The Minister of State’s Government was not where it should have been, namely in the Dáil doing its job, protecting ordinary workers, families, pensioners, farmers, hauliers and small businesses who were, and who still are, looking for help. The Minister of State can try to interrupt me but I talk to these people. I was on the line in Whitegate, Cork city and Youghal. Those people are still feeling it today. There are more than 300,000 people in arrears with electricity. A quarter of people who get gas are in arrear…

-----Electric Ireland has 1 million customers and it is putting up the cost of electricity by 8% and gas by 7.7% and the Government is doing nothing to tackle it. What is the famous phrase? It is standing idly by while energy companies come in and gouge the market. They pile the pressure on ordinary, hard-working families and what is the Government doing? It has half a Bill instead of delivering for people. We have pensioners who are afraid to turn on the lights, boil kettles or turn on the heating. The weather mig…

Hear, hear.

In 2013, the current Taoiseach, Deputy Micheál Martin, described the triple lock as being at the core of our neutrality. At the time, there were protests in Kyiv, and the following year the annexation of Crimea took place. There was a war in Afghanistan and there was a civil war in Syria, with the Russians and the Americans involved in it. Now he is saying times have drastically changed but that is not true. Things were as bad then as they are now on the world stage when it comes to wars. For as long as I have been…

When NAMA came into being, the State was in a really dark place. The economy had collapsed, there were no jobs and people were really struggling. We had ghost estates and sites that were half developed. Fianna Fáil destroyed the economy. I remember it as clear as day. I remember friends of mine losing their jobs. To add insult to injury, when Fine Gael came into government in 2011, all it gave a damn about was austerity. The ordinary working men and women of this country were thrown under a bus. The most vulnerable…

We have all heard in recent weeks about the scandal on Connaught Street in Dublin. Dublin City Council has finally agreed to meet with the residents today but this is not the only such site in the heart of Dublin city centre. No. 6 Terrace Place sits at the end of a row of beautifully maintained homes off Seán McDermott Street. It was added to the derelict sites register in 2008 and was subject to a compulsory purchase order in 2023. I have pictures here just to give the Taoiseach an idea of what it is like. It was…

The Government amendment to the motion is an insult to the more than 7,000 families who received notices to quit in the first three months of the year and the thousands of families who received such notices at the end of last year. Those people are facing eviction and do not know where they will be in four, five, six, seven or eight months' time. They are asking where they are going to live and where their children will play and go to school. The Government claims the figures in March were not as bad as previously.…

On page 76 of the Government's housing plan, there is a commitment to develop a new voids funding programme that would "incentivise lower vacancy rates and faster turnaround times for vacant local authority stock". The plan was launched 187 days ago on 13 November 2025. In that time, only one action has been taken on the voids scheme.

The Minister talked to colleagues earlier about policy. I launched a policy to return vacant, boarded-up homes to use in housing families. This is the low-hanging fruit and I still cannot understand why the Minister, his Department and the other Ministers in the Government do not tackle it. The voids programme for 2026 will allow for the return of 2,200 homes, with local authorities receiving only €11,000 per unit when there are more than 4,500 houses boarded up and vacant. Why is the Minister not being more ambiti…

The Minister mentioned the NOAC report. I will refer to some of the figures in that report. In 2024, there were 4,251 empty council houses, which was an increase from the previous year. One in four of those homes was empty longer than a year. I know of houses in my constituency that have been empty and boarded up for years. The problem is a lot of local authorities do not have the excess funding to bring the long-term, older, more complicated and more expensive homes back into use. If the Minister is only giving €1…

They do not have the money to do it.

Some of them are up to 100 years old.

They cannot do so.

They cannot do it because the Government cut their funding.

The first quarter of this year saw the lowest number of first quarter reconnections and it was the second lowest number for any quarter since the CSO began collecting data in 2011.

I find it astounding and unbelievable that the Minister would say this is not a measure.

This is a CSO figure that shows the lowest number for any first quarter in 15 years. That is a measurement. Regardless of whether the Minister agrees with it or wants to accept it is his issue, but these are the facts. I printed them off.

We have the lowest number for any first quarter and the Minister says it is not a measure. The Minister can disagree with me, but he should not say these figures are not right because they are right. The Government is not delivering. This proves the Government is not delivering on dereliction because the vast majority of these derelict sites are not connected to an electrical supply, so if there were no reconnections or the number of reconnections was low,-----

-----that shows that the Government's policy on dereliction has failed. These are the facts. I am not making them up.

I am sure the Minister can recognise that these figures are accurate.