Paul Murphy

In response to the fuel crisis, other countries are rolling out additional services. Some are making public transport free, which we have called for for a long time. The Government did not provide any funding for new services in this budget. Will it reverse that decision in light of the fuel crisis? Will it provide additional funding for new services to be rapidly rolled out to alleviate the fuel …

To respond to the climate crisis and the cost-of-living and fuel crises, we need to rapidly roll out as much public transport as quickly as is possible. That is not what is currently happening. Dublin Bus is sitting on 50 new electric buses. They are expensive and very good quality presumably but they are sitting there not being used because of a lack of appropriate infrastructure. The oldest new …

Yes, please.

I ask the Minister to give me a date for when all the electric buses will be in use. I would like that. I will hold him to it.

There are 50 brand new electric buses still not being used. The issue that the Minister did not come back to is that each time we add one of the electric buses, we are withdrawing a diesel bus. Why on earth are we doing that? Why are we not having more buses in the system? That is what we need. We need a lot of more buses. Why are we scrapping routes? We introduced the BusConnects routes. That is …

I was calling round to people's houses in Dublin Central the other night and met a woman who said to me "Everything's going up. My rent is going up" - she is a Dublin City Council tenant - "The price of petrol is going up. Groceries are going up. Everything is going up except for my wages." She is right. Statistically, that is the case. Prices are up almost a quarter over the past five years and p…

I want to ask about corporate capture of the Government, enabling landlords to build shed-sits with no planning permission, to rent them out with no legal protections, to evict tenants at any time with no right of appeal, no reason and no basis to go to the RTB. Where did this dystopian idea come from? A corporate think-tank set up by the billionaire Collison brothers. Plugging the idea two years …

It is its idea.

It is its idea.

2. Deputy Paul Murphy asked the Taoiseach if he will report on his attendance at the annual World Economic Forum meeting in Davos. [6017/26]

The World Economic Forum is a place where billionaires and multimillionaires gather together with Heads of Government and Ministers. It is a place where the policy interests of the billionaire class are transmitted to their political representatives, the likes of the Taoiseach. In this country, the richest billionaires we have, who obviously are not resident, are the Collison brothers. They, like …

Deputy Boyd Barrett spoke about the workers today.

He has to repeat the Kilmainham workers, though.

They are one of them.

For the family members, not for renters.

24. Deputy Paul Murphy asked the Taoiseach if he will report on the work of the Cabinet offshore wind energy clearing house. [29039/26]

The new cost-of-living crisis underlines the need to get to 100% renewable energy as quickly as possible. For Ireland, that means developing offshore wind. It is quite incredible that for the past 20 years, successive Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael Governments have been in power and have failed to add any offshore wind energy to the grid. We have less offshore wind energy today than we did 20 years ago…

-----dependent on fossil fuels. We cannot control what we do not own.

Will the Government change course and switch to a public model?

Fianna Fáil was in government for a long time before that.

Will the Tánaiste join with me in calling for An Post to reverse the disastrous decision to move the sorting office for Dublin 16 out of Dublin 16, moving it from Edmondstown to Lucan. It makes no sense whatsoever. It is not clear where the public who miss packets and parcels are going to have to go to collect them. They may have to go all the way to Lucan to collect parcels that they miss. It cer…

This is very simple. The school building, as it is, is simply not fit for continued use. There are serious health and safety concerns. When we visited there was very clearly water still coming through and sitting on top of tiles. You could see water coming in beside an interactive electric panel, which clearly represented a danger. A couple of years ago there was a partial ceiling collapse while c…

There is lots in the roof report carried out by Morris Roofing and Cladding. The key point is the roof has gone beyond economic repair due to its nearly 50 years of age. The fundamental problem is the school is over 50 years old and needs a new replacement building. That is not just the opinion of some teachers, students or parents but of the architect originally appointed by the Department 12 yea…

I thank Deputy O'Gorman and the Green Party for tabling the motion, which we support. We have also tabled two amendments, which I will mention later. The main point is that history will not treat this Government kindly, if history gets to be written. Maybe that is what it is counting on. One after another, the Government is ripping up its climate commitments relating to LNG, data centres, public …

It has been a bad week for the Government; it is been a good week for people power. The fuel protests caused the resignation of a Minister of State and the sudden appearance of the young Turks of Fianna Fáil. Those protests led to the majority of the Government being reduced and the Government being destabilised. That is before we get to the by-elections in just over a month's time. It is often s…