The Taoiseach has committed himself to try to address the completely chronic homelessness crisis which continues to get worse month in, month out. I appeal to him once again to look at a particular cohort of people who are above the social housing income thresholds because they are working. Yesterday, I had another woman in my clinic who works in a major hospital in my area, is now homeless and cannot get anywhere to live. It is bad enough being on a housing list, where you are entitled to housing assistance paymen…

Torren is 11, has autism spectrum disorder, ASD, is non-verbal, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, ADHD, and an intellectual disability. He has been homeschooled until now, but as he gets older his behaviour is deteriorating and his mother cannot cope. It has been recommended by the children's disability network team, CDNT, and the child and adolescent mental health service, CAMHS, that he get a school placement this year. Despite these recommendations and the support of the education and welfare officer and…

I have made it very clear that it is quite shameful what people like Ursula von der Leyen and some of the European Union states have done to essentially give carte blanche to Israel to commit war crimes against the people of Gaza, and indeed their failure to hold that regime to account over many years for its crimes against the Palestinian people. I will refer to a particularly disturbing case that has come to light in that regard in the last couple of days. My office was contacted yesterday by Courtney Carey who w…

The severity and extent of our housing crisis are shameful in one of the wealthiest countries in the world, but it will also increasingly become, and is already, an economic problem. When workers cannot afford to live because rents and house prices are so high, that is a serious economic problem. It is increasingly the case that people are going out to work and working very hard but rents and house prices are so off the Richter scale that they are ending up homeless and there are no supports for them. Following on …

In broad terms, I think this Finance Bill has failed to address the cost-of-living and housing crises that are imposing such hardship on hundreds of thousands of families and workers in this country. It could have done so, but, as is typical of this Government, it failed to do so. This failure is driven by a commitment to always protect the haves over the have-nots, the very wealthy over the working people and the less well-off. Nowhere is this better demonstrated than in the contrast between what was given to rent…

Earlier this year, the Minister made a commitment to make Ireland one of the best places to do a PhD. In the recent budget, he failed to live up to that commitment. He provided for an increase to €22,000 a year in the stipend, but that applies only to PhD researchers funded by SFI and IRC, who make up fewer than 30% of the total. The payment is still well below a living wage or the average stipend for PhD students in the rest of Europe. What will the Minister do to fulfil his commitment and ensure PhD candidates ha…

The Minister said he just cannot increase the figure to €25,000.

Why can he not do that? I do not accept he cannot. The research and development tax credit is worth €750 million a year in most cases to multinationals. I would much rather give our PhD researchers a living income and cut slightly the money going to the most spectacularly profitable companies in the world, and the Minister would have plenty of money. In our budget submission, we proposed a stipend for all PhD researchers and costed it at €100 million. We could take €100 million, therefore, off the super-profitable …

Will the Minister clarify whether PhD researchers are treated like workers? Members of the Postgraduate Workers Organisation are in the Gallery and this is another issue they have asked about. If a PhD researcher has the same status as a worker, they should get sick leave and all the other entitlements a worker gets, given they are workers and without them our universities and other third level institutions would not be able to function. They need to be acknowledged as such. When the Minister says he is going to tr…

The dropout rates for undergraduate students have jumped very significantly in recent times. The rate is now up to 15%, a shockingly high figure. For example, the number who dropped out in first year across higher education was up to 5,000, an increase from 9% to 12%. There are a range of reasons for this, including the cost of accommodation, transport, having to travel long distances, mental health, the impact of the pandemic and the lack of mental health support for students. What is the Minister going to do to t…

Someone does not need to be a rocket scientist to work out why people are dropping out of college. Of course, if people were actually studying to be a rocket scientist they would be living on less than the living income, as we know from our PhD students, but we have covered that ground. The Minister mentioned the increase in core funding. The Government accepted that there was a shortfall of €307 million in core funding but only provided €60 million in the budget. This is very significantly short of what is necessa…

I certainly agree that there is no excuse for universities jacking up rents to unaffordable levels. I was simply pointing out that if they are underfunded, they start to look for ways to increase revenue. They start to operate more like businesses and less like institutes of higher education. However, it is no excuse and the rents are often pushed down because students actually get out and protest about it. I commend the students who have done so recently. There is a massive shortfall in the availability of afforda…

The barbaric slaughter that Israel is visiting on the people of Gaza and its publicly stated intention to ethnically cleanse 1 million Palestinians from northern Gaza under the threat of massive aerial bombardment are war crimes. Does the Taoiseach acknowledge that his constant references to Israel defending itself are completely inappropriate in the face of Israeli war crimes publicly declared against the people of Gaza, that he should stop using that language, and that he should in fact now impose sanctions on th…

Deputy Paul Murphy is taking some of it. One and a half minutes.

It depends on what one is the lead spokesperson for, or what particular portfolio one has. I move: That leave be granted to introduce a Bill entitled an Act to direct the Central Bank to cap interest rates on private dwelling house mortgages at 3 per cent; and to provide for related matters. Hundreds of thousands of mortgage holders in this country have been absolutely fleeced and crucified by mortgage interest hikes over the last year or so, with ten interest rate hikes by the European Central Bank, ECB. There are…

I move: "That the Bill be taken in Private Members' time."

The Taoiseach often says there are no instant solutions to the housing crisis but I wish to suggest something the Government could do that could make a dramatic and rapid impact on it. I attended an ICTU conference on housing the other day where one of the other speakers was from Vienna. She pointed out that in Vienna now, 60% of all new developments are required to be social or affordable housing. Imagine that; not 10% but 60%. When some developers kicked up, the local authority told them that if they kicked up an…

The big investors are buying a lot of them.

The Taoiseach can google the video on this. A number of years ago, Joseph Biden said that if Israel did not exist, the United States would have to invent it. He went on to explain what he meant by saying that the United States would have to station tens of thousands of US troops in the Middle East. Why did he say that? It gives us a little glimpse into why he has gone to Israel today to offer unconditional, uncritical support to a regime that in the past few days publicly declared and then carried out an intent to …

No, Britain invented it.