Tens of thousands of health workers across the health service are balloting for industrial action against the pay and numbers strategy. I have raised this with the Taoiseach, the Minister for public expenditure, Deputy Donohoe, and the Minister for Health repeatedly over recent weeks. Workers are feeling forced to take industrial action because the pay and numbers strategy, despite protestations by the Government that there is no recruitment embargo, is, in effect, a recruitment ceiling or embargo by another name. …

The programme for Government made commitments on legacy issues, specifically the Dublin-Monaghan bombings. I have been asked by those campaigning, including families, victims and so on, to raise what they believe is the outrageous failure of the Government and Garda to release the files relating to the Dublin-Monaghan bombings to Operation Newham, that is, the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland's investigation into those bombings and the collusion of the loyalist killers with British intelligence and what the Ga…

The campaigners will have to go to court.

I wish to bring to the Taoiseach's attention the shocking case of a new social housing development, St. Germaine, in Ballybrack in my area. It is in the hands of Co-operative Housing Ireland, an AHB, and was built by a developer called Kavco. It was finished at the end of last year and there are 31 units with many families. I met people the other day and, while they were delighted that, after many years – sometimes as long as ten or 15 years – on the housing list, they had got their houses, they had contacted me to…

Yes.

I think it would be fair to describe the Cherrywood development as a flagship development for Ireland presenting itself as a place where there is quality of life, there is the housing we need and where you have all the amenities, facilities, infrastructure and so on necessary for a place where people can live and work. It is the biggest residential development in the country. I do not like the word "competition" because I do not think running an economy is like running a race against somebody else or playing a foot…

And shops.

But Israel will not even allow the UN Secretary-General into its country.

We are signatories of the Genocide Convention; it is Irish law. That requires signatories not just to join legal cases but to take all action in its power to deter, prevent and obstruct the commission of a genocide. What is the Tánaiste doing in that regard? What has he said to the US Government or, for that matter, the Israeli Government, about the plausible commission of a genocide and his demands that it stop committing genocide?

I framed the question about the Genocide Convention because I want to know what the character of the Tánaiste's intervention with the United States or Israel is. We have more or less got it, "Ah, we condemn this, we condemn that." A bit of this, a bit of that. I am trying to reframe this and say we are talking about genocide. We are signatories of the Genocide Convention. The International Court of Justice said there is a plausible genocide taking place. This is not a bit of this and a bit of that. It is not a bit …

Why did Simon Harris not say yesterday to the United States, "Stop arming a genocide. Stop giving weapons to people to commit genocide." Even now, the Tánaiste will not use the word "genocide". He will not say "They're committing genocide", even though the world is saying it and it is obvious they are committing it. The Tánaiste is still failing to distinguish between the oppressor and the oppressed. When the Vietnamese fought back against the American occupation, they did some nasty things, but they were the oppre…

That is not what I said.

I know it is, to muddy the waters.

International law distinguishes between the oppressor and the oppressed.

I have very mixed feelings about this motion. I am not from the south-coast area so I lack the sort of specific knowledge or guidance that would allow me to make a properly informed decision as to what I think about this motion. We all know we need to develop renewable energy and that offshore renewable energy will be an important part of that. We should also know, however, that the development of offshore renewable energy should not come at the expense of the destruction of the marine environment or the displaceme…

Of course, nobody who receives this credit before or after Christmas will be sorry to do so. As the ESRI has pointed out, however, the net effect of the Government’s budget is that some of the least well-off and most vulnerable households will be marginally less well off. That is pretty shameful. Given the astonishing, unprecedented budget surpluses and, of course, the Apple billions, it is quite a feat. Even the ESRI, which is hardly a radical or left-wing think-tank, is saying the Government had the chance to eli…

On this-----

Look-----

I know. Unfortunately, the discussion on the Bill commenced early and therefore, I have not heard the earlier contributions. I will briefly restate my concerns about the ramming through of this Bill. On Report Stage, we had many amendments which did not get dealt with because the Bill was guillotined. I know the Government will say there were many hours afforded to this Bill on Committee Stage. A lot of concerns and issues, however, have been raised by us in the Opposition. It is undoubtedly similarly the case with…

Or the Americans.