What were they doing in Cork then?

With NATO.

I doubt that.

He cannot.

One terrible aspect of the absolutely dire housing crisis over which the Government is presiding is that people with very serious medical conditions are looking to gain medical priority but waiting months for their cases to be looked at, even though they are in dire situations, clearly because of lack of resources for medical assessment in local authorities. Something needs to be done about it urgently. I will give the Taoiseach a few examples: a 73-year-old with a very severe spinal condition who is couch-surfing …

There is a massive backlog.

I am talking about medical assessment.

Gaelscoil Laighean in my area was recently denied planning permission for temporary buildings on the Mount Anville site, which Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown county councillors agreed to dispose of earlier this year in order to provide a site for both temporary and permanent buildings for the school. Parents have expressed absolute disbelief and fury that this is now the third planning permission application for temporary buildings that has been put in by the Department and been refused. They asked whether the Department o…

The conditions the planning application failed to meet were around things like lack of public lighting, lack of proper pest control, failure to put in correct waste management systems and other green conditions in those conditions mentioned by the Minister. What the parents of Gaelscoil Laighean find really hard to believe is that where there are particular conditions around building a temporary school building - bear in mind, this school has been authorised to exist since 2015 and has been in a completely inapprop…

It still seems quite extraordinary that some of those conditions could not be met and that we have delays around the failure to meet some of them, some of which I just outlined. One would have thought people would know how to meet these sorts of basic conditions, or "green conditions" as they were described to me. We must also remember that this is a long saga. The school was originally promised a site at Newtownpark Avenue. Then, there was a long battle to get another site. We had to have council land that had bee…

In the last few hours, thejournal.ie reported that Irish troops were being assessed by NATO assessors in the uplands of north Cork, between Mitchelstown and Fermoy. They were being assessed by a US Navy commander, Sam Mason, who is part of the NATO command. Very worryingly, Commandant Daire Roache explained that this is "part of a program that is for partner nations within NATO." Every week, we see further evidence that this Government is trying to destroy what is left of our neutrality and bring us in with NATO by…

Despite having the best conditions in Europe for growing trees, we have a totally dysfunctional forestry model in this country, and that has not changed in the 11 years I have been a Deputy. I do not claim to be an expert on forestry, but my interest was piqued beyond a general interest in forests as just being beautiful places when, in 2013, the Government of the day agreed with the troika to sell the harvesting rights of Coillte's entire forest estate. At the time, I tabled what was the first Private Member's mot…

Many thousands of people will come out on the streets for the Raise the Roof demonstration because of the failure of the Government to address the absolutely diabolical housing and homelessness crisis. I have brought to the Gallery some of the people for whom this is a life and death matter. Deputy Bacik may not have been aware that some of the residents of Tathony House she referred to are present. The 35 families in Tathony House have done nothing wrong but are facing eviction by a landlord who has had a massive …

I ask the Taoiseach to look those people in the eyes. There has to be a solution. They have done nothing wrong. They paid their rent, they worked and they paid their taxes. The Taoiseach cannot say that there may not be an answer because of this legislative shortcoming or that legislative loophole. If people's incomes, for example, are under €53,000, even according to the Government's schemes, they are in need of some subsidy because that is what the cost-rental threshold is. Every single one of the people I mentio…

That is what I am asking the Taoiseach to do. Please do it for these people who do not deserve to be put through what they are being put through at the moment.

I thought there were 20-minute slots.

The Acting Chairman can give me half an hour, if she wants.

The simple fact about the situation for the vast majority of people on middle and low incomes, working people, or people dependent on pensions or social welfare is that they will be worse off next year than they were this year. This is the fundamental fact. As much as the Government may try and bedazzle people with a long list of measures it has taken to try to mitigate the absolutely diabolical cost-of-living and housing crisis that people face, this is the fact. The official rate of inflation is running at 8.1% b…

If she is entitled to illness benefit, she should be entitled to the fuel allowance, which she should have been getting for the past nine years, as well as the cost-of-living payment. The Minister should do something about this. Beyond that, I see no justification for why people on illness benefit, jobseeker's benefit, maternity benefit, death benefit, injury benefit, or carer's benefit should not have the fuel allowance. Why should they not have it? There is no good reason for this. They will suffer during the col…

I move amendment No. 2: In page 9, between lines 18 and 19, to insert the following: “Reports 2. Within 3 months of the passing of this Act, the Minister shall lay a report before the Dáil, on the cost to the exchequer of abolishing the USC and replacing it with a High Income Social Charge of 10 per cent on all earnings over €90,000.”. This amendment asks the Dáil to look at the cost of abolishing the universal social charge, USC, and replacing it with a higher income social charge of 10% on all earnings over €90,0…