The power is there.

I am standing here as a man, and to be honest, I cannot imagine a situation where I would be told by my doctor to go away to have a think about things and come back in three days. It is just wrong, it does not make sense and it is not right. Why would anyone be told, when it is a health issue, to go away and think about it? How patronising is that? This legislation is about protecting women, helping them at a very difficult time and giving them all the support we can. I am a father of two daughters - two brilliant …

We must stop the game; it is as simple as that. The Irish Government must step in now. As the Social Democrats have outlined, all sporting events with Israel should be stopped. We should lead a campaign in Europe and the world to have Israel banned and boycotted, the exact same way it was done with the Russians. There are double standards here. The question we must ask ourselves is: where do these double standards come from? Is it Europe? Is it America? Is it big business? Is it the Israeli lobby? Or is it that thi…

Tourism is such an important part of the Irish economy. It is such an important industry. More needs to be done to develop it, especially in my own city of Cork. In 1916, Thomas Kent's home was raided and his brother was seriously injured. He and his brothers were taken away. Thomas Kent was convicted and found guilty by the British. He was later shot in the grounds of the old Cork prison in the Glen. That was on 9 May 1916. He was the only person from Cork to be shot and executed as part of the 1916 Rising. For 99…

The first thing I want to say on the Finance Bill we are discussing is that it goes to show how this Government just does not get it. It is another failure at a time when the Government had the money and knew people were struggling. It could have stepped in. If people throw their minds back to late February and March when people came on to the street, remember the anger that was there. The Minister of State and the Government went on holidays for St. Patrick’s Day to get out of here while people were paying double …

The Minister of State’s Government was not where it should have been, namely in the Dáil doing its job, protecting ordinary workers, families, pensioners, farmers, hauliers and small businesses who were, and who still are, looking for help. The Minister of State can try to interrupt me but I talk to these people. I was on the line in Whitegate, Cork city and Youghal. Those people are still feeling it today. There are more than 300,000 people in arrears with electricity. A quarter of people who get gas are in arrear…

-----Electric Ireland has 1 million customers and it is putting up the cost of electricity by 8% and gas by 7.7% and the Government is doing nothing to tackle it. What is the famous phrase? It is standing idly by while energy companies come in and gouge the market. They pile the pressure on ordinary, hard-working families and what is the Government doing? It has half a Bill instead of delivering for people. We have pensioners who are afraid to turn on the lights, boil kettles or turn on the heating. The weather mig…

Hear, hear.

In 2013, the current Taoiseach, Deputy Micheál Martin, described the triple lock as being at the core of our neutrality. At the time, there were protests in Kyiv, and the following year the annexation of Crimea took place. There was a war in Afghanistan and there was a civil war in Syria, with the Russians and the Americans involved in it. Now he is saying times have drastically changed but that is not true. Things were as bad then as they are now on the world stage when it comes to wars. For as long as I have been…

When NAMA came into being, the State was in a really dark place. The economy had collapsed, there were no jobs and people were really struggling. We had ghost estates and sites that were half developed. Fianna Fáil destroyed the economy. I remember it as clear as day. I remember friends of mine losing their jobs. To add insult to injury, when Fine Gael came into government in 2011, all it gave a damn about was austerity. The ordinary working men and women of this country were thrown under a bus. The most vulnerable…

We have all heard in recent weeks about the scandal on Connaught Street in Dublin. Dublin City Council has finally agreed to meet with the residents today but this is not the only such site in the heart of Dublin city centre. No. 6 Terrace Place sits at the end of a row of beautifully maintained homes off Seán McDermott Street. It was added to the derelict sites register in 2008 and was subject to a compulsory purchase order in 2023. I have pictures here just to give the Taoiseach an idea of what it is like. It was…

The Government amendment to the motion is an insult to the more than 7,000 families who received notices to quit in the first three months of the year and the thousands of families who received such notices at the end of last year. Those people are facing eviction and do not know where they will be in four, five, six, seven or eight months' time. They are asking where they are going to live and where their children will play and go to school. The Government claims the figures in March were not as bad as previously.…

On page 76 of the Government's housing plan, there is a commitment to develop a new voids funding programme that would "incentivise lower vacancy rates and faster turnaround times for vacant local authority stock". The plan was launched 187 days ago on 13 November 2025. In that time, only one action has been taken on the voids scheme.

The Minister talked to colleagues earlier about policy. I launched a policy to return vacant, boarded-up homes to use in housing families. This is the low-hanging fruit and I still cannot understand why the Minister, his Department and the other Ministers in the Government do not tackle it. The voids programme for 2026 will allow for the return of 2,200 homes, with local authorities receiving only €11,000 per unit when there are more than 4,500 houses boarded up and vacant. Why is the Minister not being more ambiti…

The Minister mentioned the NOAC report. I will refer to some of the figures in that report. In 2024, there were 4,251 empty council houses, which was an increase from the previous year. One in four of those homes was empty longer than a year. I know of houses in my constituency that have been empty and boarded up for years. The problem is a lot of local authorities do not have the excess funding to bring the long-term, older, more complicated and more expensive homes back into use. If the Minister is only giving €1…

They do not have the money to do it.

Some of them are up to 100 years old.

They cannot do so.

They cannot do it because the Government cut their funding.

The first quarter of this year saw the lowest number of first quarter reconnections and it was the second lowest number for any quarter since the CSO began collecting data in 2011.