Cian O'Callaghan

I, too, welcome the Little Blue Heroes and the gardaí and commend everyone involved in that. Listening to the Taoiseach's answers, I wonder if he gets it at all. He was presented with the stark reality people face in terms of grocery prices and he rattled off a list of numbers and inflation rates rather than acknowledging the real difficulties people are facing when they do their weekly shop. I d…

Well, if the Taoiseach were listening, the question was whether is he going to act-----

-----to ensure all supermarket chains have to declare their profits in full detail.

The Taoiseach did rattle off a range of figures about inflation but did not acknowledge the real hardship people face in terms of grocery prices. I ask him to acknowledge that. Last week, his Government took the decision to lift the pay caps for senior high-paid bankers. Newspapers reported that means, for instance, the annual package of the head of AIB could go from €500,000 to €2 million. Those …

I move: That Dáil Éireann: notes that: — Israel Sovereign Bonds, known as Israel Bonds, have, since 1951, raised funds for the Israeli Treasury for use across the Israeli economy including the Israeli military and the illegal settlements; — Israel Bonds have since October 2023, been advertised as war bonds with the slogan "Stand with Israel – Israel is at War", and the website marketing the bo…

I have a right to come in as well. The Ceann Comhairle cannot cut our speaking time like that just because the Minister went over his speaking time.

It is not right.

It is completely unfair that the Ministers went over their speaking time and we have been cut off.

We have six minutes of our speaking time left.

That has never happened before.

I thank everybody who contributed to this cross-party motion and spoke on it today. Let us be very clear about this. The Minister and the Government are hiding behind technicalities and standard arguments that are wheeled out to justify inaction. The Government could act on this if it wanted to do so. The Central Bank is independent; that is correct. However, as Deputy Connolly pointed out, it is …

Renters are already in an incredibly stressful situation having seen their rents doubled over the last decade and the Government is now not helping the situation by sowing confusion. It did that yesterday. The launch, as regards the understanding of it and the contradictory messages coming out, was an absolute shambles. The Taoiseach is at it again today. He told the Dáil just a few minutes ago th…

That is not true.

The Taoiseach knows that we put forward proposals to bring extra financing into housing. His criticism is that it is going to take a couple of years but his party has had decades at this and it cannot get the situation right. If it takes a couple of years to get more financing into the system, it is absolutely worth it. The fact is that most renters are going to face huge rent increases. The Taois…

They are going to enter new tenancies and the Taoiseach will not even acknowledge that. He will not acknowledge that in what he is saying.

Tell us how many renters-----

What proportion of renters over the coming years will not face this reset to full market rents? Tell us that. Most are going to face that. When they end a tenancy, they are going to be in this new system where, effectively, the RPZ rent regulation is ripped up on them and they are going to face full market rents.

Until-----

Or new tenancies-----

Or new tenancies-----

Up to the gills-----

And new tenants-----

I also extend my sympathy to those affected by the school shooting in Austria. The Taoiseach was right about one thing; I did not expect these proposals. That is because at no stage in recent months, weeks or even today, until the press release was issued earlier, was there any mention by Government in all its spin that what it is actually introducing here - and the Taoiseach has not even acknowl…

The Taoiseach can talk about his 2%, inflation and all the rest of it but if people are going to face astronomical rent increases they cannot afford every six years, Government will drive more people into homelessness. In a country where rents are already incredibly high - among the highest in Europe - the Taoiseach will only make things worse. Will he admit that in the last bullet point of his pr…

Time and again, we have put forward proposals to increase supply and financing, most recently with regard to leveraging some of the savings on deposit in Ireland and incentivising how they could be invested in housing. Pension funds in other countries invest in housing that is affordable. The Government is creating a system in which rents just go up and up, beyond people's reach. That is the diffe…