When the Taoiseach entered politics, people were able to buy a family home for £50,000. Now house prices in Galway have exploded. They are up by almost 50% in the city and more than 60% in the county since 2020. Buying a home now costs over €140,000 more than it did a few years ago. In five years of the Taoiseach's so-called affordable housing scheme, not a single affordable home was delivered in Galway. Now, finally, the Government has announced 33 affordable homes. Does the Taoiseach know that the prices being ch…

Percentage of homeownership.

The Taoiseach has been in the Dáil since before I was born and I am beginning to think he has become so out of touch that he does not see the hardship facing ordinary workers and families. Every single day in Galway, people tell me that the cost of living is too high and that the Government is doing too little. Then, today, we hear that we have the highest electricity prices in the EU, an outstanding 40% above the EU average. Why has the Taoiseach allowed this? Does he not meet people who cannot pay their electrici…

Gabh mo leithscéal-----

People are-----

Show it.

It does not seem like it.

The Minister talks about a strong economy. A strong economy is not made up of thousands of homeless children who face Christmas after Christmas in emergency accommodation. A strong economy is not made up of young renters who cannot afford to buy a home and feel they will never have the ability to do so under this Government. A strong economy is certainly not made up of all of those people who feel they never will have a future in Galway city, a place they are from, because they simply cannot afford to rent or buy a…

The decision not to suspend the EU-Israel association agreement is an act of profound moral cowardice. Israel has violated every aspect of the human rights conditions attached to the agreement. It is committing genocide in Gaza. It is murdering citizens in the West Bank. It has started an illegal war against Iran. Now, it is also bombing Lebanon. This is not a normal government. This is a rogue state that has crossed every red line and engaged in egregious breaches of human rights and international law. Since this …

As the Aire would be aware, there was an overspend in the Department of education. I wonder if he can give us an update on that. As he will know, the Department of education has projected a €600 million overspend that will be paid for by cuts to the Department of education and other departmental budgets. To be honest, it is further evidence that the Government cannot be trusted with public finances. I ask the Minister to give us an update.

My question is where exactly the cuts will be. The reality is that these cuts are the direct result of the Government's decisions. Anybody who read the budget book at the last budget will know that the sums do not add up. We know that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael Governments have underbudgeted and overspent for years and this Government is the exact same. Budget after budget, the Government failed to allocate the necessary funding for essential public services and relied upon Supplementary Estimates to cover its back.…

The issue here is the question in relation to the €600 million. That is just a simple question; I do not think it is any more difficult than that. It is in relation to that €600 million. I have to be honest; I have never seen a budget like I saw this year. The sums do not add up. Anybody who can take out a calculator and take a look at the budget book will see that. If the Minister wants to publish something where the figures do not add up, that is fair enough but it causes huge confusion. I do not really know exac…

The Minister and Deputy Sheehan were just talking about the approval of the ring road. In Galway we have been waiting decades for the approval of the Galway ring road. We also have a chronic infrastructural deficit across Galway city and county. People in Galway have been waiting decades for the approval of the ring road. This is the kind of infrastructure that has been desperately needed to reduce congestion within the city, particularly for those who may be travelling to hospital appointments from Connemara. That…

It really has been decades that we have been waiting. I do not remember a time when we were not talking about the Galway ring road. It is also about people being able to access services through a gridlocked city, which is incredibly difficult. I was talking to one mother who said that to get to a 9 a.m. appointment in Merlin Park hospital from Connemara, really she would have to stay the night before but the prices are expensive, so she was leaving the house at 6 a.m. That is the reality of it. The Minister mention…

The Critical Infrastructure Bill is currently going through the Oireachtas, but it does not provide a full definition of critical infrastructure and seems to leave it up to the Minister of the day as to what is and what is not critical infrastructure. I ask the Minister to provide some clarity on what he means by critical infrastructure.

I understand that the Minister is giving me the layout of the Bill and exactly how it will work. My interest is in what he would deem to be critical infrastructure. Obviously, we have serious issues when it comes to the delivery of critical infrastructure. I think of the likes of homes and houses, hospitals, public transport and infrastructure of scale. At the moment, what is being built an awful lot of the time is private student accommodation which is then rented at extraordinarily high prices. We see empty offic…

My party colleagues and I want to work constructively with the Minister on this Bill. We understand that our people and our communities need critical infrastructure to be delivered with urgency. We want to engage with this legislation and scrutinise it in order that it is fit for purpose because, as the Minister says, the critical infrastructure that is built by this Government will be in use for decades. Therefore, it is essential that this Government gets critical infrastructure delivery right. It has been incred…

People took to the streets in a way that we have not seen before. People left their homes, their families and their livelihoods to stand up for themselves and for their communities, demanding a better Ireland, and how dare the Government ignore the people again here today. The Government talks about Sinn Féin but it does not talk about the people. It was the people who went out and said enough was enough. It was the people who had to take to the streets to demand action and it was the people who said they have no c…

Not one of the Ministers here spoke to the people today. Instead, they spoke to and about themselves. The Government has in no way heard the message that came from the people of Ireland, a message that they could not have given to the Government any louder or any clearer. Coming in here today, I had thought that maybe a little bit of humble pie had been eaten after the arrogance of last week but, no, I was completely mistaken. Nothing has changed. All of this, of course, happened because the Government refused to t…

Is é buninfreastruchtúr ceann de na rudaí is tábhachtaí d’aon cheantar nó pobal atá ina gcónaí i gceantar tuaithe ach go háirithe, áit go minic nach bhfuil an buninfreastruchtúr ann. Mar gheall air sin, ar ndóigh, is maith an rud é go bhfuilimid á phlé seo agus ag breathnú air. Tá súil agam go gciallóidh sé go ndíreoidh an Rialtas ar chúrsaí infrastruchtúr, ach go háirithe sna ceantair cosúil leis an gceantar in atá mé féin i gConamara. Critical infrastructure is something I have been raising with the Minister for …