2026-06-30

Before I call Deputy McDonald, I take this opportunity to welcome Councillor Alison Field, who is in the Public Gallery and who became deputy Lord Mayor of Dublin City Council last night.

Tomorrow is an important day that will provide a serious test for the Government. More than 1 million households will be hit with hikes in gas and electricity prices. Customers of Electric Ireland, the country's largest electricity supplier, and Yuno Energy face increased bills. These sharp increases range from 8% to 11% and will heap more pressure on people. The hikes will kick in as households deal with rising rents, increasing food prices and expensive back-to-school costs. That is before we mention the sky-high cost of car insurance and childcare. The bills keep coming. They keep going up and up, and people are fed up with being ripped off. I want to remind the Taoiseach of something, which is that Irish households already pay the highest electricity prices in the European Union. On average, we pay more than €500 more per year than our European neighbours. As the Taoiseach knows, we already have record numbers of people who are unable to pay their energy bills, with more than 500,000 household accounts in arrears. That is the context and the backdrop. That is what families are facing as these new hikes come at them tomorrow. The hikes will hit hard-working families. These are people who work every hour they can and who do everything they can to build a good life for themselves and their families. No matter what they do, however, there seems to be a constant uphill battle and a constant rip-off. These are the families that are squeezed and squeezed. Here is the worst of it. The Government has known these hikes were coming for weeks, because the increases were announced at the end of May. It has had more than a month to act and to step in to protect people, but, true to form, it has done nothing at all. Energy has to be affordable for people. We need to get costs under control and end the rip-off. We have to support people while costs are so high. The Taoiseach should rein in the energy companies, which are making massive profits. He should see to it that energy credits are reinstated, because his job is to take action to ease the pressure on people and families. Why is the Government allowing this scandalous profiteering to go unchecked. Why is it content to sit back and allow more than 1 million households to take the hit? The uncertainty, stress and pressure people are being asked to live with is not right and is not fair. People deserve better. Ón lá amárach, beidh billí leictreachais agus gáis ag méadú go géar do níos mó ná 1 milliún teaghlach. Cuirfidh sé níos mó brú ar theaghlaigh atá ag streachailt go dona cheana féin. Cad atá an Rialtas chun a dhéanamh faoi seo? This comes down to choices. The Government should choose to step up, have the backs of households faced with these energy price hikes and take action to rein in the energy companies. It should provide people with the support they need here and now. That means intervening directly and providing the energy credits that households need. Will the Government make these choices?

I dtús báire, admhaím go bhfuil deacrachtaí ann agus go bhfuil teaghlaigh faoi bhrú maidir leis an gcostas maireachtála, go háirithe de dheasca an chogaidh san Iaráin. Is léir go raibh drochthionchar ag an gcogadh sin ar phraghsanna. Tá sé sin soiléir. Tá an-chuid déanta ag an Rialtas, áfach, chun an brú sin a ísliú agus chun cabhair agus tacaíocht a thabhairt do dhaoine. Faoi dheireadh na bliana, beidh suas le €1 billiún níos mó curtha ar fáil againn do mhuintir na tíre i gcomparáid leis an méid a chuireamar ar fáil i gcomhthéacs na cáinaisnéise is déanaí i mí Dheireadh Fómhair seo caite. Families have been under pressure in respect of the cost-of-living issue. The latter has been exacerbated by significant events in recent years, not least the exit from Covid, the supply chain inflationary crisis and the spiral that followed that, the invasion of Ukraine by Russia and the energy that followed that, the tariff situation relating to the United States and the war in the Middle East between the United States and Iran, which led to the largest ever supply shock in terms of fuel and to consequential increases in fuel prices. In the first instance, budget 2026 provided a lot of significant supports. First, we had the increase in the core rates. We also had the significant increases in child support payments, which helped families that have children and that are on the lowest incomes. Record allocations were made in respect of those payments, including, for example to the fuel allowance. What was done meant that a lone-parent family with one child saw an increase of nearly 9% or €1,800 in payments from the Department as a result of our budgetary decisions. A two-adult household received increases in payments of up to €2,300 as a result of those decisions. Other measures we took include free hot school meals and free schoolbooks in primary schools. We took a lot of charges out of the health service to facilitate families in particular. These measures were all with a view to helping families deal with the crisis. We reduced VAT and have kept the VAT on electricity charges down to 9%. That will continue out to 2030. Deputy McDonald said we did nothing. We introduced a special package of between €755 million and €771 million at that stage in order to alleviate the pressures on people and on the transport and food production sectors. We took 32 cent off the price of diesel, 27 cent off petrol and 7.4% off marked gas oil. We also deferred the carbon tax increases until 14 October. These are substantial measures. We have now taken a decision to extend those and to reduce them on a graduated basis. The cost of that will be about €255 million, so we are looking now at an intervention, above and beyond what was in the budget, of close to €1 billion. That is not doing nothing. That is a significant intervention by any yardstick – probably one of the highest across the European Union. We want to introduce further measures in the forthcoming budget that will alleviate the pressures on families and on workers, particularly in terms of the tax burden on them. We also want to support pensioners, carers and those with disabilities. We want to use our resources in a focused and targeted way in the budget, which we will do.

Hear, hear.

It is not enough simply to agree that households are under incredible pressure. Far from intervening to assist people with their energy bills, the Government took away the very thing that was a support to households when it removed energy credits. Rather than intervening to assist, it intervened and made things worse. It has failed to rein in the energy companies that are turning huge profits. People work very hard and will pay their way, and everybody realises that this has to happen, but they are simply fed up with being constantly ripped off. They ask themselves why everything here is so much more expensive and why this is the case. Why is it that Irish households and families consistently have to pay more for their energy? I am putting the question to the Taoiseach today that more than 1 million households will be asking themselves tomorrow when they face yet another hike in their electricity and gas prices and bills. They will ask what the Government is doing to put a stop to the gallop of the energy companies. What is the Government doing to step in and assist these households as they struggle, as the Taoiseach has acknowledged?

The energy companies were quite quick to put up the prices at the time of the issues in the commodity markets arising from the war between the US and Iran. We will have to see comparable decreases as commodity prices reduce and as this feeds into the Irish market. We have had significant reduction in terms of energy prices but they need to go much further than they have. We have nominally the highest EU electricity prices and about the fifth highest when adjusted for affordability. We have a heavy gas dependency. This is a significant factor in the pricing of our energy. We have grid isolation and small market scales. The fundamental problem we have is an over-reliance on fossil fuels, and on gas as our source, and we need to move more decisively to renewables. Through the warmer home schemes and retrofitting schemes, we are empowering people to deal more effectively on a long-term basis with the costs.

Carmel Cantwell's brother William died in Bessborough mother and baby home. Speaking at a vigil on Sunday she said, "The land itself holds the truth. These buildings, these fields hold stories and secrets and the remains of our family members". That truth now lies buried. If planning permission is granted next week, this Government has a big decision to make: do its State apologies mean anything or are they just performance? Until this point, every time I have raised it with the Taoiseach, the current Minister and the former Minister, they have all said the same thing, which is that an investigation of the site would be too big and too expensive. For one, is anything too big when we are talking about the gravity of 829 disappeared babies? Leaving that aside for the moment, no one is asking the Government to go in tomorrow and excavate the entire site at Bessborough. Before that there would need to be geophysical surveys, test excavations and soil samples. The commission of investigation did not do any of that. It did not properly investigate the site. Even leaving that aside, the first thing the Government has to do is CPO land. This was unanimously agreed by Cork City Council and it is the number one ask of survivors for the State to protect the site and to give survivors breathing space and time to discuss what should happen next, without the looming pressure of diggers rolling into the site. Another argument the Taoiseach puts forward whenever I raise Bessborough is that he cannot intervene in the planning process. Everyone understands and agrees that in normal circumstances the Government should not intervene but does the Taoiseach think these circumstances are normal? A total of 923 children died at Bessborough between 1922 and 1998 when it finally closed, and 1998 is not that long ago. This is the Taoiseach's constituency and he was on the local authority at that time. Burial records exist for only 64 of these children, meaning 829 children are disappeared, presumed dead, but nobody knows. These are not normal circumstances. Under the European Convention on Human Rights, ECHR, the State has a legal obligation to protect this site for proper forensic investigation and to deliver truth and justice for survivors. The only way to do that is through compulsorily purchasing the land. What survivors want to know is what this Government is going to do if the planning decision is upheld. Is it going to do nothing? Will it sit back while survivors chain themselves to the gates, or is the Government going to do what it should have done a long time ago, which is the bare minimum of compulsorily purchasing the land?

First of all, the pain felt by survivors and families connected to Bessborough is profound. It is enduring. Neither I nor the rest of the Government has ever minimised that reality. I would argue that the last Government did more on these issues than any previous Government for a long time. It was not just about performance. I think it is unfair of the Deputy to put that insinuation across in the manner that she has, given the profundity and deep sadness of this issue. The most fundamental pursuit for quite a number of years was unhindered access to all birth records. That was the most significant issue over two decades, and various arguments were used around the constitutional this and that. The last Government and the Attorney General advised that there should be no hindrance to access to information. That has happened and it has been very comprehensive. This is not, therefore, some empty gesture or performance, as the Deputy suggested it was. No one has a monopoly on compassion or concern about this issue. Equally, I would say that the redress scheme - people could argue its merits or demerits - has been a significant one. About 7,000 people have applied to date. My understanding is that up to 6,000-plus have had positive outcomes so far and the rest are being produced. This is along with many other initiatives undertaken by the last Government, and the former Minister, Roderic O’Gorman, in particular as the Minister responsible at the time for that issue. The legal position and the law as we currently have them, as the Deputy probably knows, prevent further intervention on the site due to the absence of evidence on burial locations. Robust safeguards are in place and the Government remains fully committed to survivor engagement, memorialisation and accountability. We still do not know where the children who died are buried, including at Bessborough. As the Deputy said, the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes examined the Bessborough site extensively, including using cartographic and archival research, site surveys and public appeals for information. The commission concluded that, while it was likely some children were buried on the grounds, it found no physical or documentary evidence locating burial sites. There have been different calls at different times, and there is not unanimity on this among survivors in terms of how the site should be treated or protected. It is a large site of approximately 60 acres at the moment. It was previously over 200 acres, so it has already been partially developed over the decades.

I thank the Taoiseach.

Excavation without evidence of location at the moment is not lawful nor feasible. I will come back in again.

Can the Taoiseach imagine what it must feel like to not know if your baby, your sibling or your niece or nephew is buried at the site in Bessborough or, potentially, was sold abroad? Like Carmel Cantwell said at the weekend, the truth lies in the grounds. We are talking about some of the worst human rights violations and some of the worst crimes imaginable. We are talking about forced family separation. We are talking about disappeared infants. We are talking about human trafficking. We are then talking about the potential. Can the Taoiseach imagine apartments being built on top of that uninvestigated, potential mass grave of disappeared babies? It is unbelievable. I asked the Taoiseach if the Government would compulsorily purchase the land, and he stood up and simply did not answer the question. He spoke around the issue for the entire reply, talked about how great the Government's scheme was, which excluded people who spent less than six months in an institution, and talked about the size of the site again.

I thank the Deputy.

Is there a site that is too big to warrant-----

The Taoiseach to respond.

-----the investigation of the disappearance of over 800 babies?

In my view, the local authority should have purchased the site compulsorily a number of years ago. It chose not to. Governments, by definition, do not just go in and purchase sites compulsorily. There are issues regarding how to how to protect and treat sites, without necessarily having to purchase it compulsorily. The history is a bit more complex than was articulated by the Deputy. It is much more so. It is not so simple. I will not say any more than that. I will put it this way to the Deputy: even within the context of the laws that have been passed and in terms of the planning application, she has not specified to me how the Government should intervene with An Coimisiún Pleanála. She must know the law, just like everybody else. It is a great thing to say-----

I said the Government should purchase land compulsorily.

Is it not a wonderful thing to say that we should interfere with An Coimisiún Pleanála? Just intervene.

No, I do not find it a wonderful thing to say.

Please, Deputy.

Sorry, but it is a very simple thing to say we should intervene in the planning process-----

The time is up. I thank the Taoiseach.

-----without any consequence, without even a question of-----

We now move to Deputy Ivana Bacik.

The Government will await the outcome of the planning appeal next week, and then we will see how to respond to that decision by An Coimisiún Pleanála.

For most children across the country, this is the first week of the summer holidays, an exciting and positive time. For hundreds of families, however, this is the first week of a final countdown they have long been dreading because, as of this week, far too many children with special educational needs are still officially without school places for this coming September. What a disgrace in a republic that claims to value education. In desperation, many parents have been forced to go public about their children's situations. One such parent is Labour Councillor Alison Field, who is in the Gallery today. On her Instagram account, one will find posts about her work providing support for people in her Dublin community every day. As of last night, one will also see posts about her work in her new role as Deputy Lord Mayor of Dublin city. I congratulate her, and I hope the Taoiseach will join me in congratulating her and, indeed, his own party colleague, the new Lord Mayor of Dublin, Daryl Barron. There is another running theme to Ali's social media posts. She has had to use her profile to highlight the ongoing failure of the State to provide her son James with a school place. Recently, James received rejections from two more schools. That brings the family's grand total up to 18. James, a vulnerable child, has been rejected 18 times, refused care and refused an education. In Ali's words, he has been on the Department's books since he was five. He is 12 now. The Department of education has had seven years to provide him with a secondary school place and to plan for this. Now, with mere weeks to go, his mother has again had to resort to social media to plead for answers. The family is banking on one last school, hoping for what Ali describes as a miracle. Families like Ali's should not need a miracle. What they are asking for is something that most children can take for granted. In a wealthy country in the 21st century, an education should be a given, but so many children have been abandoned by the State. I refer to children like six-year-old Kristian Walsh, who is autistic and non-verbal, and for whom this September will mark his third year without a primary school place. His mother says that most of her days are now spent fighting for a basic right that every child should enjoy. The Minister, Hildegarde Naughton, and the Taoiseach have repeatedly assured parents that every child will have a place. Is that true, though? Parents have heard these promises before. Many have had to become experts in advocacy and public policy because all they are getting are delays, confusion and copy-and-paste refusal letters. Many now say that they have no hope left. What can the Taoiseach say to someone who has lost the hope of providing their child with an education? When he knows there has been a shortage of places and that demand is rising, why are parents and children now entering the summer holidays without any certainty? Now that schools are closing for the summer, how many children are still without a school place for next year and when is the Government going to treat this as a national emergency? For many parents like Ali and many children like James, this is a personal emergency.

The scale of demand for special education places and our response to it over the past six years have been exceptional. I think that balance and perspective are required here. Thousands of children are being provided for every year and additional places are being found. The Deputy knows herself that when the portal was opened earlier last year, which was a good thing, the National Council for Special Education, NCSE, received applications from about 7,860 children for special placements. That was more than twice the number who did so ahead of the current school year. Let us acknowledge that. Of those 7,860, 6,000, or 75%, were already enrolled in a school but were seeking special provision in addition to the placement in a given school. Every child who requires a special school placement and who has notified the NCSE will have a place in September. That is the target. We have already announced 580 new special classes - 378 at primary level and 202 at post-primary - that will open this September. In addition, there are 60 new inclusive special classes, with the latest tranche of five additional classes announced yesterday by the Minister of State, Michael Moynihan. The number of primary special classes has grown by 99%, from approximately 1,319 to 2,629 today. Post-primary special classes have grown by 115%. That is from 517 to 1,122 over the past five years. The number of special needs assistants, SNAs, has increased by 45%. We will have more than 26,000 SNAs working in schools by the end of the year. There will be almost 22,500 special education teachers in place by year end. Sixteen new special schools have opened in the last number of years. Four more were recently announced in Balbriggan, Citywest, Bray and Monasterevin. Special school enrolments are up by 20%. Over 40% of special schools have benefited from new or upgraded buildings. Clearly, the Minister, Hildegarde Naughton, and the Minister of State, Michael Moynihan, and the Ministers and Ministers of State before them have been very active on the issue. We have more to do. I fully accept the anxiety, stress and trauma that a family, and parents in particular, can experience when they are finding it extremely difficult to get a school place. We have put in place provisions for the NCSE to be more proactive and act as advocates for children in securing an appropriate and suitable place for the child. Changes occurred prior to this school year. Some 6,000 additional students who were already in school have sought special accommodation. It is fair to say that the Department has been stretched but has moved at pace to provide the additional places, teachers and SNAs to meet the need that was out there.

We certainly acknowledge that places have been found for many children. Of course that is welcome, but it should not be remarkable or something to boast about. There are still children, parents and families left waiting and left without certainty. I welcome the Taoiseach's commitment - I think he did give a commitment - that every child who needs a school place will have one this year, but parents are losing hope that the Government will fulfil these promises because they have heard this before and there is still no certainty. After February's debacle, when the NCSE told 200 schools that they would lose SNAs, we thought there might be progress and certainty for special education. We have been here every year. Every year, we have heard from parents that their children, such as Kristian and James, are being left without a place. They and their families are paying a terrible price for this failure. We know that, for every period of time that a child is left without a place, it impacts negatively on their development. The Government already found hundreds of millions of euro for special education this year. Indeed, it had to bail out the Department of education earlier this year. Parents were told the resources would be there but we still do not know how many children, such as James and Kristian, are left without places. Can the Taoiseach guarantee those places will be available this September?

There are about 30,000 students now who are supported across special schools and special classes. The Deputy is correct that we allocated an additional €646 million to education. That is helping in terms of special education provision. Opening the portal early last year led to far more applications than perhaps was anticipated by the Department. The number of applications almost doubled, even though last year we delivered approximately 2,700 new special education places and well over 450 - close to 500 - special classes. This is growing exponentially. The bigger question for all of us in the Dáil and so on is how this evolves over time. More critical analysis and evaluation is required.

Thank you, Taoiseach.

There are 26,000 SNAs. The number has increased dramatically over the last five to six years.

Thank you, Taoiseach. Time is up. Deputy Boyd Barrett.

Provision is being provided and resources are being allocated.

As the Taoiseach knows, Ireland will take over the EU Presidency for six months as of tomorrow and the Taoiseach will host a launch event in Dublin Castle to commence the six months of the Irish EU Presidency. I will be joining a demonstration outside Dublin Castle with anti-war and peace groups, pro-neutrality groups and Palestine solidarity groups, because they and I are concerned that, rather than using the position of the EU Presidency to defend our tradition of neutrality and reflect the views of the majority of Irish people, who want to protect that tradition of neutrality, the Government will cave in to the agenda of Ursula von der Leyen and the European Union to ramp up in an enormous way the militarisation of Europe and the arms industry in Europe, and that it will do this at a time when the European Union is deeply complicit in the horrific genocide Israel is committing against the Palestinian people. The background to that is a policy document of the EU titled, tellingly, ReArm Europe Plan, which was published in the middle of last year - ReArm Europe. I am sure the Taoiseach is familiar with it, and if he were not that, would be a serious abdication of his responsibilities. It is a document which proposes to dramatically increase arms expenditure in Europe - about double it - from approximately €400 billion per year to €800 billion per year. This is money that could be spent on addressing the cost-of-living crisis, the housing crisis, health and education, but Europe is proposing to double arms expenditure. This is at the same time that Europe is exporting about €800 billion worth of arms and military components to Israel while it commits a genocide against the Palestinian people. My fear is that the Government will use this as a propaganda jamboree to justify what we know it has committed to, which is getting rid of the Irish triple lock, removing obstacles to the deployment of Irish troops where there is no UN mandate, while Europe is pushing for greater militarisation-----

Thank you, Deputy.

-----greater spending on weapons and arming a genocide in Gaza.

The Taoiseach to respond.

Will the Government stand up for neutrality?

The Taoiseach will respond.

Will it oppose the EU militarisation agenda and complicity with genocide or will it cave in to that agenda?

Ireland will assume the Presidency of the European Union. The three fundamental pillars of our Presidency will be competitiveness, values and security. On competitiveness, we are looking for a capital markets union. We will try to advance that agenda to enable Irish small- and medium-sized companies to get access to a far greater degree of venture capital in Europe. We hope we can establish - Commissioner Michael McGrath is pursuing this - the 28th regime or European Inc., which would basically mean that SMEs would be established on a pan-European basis from day one. We want to deepen the Single Market because Irish workers and people have benefited from it. We also want to simplify regulation to enable economic growth across the European Union. The European Union has been transformative for Ireland since we voted to join in 1972 and joined in 1973. It has been a transformative experience economically for Ireland and, among most populations across Europe, Ireland has enjoyed probably the highest pro-European Union sentiment on a consistent basis over the years. Many on the left have opposed the European Union and every treaty to do with it. That is their right and entitlement, but Europe is a far broader story than the one the Deputy painted. Fundamentally, we will be endeavouring to see if we can help the agenda of making Europe more competitive on the industrial front and technology front to create jobs for people and to protect the jobs Irish people already have. Many of our companies export to the European market. We export a lot of food to the European market. We export a lot of medical devices to the European market. We export a lot of pharmaceuticals to the European market. They are real jobs. Real Irish people depend on those jobs and depend on that market. The Deputy ignores all that and he has consistently ignored it in the context of the European agenda. Let us come to what he claims is rearming and militarisation. What is happening? What happened in the past five years? Can the Deputy recall? Ukraine was invaded, violently, by Russia and without any provocation. It was a total violation of the UN Charter. What has that created across the eastern flank? How does the Deputy think Finland, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland and Estonia feel? They do not have the geographic isolation we have here; we are far removed. They have a far greater existential fear of Russia than the Deputy or I have, even though we should be concerned in terms of technology and cybersecurity as well as subsea cable and gas connector sabotage.

Hear, hear.

The world has become much more complex but the Deputy ignores that all the time. There are parts of Europe that feel under existential threat. They do not believe the US will be there for them-----

Thank you, Taoiseach.

-----when the time comes and therefore they are-----

Thank you. Deputy Boyd Barrett to respond.

-----enhancing their military expenditure and defence expenditure. It is because of what happened in terms of Russia's behaviour.

I spent much of last night conversing with a young man from Ukraine who fled here because he did not want to be conscripted into the disastrous Ukrainian-Russian war and is fearful he is going to be sent back there because Zelenskyy is asking that people of his age now be sent back to fight on a front line where tens of thousands are being slaughtered. That disastrous war was, of course, started by Putin but young men like him do not want to fight in it. The Taoiseach did not refer to the document I mentioned. It states "The moment has come for Europe to re-arm. ... [we need] a massive increase in European defence spending ..." That is what is being urged by Ursula von der Leyen and the EU at the moment, namely, to double arms expenditure from about €400 billion to €800 billion at the same time as Europe is exporting about €800 billion in arms to Israel to commit genocide. We are a neutral country. That is about opposing militarism, war and so on. Is the Taoiseach going to speak up against that? Is he going-----

Thank you, Deputy.

-----to oppose the militarisation agenda-----

The Taoiseach to respond.

-----oppose the shameful complicity with the genocide-----

Thank you, Deputy. The Taoiseach to respond.

-----and do an about-turn on the question of the triple lock-----

The Taoiseach to respond now.

-----which is about dismantling our neutrality?

Taoiseach, please.

First of all, we will uphold Irish military neutrality. There is no issue with Irish military neutrality. There has been no attempt to undermine Irish military neutrality by Europe or by anybody else, for that matter, and the Deputy should stop scaremongering in respect of it. We are not joining NATO anytime soon. We are not militarily aligned and we have no intention of joining any military group or bloc. That is Irish military neutrality.

That is all it is.

Sorry?

No.

That is all it is for you. As long as we are not in NATO we are neutral.

I am sorry but you do not get to define it.

And you do not get to interrupt.

You do not get to define it. If you had your way you would not have an army at all. You said that to me one day here during question time when I asked you straight out if you believed we should have a military at all.

I did not. Check the record.

A bit of respect, please.

Okay. I am glad you maybe accept we might need some sort of military or defence capability. In any event, there is not unanimity across Europe - there is disagreement on Palestine - but Europe remains the biggest donor to Palestine globally. It is the biggest donor to Palestinians in terms of-----

Thank you, Taoiseach.

-----supporting Palestinians across the board from the PA to the ordinary Palestinians in terms of the vital essential services they require.

Before I move to the Order of Business, I welcome Tina and Killane Shine from Cork who are in the Gallery with Deputy Collins. Everybody I met today was from Cork and you are all very welcome.

We are the best county, a Cheann Comhairle.