This Bill is better than nothing but it is too little and too late to address the cost-of-living misery and the energy poverty that has been inflicted on huge swathes of our population since the cost-of-living crisis took off. I believe it was People Before Profit that put the first cost-of-living motion to the Dáil at the outset of the crisis in October 2021, which looked for measures to be taken to control the price of energy. The Government resisted. It was only when the European Union finally acknowledged that …

It is utterly shameful that 12,800 people, including 3,800 children, are in emergency accommodation. This is getting worse because of the Government's decision to lift the no-fault eviction ban. We urge the Government to urgently reinstate that ban. We will have a motion before the Dáil next Wednesday to seek the expediting of People Before Profit's Eviction Ban Bill 2022, which has passed Second Stage, and the reinstatement of the ban as a matter of urgency. The number of notices to quit issued between April and J…

I thank Deputy Doherty and Sinn Féin for bringing forward this motion on mortgage interest hikes that are inflicting extraordinary hardship and suffering on tens and tens of thousands of homeowners and mortgage holders who are being crippled with these ten hikes over a short period of time. This has put many of them into a completely unsustainable situation about which the Government has done absolutely nothing to alleviate the suffering and hardship that they face. While there is so much we can say in here, I will…

There has been much public fury about the secret payments in RTÉ, the pay cuts that were not pay cuts, secret accounts and so on. One of the things that has come across very strongly in all of this is how commercial activity and advertising have serious undermined and negatively impacted on the public service remit of RTÉ. Does the Minister agree that is a serious problem that needs to be addressed? What are her proposals in order to address it?

On a point of order, Deputy Gino Kenny will take this slot and I-----

-----will take the Regional Independent Group's time after Sinn Féin's next slot, if that is okay.

Never.

I thank the Regional Group for allowing me to use their time slot and the Leas-Cheann Comhairle for allowing that, too. I also thank all the Dáil staff, service officers, ushers, everybody in the canteen and everybody in here who keep us going during the term. I thank them for all their help and their great work, and wish them the best for the next few weeks. The Irish Government is playing a deception on the issue of Palestine that the Palestinian people and Arab people generally in the Middle East are very famili…

I apologise for being late. I was outside the gates of Leinster House at a protest on the cost of living. I thank the Labour Party for bringing forward this important motion. I am very grateful to grassroots football for the role it played in my life, instilling certain discipline, experience and education about the importance of working together with others, team discipline, comradeship, being part of a community and just having fun and mixing with people from all sorts of background. I thank the many clubs I play…

We need to invest.

Teo is 13 years of age. He is on the severe end of the autism spectrum and is in residential care. If he does not get a school place this September, it will be his third year out of school, which is shameful. He is being told there are no school places with the supports and resources that are necessary for him available and that the only option for him is home tuition. His parents want him in school and Teo himself wants to be in school, but he is being told there is no place for him. This is completely unacceptabl…

Probably a special school.

Yes.

Councils know.

Yes.

I do not have a problem with the Government spending money on genuine public service information with the national broadcaster. As an aside, there is a need, however, to address as a matter of urgency the more general issue of the impact of commercial and advertising on the controversies that have unfolded in RTÉ. It was notable, although not entirely credible, that Noel Kelly was, in essence, trying to excuse a lot of the goings-on over the pay stuff relating to the commercial relationship with RTÉ. That is a matt…

Could that include people who do not tick those boxes but need help and a place to go? There are people who do not fit into these categories. I welcome the proposal but-----

So do I.

Nuclear weapons are probably the most monstrous invention of humanity. Coming fairly close behind them are cluster munitions. As the Taoiseach knows, this country was the locale and one of the major promoters of the Convention on Cluster Munitions to ban them, with more than 100 countries signing up to it. Then this weekend we had the spectacle of US President Joe Biden talking about the "very difficult decision" to give Ukraine cluster munitions, which spread explosives over wide areas and leave things on the grou…

I, too, want to press the Taoiseach on dates for the referendums on keeping water services and infrastructure in public ownership and on housing, both of which have been promised by the Government. The Government keeps echoing the mantra that housing is its biggest priority. The most severe social crisis facing the country, which it certainly is, is that hundreds of thousands of people, in one way or another, are impacted by this absolutely devastating housing crisis, whether that be by unaffordable house prices, m…