I am informed that the Bill will not be referred to the Oireachtas Select Committee on Health. Remaining Stages are due to be taken in Dáil Éireann next week.

The number of dead and injured in Gaza is so large that it almost defies our ability to comprehend. There are 11,180 dead, 4,609 of whom are children and 3,900 of whom are children. There are 28,200 injured and 2,700 trapped in rubble. By the time this debate ends, 12 more children will have been killed. Children are being wiped out by the murderous Israeli military, which is hell-bent on clearing Gaza of every last Palestinian, and which views hospitals, schools and people queueing up for bread as legitimate targe…

I thank my constituency colleague, Deputy Duffy, for bringing forward the Bill. As early as 1977 the Law Reform Commission recognised the gap in legislation and the very real challenges facing home owners who find themselves in a defective property and the challenge in trying to ascertain who is legally liable and where the blame lies, be it the builder, the subcontractor, the architect, the clerk of works, the planner, the supplier, the bricklayer, the carpenter, the electrician or whoever signed off on the job. T…

It is hard to believe that in the new year, it will be 13 long years since Fine Gael took office. Things have gone from bad to worse and we now have an abject crisis in housing. During much of that time, the Minister's party has supported those Fine Gael Governments. We have heard the Taoiseach say that we have turned a corner. The Tánaiste insists we have made great strides. I do not think they are fooling anyone. Anybody watching the debate probably has a different view. Many such people are probably kicking thei…

How does the Tánaiste know that? How does he know what we have?

I have asked for copies of the Minister's script to be distributed. They are on the way.

We were told that budget 2024 was going to solve all our problems but what we got was a giveaway budget that failed to address the very serious issues we have in our public services, health being chief among them. While the HSE recruitment freeze has rightly dominated media coverage in recent days, there is another sector of the health service that is on its knees. There is no sustainable funding model for section 39 organisations, which provide essential core services for people with disabilities. The Minister for…

The Government and Sinn Féin clearly have different perspectives on the challenges people face. Many people say to us they are facing a financial cliff and getting nearer and nearer to it. The Government seems to be steaming on ahead with its policies, clearly powered by hot air. Families are suffering. The key element of what is proposed is that there will be two increases in October. The Government is asking us to wait for the budget process. We are already in the budget process. Every day, we are contacted by fa…

With a shortage of affordable housing and increasing homelessness rates, the need for social housing has become more urgent than ever. The last thing Irish people want to hear is the excuse that homes cannot be built overnight. Fine Gael has been in power for 12 years. In those 12 long years, the level of homelessness has done nothing but grow. We have seen homelessness records broken time and again. There are 3,700 children in emergency accommodation and I genuinely worry that there will be 4,000, 5,000 or 6,000 b…

Long-term residential nursing home care is yet another aspect of the health service that we have surrendered to the private sector and it is ordinary people who are suffering the consequences. Increasingly, nursing homes are considering leaving the fair deal scheme and we are losing more and more bed capacity as nursing homes close. Some 31 have closed since 2020 with the loss of almost 1,000 beds. There are now real concerns about the viability of the sector. The same has happened with dental care. The dental trea…

I will have to ask the Minister of State to finish there.

Deputy, allow the Minister to reply.

The Minister to reply, please.

Let the Minister reply.

Before we move on, I welcome our visitors from Portroe National School in Tipperary, who are in the Public Gallery. We need to be on our best behaviour for the schoolchildren.

Huge factors in the causes of crime involving young people are poverty, deprivation and disadvantage and, I suppose, the normalisation of certain crime in our communities. Young people and children often fall victim to those who exploit that poverty and use them as drug couriers or sellers. My party colleague, Deputy Ward, has introduced legislation that will make the coercion of a child into drug running or other such crimes a criminal act in itself. Children growing up in poverty and social exclusion are less lik…

We all have cases we could outline to the Ministers of State. The reality is that many families feel burnt out. It was timely that there was a pre-budget submission today from the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Ireland. Its submission stated it was looking for an increase in the annual statutory investment in a centre for people with MS, and right across the board. There is common agreement that we are not doing enough. The question we need to ask is: why we are not doing enough? What is causing the blockages? We ha…

As mentioned by previous speakers, it was timely for National Biodiversity Week that researchers from Queen's University Belfast published a report containing some of the clearest evidence that we are failing utterly in our efforts even to limit the damage we are causing to the planet. The populations of half the animal species on earth are declining. This means more than just a few species going extinct; it represents a genuine threat to how we will live and survive. Without preserving the biodiversity and delicat…

The Oireachtas health committee has consistently heard from health service workers and their unions that staff are at constant risk of burnout. Recruitment and retention remain at crisis levels as young graduates seek better pay and working conditions elsewhere, despite their express wish to remain in Ireland. This makes it impossible to legislate for mandatory staffing levels in hospitals as what staff we have we cannot keep and we are increasingly unable to replace those who leave. If we do not have key staff, ha…

Grocery prices have soared by 17% over the past year, which is the highest rise ever recorded. This means the average grocery bill could rise by €1,200 a year, just to put food on the table, if the current trend continues. We know this rise in the cost of living shows no sign of slowing down. What we were told was a temporary rise in inflation, a reaction to the war in Ukraine, has persisted and running a household is becoming increasingly unaffordable. Prices will not come down on their own. We saw this with petro…