Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)

First, I share the Deputy’s condemnation of what happened to our five Irish citizens. I have just received confirmation that Deputy Heneghan is back in Ireland. I had a brief message from him to that effect. It seems Israel released parliamentarians first. I know he is Deputy O’Callaghan’s constituency colleague. He is back in Ireland but the remaining Irish citizens will be engaging with our embassy team today. Obviously we are calling for their swift release. We believe it was illegal in terms of how they were detained and I do intend to consider how to pursue that with counterparts.

I join the Deputy in welcoming the very real live prospect of a ceasefire and the fact the United Nations has talked about there being enough food in the region to feed the people of Gaza for three months if we can just get that in and do so urgently. Our aid people will be endeavouring to assist in that.

On college fees and many issues, we were very clear during the election campaign that we were moving back to a one annual budget process. That meant that the one-off measures between September and Christmas were going to be replaced with an annual budget and that we would seek to embed permanent, sustainable, affordable cuts to a number of areas, including education, the cost for business and a variety of other areas. The measure we have taken on student fees is the first instalment of five. I remain committed to the very strong views I have in relation to the cost of education and college fees. We intend to build on that further in the time ahead. Other decisions we made, like extending the renters tax credit which was due to expire this year at a cost of €350 million a year, will directly benefit and help students.

I appreciate we have different views on the measures we have taken around apartments and tax but I believe it is an important viability measure. We will see who is right in time. We have listened to a lot of people in terms of the viability gap. We have taken a number of measures to try to close that gap because there are tens of thousands of apartments with active planning permission today that are not being built and we need them built. We all want more housing supply.

On disability, the Minister for Social Protection has been clear he is working on developing a cost of disability payment. We would like to see that in place for the next budget. However, this year’s budget did see objectively a step change in the investment in disability services. That has been recognised by the likes of Inclusion Ireland. The extra funding of €628 million for disability services from the Minister, Deputy Foley and the Minister of State, Deputy Naughton, is an important step forward and will make a real difference.

On childcare, we have taken a number of measures. The commitment was to produce a plan within 100 days. All these things were going to be done as part of the budget.

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