UAE, Cuba.

It was always different from Iran.

The Taoiseach mentioned that there is a focus in the strategy on housing and on the delivery of affordable housing. In my area, the average house price is now €680,000. The limit for the first home scheme for affordable housing is €500,000. In other words, if it is a new build, it cannot be more than €500,000. The Government's affordable housing schemes simply do not apply in Dún Laoghaire. Ordinary workers in Dún Laoghaire do not earn more because they earn in Dún Laoghaire. If you are a nurse, a teacher, a bank w…

Even before the Israeli and US illegal and bloody aggression against Iran and Lebanon, there was a cost-of-living crisis in this country that the Government was not acting in any serious way to address. We already had electricity prices that were approximately 25% higher than the rest of Europe. Gas prices had doubled over the previous five years. We have seen the price of groceries, etc., increase very significantly. In all of those areas, of course, massive profits have been recorded by the energy companies and t…

Can this be done? It is being done elsewhere in Europe, in the Czech Republic-----

I have five seconds left-----

-----but now I do not, thanks to your interruption.

I thank Deputy Cullinane and Sinn Féin for bringing forward this very important motion on cancer services, which I am very happy to support. It is more or less a year since I started my cancer treatment for throat cancer. The most important thing I wish to say is how grateful I am to all of those who work in cancer services, from the doctors and nurses to the radiotherapists and nutritionists, from the orderlies and porters to the receptionists and the people who research in the area of cancer and help to develop t…

Children with special needs, just like every child, have a right to an appropriate education. I heard the Tánaiste say earlier on that there have been lots of announcements about special classes and places, and even that once the Government gives the green light, these things are delivered. I have been asked by the Equality in Education Dublin North West campaign and my colleague, Councillor Conor Reddy, to raise the issue of Finglas Parochial National School where children were enrolled in two special classes last…

They are enrolled but there is no physical place for them. There is no physical building.

The Media Regulation Bill sets out aspirations that, on the face of it, one would consider to be very good. Its objectives include protecting editorial independence and journalistic sources. EMFA, from which this Bill derives, refers to ensuring the independent functioning of public service media, enhancing the transparency of media ownership, guaranteeing transparency in State advertising for media providers, boosting transparency in audience measurement for media services and so on. They all seem like worthy aspi…

Yesterday, Joseph Kent, who was the director of national counterterrorism in the United States and a senior official in the American Administration, resigned over Donald Trump’s war against Iran. In his letter of resignation, he stated that “Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation” and attempts to justify the war were lies. He described the war as one manufactured by Israel. That war, since Trump and the Israeli regime commenced it, has claimed the lives of more than 3,000 innocent Iranian people, including 160…

-----extend facilities to the US military at Shannon Airport in breach of our neutrality?

It is because even they can see it.

No.

I would have gone to the United States and I would have stood with people like Mamdani, who reminded us of our own history of opposition to colonialism and war. I certainly would not stand beside a warmonger like Trump, who is ripping up the international legal rule book to pursue a bloody and murderous war against Iran, and is co-operating with Israel, which is in the dock for genocide and is bombing the hell out of Lebanon. Our Taoiseach cannot even bring himself to condemn this, even when it is imposing an econo…

Sorry.

As somebody who was born in a mother and baby home, I was lucky to have a good outcome. I am acutely aware of the feelings and sensitivities of people like those who suffered and were traumatised and of infants who lost their lives in places like Bessborough. There is urgent need to take on board the reason people are protesting this evening. I will be joining that protest. We need to listen to these people and acknowledge their concerns.

I thank Sinn Féin for bringing forward this important motion on the cost-of-living crisis. As well as the issue of the action the Government needs to take to address the spiralling cost of living, and particularly the cost of energy that has hit hard, I would just like to underline a point about the failure of the Taoiseach to speak up yesterday on the economic impact of Trump's war on people here. Even if he is not willing to condemn the death and destruction being rained down on the people of Iran and Lebanon as …

The Minister has introduced legislation allowing landlords to reset rents upwards, which is unbelievable when rents are already unaffordable for the vast majority of people and we have an unprecedented homelessness crisis. Does the Minister have any plans to make rents affordable in the private rental sector or is he just admitting this is a Government that is about increasing rents in order to benefit landlords who profit from the housing misery that results from unaffordable rents?