As was requested at the Business Committee, we are looking for a discussion on the housing crisis and the announcements the Government is making and an opportunity to question the new Minister about the Government's crazy housing proposals.

We want to question the Minister.

The Minister is new in the job at the Department and I ask him to intervene on behalf of lecturers in the British and Irish Modern Music, BIMM, institute. Four of those lecturers are here in the Public Gallery. They were all on the picket lines earlier. I was with them today on Thomas Street. They have been forced to take strike action and mount protests because of absolutely shameful treatment by BIMM. This is a private company but 500, or 80%, of its students are effectively students of the Technological Universi…

TUD is publicly funded. Some 80% of the students at BIMM are on courses provided by TUD. It gives €3 million in direct funding to BIMM and the SUSI grants and other moneys the students receive go to BIMM. It is public money. The Minister does have responsibility. He cannot wash his hands of this. Given his responsibility for higher education, the Minister has an interest in ensuring that every single teacher and lecturer working in higher education is treated properly and not subjected to a race to the bottom and t…

It is a TUD course.

The Minister could crack the whip with TUD as well.

Thankfully, much of Dublin escaped the worst ravages of Storm Éowyn but I know that, across the country, tens of thousands of people suffered extreme hardship as a result of water and power outages. The lack of resilience of our key infrastructure in those areas of water and power exposed extreme vulnerabilities in our ability to respond to emergency situations. Some, including some in this House, who scoffed at weather warnings before the storm should, quite honestly, hang their heads in shame. We obviously need t…

He was their chief negotiator.

Since I met them during the general election campaign I have been advocating on behalf of four families, three with young children and infants, who are living in council maisonettes in my area in Sallynoggin. They are living in absolutely deplorable conditions. There is rodent infestation, black mould and damp running down the walls. One of the tenants told me this morning that there was ice inside because of the water running down the walls. These maisonettes have been earmarked for redevelopment but in the meanti…

Lies, lies, lies. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael won the election based on a pack of lies about some of the most serious issues facing the country, whether that is housing, the crisis in the health service, looking after the disabled and those who need care-----

-----and the issue of Palestine.

I know what you are going to say; we will call it misleading, then.

They deliberately misled the public about the reasons for the housing crisis and not just about the numbers or targets. They misled the public by saying 40,000 were built when only 30,000 were built. They also misled the public as to why, after more than a decade, they have not solved the housing crisis. The reason is that they are dancing to the tune of people who are making money from it. That is why the Government will not build social housing, ban no-fault evictions or build affordable housing that people can a…

The Israeli state project is a racist, apartheid project.

I am not an antisemite.

We are objecting to the Order of Business. The Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and so-called Independents gravy train has arrived, in the form of the Ministers and Secretaries and Ministerial, Parliamentary, Judicial and Court Offices (Amendment) Bill 2025, to give more jobs, allowances and Ministries to spread out the spoils of an election. It is really blatant and outrageous and the Government is not even proposing that there would be a debate on it. This is not a particularly good sign of where this Government is heading…

But you do not want a debate.

Last night, in the latest ravings of Donald Trump, we got a threat by the US President on television to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity, namely, the crime of ethnic cleansing. Donald Trump should now be indicted by the International Criminal Court for saying what Netanyahu told the world he was going to do before he started the Gaza genocide when his Government threatened publicly to commit genocide against the people of Gaza. The world stood by and did nothing. We continued to treat the Israeli state…

A Cheann Comhairle, I thank you for your efforts overnight to try to resolve this issue. We want to state for the record that we were not in any way trying to obstruct the nomination of the Taoiseach or the establishment of the Government. Our concern, and we are glad that the Government has now finally acknowledged it, is that there has to be a clear distinction between those TDs who are in government and those who are in opposition. If the Government is as good as its word and honours the commitment now made, tha…

However, we continue our opposition to the decision to suspend the Dáil for another two weeks. There are too many pressing issues for people in this country and we will be opposing the Order of Business on that specific basis.