Micheál Martin

With respect, stop trying to bully your way-----

I have the floor.

I am simply saying-----

I will finally say this to you, Deputy.

We need to have rules here in the House and not disruption.

There are particular rules about interruptions as well.

The key issue in housing is supply. Everything the Government is doing is and will be focused on increasing the supply of houses right across the board. This includes an increased number of social houses. In the last four years, a record 48,000 social houses have been provided. Not since 2008 has that level of new-build social housing been provided. In addition, we brought in the tenant in situ sc…

Last year, approximately 1,500 houses were acquired in tenant in situ situations. This scheme has only been in place for a very short period of time. There has been a very rapid expansion of the scheme. I am not criticising local authorities. Many availed of the scheme and pushed forward with its delivery. We saw a record number of new social homes constructed in 2023, as well as local authority …

I appreciate the Deputy's acknowledgement of certain measures the Government has taken. The Government has acted, as indeed has the Opposition. The Deputy made a very fair point about the State of Palestine today and the question of how one reconstructs a pathway to a two-state solution in the context of the appalling war and genocide being waged by Israel. I am very conscious of the particular fa…

It is at that level-----

-----and at the level of the United States Government that the real leverage can happen to get Israel to stop.

On the bond issue, the Central Bank of Ireland is part of the European Central Bank. It is a constituent member of the European Central Bank. We all know that.

No, it does not act unilaterally on fundamental matters.

That is the reality of Ireland joining the European Central Bank. The Central Bank is independent of the Government, by the way. That is a fundamental point of central banks. Politicians and other political leaders rail against central banks. That is another inconvenient truth-----

It does not sell.

It is a very narrow area in terms of the prospectuses and whether that would-----

There are limits. If all of us want to be honest about this - I want to get the right phrase here - we are really on very narrow ground here.

We are, really. This is not as proclaimed. The Central Bank is not facilitating anything-----

-----or approving bonds or anything like that.

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue and the cases of Emilia and Hannah. Will the Deputy confirm that Hannah did not get the surgery?

Okay. I do not want to put too much of a burden on the parent, but the issue should be formally referred to the Medical Council, for example, or to the authorities in CHI. It is important now that the Medical Council takes a role here in terms of the professional regulation of its members.

There is an onus on the Medical Council to be proactive in respect of this issue. I am conscious that it is a random, anonymised sample, although, to paraphrase, the author says there is a preponderance to a smaller number of surgeons in this context. I do not know who the clinical director at Cappagh is, by the way, but I know who the clinical director was at that time. That in itself is a seriou…

The Minister has said already in response to that the last evening that she is not ruling out going beyond 2010, but that the priority right now has to be followed through-----

Let us be sensible about it. The Minister has to deal with those where skeletal maturity applies in terms of the cases that have been the subject matter of the external review, which is about 15 years. For those over that, they are in a transitional programme of care already as they transition to adult care. However, the Minister has said that this can be looked at in the context of getting the fi…

I thank the Deputy very much for raising this issue. I always marvel at the scenic beauty of County Kerry. I was down there on Monday at Fossa-----