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I also thank my colleagues, Deputies Quaide and Hayes, for bringing this motion forward. Politics is all about choices. This Government made a choice in the budget to cut payments for people with a disability while it gave a VAT cut of €390 million to investor funds and developers. Right now, disabled people are struggling to pay the cost of living, including the costs of heating, food, and charging mobile equipment and wheelchairs, yet the Government refuses to implement our very straightforward proposal for a €40…

Infrastructure is the key to getting this country working for people. For too many people, Ireland is not working. When we look at the flooding yesterday and the traffic gridlock across the city and around the commuter belt, people are literally losing years of their lives because of the lack of investment in infrastructure. The Government, in its plans and pronouncements, can blame planning, judicial reviews, local authorities and even the population and immigrants, but the barrier is this Government not investing…

I echo my colleagues' concerns in relation to this Bill. I will make some broad points and question the nature of what is being brought forward, the Government's approach, its language around migration, the words that have been used, what it says and what has been done. I do feel, and I know colleagues share this, a deep concern about the direction this Government has taken. There is an element of what feels and looks like performative cruelty, that is, to be seen to be hard on immigration in order to, essentially,…

What is the point in that? Answer the question.

That is not true.

What is the policy on rents?

We have record homelessness, with over 5,300 children homeless right now and living in emergency accommodation. We have a cost-of-living crisis, with families struggling to afford the basics, many of them renters. Hundreds of thousands of renters in the coming years, who are struggling to pay the basic costs of living, will not be able to afford the new market rent. Does the Minister agree that rents will increase as a result of these measures in the coming years? As a result of changes that he is about to make, re…

When are rents going to fall?

They are scared of the Minister and rising rents.

I made it very clear and the Minister knows that we have alternatives. We set out a State fund that would actually increase funding for, not vulture funds but public affordable housing. The Government is completely out of touch and the Minister is too, to be honest. He has been captured. He has gone into the Ministry for housing and been captured by the investor funds. This is how clear it is that he has been captured. His Department is taking part in an event that is being billed as a global meeting point for glob…

That is not true. You actually lied in the election. You said you would build 40,000 homes. You never did it.

The headlines were true.

He will not even answer the question.

There was a significant public reaction to the video about moving in with family that was put up late last year. Will the Minister outline what role the Department of housing had in the production of that video and clarify when he first learned about the video?

Gabhaim buíochas leis an Aire. The Minister has still not clarified when he first knew of the video. Could he clarify that, please? At the housing committee when I asked him directly about it, he set out four times that the Department of housing did not have any involvement in the video. He repeated that three times. Can the Minister clarify now and make a statement that the Department of housing was involved in the video and was aware of it? I will ask the Minister very clearly: when did he first become aware this…

It is about the Oireachtas and the record. The Minister said at the housing committee that the Department was not involved in it.

The Department had no other involvement?

The story in the Irish Examiner was not true?

Sorry, yes. What was reported in the Irish Examiner mentioned senior officials in the Department. I am pushing this because we need to be honest in the Oireachtas record. If what was said at the housing committee is not true, that needs to be corrected. What was happening at the time was the Minister and the Department were trying to get away from a controversy.