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three-bedroom units. This tells us that a huge group of people who are not eligible for social housing, but whose incomes are below those levels, are locked out. Approximately 26% of applicants to the LDA's cost-rental stock are excluded on affordability grounds. For three-bedroom … ESRI in the past, we would have been doing this a decade or more ago. However, right now, there are thousands upon thousands of working people who cannot access social housing, do not earn enough for cost rental and have no housing options. Does the Minister accept there

programme. A maximum of only €11,000 can be claimed per unit under it. Local authorities are leaving the voids, or boarded-up houses, as they should be called, empty for years, destroying communities, causing dirt and antisocial behaviour, and affecting the environment people are living … Government is not giving the money. There 79 apartments between the two blocks that are empty right now. Across the whole State, there are more than 4,000 board-up houses and the Government has only allocated enough to do less than half - 45% - yet the Minister

that goes to the heart of privacy, dignity, access to counselling, fair trial rights and the administration of justice. This is one of the most sensitive areas of criminal law this House has legislated for. The same can be said of the Defence Forces provisions inserted into this … huge range of unrelated matters, all bundled together under one legislative umbrella, and that is a problem. If legislation affects the most vulnerable rights of citizens, if it affects the victims of crime, if it affects civil liberties and if it affects State powers exercised, then it deserves

back as 2016 in our social and affordable housing Bill. I will seek to introduce legislation on this in the coming weeks. If the Government were serious about protecting renters without caveat, it would pass our renters' rights Bill, which includes measures such as a complete … Party colleagues from right across the country have raised the very real possibility of hundreds of shovel-ready homes being stopped in their local communities. This is especially true for my Kildare South colleague, Deputy Mark Wall. In the midst of a deepening housing crisis and record levels

monumental challenge. We need to have an honest debate in this House and across the political spectrum on how we do that. There are no easy options but it is something we have to get right. A particular cohort of people I want to be a strong voice … certainly want to be a strong voice for them. The issue of disability is one that has been debated widely in the House. To be fair, successive Governments have failed on this issue. As a candidate in the recent general election, I listened to many harrowing stories from

full support of the House in so doing. Instead, the Minister has done something that goes against everybody who has entered into this debate, apart from a few mega-wealthy media owners who want to just simply curtail the rights of anybody to vindicate his or her good … very impassioned case in this House not to go down this line, yet here we are. I will make a final appeal to the Minister, although it appears that it will fall on deaf ears, to do what he knows is right and not proceed with this provision

person is in receipt of HAP, he or she is not adequately housed in social housing. The Government is twisting language on its head. The most fundamental human right is the provision of a home for our people in a so-called Republic. In respect of this plan … reports that set out the need for that. It is not even mentioned in the budget. One of the major solutions to the housing crisis is to make a commitment to build public housing on public land. It will not sort out the problem but it will

transport for young people, student fees and housing. Many of the issues that directly affect young people in this country are not discussed on the floor of this Chamber or at local councils because young people do not have the right to vote, and they are not heard

mean very little when talking about some of these very difficult cases. Notwithstanding that, the work we are trying to do in government right now is to move away from a crisis management approach to residential care to a more planned one, involving a planned model of care … area shortly to support families. The Department of housing will shortly set out a target for the delivery of homes in this sector. I am very mindful that quoting figures in this area is of no help right now to the brothers the Deputy referenced. However, we have

child because they understand the reality on the ground. Right now, families are stretched in north Dublin, particularly in Dublin Bay North. Schools are under pressure. Inclusion is something we talk about in this House and it must be visible in our classrooms. I thank Minister of State … again for his visit to St. Michael's House Special National School in Baldoyle yesterday. I have been to a few special schools across north Dublin with him. His hands on approach to children is commendable. He knows first hand this is needed. I wish

regurgitating the very policies that caused the crisis in the first place. It is making housing policy not for young people who need a home but for the institutional investors. We rightly call them vulture funds but we should also call them vampire funds because they are feeding … getting a home of their own. It is shocking that we are now in a situation where Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael housing policies have brought us back to the 19th century. They claim to be the parties of home ownership, yet under their watch home ownership levels

dismantling of the West Bank over the years, whether it is allowing settlers to de facto annex parts of it in their own right or whether it is the state policy of dividing it up so as to make the West Bank no longer viable. This has been … taken years to get to a watered down Bill. That is shocking in its own right. While I welcome the legislation and will vote for whatever finally comes through the Houses because it sends a message, until that point we have a moral obligation to put the international

themselves provide services or address the challenges that we are all concerned about. I want to assure the House and the families listening to this debate that as a Government we are steadfast and determined in our efforts to address these challenges. These efforts include strengthening governance … recovery and what is clinically indicated as being the right time. The Tánaiste and I, and the entire Government including the Minister for Health, are very committed to doing that. I commend the motion of confidence to the House

absolute priority for me to ensure we have action on this. I will certainly be open to working with everyone across the House to ensure children have access to the services they require. In my last Ministry of State, where I had responsibility for special education, I travelled … services and housing supports such as domiciliary care allowance. One does not need to provide an assessment of need. It is a smaller part of the jigsaw but these are all the areas we need to be looking at to get this right. I acknowledge Cara. I have

that cannot do basic common-sense things like building public housing, providing bike sheds or building walls. Instead, all of those things are outsourced to a profiteering private sector. Independent Ireland is so blinded by its right-wing neoliberal ideology that it wants to ape Trump and Musk … permanent social and affordable housing for upwards of 50,000 families. None of that, or the €26 billion set to be wasted on fines for climate inaction, tends to be mentioned in debates on Government waste because it does not fit the right-wing narrative that the public

Across this House we are incredibly impatient and adamant that this committee at the Department of the Taoiseach must deliver for disabled people. Right across the country, every single day, many of us speak to people with disabilities, and families who have children with disabilities who are caught

look at the timeline because the optics and the reality is damning. Next week, this House will rise, the doors of Leinster House will be locked and Ministers will head off on their summer holidays. Their parting gift to ordinary Irish people across the State will … October, right when the days are getting shorter and the nights colder and right when families are forced to turn back on the heating. As I have said in the House numerous times, the carbon tax is regressive. In 2022, the Economic and Social Research Institute, ESRI, stated

eventual release to the authority if the compensation goes unclaimed. There are several derelict properties in Dublin that cannot be compulsorily purchased right now because the owners cannot be tracked down. This Bill will bring an end to that. Fourth, the Bill repeals the current arbitrary principles … fair and quick. It strikes the balance between respecting property rights and empowering the State to act for the public good. It will make CPOs a modern tool for modern challenges. I commend the Bill to the House

feeling right now. People are genuinely worried about the impact this conflict is having on their energy costs and what is facing them and their families in the weeks and months ahead. There will be a second resolution, which we will discuss later in the House … right to consider any further action - legislative or otherwise - that may be required should this not be the case. More broadly, I indicate again tonight the Government's intention to strengthen further the powers of the CCPC and to work on a collaborative basis across this House with

European Union with record waiting lists of up to 18 years for the only public gender clinic. You cannot talk about trans rights when you cannot access trans healthcare. It is eight years since the Government's own review of the Gender Recognition Act recommended non-binary recognition … both non-binary and intersex people for the first time. I hope everyone in the House will support it. The rise in hate directed at the queer community by the far right is absolutely frightening. You see it. It is not just online. It is in the real

Affordability to be published in Q3 of this year.". I welcome the opportunity to address the House this evening on an issue that is weighing heavily on households, businesses and families right across the country. It is right that we are debating this issue tonight and examining solutions … commentary and in all our interventions should be to seek an immediate de-escalation. I think that is a view shared across this House. De-escalation is important for humanitarian needs, but also because, from an economic point of view, it would lead to the greatest level

relates to Palestinians, and that the implementation of this law would give rise to serious breaches of international human rights law and international humanitarian law; — the approval and publication of the text of the Israeli Settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (Prohibition of Importation of Goods) Bill … editorially independent of the Government. Again, if there was a debate in this House demanding that the Government involve itself in a decision like that, it would be seen as overreach, and rightly so, if we were to get involved in what is an independent authority. I think

terms of the questions that puts down in this House and, indeed, in the discussions that we had around the programme for Government. I thank her for that because what she is raising today, as she rightly said, is a commitment in the programme for Government. I will … rightly raising here. It would be useful if it could in terms of that county-by-county basis because it is not. Even in a country the size of Ireland, some of the issues are common but there can also be very significant differentials. The housing example Deputy

people who come into the Public Gallery for the vindication of a basic right, such as a wheelchair or a school place. This does not scream of a Republic fulfilled. We see this in housing, poverty, immigration and in how we have treated children, women and minority groups … betrayals, heroes, silences, possibilities and complications, all housed within the space. It should be a museum that includes hunger strikers and the women who fought for their suffrage, the revolutionaries and resisters, the trade unionists and the campaigners for civil rights, repeal and marriage equality. It should

moved quickly to task the Housing Agency to support this work, not to reimagine the commission's consideration but to help examine costs associated with them, identify priorities and consider implementation timelines, resourcing implications and so forth. The commission rightly considered these matters to be more appropriate … staffing, to the next Cabinet committee on housing and thereafter to the Government for a decision. I am mindful of the need to move quickly, but I am also keenly aware of the importance of securing the right person and team to lead and support it. Critically