Contrary to mainstream economic theory, all wealth in our society is generated by workers. It is very obvious now that we are chronically short of the skills and workers we need in a whole range of areas, including construction, the health service, teaching, bus drivers and hospitality; you name it. Of course, the reason we are short is that it is unaffordable for tens of thousands of people who are qualified in the professions and trades to live here because housing is completely unaffordable. This has been confir…

Just ban them.

There are a lot of issues that will have to be dealt with in the Covid inquiry but certain things are beyond question. The Irish health service is operating at near 100% capacity. Most countries in Europe operate at about 80% to 85%. If we are hit with further public health emergencies or major accidents, unless we have a buffer within our health system, which means additional capacity so we are not tipping over the edge of the ability of our system to cope on a day-to-day basis, we will be in very serious trouble.…

That is because they ripped it apart.

Saint John of God Community Services is facing a funding crisis. The organisation has informed me that a meeting of the board is taking place this Thursday. If the €32 million deficit, which the HSE and the Government were supposed to address, and additional funding is not made available, it will not be able to provide services. We need to understand there are 8,000 children in its services. In my area, the organisation provides respite services, special schools, disability services, CAMHS and so on. There was a me…

No, it did not.

No, it did not.

It did not.

That is a fact.

That was our idea; it was the Opposition's proposal.

The Government is trying to deliberately mislead the public and this House about its shameful failure to discharge its responsibilities under the genocide convention. On 22 November, People Before Profit tabled a motion in the Dáil through which we appealed to the Government to discharge its responsibilities under the convention, which I remind the Government are not about holding Israel accountable after the fact of a genocide, but about obliging us as signatories to prevent the commission of a genocide that is on…

I thank Sinn Féin for tabling the motion on housing. I do not think we need to pore over the litany of failures of the Government. The facts and reality speak for themselves in terms of the catastrophic situation we are now facing with the human misery the housing and home crisis is inflicting. There are record numbers of people in emergency accommodation. People are absolutely crucified with rents that are off the Richter scale and unaffordable. House prices are at shocking, unaffordable and record levels. So many…

On New Year's Day, the Workplace Relations Commission, WRC, issued an absolutely damning ruling against Metropolitan Films, which is one of the biggest film producing companies, with tens of millions of euro of public money having been issued to it over the years. Awards in the region of hundreds of thousands of euro have been made to film crew workers. This ruling revealed systematic blacklisting, breaches of employment legislation and forging of employment contracts to cover up the failure to honour the workplace…

Deputy Murphy has made many of my points. We welcome the Bill. Single parents suffer disproportionately from poverty. That has been well documented and remained consistently the case for many years now. The fact that the amount of maintenance single parents might receive, the vast majority of whom are women, is means-tested and then impacts on their social welfare payments is completely unacceptable, when we have such a disproportionate level of poverty among lone parents. We very much welcome this long-overdue mov…

Yes, sure. If the Deputy is sceptical and if he does not believe Oxfam, he should check out the Central Bank. It may be a source that the Deputy might consider more reliable. I believe Oxfam is very reliable. The Central Bank has started to produce something we have long asked for, which is figures on the distribution of wealth in this country. In its quarterly bulletins at the beginning of each year, the Central Bank has always shown the level of net wealth and assets in the country but has never shown the distrib…

Very good.

It will be Deputy Smith.

On 22 November, we tabled a motion calling on the Government to instigate action under the genocide convention over Israel's genocide in Gaza. The Government voted that down. At that point, 14,000 people had been murdered by Israel. To date, approximately 24,000 people have been murdered by Israel. Another 6,000 to 7,000 are buried under the rubble and 2 million people have been displaced. Still, the Government brings shame on this country by refusing to support South Africa's action regarding genocide at the ICJ. …

What about Gaza? There is a genocide going on. Will the Government give us a debate-----

-----where we can discuss the genocide, the worst crime-----