Ní aontaím leis an méid atá ráite ag an Teachta mar tá Éire agus a Rialtas chun tosaigh agus muid ag seasamh suas do na Palaistínigh. Tá sé sin ráite ag na Palaistínigh. Deir Údarás Náisiúnta na Palaistínigh i gcónaí go bhfuil ár dtír chun tosaigh maidir le tacaíocht a thabhairt do na Palaistínigh. I do not accept the Deputy's proposition in terms of how she has distorted the Irish Government’s position in relation to the cause of Palestinian self-determination. From the outset, we have taken a series of measures that have been at the leading edge in terms of any Europe Union's member state's response to the genocide in Gaza, the continued violent behaviour of the settlers in the West Bank, and the continuing war in Lebanon, which is completely unjustified. We recognised the State of Palestine, along with Spain, for example, and Slovenia did so after us, in a broader move to try to get a peace accord going within the Middle East in terms of a Palestinian State. We intervened in the South African case before the-----
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-----International Court of Justice in terms of the case there in respect of genocide. We have provided very significant support to Palestinians, up to €146 million up to this year. In terms of UNRWA in particular, we took a leading role in Europe to stem the momentum at the time of taking aid away from UNRWA after Israeli allegations against UNRWA personnel. We held back that momentum and then we doubled down in terms of doubling our own provision of finance to UNRWA itself. We did this consistently in all international forums. The Attorney General has argued before the ICJ in respect of the impacts of the illegal occupation of Palestine. At the United Nations General Assembly, we, of course, sponsored resolutions in terms of seeking to implement the court's advisory opinion. There is no justification for the assertions Deputy McDonald has made. I know her objective is to sort of attack the Government, sometimes even more than the Israeli Government. That is the objective. In terms of the occupied territories Bill, we need a bit of honesty across the House. We need absolute honesty here. Let us not overstate the impact of this either way.
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My experience has been that as soon as we do something, like we did with the recognition or whatever else, Sinn Féin moves on very quickly and dismisses it.
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That has been the standard practice. First of all, the original Bill could not go through the House because it would not have been legal in terms of how it was framed. In terms of services-----
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On goods, by whatever yardstick is used, about €200,000 worth of goods - fruit and vegetables - come in from the settlements. That is what comes in. Services are intangible, as someone described them. It is impossible to implement. Could we have some honesty about that? There is an issue in terms of what will happen if services were included in terms of jobs in this country and potential attacks on multinationals that are based here.
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That is the reality. People can dismiss that all they want; I do not dismiss it. I have to protect about 250,000 jobs in this country too, and there is a real issue-----
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-----that people are turning a blind eye to in terms of this being something we can do casually to which nobody is going to pay a blind bit of notice. There have been a lot of attacks on Ireland because of the leadership stance we have taken as a Government.
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We have been out there with Spain more than anybody else in terms of these issues.
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Spain has not included services.
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It included the advertisement of services.
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Different thing completely. We need accuracy here.
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Very few countries have gone down this route. Spain and Ireland are going down this route in terms of the banning of goods. We hope Belgium and the Netherlands will follow suit. It looks like Slovenia will not be in a position now because the Government has changed in Slovenia. The Government that has been elected has a completely different issue. It must be at European level if we are to have any impact on Israel. Even at European level, I am trying to be honest with people here, how does one have impact on the Israeli Government, Netanyahu and these people? The bottom line is-----
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That is all rubbish about Shannon and all that nonsense. It has no impact on Netanyahu.
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It is just sloganeering. All that is happening is sloganeering and shallow rhetoric that is devoid of any substance. There are two major powers that could influence Israel. Fundamentally, the US can. Second, maybe, a unanimous European Union position on the EU-Israel Association Agreement. Those are potentially the two ways to get----
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First of all, I want to take the opportunity to welcome Deputies Daniel Ennis and Séan Kyne. I congratulate them on their election and have no doubt they are looking forward to being effective and productive legislators and, of course, diligent representatives of the people who elected them to Dáil Éireann. It is a great day for them and for their families. We hope their families, in particular, enjoy this historic day for the Deputies and for them. In respect of employment more generally and the impact of AI and the decisions of certain tech companies, overall, we should not lose sight of the fact that our economy is continuing to grow significantly using GNI as our figure. Modified domestic demand is expected to grow by about 2.1% in 2026. It increased by 4.95% last year. Employment has been fairly consistent year on year. The payroll employee index is up 2.2% year on year, and we are close to 2.8 million workers. We have a very robust and resilient employment story made up of the SME sector as well as the multinationals but we can never look at them as an either-or. They are both inextricably bound together. I was in Dexcom in Galway recently where a factory has been built that will accommodate 1,000 workers by 2028. At the moment, there are 300 workers there. What was interesting is that in an investment of about €300 million, Dexcom procured about €180 million of that locally through the local supply chain, although the figures might vary. In other words, there are lots of smaller companies that are able to plug into the Dexcom investment. I was at a Japanese pharmaceutical facility in Kerry recently and again it was the same story in terms of the clean room technology and laboratories. We now have companies at a calibre that can actually supply into very sophisticated operations. While we do need to develop our SME sector, work with Enterprise Ireland on high potential start-ups and do better at scaling up companies, quite a lot of Irish companies have scaled up on the backs of having originally won contracts with a big multinational. Take, for example, all the companies that have supplied into Intel in Kildare. I visited the Intel site about two or three years ago in the midst of the next Fab being built. Nearly every Irish construction company was in there, with different companies doing incredible frontier-type solutions for Intel in terms of clean room technology and so on. We do have a healthy ecosystem but we need to invest more on the skills side as it is key to the AI issue. The skills round table, aiready.ie and the national skills observatory the Ministers, Deputies Lawless and Peter Burke, are putting together are a good solid response to what is happening.
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There are two dimensions to this. In itself, AI will change the world of work. We should not be blind to that. We need to prepare for it. There is investment in skills, in particular, and thankfully, the International Monetary Fund, IMF, has identified Ireland as one of the top countries in terms of an AI-skilled population and workforce. Equally though, I accept that because of the extraordinary investments some of the global players are making in AI , they are cutting costs in terms of human resources. It may not necessarily all be AI driven. There are certain investment decisions being taken. One of the negative consequences of that is a cutting of labour forces globally, not just in Ireland. We have to prepare for that. We have strong labour protection laws in this country and frameworks that govern any redundancies or situations pertaining to workers' rights. I would not understate the protections that are there.
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On the small business front, regulations are a big feedback from the SME sector. They are saying to us that they are over-regulated and need simplification.
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The population increase in the last ten years has been quite phenomenal as well and is having an impact on the housing situation. Migration - and I mean this in a general sense, not casting any aspersions - has had an impact on housing also. One only has to look at the figures now of the people who are non-European or non-Irish in emergency accommodation. It is well over 50%. That is where we are in the modern era. We have to deal with that. We have to help people who find themselves homeless. Of that there is no doubt, but we also need to understand what the drivers of homelessness have been in the past five to ten years.
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Without question, when you analyse the figures and talk to people, population growth is a key area, but we also need to respond in terms of social housing, for example. We are building more houses in direct builds per annum now than since the foundation of the State. Last year, over 9,000 social houses alone were built. Ultimately, the provision of increased social housing is the best route to dealing with homelessness. No other way will sustainably deal with it. In addition to that, we are building a lot of affordable homes and giving a lot of support to people in terms of starter homes. Across the board, in terms of housing assistant payment, HAP, and other things, we are giving assistance to people who need to access housing. Without question, the momentum is towards increased house provision. Some 36,000 homes were built last year. We hope to increase that figure for 2026 and probably will. What is interesting is that commencements are up by 176% this year, with about 11,000 commencement notices in the first four months. Real dwelling investment is up by 19% and construction employment is up by 33% since 2020, 10% year on year. That is because of the increased house building that is taking place. There has been a 55% year-on-year increase in terms of land for housing and deals to facilitate housing. The Home Building Finance Ireland, HBFI, loan book is up by 25%. Whatever metric one is looking at, there are increases happening. The issue is the speed and how we can exit people from homelessness as quickly as possible, and from emergency accommodation in particular. If we do a temporary eviction ban, we will depress supply again. We have been through this. The Housing Commission said that the existing renting situation could not continue and that we had to create a more permanent framework for the rental market to give certainty to all concerned. What the Deputy suggested towards the end of her contribution would actually make the situation worse because supply would be depressed. We need more supply and we need it as quickly as possible. It is interesting that any form of supply we have proposed in the past three months has been opposed by the Social Democrats and by others in the Opposition.
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I do not have any faith in the Deputy’s capacity or her party’s capacity to deal with housing and homelessness-----
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-----based on what it has produced so far, in terms of the substance of what it has put forward. Soundbites will not build houses. It is good play but it will not build houses. I do not mind having an honest debate on housing but the Deputy consistently fails to acknowledge any progress at all in terms of the social housing issue, for example. There have been 58,000 social houses built in the last five years. That is dramatically better than anything built in the previous ten years, but the Deputy cannot acknowledge that. She cannot acknowledge anything at all. I acknowledge there is a homeless crisis out there. I have said from day one that housing is the number one crisis, but we are doing something about it with concrete policies.
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I have genuinely seen nothing. All I see that the Social Democrats have produced is a savings and investment scheme.
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That is all it has really come up with.
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That is not going to not solve homelessness today, next year or the year after.
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There is a lot of rhetoric but very little substance on the Deputies' side.
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I again thank the Deputy for raising it and maybe to some degree with a bit more honesty than others. First of all, let us accept the distinction he has made compared with others. He is not really interested in the occupied territories Bill on its own because it just deals with the illegal settlements. He knows that. All along, he has been shouting about the occupied territories Bill but all along he wanted an Israeli boycott.
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Let us be honest about what has happened here. We recognise Palestine and the Deputy moves on quickly. We intervene in the legal case by South Africa and he moves on quickly. We double down on UNRWA and he moves on quickly. We go to the ICJ and he moves on quickly.
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We do the occupied territories Bill and he moves on quickly and calls for us to boycott Israel.
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What is after that and after that? There has been no deep analysis,-----
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-----and that is the problem. The Deputy has now moved on very quickly. By the way, we do not have the power, even if we wanted to, to stop trade with Israel right now. That is a European competency and Deputy Boyd Barrett knows that, but he is not interested in that because, as far as he is concerned, the EU can go to pot as well. He is not particularly interested one way or the other. It is about campaigning. It is about attacking this Government. It is not really about trying to explain to people the impacts and implications of all of this. Does the Deputy want to ban trade with Israel?
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Does he want Intel to stop dealing with its sister company in Israel?
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Fine. Talk to the thousands of workers in Ireland working with Intel. What happens there?
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Through the Chair, has Deputy Boyd Barrett worked through the implications of it? Has anyone in the Opposition done an assessment of what it would mean economically?
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Does Deputy Boyd Barrett give a continental if the US goes south because of what we might do there? It is great to be virtuous, Deputy,-----
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-----but for the workers’ representative, he lacks all virtuosity when it comes to protecting Irish workers. We have to take everything on board and be sensible about it. At the same time, we have been principled.
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We are one of the few European member states that has stood out there. If you talk to the Palestinian Authority, Jordan, Egypt or anyone in the Gulf and the wider Middle East, the first thing they say is, “Thank you to the Irish Government for leading on this”.
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But no, the Deputy cannot ever say anything like that because that does not suit the campaign. The campaign for him is an end in itself.
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The campaign is a means to cause further undermining of the Irish Government. He has never campaigned on the same basis against Russia or Iran. He never has despite all that has happened in Iran.
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The campaign here is a deeper issue.
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For me, I am very clear. We have tried-----
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We all have a moral framework by the way. The Deputies do not have a monopoly on that. We have taken a lead on this. The easiest thing for politicians to do is put the chin up and be great people in sloganeering and rhetoric, but we have a deeper responsibility.
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We have to protect our national interests and people at the same time.
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That is the problem. As far as I am concerned, and I said it the last time, it is about finding the most effective way to do this.
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We either do it in unanimity with the European Union-----
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-----or we get the United States to change tack in terms of its relationship with Israel. Those are the fundamental ways we can change tack.
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We are implementing what we said in the programme for Government. Read the programme for Government. That is exactly what we are now doing. The way to deal with Israel effectively is through the European Union. There is no other way. We have not been able to get agreement across Europe because some countries historically have a position of supporting Israel come what may. The Deputy and I know that. The Commission is the competent authority in terms of trade with Israel. We have sought to get a suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement. Ireland and Spain have been the two countries for well over two years now-----
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I am sorry, but the Deputy is interrupting again. For over two and a half years, we have been seeking to suspend that association agreement, but we have not been able to get any support. Only last week, because of Hungary’s change of government, we were able to get sanctions on violent Israeli settlers at a European level. We are now trying to get at least a common European position on the occupied territories, but it is still difficult because the Slovenian Government has now changed with a completely different approach and response.
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