I welcome the Northside Home Care Services workers in the Gallery. Deputy Murphy will be raising issues on their behalf, and I absolutely hope the Taoiseach will listen to them. I want to raise another issue. The Taoiseach probably will not know about it but I ask him to raise it with the Minister for justice. Four years ago, Ned Connors died in prison. He died of alcohol poisoning. How the alcohol got into the prison and so on is a question. There was a report done by the prison inspector into the circumstances of…

Something has stalled the report.

Yes.

First, I wish to say that I am personally very grateful to grassroots football and youth football in my area and to all the people - the managers, coaches and officials - who put in their time, as is the case in area after area in town, city and county across the country. These amazing people put their time and energy into me and my teammates on a voluntary basis. I played for nearly every club. Cabinteely Football Club was my first club. They were a tiny club then. Now, they are up in the League of Ireland. Then, …

If it was not for football, it could have been a lot worse, let us put it that way. It is true that the team ethic, the discipline and all that kind of stuff people are taught by football really stands to them for the rest of their lives. It creates friendships and networks and does things for the community. We cannot measure the value of these things. They are so important. However, we need to put the resources into ensuring that clubs I mentioned like St. Joseph's, Dalkey United, Granada, Pearse and all these tea…

In 1913, Ireland's greatest revolutionary, James Connolly, whose statue is behind us in this building, led the Dublin working class out for a year of disruptive strike action that shut the city down. That is how the trade union movement in this country was formed. It was done in a fight against deprivation, poverty and economic inequality and because of the refusal of the rich and powerful to understand the pain, hardship and suffering that working people were enduring at the time. That is a great tradition. The pe…

They were right to protest. Protest works, and we need more protests.

The protesters who were on the streets were there, by their own explanation, because their backs were up to the wall to the extent that they simply could not sustain the fuel price hikes they were enduring. That is on top of a cost-of-living crisis that is absolutely crushing people in terms of the cost of accommodation, energy price hikes, the cost of childcare and so on. It should be obvious to the Tánaiste that the Government has utterly failed to address that crisis. The demands that were made by those who were…

There are 320,000 people in this country who are in arrears with their energy bills because they just cannot pay them. We have about 700,000 people who are living in poverty, and we have hundreds of thousands of people - and this is what was expressed in the streets - who are absolutely crucified by a cost-of-living crisis that started before Trump's and Israel's disastrous war commenced. It was already crushing people and producing arrears, hardship and suffering. We can add to that the exorbitant rents and accomm…

Hear, hear.

In principle, the idea of getting State bodies to co-ordinate to accelerate the delivery of critical infrastructure and removing unnecessary obstacles to its development is a good one. I have concerns about the legislation but I would love to know whether it might be helpful in dealing with an issue in my constituency. This gets to the heart of my anxieties and concerns about what the Government's real motives and objectives are. I have raised a number of times the town centre in Cherrywood, which is the biggest re…

I pay tribute to Carmel Cantwell, Noelle Brown who I see in the Gallery, and other survivors and those affected by the crimes committed at Bessborough Mother and Baby Institution. I called it a "home" at the protest last week and I was rightly rounded upon and told it should be called an institution because these were institutions of brutality and oppression that traumatised, stigmatised and brutalised women, and of course led to the deaths of 923 children. It is a horrific stain. Over the next few weeks we will be…

Hundreds of thousands of people in this country are being impoverished and having hardship imposed on them because of the deranged lunatic in the White House, Donald Trump, and the psychopaths who run the Israeli regime and their bloodlust and warmongering. People in this country cannot pay their bills, cannot turn on their heating and, in some cases, cannot travel when they have disabilities because of the mad dog, Trump, and because of Netanyahu and the Israeli regime. Despite this, our Government still cannot co…

It is clear that Donald Trump and the Israeli regime are criminal warmongers that could do anything. If they start to bomb more energy infrastructure in Iran, and there are reports suggesting that they are already doing this having said that they would not, the miserable concessions the Government has made to address the spikes in the cost of living could be wiped away overnight. We need serious time to discuss how the Government is going to actually protect people in this country from the cost of energy spikes res…

Over the past week I had parents of children with intellectual disabilities from the Before We Die campaign in with me. They pointed out that about 2,000 adults with intellectual disabilities are living with parents who are over 70, and about 500 of those people are living with parents over 80. Their parents are extremely worried about what will happen to their children when they pass away and are asking, "Where is the plan?" They are saying there should be a plan, a framework. The number of houses being delivered,…

We used to have one too.

We still have not got it back.

The Taoiseach has rightly and repeatedly condemned Putin for a criminal, barbaric and imperialist attack on Ukraine. Will he do the same when it comes to what Trump and the Israeli regime are now doing to Iran and Lebanon? They are bombing the hell out of civilians and infrastructure in Iran. Israel is now ethnically cleansing south Lebanon. Will the Taoiseach condemn Trump's suggestion that he might "take over" Cuba, attacking another country in exactly the same criminal, entirely unjustified and illegal way that …

Is it more repressive than Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates?

I do not know why the Taoiseach is saying this.