I will come back to the Deputy with a date.
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 thank the Deputy for his constructive, low-hanging fruit-type ideas. I will talk to the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, in respect of those issues and how we can incentivise or trigger a greater uptake and utilisation of them.
On the EV question, something has to be done there.
Ní aontaím leis an Teachta. Is éard atá faoi chaibidil ag an Rialtas ná cabhair agus tacaíocht a thabhairt do dhaoine ar ioncam íseal agus do na daoine is boichte sa tír. Sin é an fáth go bhfuil, ó thaobh cúrsaí leasa shóisialaigh de, cabhair agus tacaíocht á dtabhairt againn. Tá níos mó cabhrach agus tacaíochta á dtabhairt don tionscal haulage chomh maith mar tá sé riachtanach ó thaobh cúrsaí geilleagar na tíre.
Th…
With the greatest respect, the only party of late that has been courting bankers and developers and every sort of corporate financial operation is Sinn Féin, particularly in the United States, where the party has raised a hell of a lot of money from developers and builders. Spare lecturing everybody else about fundraising from developers and bankers and everybody because Sinn Féin has been doing it on a serial basis …
Deputy McDonald speaks out of both sides of her mouth when it comes to all of that playbook that she just regurgitates every time there is an event or a crisis in the world. We do not take Sinn Féin's approach. Exactly what we are doing here is targeting our measures on the fuel allowance, which would help poorer families and low-income working families withstand the impact of the increases in home heating oil and ot…
You are not leader yet, Deputy. I keep on saying you are not leader of the party; do not be interrupting. The bottom line is that the evidence is there that we looked after the lowest income groups and through the household benefit scheme as well, which was successfully improved as a result of the budget.
I acknowledge that people are under a lot of pressure in terms of the impact of this crisis and the cost of energy as a result of this war. There is no question about that. The Government is limited in how comprehensively it can respond. Governments cannot compensate every single person in society. I am sure the Deputy would acknowledge that. We need a realistic assessment of this and a realistic discussion about it.…
There is a lot of flexible remote working in our economy already and-----
-----particularly in the public service, the degree of remote working in quite significant and prevalent now. The Deputy again attacked the reduction of VAT for hospitality. That supports a lot of minimum wage workers in our economy, people the Labour Party should be supporting and defending.
Not everybody in the hospitality sector is on the minimum wage but, nonetheless, it was about protecting jobs in an important sector of our economy. With changing job profiles with AI and everything else, it is particularly important that tourism and hospitality are protected and looked after, and that is what we did in the budget.
In terms of LNG, Deputy Bacik referred to energy security, the LNG facility is requir…
It is not nonsense. It is rubbish to suggest that we should not put in an LNG facility in this country. It is absolute nonsense in terms of-----
I am sorry; if anything happened the gas connectors linking this country to the United Kingdom, this economy would not survive beyond ten days. That is the reality. That is the advice we received from an energy security perspective. The Opposition has to twist it - not the Deputy personally - but it gets twisted, it gets spun as an anti-climate measure. It is anything but that. It is an energy security and economic s…
I appreciate the Deputy raising these issues in a constructive light. It is not just the Deputy that has made the comment that the Government has waited for weeks and weeks. We are in a war for three weeks. We need some perspective here. The Government does not have billions and billions to allocate on a monthly basis, which is the implication one could draw from all of the protestations from the Opposition today. We…
What we did for child support payments was the most significant - record increases of €8 per week for children under 12, and €16 per week for children over 12. As part of the child poverty unit in my own Department, with the Minister, Deputy Calleary, we have focused on that child poverty package, which is permanent. Today, DEIS plus was approved by Cabinet. We have taken a series of measures that have worked on the …
The working family payment was generally designed with low-income workers in mind. They are now included in the fuel allowance, which I think is a significant targeted measure by the Government, and the correct one. It is a framework that exists already. This package is about €250 million. I am not sure what the Deputy is saying he would take out. I am not clear on his costings, and I would need to get it costed prop…
We do have an energy plan. At the European Council meeting last week, there was a very interesting presentation by President von der Leyen, which went back from the late 1970s through every decade to the present day. The one constant was that every energy crisis was a fossil fuel crisis generated through war and conflict with the most recent being the Russian invasion of Ukraine before this war. The Deputy attacked t…
On the offshore wind, we held the onshore RESS 5 and the offshore Tonn Nua auctions, which have delivered wind energy projects at competitive prices for consumers. The Department expects the five projects that bid into the offshore one auction to be in construction by 2030, marking a new phase in electricity generation in Ireland. The second offshore auction was the first to be held under the new spatial plan for off…
-----this country will be grounded in renewables, wind, solar and battery storage.
The level of domestic and gender-based violence is a tremendous stain on our society. There has been a step change in Government responses in the past number of years. Funding is now at about €80 million under the last budget. The establishment of Cuan has been an important step change in terms of dedicated, focused provision of services and the representation of the zero-tolerance strategy. There has been a €12 mill…
There is a whole range of other measures as well that we have outlined.
The Deputy seems very confused in her presentations on the rental market. On one level, she is complaining about evictions she suggests are caused by recent reforms of the rental market, which were all about protecting tenants and the six-year term. Which is it?
If the Deputy banned evictions, she would cause greater churn and a greater loss of landlords. The facts do not bear out what she said. The latest RTB data shows continued growth in quarter 4 of last year with 243,598 tenancies, the highest on record. There were 104,687 private landlords, broadly unchanged year on year. Churn is normal but overall numbers are stable and, actually, rising. A total of 17,342 new tenanc…
-----for larger landlords, places stronger restrictions on tenancy termination and caps rent increases at inflation.
The Competition and Consumer Protection Commission is there to ensure fair play in the marketplace. The Government certainly will be keeping a very watchful eye on this issue. If there is not pass-through, that will have implications for any potential future measures we might take in the energy market itself. We will be keeping a weathervane eye on this in the coming days. I take the Deputy's point that prices went u…
I will check with the Minister of State with responsibility for special education in respect of that report and timelines for its publication. There is forward planning now. We brought forward the date by which parents and students apply for places in our schools. That has happened this year, as the Deputy must be aware. The establishment of a central database has to happen but I acknowledge it is not there yet. Ther…