-----by the HSE that this matter will be resolved. In this specific case, the intervention has happened and the Minister of State, Deputy Butler, has been advised that it will be resolved. I will discuss the broader issue with the Minister for Health and the chief executive officer of the HSE in terms of cases involved, such as this one, and, more broadly, in terms of the broader dental situation and children with ad…
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
705,467
words spoken in the chamber
703,329 as a minister, 2,138 as a TD
198
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 4 November 2026.
Contributions to debates 6,677 in all
Dec 2024Nov 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 |
| November 2026 | 131 |
Debates they spoke in most
Plus 6,554 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
The bottom line is that the State has intervened very strongly and assertively in the housing market. The State is the main player, I would argue, in the housing market right now in terms of the level of State investment. That is increasing and has increased over the last number of years. As I said yesterday, we are at record levels of social housing new builds compared with the last three decades. The Deputy can go …
I can come back.
What does that mean?
Come on.
A few people tried that.
Actually the State is involved in the apartment building area at huge cost and a genuine debate would ask whether there are better ways of doing it. I do not know what the Deputy means by turning the LDA into a genuine vehicle, as though it is not genuine now. However, when I indicated last week, as everyone outside agrees, that we need private sector investment-----
Most economic people and experts in housing are saying it.
The Deputy attacks people for mentioning it. She moves straight to tax breaks. She might benefit from looking at the history of her party on this. I quote:
We are creating this process for bringing in private investment. I hope to launch a new scheme in relation to investment in social housing in the near future, a new process for bringing in investors.
Can we guess who said that when he was Minister for housing? I…
-----back in the day when AK47 was firing on all cylinders.
When I mentioned it last week-----
-----there was outrage and hyperbole.
No, this was before the 2016 election.
Do not get tetchy, Alan.
I thank the Deputy for raising this issue. I accept fully that the journey of parents of children with special needs is an extremely challenging, difficult and traumatic one. They simply have to fight too hard and too long for access to services and in some cases, though not all, for education and access to school places. It is my objective as Taoiseach to change this story and it is a key priority of mine, along wit…
There will be a relentless focus on this for the lifetime of this Government.
I will come back on the situation on the CDNTs. That recruitment continues.
On education, it should be acknowledged that there has been a huge increase in public expenditure, and rightly so, on special education. It now constitutes 25% of the overall education budget, or about €3 billion now. Money, however, does not mean a whole lot to people if they are waiting for school places. We have some 23,000 special needs …
I will start by acknowledging the work the Deputy did when he was the Minister responsible for this area in the last Government for close to five years. I hope he acknowledges the commitment of the Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael parties, with the Green Party, to the issue of childcare during the last Government when it dealt substantially with pay and conditions and money was allocated to successive Ministers for public e…
The immediate issue is primarily the allocation of resources and also working through what we mean by public health model and how we integrate it with the school-based model for children from the age of four and a half or four years upwards. That is the big question. We then have to ask about the funding implications of that and identify how much would it cost and how we would plan, in terms of the overall allocation…
I understand what Deputy Doherty is at here. Deputy Michael Lowry is an independent TD. He is not one of ours.
I will say one thing. Sinn Féin needs to reflect. A funeral happened this week. While I have great time for the victims and for wife and those who have lost a loved one, the truth is that Deputy Doherty's party called somebody who murdered five innocent people in a bar and injured 16 more and who was involved in the murder of a trainee garda and a member of the Defence Forces in Derradda Woods a patriot.
What Michael Lowry did-----
-----pales into insignificance in terms of what the members of your movement did. Please-----
I would ask Deputies Doherty and McDonald-----
-----to ask members-----