Micheál Martin

I will discuss this matter with the Minister for housing. I do not have the specifics in respect of the latest decision on the Oliver Bond complex. I will revert when I discuss it with the Minister.

Over the years there has been significant expansion of bus services. I will have to talk to the Minister. There could be a resourcing issue. There are set budgets for all Departments. That was agreed at budget time in terms of the degree of expansion that could be entered into across the board. I will check what the position is in terms of the 132 bus service and the 199.

I think Deputy Malcolm Byrne would have been on about this as well as the Deputy. It is in Gorey. I do appreciate the work the Gaelscoil did in facilitating the location of the special school there. I certainly will talk to the Minister for education and see how we can progress this further. The Deputy is saying that the amenities and playing pitches the Gaelscoil has been enjoying are now under p…

Covid was an emergency. Before we got vaccination, people were dying and the fundamental objective of Government was to protect life and then to protect livelihoods. That was it, and all the stops had to be pulled out to enable us to do that.

I do not accept that five years on the Deputy can casually, at such remove, make such statements as he just made. If we did not get vaccination, and I presume the Deputy supports vaccination, we would have been in deep trouble and continuing trouble as a country, and more and more lives would have been lost.

First, I join the Ceann Comhairle in welcoming the Polish community in the Gallery in celebrating their constitution day. I pay tribute to Deputy Malcolm Byrne, in particular, who is the convenor of the Irish Polish parliamentary group. I welcome the ambassador to-be Mr. Artur Michalski to the House. I fully reject the Deputy’s analysis of the situation. The first point I would make is that yet a…

Since the war broke out, the Deputy keeps pretending it has not happened.

It is almost as if she is living in a parallel universe. We have a huge issue-----

-----as have the world and Europe because of that war which is following on earlier shocks, in terms of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the energy crisis that happened then. We need a Government-----

-----and we need a political response that understands the seismic potential damage of this crisis. The Deputy is ignoring it and that is irresponsible and negligent. Anybody I meet, at European level or anywhere, is very concerned about not only the short-term impact but the medium- and long-term impacts to the world of this energy shock crisis. That is not overstating it - that is what people ar…

What happens in October if this crisis does not abate? What happens in January? What happens our housing investments or our investments across in education, health and childcare? The USC brings in €5 billion to €6 billion. The Deputy wants something for everyone in the audience. She wants universal energy credits. She wants to give credits to the wealthiest in society. She does not believe in targ…

We have to think even short term to October. We should be looking at more permanent measures that help to alleviate the cost of living. Tá géarghá é sin a dhéanamh. Tá an-chuid déanta againn agus tá níos mó le déanamh againn dan dabht. It is not next year's budget but next October's budget, which is a number of months away.

No, not necessarily, and the Deputy knows that is not the truth either. We know that we have to help people over next winter, which will be a crucial period, but we are going to do it in a measured, sensible way, not Sinn Féin's way, which is the Liz Truss way,-----

-----which nearly blew the British economy apart. That is where Sinn Féin is going.

Hold on a second. The budget that we announced last year-----

We have introduced permanent measures that reduce the cost of living. In terms of healthcare, we eliminated all hospital charges. In terms of education, there are free primary schoolbooks.

In terms of primary schools, there are free hot school meals. These are measures that matter. We have expanded the back to school allowance and so on.

In terms of the fuel allowance, we expanded that.

The Deputies have to keep interrupting because they do not like the truth, but 450,000 working families benefit from the fuel allowance. We brought in the working family payment within that. We have done very effective, targeted measures, including free contraception, HRT, and going right through the health services.

These all reduce the cost of living for working families. Sinn Féin chooses to ignore that.

I welcome at long last that Sinn Féin has acknowledged that there is a war in the Middle East. That is progress from its perspective-----

-----but I do not accept Sinn Féin's approach to how to resolve the issues for people.

I fundamentally disagree with the Deputy's proposition. The State is investing the majority of funding in housing right now and has been for the last three to four years.

Deputy Bacik's presentation, saying that we are favouring the private market, does not add up. There are record levels of State investment, nearly up to €10 billion this year.

They are not tax breaks at all. Come on, the Deputy knows it. That is untrue. Let us have an honest debate about it. The only thing Labour has produced in its policy responses is a State housing development agency. That is all. Not one paragraph in it is fleshed out at all, as far as I can see.