It is a prime site.

I have several cases like that as well. There are problems with the tenant in situ scheme and councils are looking for reasons not to go through it with families who are facing the prospect of homelessness. Something has to be done about it. I want to raise an issue quickly that is also shocking which relates to children with special needs. This story can probably be repeated many times. A young woman and mother called Margaret came in to my office this week. She has two children with special needs. Her son Thomas,…

I was grimly amused by the Tánaiste's accusing others of ideological obsessions in response to an earlier question. Surely the ideological obsession that is most evident is that of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael to privatise everything that moves, whether it is selling public land to private developers for housing or the issue I want to raise, public service broadcasting. It has been about a year since a scandal erupted in RTÉ which centred on the behaviour of a tiny group of people at the top of that organisation, whet…

Just "Fair City".

So the Government washes its hands of the matter. The Government is responsible for not reining in the obscene salaries, which everybody knew about, at the top of RTÉ, whether it was executives or a tiny number of overpaid presenters. Now, however, the people getting it in the neck are the skilled people - the ordinary workers. They are the ones who will lose their jobs and they will go into an independent private sector characterised by the gig economy and project-to-project work. I do not know how many times I ha…

The losses will not stop at 400 jobs. Many of the people we are talking about are ancillary workers who work on "Fair City" and in other areas of RTÉ. Their jobs will be under threat as well.

Will the Government intervene to protect public service broadcasting? Will it ensure there are decent jobs for workers and that they are not the victims of this process? Will public service broadcasting be properly funded by taxing the obscene profits of social media companies?

However, there will be crap conditions for workers.

I will probably take less than ten minutes. The Commission on Taxation and Welfare deserves great credit for the extensive work it did in producing its own report, which is a huge piece of work. Similarly, the Committee on Budgetary Oversight put in a fair bit of work and thought into producing its own report. Given the volume of recommendations involved, I do not support many of the recommendations on the Commission on Taxation and Welfare's own report. Similarly, I do not agree with some of the recommendations th…

A number of years ago, we passed a referendum to put children first, but when one listens to the testimonies of the school principals who were in Leinster House last week or of the parents, teachers and SNAs who attended our recent meetings on special education, what they describe is a dire crisis in our schools and the Government's complete failure to adequately resource, staff and fund schools for our children, thereby shortchanging our children on their future and potential. The disconnect between the Minister’s…

I am sharing time with Deputy Barry. The Taoiseach said the nominations of Deputies McGrath and Chambers to their new posts were about policies and not personalities. I agree, so I will focus on policy and not personality. First, it is extremely worrying that the discourse around Deputy McGrath's nomination to the European Commission is focused on the horse-trading going on in terms of support for Ursula von der Leyen to retain her post as President of the European Commission. This would be an outrageous price to p…

Turning to the question of the finance portfolio, we will be voting, for policy and not for personal reasons, against the nomination of Deputy Chambers because we have had more than 100 years of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael Ministers for Finance. We think they have had their chance and have not delivered, not even when this country has more revenue and is wealthier than it has ever been. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have left us with an absolutely dire housing and homelessness crisis. While they have failed to invest the…

I wish to make a point of order.

This motion relates to the European Defence Agency and the involvement of Irish troops with PESCO. Some of us believe this represents a very serious threat to Ireland's neutrality. It is being referred to the committee, which would be normal but do we have a commitment that when the committee has considered this, it will be sent back to the Dáil and there will be a debate on it? If there is not, then we will be calling a vote on it being referred to the committee.

The marine protected areas legislation has been on the priority legislation list for 20 months and it still has not even been published. The Minister of State, Deputy Malcolm Noonan, was asked about this in January of this year and he said it would be published in the first quarter. It still has not been published. Ireland has the lowest proportion of its marine environment protected of almost any country in Europe. Averages are 40% and some are at 50%, which is well in excess of the 30%. Ireland, however, has 9% o…

Along the same lines, we still have a devastating housing crisis with multiple facets to it. One of these is the cliff edge of thresholds when it comes to social housing income thresholds, where people find themselves threatened with the possibility of homelessness through no fault of their own but then discover they have now gone over the threshold in this regard, even though they may have been on a housing list for years. It is a cliff edge because once people are denied the possibility of social housing because …

The rest are kids and the parents are dependent on social welfare. They are all homeless now. After 15 years on the list, they are over the threshold for social housing. Nothing is available for them.

One of their daughters is working in our hospitals looking after our sick. They are all homeless and not eligible for social housing or HAP. It is crazy.

It is and was a welcome step, belatedly, to recognise the Palestinian state. If it is not going to be more than hollow symbolism something has to follow that assists the Palestinian people in liberating themselves from a regime that is capable of committing what the International Court of Justice believes is a plausible genocide and which most reasonable people think is a genocide. Any reasonable assessment of Israel's behaviour over its entire history is that it seeks to normalise the utterly indefensible. It seek…

The Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, is departing the Chamber-----