The Housing Commission has simply confirmed what the dogs in the street know, namely that the Government's housing policy is an absolutely disastrous failure. The catalogue of human misery that this failure is visiting on thousands of individuals, families and children should be well known to the Minister of State if he is knocking on doors. He could not possibly miss it, because house after house is impacted by one type of housing misery or another. Yet, the Government tables amendments to housing motions put befo…

One of the most obscene aspects of the absolutely dire housing and homelessness situation we face in this country is the phenomenon of people being homeless, being crammed into overcrowded conditions and being hopeless about the possibility of ever owning their own home or getting a social house while you can see vacant property, derelict sites and speculators sitting on land or property to make money out of it anywhere you walk. Is the Minister going to take any further measures in the forthcoming budget to deal w…

The vacant homes tax is a failure. We learned at the beginning of this year that only €2 million was raised from it and it applied to less than 3,500 properties. That is against a background where the census showed 160,000 vacant residential dwellings, 48,000 of which were vacant in both the 2016 census and the 2022 census. We then have about 20,000 derelict properties and one just has to walk around this city to see many of them. Does it not outrage the Minister, because it certainly outrages me, to walk past empt…

The Minister has just confirmed how much of a failure the vacant homes tax is in the context of tens and tens of thousands of vacant properties. Of course, I am for being fair to people where there is a good reason but there should be an imperative to say that by hook or by crook, this house will be brought back into use. It is obscene for that not to be the case. Yes, if somebody has a reason for leaving it empty, we should buy it off them for a fair price. If somebody is sitting on it for speculative reasons, we …

The Taoiseach boasted earlier about the increased construction of housing under his Government. What he is not acknowledging is that the majority of what is being delivered is completely unaffordable. We get 10% social housing on private developments. The rest is unaffordable rents and unaffordable house prices and the result is record homelessness, particularly egregiously for families and children. If the Government was buying houses instead of leasing them and getting a higher proportion, as well as building the…

It has been promised for weeks. Can we have it soon?

I am struck by the extraordinary double standards that the European Union displays and the Taoiseach seems to go along with when we look at the contrast between the way in which the Ukrainian situation is presented and the way in which the Palestinian situation is presented. It may just be a symbolic thing but tomorrow is Nakba, the anniversary of the catastrophe, as it is known to the Palestinians, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were ethnically cleansed, using extreme violence, in 1948. Millions of th…

We should long ago have recognised the state of Palestine but the question is this. What state is the Taoiseach recognising? Is he simultaneously legitimising the ethnic cleansing of historic Palestine when he speaks of a two-state solution? I find it ironic that people who are for a united Ireland, who call themselves republicans, who would never dream of endorsing a two-state solution in Ireland are for endorsing a two-state solution in Palestine. They are for the partition of Palestine forever after the ethnic c…

Ursula von der Leyen embodies the shocking and blatant double standards that have been displayed by the European Union. On the one hand, she is the most gung-ho for arming, supporting, or whatever is necessary in terms of Ukraine being faced with a brutal and illegal invasion. She then stands beside Netanyahu as he embarks on what we can now see is a genocidal murderous massacre against the Palestinian people, the blood of whom she has on her hands for the position she took. She continues to defend the indefensible…

I thank Sinn Féin for bringing forward this important motion. I welcome Justice for the Forgotten and the families of those who were murdered 50 years ago this month in the Dublin and Monaghan bombings and the survivors. I also welcome Fergus Dowd, who is the producer of the film that was mentioned earlier and which premiered last Friday. “May-17-74: The Anatomy of a Massacre” was produced by Fergus and Joe Lee, the director, in conjunction with the families and Justice for the Forgotten, to once again shine a ligh…

We should have long ago recognised the Palestinian state. We might not be in this horrific situation had the world acted sooner on the crimes of Israel against the Palestinian people. Let us be clear. In the face of the genocidal assault and massacre taking place in Gaza, belated state recognition will not stop the horror. Recognition is welcome but it is not going to stop the horror. The question the students in Trinity College are asking is the same one Palestinians and others are asking. I handed letters to the …

Exactly. The two-state solution will never work because of the Arab population.

Ursula von der Leyen is directly complicit in the genocidal massacre that Israel has committed in Gaza over the past seven months. She greenlit the massacre and she should be unceremoniously sacked. People should state publicly that she should not remain as the President of the EU Commission. They should say publicly, "Ursula von der Leyen; sack her." Say publicly she should be sacked for her complicity in genocide. Some of us warned the Government about this. When she came to this House in December 2022, most of t…

I am not, actually.

I am against its current direction.

It has good environmental directives.

I hope it is clear at this stage that there is no level of atrocity that Israel is not willing to commit against the Palestinian people. It should have been clear long before now for a state that was built on ethnic cleansing on an ongoing basis, on apartheid and on a 17-year-long siege of Gaza, but now, when we look at the massacre in Gaza, it should be clear. Under the Genocide Convention, states are required to prevent, not just punish, genocide. What is the Government going to do to prevent what is clearly a ge…

People Before Profit put a motion to the Dáil in November of last year asking the Government to take a case against Israel for genocide under the ICJ and it voted against it. Now, belatedly, because South Africa did what Ireland should have done, the Government is saying there will be some class of intervention. I suppose later is better than not at all, but when we consider the horror that has ensued for the people of Gaza and continues, the Government should be ashamed, frankly, of its failure to support that cal…

I have been campaigning for Palestinian rights since I was there in 1987 - I lived there - and my position has been very consistent over a very long time, as has been the movement in this country of solidarity with Palestine. My position is that, in relation to the apartheid state of Israel, we need to do what was done to the apartheid state of South Africa. A state based on apartheid and ethnic cleansing has no place in the civilised world. Surely we now have the evidence that is the case, even if the Minister and…

The Dunnes Stores workers played a big role.