I am not sure whether the Taoiseach answered on whether the Cabinet committee on housing will meet before the summer recess. He might repeat what he said if he did. It is very important the housing committee meets before the summer recess to tackle a number of things. One of them is the one I have mentioned as it is a serious issue, namely, that the eligibility criteria for cost rental do not align. Huge numbers of the people applying for that, who are supposed to be in the cohort affected, are being told they cann…

As an urban Deputy, I am obviously very conscious that I do not have the day-to-day experience of what is happening in rural Ireland. In that regard, I have to rely to a large extent on insights from those whose judgment I trust. As a result, some of what I will say will reflect what I have heard from people who are living in rural Ireland and who have particular views about what is going on there. Other things are slightly more general observations; I start with one of those. First, it is important for people who …

Some 30% of it is in the southern region. The areas that have the least of it are the west and north, which has only 14% of the wealth. As can be seen, there is a stark inequality in the distribution of wealth.

However, if you marry that with some other facts that we saw in the Teagasc survey on farm incomes published in recent days, you can see that average farm incomes vary radically. Again, there are gross and shocking inequalities. The average dairy farmer has an income of €97,000. I am sure there are plenty of medium-sized dairy farmers who do not have that size of income, so we can be almost certain that this is again concentrated in a very small number of hands. Then there is the average beef farmers who is on €16,…

Yet again, it is noticeable that despite the sort of laudable concerns the Taoiseach had about human rights at the Council of Europe, there was no mention of Palestine. Yesterday I met with the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and in Israel. I met its representatives again at the Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defence. They are, in a word, looking for states to be consistent in terms of the application of internat…

Neither do the Americans.

The Taoiseach is not suggesting that Israel is planning to withdraw.

The NRP acknowledges the problems with assessments of need but has less to say, when one has obtained an assessment, about the resources that are made available. I will give the Taoiseach an example. The case involving Theo, who is 13, and his parents, is quite urgent. Theo has severe autism and intellectual disability. He is in residential care but he has not been in a school environment for a year now. Since 2019, when he was in school, Theo was being sent home because the school did not have the resources to pro…

I also want to particularly welcome the South African delegation to remind the Taoiseach of a very particular relationship that exists between this country, South Africa and Palestine. We had the first version of apartheid with the penal laws. These were systematic discrimination which contributed very substantially to the Famine in this country. The people of South Africa struggled against a similar system of apartheid that had cruel consequences for the majority of the population and they overcame it. The South A…

I thank Deputy Cian O'Callaghan and the Social Democrats for bringing forward this very constructive motion on home ownership. I also thank them for highlighting the fact that members of the Government are spoofers when they claim they are people who champion home ownership. Indeed, they are dishonest in misrepresenting the Opposition as people who are not interested in home ownership when the opposite is the truth. Of course, the Government does not really care, because it is just spin. What this motion very helpf…

I did not know he was coming. We do not even know what affordable housing we are getting or how much it is going to cost for all the money we have put into Cherrywood. The Government needs to get real and deliver affordable housing through the State because the private sector is only interested in making a profit.

The nature restoration law is a modest thing and, for the most part, we have already agreed and adopted all of its targets and objectives. The controversial issue of rewetting is going to be accounted for mainly on State lands. It is reasonable that farmers who believe that rewetting might affect their adjoining lands should get assurances of support from the Government, but it is certainly no reason to oppose this law. Beware politicians who speak out of both sides of their mouths. I do not understand what the Gov…

We warned the Government when it decided to go through with the cold-hearted decision to lift the no fault eviction ban on 1 April that it would lead to a spike in homelessness. The figures that came out last Friday, conveniently enough for the Government before the weekend but we need to consider them, show a significant rise in the rate of homelessness in the first month after that no fault eviction ban was lifted. Worst of all, it shows a dramatic jump in the number of families and children who are homeless. We …

Once people enter into homelessness, it is very hard to get out of it. I will respond to something the Taoiseach said earlier. I have raised multiple cases, including that of a woman who is working, ironically, looking after vulnerable children, who has been in homeless accommodation and sharing a bedroom with her son for four years. That is what happens when people enter homelessness, in many cases. It is very hard to get out of it. It is absolutely imperative that the Government stops as many people ending up in …

If you go on daft.ie or myhome.ie and look for rental accommodation, you are very unlikely to find any rental accommodation for less than €2,000 per month and you are more likely to see €2,500 to €3,000 being sought. Many of the people who would want to rent such accommodation will be over the social housing income thresholds and, therefore, are entitled to no rent support at all but rents like these would amount to 60%, 70% or even 80% of their income. It is just not possible for people. Does the Taoiseach agree w…

Is the Taoiseach predicting a recession?

It is going to be a few years.

My question follows directly on from Deputy Moynihan's. I will ask about the forestry programme. In a document I helped leak, and that the Government had not put out, from the European Commission's Directorate-General for Environment, our draft forestry programme was rejected on the basis that it was not doing biodiversity. It very specifically referred to Coillte and the predominance of the Sitka spruce monocultural forestry model. I do not even know where that is at. Have we redrafted it? When will we see it? It …

I am part of the Save Our Forests - Save our Land alliance, which the Minister may remember campaigned and protested against the deal between Coillte and the Gresham House vulture fund for Ireland's forestation programme. In January we put into the public domain a leaked letter from the Directorate-General Environment in the European Commission, which roundly criticised the proposed forestry programme from the Government, basically on the grounds that the Sitka spruce plantation model is damaging to Ireland's biodi…

Part of the reason for the outrage at the Gresham House-Coillte deal was that it was going to further expand a failed forestry model of Sitka spruce plantations. They are bad for communities, bad for biodiversity, bad for water quality, and bad on just about every level. They make our forestry very vulnerable to disease and dependent on a monoculture economy. Interestingly, the European Commission letter, which we leaked and which the Government tried to suppress, essentially corroborated that critique. It said tha…