It is the Taoiseach who is putting the target on their backs.

The Taoiseach has done it. I did not make the statement; he did.

Tell that to the Taoiseach.

I also want to ask about staffing in the health service. In July, the Government announced a lifting of the recruitment embargo in the HSE. However, over the past few weeks I have started to receive desperate calls from staff in multiple departments in my local hospital about a recruitment embargo being imposed in St. Michael's Hospital that is endangering patient safety and means workers are demoralised. I looked into this a bit further because I wondered whether this was a local matter. I then discovered from the…

Even if they are understaffed and unsafe.

Quality, not quantity.

I thank Sinn Féin for bringing forward this motion, which I am happy to support. I will not get into the discussion about whether it goes too far or far enough other than to say I bow to the knowledge of people in the region, whether they are campaigners or political representatives, who I am sure know a hell of a lot more than me about the details of what is happening to the health services in that area. I am sorry you are going, Stephen. I had some important points to make to you. Anyway, he is gone.

Good. Fair play to you, Minister. I support the motion. The case of Aoife Johnston, her tragic and unavoidable death, should be a wake-up call for everybody. Something like that should not have happened. It is absolutely tragic and no doubt linked to massive overcrowding and the fact that she was left on a trolley for 13 hours without the medication she needed to save her life. Her life almost certainly could have been saved with that medication, without that overcrowding and without that chaos in the emergency dep…

It is a welcome move by the Government to add a new leaving certificate subject - drama, film and theatre studies. A problem is that many people who might take up that subject and go on to study in college will face poverty and precarity when they-----

Sorry, I thought it was with one of the later questions. There is a chronic deficit of pitches and playing facilities across the country. There has been a welcome expansion in participation in sport, particularly in women's sport, but everywhere - certainly in my area - there is a dire deficit of all-weather pitches, pitches generally, decent facilities, facilities with showers and facilities suitable for women. We need to dramatically increase investment in grassroots sports and clubs to provide them with pitches,…

We were very proud in our area that Monkstown Boxing Club had one of its boxers, Jack Marley, participate in the heavyweight division of the Olympic Games. The area was very proud and it is a fantastic community club. Does the Minister of State know how long it has been fighting for a permanent facility? It has been for about three decades. It is one of the most inclusive, community-based clubs one could imagine. We finally got it but it was a long fight for Monkstown Boxing Club to get its own permanent facility. …

I am glad to hear the positive response. The whole borough of Dún Laoghaire, and indeed the whole country, was very proud of Jack Marley but also of many others of our Olympians and Paralympians. We need to really support and resource them. There is not a proactive approach towards this issue in a lot of the local authorities. I will take Sallynoggin Pearse for example. Again, it is a community-type club. There are different types of clubs. There are people who are going for the elite areas, there are community-typ…

The Minister of State could share the time among us.

I mentioned earlier the tremendous success of Jack Marley in the Olympic Games and, previously, in winning gold and silver at European level. I should also mention Robin O'Reilly, who is 14, also from Monkstown Boxing Club. She started boxing when she was ten and has just won a bronze medal at European level. The important thing about that is that success is down to a club that was built in a very disadvantaged area and had to fight a very long time - more than two decades - for decent facilities. Finally, it will …

Dick Shakespeare was my manager in UCD when we won the Collingwood Cup in soccer. He has an interest in soccer and I am glad to hear that positive response in Dublin city. That needs to be generalised everywhere. There has also got to be a focus on clubs which have a particular community remit. It is not just about the high performance stuff, although that can be important, as we have seen with Monkstown Boxing Club, but also the community remit. Sometimes, it is about thinking outside the box in terms of supportin…

Local authorities should not be so controlling when we are talking about the development of facilities.

Despite the Minister's claims of success and his promises and commitments, while the Dáil was in recess the human misery resulting from the housing and homelessness crisis continued and escalated. Given that the Housing Commission and now the Central Bank have told us that the Government's plan, Housing for All, provides for approximately half of what is necessary to deal with the deficit in housing, future needs and especially the deficit in social and affordable housing, the future is grim. It is important for us…

-----with no prospect of being able to afford the private rents that are out there.

I have been campaigning on the Shanganagh site, which the Minister will open tomorrow, for 18 years. It has taken us 18 years to develop a public site to deliver 600 social and affordable houses. At that rate, we are facing a grim and long housing crisis. By the way, we still do not know what the price of the affordable housing there will be. There will be 200 social houses. There are approximately 5,000 families on the housing list in our area who have been waiting for 15 to 20 years. Many of the people in the cos…

Will the Minister please do something about the thresholds? People have spent 15, 16 and 17 years on the list and then that time is gone.