Peadar Tóibín

The Minister said exactly the same thing to me this morning. He said that it is not his responsibility.

I want the Minister to withdraw the allegation that there was any misrepresentation of his view today.

Can the Minister withdraw the allegation as false?

No.

Will the Minister withdraw the allegation that is incorrect?

They are the ones who are-----

The Minister is doing a disservice here.

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Bill. Vulnerable children have been treated terribly by the State and it is a dark mark against the Government and the previous Government. There are many good things in the Bill. There are bad things there also and I want to go into detail on them. When it comes to child protection and child welfare, there is no doubt we have to get better in terms of int…

It is not starting until 4 o'clock.

Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Greens.

This Government is the worst in the history of the State when it comes to the delivery of infrastructure. In practically every infrastructural space, its projects are either grinding to a halt or going way over budget. For ten years, under this Government, Ireland was at the very bottom of European spending on infrastructure per capita. That is incredible. It is really hard to listen to Fianna Fái…

My Aontú colleagues, Deputy Paul Lawless and Melissa Byrne, are in Strasbourg today lobbying MEPs to vote to send the Mercosur deal to the European Court of Justice. Our team has spoken to dozens of MEPs. A referral to the ECJ would legally freeze the agreement and allow for proper scrutiny of its environmental, competition and legal implications. While the Taoiseach's Government says that it is o…

Will the Taoiseach not-----

This is outrageous. My question was not answered at all. The reason the Taoiseach is not answering it-----

You did not.

You said you-----

15. Deputy Peadar Tóibín asked the Taoiseach for an update on the implementation of the Dublin city task force report. [3829/26]

Let us be honest: many parts of this great capital are now in decline. Moore Street, one of the most important battlefield sites in the country, the headquarters of the 1916 Rising and the ground zero of the independence struggle, was supposed to redeveloped ten years ago in time for the 1916 centenary commemorations. Maybe the bicentenary will be a better timescale for the Taoiseach's Government …

What about Moore Street?

This Government has significantly neglected older people for many years. We saw during the Covid crisis the number of older people who were moved out of hospitals and into nursing homes were in their thousands. It happened all of a sudden. It happened on the direction of the HSE and it had the effect of bringing older people from hospitals, without testing them properly for Covid, and placing them…

Aontú is a long-term critic of AI and its gross under-regulation in this country. We were the first party to call for an Oireachtas committee on AI. We believe there should be far stricter democratic oversight of AI. There is little regulation if we are honest and that is because a lot of governments are afraid to stand up to the oligarchs who own the technology. In many ways, AI, like nuclear pow…

One of the biggest problems of this Government over the past ten to 15 years has been its absolute inability to build infrastructure. Probably the biggest legacy element of the Government is that it cannot deliver necessary infrastructure and could not deliver it on time. Regardless of whether we are looking at housing, healthcare and hospitals, transport infrastructure like motorways, rail lines …

The Government is one of the most significant drivers of rip-off Ireland. Many of the costs affecting families currently are being driven up by the Government. To take electricity as an example, Ireland has one of the highest electricity costs in the whole of the European Union and the gap between retail price and electricity costs here is one of the largest in the world. The ESB is a semi-State c…

First of all, real income fell in 2021, 2022 and 2023. We are talking about a marginal recovery on those particular years. The Taoiseach talks about fuel allowances. The Government is giving money with one hand but picking the pockets of people with the other. The Government is taking more in fuel taxes than it is giving back in allowances. What we are talking about here is the working poor. In t…

We have the highest electricity costs.