Not even close. Only 35% of what the Government is planning to deliver, but will not deliver, is social and affordable. However, 70% to 80% of working families are priced out of the market by the prices the Society of Chartered Surveyors Ireland is saying will be delivered. It is not working. The Government has to dramatically increase - even in the Planning and Development Bill - the proportion of social and affordable housing that is being delivered. Because nobody can afford what is being delivered, the vulture …

It is no good if the local authority loan is less.

We would still have social and affordable homes at Shanganagh.

We would have had them sooner.

We are one of the richest countries in the world. We are now heading into Christmas with more than 13,000 people homeless and 4,000 of those are children. Many of them have been homeless for several years. It is a stain on our society and, frankly, on Government that in such a wealthy society that should be the case. I have a simple question. What hope can the Taoiseach offer those families and children who are homeless as to when they will get a home of their own? Can the Taoiseach give us any indication of when h…

Following on from that point, the Israeli massacre in Gaza continues. Hundreds of people are being killed every day. More than 20,000 have been killed, 70% of whom were women and children. The Taoiseach has indicated that there is nothing really that he can do about it except criticise it. I suggest that what he could do is read, if he has not done so, the reports produced before 7 October by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the UN special rapporteur on the Middle East and the UN Human Rights Council. I c…

Since 1948.

At the end of last year, NESC produced a report on improving industrial relations. I suggest that NESC was absolutely right to focus on this subject when we consider that Fórsa has demonstrations today outside hospitals because of the really outrageous fact that a recruitment embargo has been imposed across our health service. Fórsa points out that due to this recruitment pause, there will be a serious impact on services. It also states that there will be a massive increase of pressure on staff, which will lead peo…

----- on a health service when we need more, not less, staff.

If Deputy Barry does not arrive I will; if he does, I will share time. How many thousand more Palestinians will be dead by the time the European Council meets next week? Some 16,000 have already died, 70% of whom were women and children. Children, including babies, accounted for 40%. How many more will be dead before the Taoiseach goes to the European Council next week? He told us that nothing can be done because other members of the European Union do not want to do anything about it. If the Minister of State cares…

Not agreed.

I requested at Thursday's meeting of the Business Committee that before the Christmas break an urgent discussion about the shameful levels of child and family homelessness as we head towards Christmas. Every single month we have seen a new and shameful record in the levels of child and family homelessness. While many might be looking forward to Christmas, for many mothers, children and families, some of whom have endured three and four years in homelessness, this is going to be a pretty difficult, if not traumatic,…

It is not section by section.

What about child and family homelessness?

Israel's actions in Gaza are not "disproportionate", as the Taoiseach suggests. It is a massacre and genocide unfolding in front of the eyes of the world. Leading genocide experts and historians of the Holocaust, including many Jewish historians of genocide and the Holocaust, are saying this is genocide. This Saturday is the day the UN marks the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. I asked the Taoiseach a number of weeks ago to look into the obligations - this is not the Internation…

It is all states.

Last Sunday was UN International Day of Persons with Disabilities. The disability community and disability activists are asking when the Government will adopt the optional protocol to the UNCRPD to make itself accountable and to ensure real equality for people with disabilities. This Thursday, a new alliance of disability groups will protest outside the Dáil between 12 o'clock and 2 o'clock. I encourage the Taoiseach and Government Ministers to go out and meet them. They are calling for the scrapping of the Governm…

Earlier, I asked the Taoiseach about our obligations under the genocide convention. He claimed that it is only for one of the state parties affected to invoke it. This is just misleading the House. Under the genocide convention, to which Ireland, all the other EU states, the United States and, indeed, Israel, for that matter, have signed up, all have a responsibility to protect against and prevent genocide. Then we have every leading genocide scholar and scholars of the Holocaust saying genocide is taking place. We…

No way.

It is not accurate.