That is all just meaningless drivel for the people out there looking for affordable rents.

It is unbelievable. Average incomes in this country are €55,000 to €60,000. Many if not most people earn less than that. Take-home pay is €3,300 to €3,600 a month after tax. If you are looking for a three-bedroom apartment in Dún Laoghaire, you will not find anything below €3,000 today. Most of them are €4,500. I will read out a few figures in my area: €3,800, €3,050 and €3,650. More than 100% of the take-home income of the average worker is needed for the rents that are being looked for today. Suzanne, whose famil…

Seriously, young working people looking for accommodation are goosed with this Government. The Minister says supply is the answer. I am on the budget scrutiny committee. The Department of Finance in the Future Forty report is projecting that supply will not reach the level where it is possible, theoretically, that prices could come down until the end of the 2030s. We are stuck. Suzanne, who is looking to get from an overcrowded situation and is facing those rents, is goosed until the end of the 2030s. Another coupl…

The failure of the Government, and the Minister and Minister of State who spoke for the Government today, to condemn the attack by Israel and the United States on Iran is an absolute disgrace. The world is now paying a price for the bloodlust of the psychopaths who run Israel and the psychopaths of the Trump Administration who are attacking Iran and setting the entire region on fire, precipitating economic consequences for literally everybody in the world. The Irish Government cannot bring itself to condemn that. I…

I am baffled by the speech of the Minister of State, and the Government should be ashamed of itself. It has really shown its true colours. It is paying lip service to the issue that is at stake, which is the well-being, mental health and safety of the children, young people and women who are victims of this toxic misogyny, which is not just online, as we have discovered. It gets translated into brutal physical reality, as will be evidenced in the protests that are taking place in UCD today. The Minister of State ac…

We need an emergency debate on whether our airport, Shannon Airport, is going to be used by the US military to prosecute what is a flagrantly illegal military assault on Iran, which has set the entire Middle East on fire and which is being conducted with a regime, Israel, that is in the dock for two and a half years of genocide.

Is the Taoiseach going to allow our airports to be used to facilitate that illegal war? We need to discuss that as a matter of urgency.

Not agreed.

We had Iranian protestors in this House.

Parents, SNAs and school communities protested over the misguided move by the Government to take a significant number of SNAs from many schools across the country, a decision it had to backtrack on because of the outrage. They want to know they will not be in the same position in a year's time when the same issues happen again. Will the infamous 2014 circular, which they believe should be torn up, be rewritten with the input of the parents, SNAs and school communities so that the same dire mistake is not made again…

How is the Taoiseach defining it?

Outside the Dáil today, there was a protest by a large number of mostly young people who are newly qualified paramedics. The Taoiseach may have seen that they gathered a petition over the weekend. About 10,000 people have signed it. For the last three years, they have been doing a degree to become paramedics and they have also been working part time for the HSE. When they were brought in through a recruitment campaign in late 2022, into this degree course and into the part-time work, they were given the clear under…

The Taoiseach would want to do something about water quality in Dublin Bay.

Paramedics.

This Saturday at 1 o'clock in Parnell Square, disabled people, disability groups and the Affordable Ireland Coalition, of which I am a part, will be mobilising in a protest, demanding that this Government relent and concede the demand for an emergency disability winter payment of €400 for those with disabilities and, beyond that, implement a cost-of-disability payment. A young man named Jack, who was at our press conference yesterday promoting the demonstration, was on the radio today describing how he had to buy a…

People should not have to beg.

I have asked for this debate for weeks on end at the Business Committee. Finally, we got there but it takes this long just to get a debate on what is an absolute disaster. The Minister for housing, Deputy Browne, said when he came into office that child and family homelessness was his priority. The Government has repeatedly said this is the biggest social emergency facing it. Yet, tomorrow, we are going to have the new homelessness figures and the likelihood is those figures will reach close to 17,000 people in eme…

It is all in the national maritime security strategy.

In the aftermath of 75,000 people have been slaughtered by Israel in a genocidal massacre and the so-called ceasefire, hundreds of people, including more than 100 children, have been killed and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian territories continues. The Government has reneged on its commitment to bring the occupied territories Bill before the House and pass it into law, and impose sanctions on the regime that is committing these crimes.

When are we going to see the Bill?