There is a crisis of community safety in Ballymun in my constituency. This week, an 11-year-old boy found a gun with live ammunition in a public space and discharged it. It is a miracle that a child was not killed or injured. This must be a watershed moment for Ballymun. What happened is utterly unacceptable. I have been consistently raising ongoing community safety issues and the need for increased visibility of gardaí in Ballymun directly with the Minister for justice in the Dáil. He committed that he would act a…

It leaves out the Gaeltacht.

What about the Gaeltacht areas?

I support both the motion and what has been put forward. However, there is a need to raise certain issues in relation to the scheme. There are limitations to the scheme, and a number of questions remain to be asked, specifically in respect of the take-up and why only 435 houses that were built using defective blocks, or around 13% of 3,500 homes, have had the remediation work completed. Why has there been such a low level of take-up six years on? We need that question to be answered. At that rate, it will be many d…

People across the city who are looking to buy a home are despairing. The prices of houses and rents are way beyond what they can afford. They are looking to the Government for hope to be able to buy a home. We have reached the point where no ordinary people can afford to buy a home in our capital city. It costs €500,000 for the average home in the city. That is ten times the average salary. In the main, new supply being built is investor fund apartments being rented out at €3,000 and €4,000 a month. A shocking 50,0…

I appreciate the Minister of State’s response and setting out of the detail, but surely he can see it is completely inadequate. In terms of the numbers I gave earlier, 13,000 adults over the age of 18 are living in their parental home in my constituency alone. There are 50,000 people in that situation across Dublin. Where are young people, and as I said, increasingly those in their 30s and 40s, going to be able to buy a home in Dublin city? It is a disaster that is hitting now and is going to get worse in the comin…

Are you going to check it?

All waffle. Answer the question.

All waffle.

The Taoiseach will not answer the question.

What about renters who will be stuck renting these-----

There is a huge concern among parents of children with additional needs, autism and disabilities that what is happening now is an undermining of the minimal resourcing that is there already. The truth is we have created an education system that is more exclusionary than it is inclusionary, and we need to create an inclusive education system. In my constituency, Finglas Parochial National School was promised autism classes that were to be delivered by September. It is now not clear if that will happen, although I kn…

There are 60,000 households, many of them families with children, in receipt of the housing assistance payment, HAP. They are classed as having their housing needs met but I want to give the Tánaiste a case of one person in my constituency. Last night, I met a father with two young children who told me that he was sick with worry about being able to afford the weekly shop. He got to the Lidl counter and his debit card was declined. He had to walk away and explain to his kids why they had to leave the week's groceri…

To follow on from my fellow Deputies in Dublin North-West, we are highlighting this issue today because St. Aidan's CBS in Whitehall is at the centre of the community. It provides excellent education. We met the school principal and deputy principal recently, who outlined their very real frustration with the lack of progress on promises of new school buildings. Tá foirgneamh scoile nua ag teastáil ó St. Aidan's agus ó phobal Whitehall, Glasnevin and of course the wider area up to Ballymun where students come from. …

It is important that St. Aidan's is included in the new list and is prioritised. I again express the frustration from the school. The principal and deputy principal outlined that they had submitted the developed design to the Department in January of this year but they were still waiting to get a response on that. The Minister of State set out that it was undergoing a comprehensive technical and cost review. It would be good to get a very clear timeframe for when the Department is going to give its response in term…

It is extremely frustrating to come back in here and put forward these proposals. We put forward key, targeted proposals for the budget last year and the Government completely ignored them. The Government has thrown its hands up and said the cost-of-living crisis is down to an international situation. It is blaming global oil prices for the cost-of-living crisis but the reality is core aspects of this cost-of-living crisis are down to the Government’s own policies. What did the Government do just two months ago in …

We voted no confidence in the Government today because from our perspective, from what we see and from what our constituents tell us, people are struggling and suffering. They are being devastated by a cost-of-living crisis. What we are being told about the reality of people's lives is that they cannot cover the basics. There are people in this country right now who are choosing whether or not to turn on the heating. I was in Artane in my constituency last week, talking to people at the doors. Elderly people told m…

This is a cost-of-living crisis that has been going on for almost five years. The lack of self-awareness on the part of the Government is really frustrating and disappointing. What we saw last week was an expression of how people are struggling. It was one section of society but so many people are struggling. At the time of the most recent budget, we in the Social Democrats put forward an alternative budget that included targeted measures but the Government ignored us. We put forward a proposal for an emergency cos…

I have been researching and critically analysing Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael's infrastructure policy for almost 20 years. In fact, I did my PhD on it, specifically on infrastructure and how it was developed during the Celtic tiger period. Back then, 20 years ago, the key policy of Fianna Fáil was to have public-private partnerships deliver infrastructure through new ways which were, essentially, handing our public infrastructure over to big global infrastructure providers that saw infrastructure as a commodity throug…

I will raise the issue of evictions, which I raised last week. The Tánaiste has probably heard that a number of people are facing eviction from a retirement village in Sligo. I am completely shocked by this. It is described as involving people in their 80s and couples. One couple in their 80s have a child with disabilities in his 50s who is facing eviction from this place, which is a retirement home. There is another example in Galway, with a mass eviction at Cúirt Éigis in Ballybane, where 14 households have recei…