The Government narrative on this Bill is that it is largely a technical Bill that is going to put on a statutory footing what is already the practice in terms of eligibility criteria on residency and habitual residency for social housing. It is just technical and it is a tidying-up exercise, providing a little bit more efficiency for decisions of the RTB in the second instance. There is nothing to see here and nothing to be concerned about. That begs the question: why we are doing it? What is the rationale for this…

I love football. I have played football since I was aged five. One of the things I love about football is it is young people all over the world playing the beautiful game, doing something beautiful. What Israel is doing to Palestinian children is the very antithesis of what football is about because it is ugly, murderous and genocidal. A very significant part of Israel’s decades-long genocidal campaign against the Palestinians is its desire to murder Palestinian children, including the children who play football. B…

The Government is engaged in the most cynical exercise to try to convey to the public the idea that it wants to sanction Israel for its obscene crimes against the Palestinian people while actually making sure that no serious sanction whatsoever is imposed. The Government wants to dance to the tune of corporations that profit from their involvement with Israel and from states that continue to arm and support the State of Israel while it is committing its genocidal crimes. That is why the Government does not want to …

Excuse me, a Cheann Comhairle, I was next .

The Government is speaking out of both sides of its mouth on the question of sanctions against Israel over its crimes against the Palestinians. It will not support the boycott, it is gutting the occupied territories Bill so it will effectively have no serious impact, and it wants to impose a guillotine on the debate tomorrow because it does not want to be exposed. There is a guillotine on the occupied territories Bill, and we have had this confirmed by the Ceann Comhairle. The Government is not allowing the many Me…

You are imposing a guillotine.

I asked the Taoiseach about what I consider to be the absolutely disgraceful decision of DLR Properties, which is a corporate subsidiary of Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council, to put up for sale land zoned for more than 1,000 houses. We could have more than 1,000 social and affordable homes but instead a board, which is not accountable to the elected representatives on Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council or to the public but is populated by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael councillors, has decided to sell off public …

Why are we selling it?

A thousand homes.

The elected councillors did not decide this.

A decade.

Happy days.

Tomorrow, there is another protest by Northside Home Care Services workers who have been engaging in a series of one-day protests and strikes over the fact that they did not benefit from the pay increases arising from the section 39 Workplace Relations Commission decision on pay restoration. Many of these workers used to be paid on a par with HSE workers. Now, they are on rates barely above the minimum wage. There are thousands of them. This is one group of 80. Their shop steward has been disciplined because of the…

By the not-for-profit company that provides services to the HSE. I met some of these other workers, doing the same thing. There are thousands of these people, all across the country, on poverty pay rates, who did not get the pay increase that other section 39 workers got. They are very angry and it is not fair. There should not be pay apartheid for home care workers.

There are a lot more affected than just those 80 workers.

The Minister has indicated that a levy of more than €446 million will be imposed on Departments to pay for an overspend in the Department of Education and Youth yet he suggests that this will not really have any impact because we are going to spend more next year anyway. In reality, will it not mean that there will be less money available than was projected for multiple Departments to undertake key infrastructure or projects or to provide services?

Is there enough then to deliver the critical infrastructure that we know we need? I will give one example where I cannot understand frankly why the money was not made available, namely, the case of The Complex. We need arts infrastructure. We had the Government bringing in stuff yesterday about drinking on the streets because we need greater vibrancy in our city centres and I agree that we do, so how could the Government let The Complex close down in Dublin's north inner city when all they were looking for was €6 m…

This is the game of pass the parcel that led to The Complex being closed down. If one goes to the Department, it says that it would love to leave The Complex open but it cannot buy properties, which is something I did not know, so what the Minister just said is complete nonsense. The Department is not allowed to buy properties. Dublin City Council said basically it did not have the money for it. The Minister is the Minister for infrastructure. We need housing, social and affordable housing in particular, and we nee…

It cannot buy stuff.

We are all aware how the failure of the 2014 circular and the Government to recognise the evolved role of the SNA and what the meaning of inclusion in education really means led to in the crisis we had earlier this year. When will the promised new circular be out? I think I heard the Minister say it will come before the summer recess. Will she confirm this? Will it reflect the needs and aspirations of SNAs, school communities, parents and children?