trouble and effort to make …

The Ceann Comhairle allowed them to be made in respect of the last grouping, so I think I deserve my opportunity.

I find it absolutely extraordinary that the Minister has managed to stay pretty stony-faced in all of this - I am sure he is aware of the strength of feeling that has been expressed by people - and has refused to give the answer or to explain the exclusion, despite the last-minute and desperate appeals that have been made in this House and, more importantly, from thousands of survivors as to how the Government can possibly justify the six-month exclusion or the refusal to fully acknowledge those boarded out and tho…

No, that is the next grouping.

It is the next one.

It is amendment No. 56 the Deputy wishes to address. It is in the next grouping.

I suspect that almost none of this adversarial approach - the Minister says he is trying to avoid it, but this amounts to an adversarial approach of putting pressure on the applicants to meet particular timeframes for further information - would be necessary if he did not have the arbitrary six-month exclusion. Why send someone back for more information? Why refuse his or her application? It would be because the deciding officer felt that the applicant had not reached the threshold of six months or needed to do som…

They are sometimes 30 pages.

I move amendment No. 2: To insert the following after "sovereignty and territorial integrity of states": "— condemns North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) activity in escalating the war and using it to increase militarisation; — re-asserts its support for Irish neutrality and declares that Dáil Éireann will not be making any application to join NATO now or in the future;".

Despite the Government's considerable efforts to put a positive spin on its cost-of-living package, the net fact is that the vast majority of workers, pensioners and social welfare recipients are going to be very considerably less well off because increases in the cost of living and inflation are far in excess of the small increases given in the budget and the one-off measures being proposed today. How can the Taoiseach justify that when those in the corporate sector, energy companies and corporate landlords and de…

The Government has let people down, despite its best efforts to spin today's package.

It is a fraction of inflation.

In including in Government policy the need for cost-rental and affordable schemes, the Government is acknowledging, rightly, that even if someone is over the social housing income threshold, that person still cannot afford market rents or prices. However, the delivery of cost-rental or affordable housing is pitifully slow. In my area, it is virtually non-existent. There is a cohort of people - working people - who are, if they find themselves facing eviction or unable to find accommodation that is affordable, in a …

What about in the meantime?

What if a person is over the threshold?