Simon Harris

I do not need to dismiss the Sinn Féin housing policy because the people of Ireland did.

Sinn Féin must be one of the only Opposition parties in the European Union to actually see its vote collapse in the general election, down by 5.5%. It lost the election.

This is a very serious issue, and I repeat that an issue that is serious deserves a serious response. When I was elected leader of my party and then Taoiseach less than a year ago, I made it very clear that we all needed to work together to fix housing for once and for all. At the start of this new Dáil, we should not seek to divide on this matter. We should actually seek to come into these Houses…

The completion figures for last year are disappointing; that is true. When we look at the past three years together, however, we have significantly exceeded the housing targets that were set. We significantly exceeded them in 2022 and 2023. We now have good momentum, with in excess of 60,000 commencement notices over the past year. This will, of course, as night follows day, translate into increas…

I have already made very clear to the Deputy about the programme for Government, negotiated by parties who won a clear majority in the last election and working with Independents, and what we have agreed to do in the programme for Government. That is what our focus is on; moving forward with the delivery of homes with real solutions for people. If the Deputy is seriously suggesting housing statis…

Ceann Comhairle, I have to be allowed to speak in this House. We are not getting back to last-----

She could not clarify that you could even access a loan or a mortgage under Sinn Féin's plan. The banks have still not confirmed that. His party would have pulled away the first-time buyer scheme-----

-----it would have scrapped the help-to-buy scheme and it would have ended the first home bridge the gap scheme.

The Deputies do not like it. They seem to think their job is just to critique.

Their job is also to put forward alternatives-----

They put forward alternatives that were emphatically rejected by the people who interpreted them-----

They failed to deliver, they lost the election and we are getting on with the job.

I thank Deputy Connolly for raising the issue of infrastructure and I want to get straight to that. I acknowledge the huge impact the storm has had on people right across the country and most particularly, people in the west and the north west. I am very conscious of the fact we can read out figures showing how many people have been reconnected to power and very good progress has been made, but th…

I hear the Deputy and I hear her advocacy for her county and her region, and for good reason. We will review the national development plan and our capital plans. We intend to publish that as a Government in the summer period. This will be an opportunity to map out what the increased level of capital funding will mean for the lifetime of this Government and provide that pipeline of capital funding.…

I thank Deputy Fitzmaurice for the constructive way he is engaging on this issue. I am very conscious that this is still a very real issue in his own constituency. While we talk about the next steps, and he rightly talks about the lessons learned, I am conscious we are still seeing in many parts of the west and north west a significant number of people - around 12,000 premises - without electricit…

The Deputy is speaking a lot of common sense on this. The Government is going to engage with the local authorities regarding generators for communities. One of the most obvious things we should be doing is making sure there are more generators available in communities for when things like this happen. The Deputy is right that nobody can storm but we have to be better prepared in terms of resilienc…

I will come back to the Deputy on each of the specific matters, including on the agriculture point he made.

Yes, we will provide that mandate. Deputy Kerrane is right to highlight this issue. These health and social care workers and others carry out an invaluable service. Our health, social care and disability services are so reliant on it. I would point out that we have made several advanced steps on this issue, including the October 2023 agreement the Deputy referenced. State agencies have worked with…

I thank Deputy Bacik. I agree with her comments regarding the dire humanitarian catastrophe. That phrase does not even capture the sense of destruction and loss of life, of home and of dignity that people have experienced in Gaza. I think all of us are united in working on that. I want to see what more the Government can do to help with the upscaling of humanitarian aid and assistance to the peopl…

I thank the Deputy for raising this extraordinarily important issue. It is one we have worked on across the House during the last period of time, including publishing an ambitious domestic, sexual and gender-based violence strategy, which was led by my colleague, the Minister, Deputy McEntee, and establishing a new agency, called Cuan, to drive this zero-tolerance approach. When I was the Minister…

It must be highly insulting to Independent TDs who are democratically elected in their own right, just like Deputy Murphy, to be referred to by someone else's surname. I think the Deputy should really stop that sort of carry-on.

No, sorry-----

There is no need for a back and forth. The last time I checked, they were called the "Regional Independents". The Minister of State, Deputy Seán Canney, sits with us in Cabinet and the Minister of State, Deputy Grealish, as well. I see Deputy Toole up there and I saw Deputy Heneghan earlier. I have also seen the Minister of State, Deputy Moran, the soon-to-be Minister of State, Deputy Harkin, the …

Does the Deputy get one question or is this just to barrage me?

I thank the Ceann Comhairle. The next thing is this. The deals, if the Deputy wants to call them that, are called the "programme for Government". It is published on gov.ie. It will be implemented in full over the course of five years. There are no other deals and we look forward to advancing it.