And a free Palestine.

Hamas was not even around in 1987. It did not even exist.

Israel is not interested.

The boycott precipitated it.

The 50th anniversary of the Dublin-Monaghan bombings will occur on 17 May. The families of the victims of the bombings are still looking for truth and justice. A film documentary opens tomorrow, which again looks at those bombings and the murders. The producer of the film "Anatomy of a Massacre" is in the Public Gallery. I met him and a relative of one of the victims. I refer to Cathy Doyle, whose sister, her husband and their two baby children, Jacqueline, 16 months and Anne Marie, four months, were murdered. That…

People Before Profit requested this debate at a meeting of the Business Committee. We are glad it is happening. We requested it because, like everybody else, we are being inundated by families who are concerned for the welfare of their children. It is clear that the State - the Government - is failing children with additional needs and disabilities. That is an unacceptable moral failure that flies in the face of the commitment of this State to cherish all the children equally. It also flies in the face of our legal…

Tomorrow there will be a debate on special needs education. This is something People Before Profit requested at the Business Committee. It was prompted by a series of meetings we had on the issue of special needs. The issues brought up by parents and teachers included that the algorithm, in terms of removing complex needs as a criteria for allocating special education resources, has left one third losing resources. Generally, people asked why the hell the Government does not trust schools and parents in terms of se…

Here is a human story of how policy failure forces children into homelessness. Amy and her husband both work. She works in a supermarket and he works for Dublin Bus. They have three children, one of whom has special needs and has, incidentally, been waiting for an assessment for months and months. They are about to be evicted on 24 June through no fault of their own because the property is being sold, the tenant in situ scheme is not an option, and they are currently living in a HAP tenancy. If they go into emergen…

We did not.

No.

And we did it. Did we not do that?

I welcome the members of Fórsa in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council who are visiting. They might be interested to know we are discussing trade union-related matters, but this time with respect to members of our Defence Forces. The Bill seeks to allow them to associate with the Irish Congress of Trade Unions. “Allowed to associate with” is an interesting phrase when we think of what trade unionism is supposed to be about. It is not about what people are allowed to do but about representing their own interests an…

I apologise that I was not able to listen to much of the earlier discussion. I was busy with something else in this place. This is a very important issue. It is of particular interest in my area because there are plans for a very significant offshore renewable energy development off the east coast. As anybody who is concerned about the climate crisis we are facing knows, the starting point is that we have to rapidly develop renewable energy resources to reduce the amount of fossil fuels we use and save the planet f…

I am one of the people who believes Leo Varadkar should not have gone to meet Joe Biden. Biden has said on several occasions throughout his career the following words: “If there were not an Israel, we'd have to invent one”. In those words, he revealed the true nature of the relationship between the United States and the crimes that Israel has committed against the Palestinian people for decades - apartheid, ethnic cleansing, ongoing brutal murderous occupation and the denial of the most basic rights. However, Israe…

All of that will come as cold comfort to Niamh and Anthony, for example, in the homeless hub in my area. They have two children and have now spent 20 months, two Christmases, homeless, and their biggest fear is that they will still be homeless next Christmas. It will come as cold comfort to Jennifer, who is in one bedroom with her two kids. She went on the housing list in 2008, the council lost her application, she went back on the list in 2014 and she is on a three-bedroom list with no prospect of getting anything…

Cherrywood is the biggest residential development in the country. It is a new town with more than 8,000 apartments and houses. There are probably between 25,000 and 30,000 people living there. Many apartments and houses are being built and millions of euro of public money has gone into it but Hines, the wealth asset management company and main developer, has given clear indications to the council that it will not build the town centre. It will have made huge profits from the development, but it is indicating that i…

I want to know what the Government can do to intervene in this situation to ensure the developer, which has made a lot of money out of that development, delivers the town centre as it was supposed to do.

Is the Taoiseach taking the people of this country for fools when he suggests that his plan to dismantle the triple lock is not a full attack on Ireland's neutrality? Whenever he attempts to justify this move he is planning on the triple lock, he refers to Russia. Of course, we all condemn Russia's attack on Ukraine as an indefensible occupation and military aggression. However, at the same time, the Taoiseach wants us to move closer to a military alliance and EU militarisation project that includes NATO, the Unite…

An international panel convened by the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights has just produced a report - they are in Dublin - saying that the Irish State had failed to properly investigate a series of deadly attacks by loyalist paramilitaries in Ireland in the early and mid-1970s including the Dublin and Monaghan bombings. They particularly castigated the failure of the Garda and the State to produce the files on the Dublin and Monaghan bombings. The anniversary of those massacres is coming up on 17 May. A new documen…

We proposed an amendment to the Planning and Development Bill that would increase the amount of social and affordable housing we get from developments. Currently, as the Taoiseach is aware, we get 10%, or more recently, we may get 10% affordable housing. That means 80% of what is being built is unaffordable. We proposed, like other places such as Austria, that we would increase it to 50% or 60%. What is the point in having lots of unaffordable housing? Why do we not get a bigger proportion? Interestingly, when I as…