Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

Yes. On Saturday, together with residents and housing activists, I was outside a house in Swiftbrook in Tallaght. It would make a fine home for a family but, instead, it has been vacant for ten years. It is owned by Pepper Finance, a vulture fund that is notorious for hiking up interest rates on mortgage holders. That has been sitting empty for ten years. It is one of more than 50,000 homes in the State that have been vacant for six years or more, and one of more than 1,500 vacant homes in Dublin 24. Someone asked me a simple question, which is why there are so many vacant homes when there are more than 4,000 children sleeping in emergency accommodation. The answer I gave is also simple. The reason is because this Government represents those who own multiple properties, not those who own none. That is the central truth of politics which is attempted to be covered up all the time, that we have a Government that is not striving to house everybody, to address the health crisis and to address the climate crisis. We have a Government that represents those who profit and benefit from the housing crisis, those who profit from the health crisis and those responsible for the climate and biodiversity crisis, not on that represents those who are affected by all of those crises. For all of the talk of new energy, there will be no change with Deputy Harris on that fundamental.

The talk of going back to basics for Fine Gael means rhetorical commitment to law and order, which, if put into action, means abandoning the rhetorical commitment to a public health approach to drugs. It means tax cuts for businesses - cuts to the lowest rates of employers' PRSI in all of the European Union. The Taoiseach will cut it. It means extending relief for developers on development levies, giving them another break. For workers, it means the promised sick days are threatened to be taken away from them.

On climate action, Deputy Eamon Ryan gives it away when he says that they are only warming up. There is a tragic truth to that about the whole world.

We are heading for absolute disaster. Our eyes are wide open. They are in government with a man who made a speech at his party's Ard-Fheis promising that he would fight for the right of big dairy farmers to pollute our rivers. It is a Government that is committed to expanding data centres with no problem about the water, the electricity or the direct burning of gas. Unfortunately, with the help of some so-called Independents, the Government gets a stay of execution. The Government avoids a general election but it cannot avoid the local and European elections in eight and a half weeks' times. This will be people's opportunity to serve an eviction notice on those in government and to kick them out of the councils and the European Parliament, and, hopefully, to kick out the European Commission President they support, Ursula von der Leyen, who is a supporter of genocide, but also to serve notice that fundamental change needs to come.

I want to send a warning to people, because there is a lesson to be learned from what happened here today. This Government only got such a substantial margin of victory for Simon Harris because of the support of a load of so-called Independents. Most of these Independents started their political careers in Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael and then fell out with them. Their highest political ambition is to be a Minister in a Fianna Fáil- or Fine Gael-led Government. That is the truth. The Independents who will stand in local elections across the country are much the same. The key question for every single candidate and party is whether they will commit not to prop up Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. Will they commit to give a fundamental alternative after the next election?

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