I do not criticise Enterprise Ireland for supporting a technology company or a drone company. There are applications of drones that would be particularly legitimate. Why someone has to get a drone for a cup of coffee is beyond me. You need to walk around to the local shop and get your coffee, or make the cup of coffee, or green tea or whatever your poison is. I have to agree with the Deputy there. We need balance and…
TDs / Micheál Martin
Micheál Martin
Taoiseach
Portrait: © Houses of the Oireachtas (Oireachtas (Open Data) PSI Licence) · source file
0
questions asked
Members of the Government answer questions rather than ask them
688,766
words spoken in the chamber
686,628 as a minister, 2,138 as a TD
197
votes recorded
Each Yes, No or Abstained in a recorded vote
From the Dáil chamber only: committee meetings are not in this archive.
Members of the Government answer parliamentary questions rather than ask them, so this page lists none of theirs.
Month by month
Low months are usually recesses, when the Dáil does not sit. The archive runs to 22 October 2026.
Contributions to debates 6,546 in all
Dec 2024Oct 2026
Show as a table
| Month | Contributions |
|---|---|
| December 2024 | 11 |
| January 2025 | 6 |
| February 2025 | 438 |
| March 2025 | 518 |
| April 2025 | 317 |
| May 2025 | 426 |
| June 2025 | 424 |
| July 2025 | 344 |
| August 2025 | 0 |
| September 2025 | 146 |
| October 2025 | 375 |
| November 2025 | 291 |
| December 2025 | 281 |
| January 2026 | 326 |
| February 2026 | 529 |
| March 2026 | 229 |
| April 2026 | 385 |
| May 2026 | 474 |
| June 2026 | 425 |
| July 2026 | 181 |
| August 2026 | 0 |
| September 2026 | 198 |
| October 2026 | 222 |
Debates they spoke in most
Plus 6,426 contributions in the regular slots, such as Leaders' Questions and Priority Questions. Speech from the chair is not counted.
Party, constituency and offices
- constituency Cork South-Central 29 November 2024 to now
- party Fianna Fáil 29 November 2024 to now
- office Taoiseach 23 January 2025 to now
I apologise. To Deputy Ó Cearúil, I absolutely agree on the need for social infrastructure to be considered alongside expansion, schools, creches and other social infrastructure.
I agree with Deputy Heneghan on the detention ponds and all that. There are mechanisms that are low cost that can be used and should be deployed. On Dublin Bay more generally, we want to clean up our waterways and estuaries significantly.
…
I was intrigued by the Deputy's commentary that he has very good local contacts with Uisce Éireann and that occasionally he has very good engagement with the corporate level but suddenly it seems to have fallen into a lull at the moment.
You want us to step in and resuscitate----
----oil the wheels of your engagement process with Uisce Éireann. I will take an opportunity to refer them to your comments.
I will remember that.
I join with the Ceann Comhairle in welcoming our special guests from County Tipperary, our Little Blue Heroes, who have come to watch proceedings here in the Dáil. They had a busy morning. They had a Garda escort and were greeted by the Minister for Justice, Home Affairs and Migration, Deputy Jim O'Callaghan, the Ceann Comhairle and Deputy Michael Murphy. I was delighted to attend the Little Blue Heroes ball in Killa…
We will deal with this issue in the budget, but consumer price inflation, as measured by the European Union harmonised index of consumer prices, HICP index, has eased significantly over the past two years, with the annual inflation rate in May 2025 standing at 1.4% compared with 2% in May of last year. That is below the 2% target rate of inflation set by the ECB. In April, Ireland had the sixth lowest rate of inflati…
Additionally, with inflation expected to grow by 2% this year, nominal wage growth-----
-----is set to reach 5.5%. That will result in real wage growth of between 3% and 3.5% this year. When inflation was high, we did not have that to offset it. We now have it at significant levels. That is an effective way of dealing with this issue, in addition to the measures we will take in the budget to deal with that.
I thank the Deputy for raising this very important issue. I take issue with the term "released" from school. Children these days enjoy school and have very good experiences in our schools but they are going out to enjoy the summer holidays. Through many other avenues of government, we will endeavour to give supports to children throughout the summer holidays. More specifically, the issue of homelessness is key. A key…
Over the last five years since Fianna Fáil came back into government we have built close to 48,000 social houses - delivered. That is the most in 40 years. You would have to go back to the 1970s to get that level of social housing construction, but we need more because the population has increased. That is a factor in this. The composition of those presenting for homelessness and emergency accommodation has also chan…
-----and through the approved housing bodies and those involved in the homelessness area to address this issue.
The question is?
Am I going to-----
First of all, I say to the Deputy that he has a tremendous habit of asserting what I said earlier, which of course I did not say at all.
I did not rattle off any figures when I was answering Deputy McDonald.
I did not. What I said was, I outlined what TASC, the Think-tank for Action on Social Change, said in its publication today. That is not rattling off figures. It basically said that the short-term, once-off cost-of-living packages that we introduced had a very significant impact in helping people to deal with what has been the worst inflationary spiral since the 1970s, which we had after Covid and as a result of the …
-----but they still did not go to meet the enormity of the increases people experienced at the time. Do not say I just rattled off figures. I did not.
I then went on to say that we had extended the VAT reduction to 9%, which we did. That is not rattling off figures. That is a fact, which has had some impact. I mentioned free-of-charge HRT coming in on 1 June.
I mentioned the extension of the free schoolbooks scheme to all students. If you have one income coming in, we all know that every September and every summer, schoolbooks, going back to school and the cost of schoolbooks was the bane of most parents' lives. That is gone, eliminated. The Deputies did not have the good grace to acknowledge that. I do not expect any acknowledgement, but they just ignored that and its im…
I did acknowledge, and have spoken a couple of times today about, the elevated level of grocery prices and the impact it is having on households. Please do not say I did not acknowledge it. I did. It is the Deputy's standard practice now to make assertions that are not true. Of course prices are impacting on families and households but the taxation measures we took last year in the budget benefited low-income workers…
We are looking at every aspect of cost and price with a view to getting prices down.
I assure Deputy O'Callaghan that we understand fully the degree to which this is impacting on people, households and families, but we have taken very effective measures. They include ones that even the Social Democrats did not advocate for, such as free schoolbooks, notwithstanding the position that party adopts on so many issues.
I thank the Deputy for raising the issue of primary care and GP provision. Undoubtedly, in rural Ireland in particular and in some urban areas, over recent years there have been challenges accessing a GP and getting a GP. On the other hand, there have also been significant developments and growth, particularly in terms of the number of places at third level. That has increased very significantly over the last two to …