Today, parents from Ireland, including our Labour Councillor Ali Field, are travelling to Brussels to present a petition to the European Parliament and institutions asking them to investigate Ireland's failure to meet its legal obligations to children with additional needs. Under the Disability Act 2005, every child in Ireland is entitled to an assessment of need within six months. However, more than 21,700 children are now on waiting lists, overdue for assessments of need. The average wait time is two years and ma…

I welcome our Polish community and also a group of students who are with me from Trinity and schools in Dublin and Wexford. Far too many people in Ireland suffer the trauma of losing their home. That is a direct result of the Government's policy. It prioritises the market over people. It did it in March, incentivising landlords to evict with new rent laws, and it is doing it again now, this week telling 16,000 Ukrainian refugees to fend for themselves in an overheated rental market or return to a war zone. So much …

Tax breaks for-----

Yes, there is.

I am not dismissing it. I acknowledge it.

We can agree on one thing, which is that supply of homes is key, but the Government is not delivering increased supply. Unfortunately, the only momentum is with the tsunami of eviction notices that people are experiencing. The Government cannot blame the housing crisis on Trump - the Taoiseach knows I have acknowledged the impact of the global energy shock - because the Government's policies have not changed. They are failing to deliver for people. They are failing to deliver for people like the family I met in Ora…

It is key.

Where is the evidence of that?

On a point of order, it is unacceptable to conflate-----

That is outrageous.

The Dublin Region Homeless Executive, DRHE, is disputing that.

The European State of the Climate report released today shows that Europe is the fastest-warming continent on Earth. From the Mediterranean to the Arctic Circle, the Earth is heating in ways that are no longer subtle or gradual, with forest fires, destructive storms, heatwaves in the Arctic and snow cover in Europe that was 31% below average in March. We know that islands, like Ireland, are particularly vulnerable. We need to start delivering real measures to support people to move away from fossil fuels. In doing …

This time last year, households were already labouring under the pressure of grocery price inflation, the housing crisis and Trump's threatened tariffs. Since the outset of Trump's illegal war on Iran and in the Middle East, and with no end in sight to Russia's bombardment of Ukraine, things have got worse. The Taoiseach has rightly just described the situation we are in as a massive global energy shock, but in this shock, struggling households are left wondering when they will get some real reprieve from the Gover…

I absolutely acknowledge that the energy shock and the particular energy crisis we are now in are, of course, caused by international events, in particular Trump and Netanyahu's illegal war on Iran. We are all conscious of that. The question is how we respond. There are two things. First, the Taoiseach acknowledges that systemic change is needed; I think he did in his response to me. Absolutely, I agree. We need to change the way we work. We need to change the way we do business. We need to change our reliance on f…

-----to rolling out a continuous series of support measures.

People are not sure what is going on. They lack certainty,-----

-----they lack clarity and they are really concerned about how to pay for basics-----

-----in this cost-of-living crisis.

Since the beginning of this year, more than 30 prospective international students have come forward to detail how they were effectively scammed. After having their visa applications refused, they were denied refunds by the English language schools here that they had paid for places they cannot now take up. They have no protection, even though they paid upfront in good faith and followed the process. Some have lost out on thousands of euro in fees and have been left to chase refunds from providers based in different…

I thank the Taoiseach.