For those who are not convinced by the Taoiseach's answer, the housing protest will be outside Custom House at 2.30 p.m. this Saturday. I hope people will come out onto the streets for it. No one disputes that there will be a private sector in housing, but the private sector should not be subsidised at the expense of delivering the social and affordable housing that it is incapable of delivering. The majority of Government policy is about giving subsidies to private developers and speculators who are incapable and …

I have been phoning the journalist to try to get it.

Let us have 50% social and affordable on all developments, as we have asked for.

Let us have 50% social and affordable of all housing.

Apartheid does not.

Israel is an apartheid-----

We do not agree with that.

As equals.

This is a local issue but it speaks volumes about a bigger one. I was pretty shocked by an advertisement I was sent last night relating to Dalkey Garda station, which is up for sale. It has been sitting derelict for about a decade. I cannot believe it is being sold. Local community groups and other organisations are crying out for spaces to use, we have a massive housing crisis, there is a lack of homeless accommodation and there is a need for social and affordable housing, yet a State agency is selling off a Garda…

Any sensible person knows there is a climate and biodiversity emergency and that, if we do not address them, we will be in trouble. As much as the far right want to deny it, the impacts will cost our society very dearly. We have to recognise that large numbers of people have become alienated from the climate action and biodiversity action agenda because they see climate action as a punishment rather than as improving their lives. We have to change this. If we do not recognise that we are losing the room with a lot …

The people of this country in their majority have long recognised Palestine. Finally, the Government has caught up with the people. It is a pity it has taken seven months of a genocidal massacre in Gaza and decades of ethnic cleansing by Israel, illegal occupation, the siege of Gaza and brutal suppression of Palestinian rights, but it is a step forward. It will mean very little if it is just symbolic. It has to be accompanied by sanctions to stop the genocide and by a recognition that a state that commits genocide …

Is it seven minutes or two minutes?

We probably would not have enough time.

No.

The International Criminal Court has sought arrest warrants for the Israeli Prime Minister and defence minister for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including the crime of deliberately starving the people of Gaza, blocking aid to them and wilfully killing ordinary people. This comes on top of the indictment for plausible genocide handed down by the International Court of Justice. I find it quite shocking, to be quite honest, that the Israeli ambassador was asked to attend a Famine memorial event when the Isr…

For generations, Irish people were the subject of foul racist stereotypes. Tory Governments in Britain specialised in scapegoating the Irish for problems that they themselves were responsible for. They implied that the Irish were a problem, and that there were too many of us. In fact, Irish people contributed significantly to building British society, particularly in the areas of housing and roads. We did the same in Ireland. Is the Government now leaning into the same tactics as the British Tories in scapegoating …

One of the important categories in the well-being framework is housing. There is nothing more damaging to the well-being of children and families than living in very poor housing conditions. An increasing phenomenon is of mothers, fathers and children being crammed into tiny spaces, which is seriously damaging to the well-being and mental health and physical health of children. When there is medical evidence to back the need to prioritise such people for housing, local authorities are increasingly refusing medical …

The decision about prioritising the physical or mental health of children and families should be based on the medical evidence, not on the availability or lack of availability of certain types of housing. This needs to be addressed.

A major anomaly has emerged for taxi drivers as regards their licensing that I would like the Taoiseach to address. During the pandemic, taxi drivers whose taxis were just about to reach the ten-year point when they had to get rid of them were given a two-year extension because there was no work for two years. Taxi drivers got the two-year extension if their cars were registered 141, 131 or 121 but cars registered 151, which are just about to come up to the ten-year point next January, do not get that extension. Th…

Yes. I asked for this debate on the housing emergency weeks ago. I have been given four and a half minutes and the Minister has just left the Chamber. It sums up my frustration in trying to get across to the Government what an absolutely disastrous situation we are facing. The human misery that people are suffering because of this housing crisis never fails to shock me. Anybody who has been knocking on doors these past few weeks will have got it in spades. It is just household after household in which there is hous…