Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I had the pleasure of attending the original London Irish soccer club, Tottenham Hotspur, on Monday evening. It was very moving to see the ceremony beforehand in support of Ukraine. There was a fantastic song from local schoolchildren and huge solidarity from supporters of both clubs. However, the topic of conversation before and during the match was the appalling stance of the British Government in terms of visas for Ukrainian refugees. Conservative ministers made appalling comments the previous week that they could come if they wanted to pick fruit. It really speaks in shameful terms of the values of that government.

I commend our Government on the positive moves it has made to welcome Ukrainian refugees. It is very important we have joined-up thinking throughout this. The challenges will be great but it was wonderful to be able to say to people at that match that the Irish Government was taking a proactive attitude to welcoming people to our country in response to the horrors we were seeing throughout Europe.

One of the other aspects of this crisis is the issue of rising costs for Irish families. I am pleased to see the Irish Government finally take a stance on reducing excise duties. My fear is that whatever is announced today will be swallowed up by tomorrow. What is very important is that the Government take Sinn Féin's advice to fix a price for petrol and assure the public it will not go beyond that price during this crisis period. I was speaking to a woman from Limerick earlier today who explained to me that her pay-as-you-go electricity costs have effectively doubled. Pay as you go goes half as far as it used to go which is an appalling prospect. We need to see very clear commitments. I do not understand why home heating oil will not be included. I hope there is a late change in stance on that. Home heating oil costs have doubled. It is now €400 for half of a fill of heating oil. Working families cannot afford those sorts of costs. We need to see joined-up thinking.

A number of people have raised the issue of education in the past couple of weeks. It is high time we had a debate on the future of education. I see we have had correspondence from the Catholic education group in terms of its stance on integrated education. We need to talk about integrated education. As an old-fashioned republican, I believe in the complete separation of church and State. We have not gone half as far as we need to in terms of our schooling.

The other issue in education on which I want to have a debate is the subsidy to private fee-paying schools. It was €111 million last year. I have no problem with anyone choosing to send their children to fee-paying schools. I have a massive problem with those people expecting Irish taxpayers to subsidise those fee-paying schools. When one thinks of the back-to-school costs that we talk about every year, €111 million would go a long way towards solving those costs for ordinary families in our public school system. It is high time we had a debate on education, our priorities and the need to move to a separation of church and state in our school system.