Richard Boyd Barrett

That is not a commitment.

To talk.

We got that commitment last night.

The problem is the Government has breached and failed to vindicate their rights. As a result, more than 50 parents will be gathering to sleep out for 24 hours tomorrow. These are parents who are looking after children with special needs and who feel they have to go to the lengths of doing a 24-hour round-the-clock sleep-out protest outside the Department of Education because the Government cannot …

Will the Tánaiste be down there tomorrow at 1 p.m.?

We have been asking for this debate for eight or nine months and I have got four minutes. I will try to make a few points about the generality of the housing crisis and the failure of the Government to address it, yet I have no choice in the little time available to me but to raise a specific issue with the Minister which I hope he will take on board, namely, the St. Germaine apartments in Ballybr…

I thank Deputy Coppinger for bringing forward the motion. As others have, I pay tribute to those in the Public Gallery for coming here today and for having the courage to speak up, and to advocate and campaign on this issue. Their presence is hugely important because listening to the Government and some of the contributions here, they might think that there is a very clear determination to address…

There certainly is a delay with the committees and the business of the House is being stalled because of that. That is solely the responsibility of the Government for trying to overstep the mark of all previous convention and trying to muddy the waters between the Government and the Opposition for its own advantage, and to neuter the Opposition. It is not good enough for it to have a majority, to …

Will there be pre-legislative scrutiny?

The Government is waging a very thinly veiled stealth war against Irish neutrality. The move to remove the triple lock is part of that very conscious and deliberate campaign by this Government to undermine our traditional neutrality. Can the Tánaiste please explain why the Government is getting rid of the triple lock? Is it not clearly just a move to undermine Ireland's traditional neutrality and …

I do not trust Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael with Irish neutrality. For example, the Department of Defence has just contracted a US defence agency based in the pentagon to redesign the Irish Defence Forces. In the blurb on its website, this US pentagon-based company says it is grounded in American values. Maybe they are the values of Donald Trump as he has shown in a video the Tánaiste may have seen a…

The point of the UN part of the triple lock is that we do not deploy troops in conflicts between the big imperial powers. The Minister is right: Putin is a nasty imperialist aggressor. However, is it not interesting that he does not call Trump a nasty imperialist aggressor when he has just said to the Ukrainians, "We might consider giving you a few weapons, but only if you give us all those raw ma…

The Minister has not given one example.

I am listening very carefully.

They are not good examples.

Every single opinion polls show the majority of people are in favour of neutrality.

Whatever. They also, in their hundreds of thousands, protested about decisions of previous Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael Governments to allow millions of US troops to go through Shannon Airport to assist US-UK led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, where hundreds of thousands of people were slaughtered on the basis of lies put out by the US. The coalition Government of which the Tánaiste was a member allow…

We got the triple lock.

The US context has changed too.

It is me, then Deputies Connolly and O'Gorman. The Putin regime's invasion of Ukraine was an absolutely brutal, unjustified, criminal action and he should get out. Putin should get out of Ukraine. The Ukrainian people have the absolute right to resist that brutal invasion and occupation. However, particularly the powers that dominate NATO, the US, Germany and the UK, are not reliable allies in sup…

I wish the Minister the best of luck with her new brief. It is important she succeeds for the sake of hundreds of thousands of people who rely on the health service every year and indeed for the workers who provide the healthcare. I apologise in advance that I will need to leave because I am simultaneously participating in the Dáil reform committee and therefore I will not be here for any response…

The Government is trying to undermine democracy by insisting that the Lowry and Healy-Rae groups can be part of the Government and simultaneously be part of the Opposition-----

-----taking up its speaking time, committee places and resources. This is clearly an effort to minimise the ability of the Opposition to scrutinise the Government. Another example of that is that this week for the third time, every single week, instead of two appearances by the Taoiseach at Taoiseach's Questions, he will appear only once this week. The fact that it is not a coincidence is confirm…

That would further reduce the Government's exposure to interrogation, not just by the Opposition but by its own backbenchers whom it claims to care so much about.

It is an alliance of the left.