Speeches: 19 May 2026

Protecting biodiversity is not just about nature, it's about healthier communities, cleaner water, stronger farming and the birds and wildlife that are part of everyday life in rural Ireland.

You've achieved the highest level of eviction since the famine, the highest level of child homelessness ever and you've nothing to offer renters.

Taoiseach, we need to ensure all the circumstances of this incident are thoroughly examined.

This pollution, which is shocking and it's chronic and it's really undermining what the Lough has to offer.

What crime do they have to commit?

What crime does Israel have to commit before we will impose sanctions?

So is there a recognition that actually having the energy sector driven by profiteering companies has failed and that we need to bring the energy sector back into proper public ownership and run on a not-for-profit basis?

The government have failed to adequately protect sensitive marine environments.

It's difficult to escape the conclusion that the government don't want to solve the housing crisis and that they are serving the interests of people who profit from the housing crisis and the worse it gets the more those people profit.

Privatization and deregulation of the energy market has been a failure and we need to bring the energy sector back into public ownership and return the not-for-profit mandate of the ESB.

When you restore the homes in the hearts of these estates and these oases, you really make them alive.

The United Nations was founded to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.

We have consistently prioritised big tech while households and small businesses subsidise the infrastructure costs and pay for the carbon emissions that's associated with this technology.

Only a sustained increase in the supply of homes of all tenures can solve this problem.

It's always been my view that farmers are our frontline workers in the battle against climate change and to deal with the biodiversity crisis and the more that we can equip farmers and ensure that farmland is used effectively for that purpose the better.

Taoiseach, yesterday Israel committed yet another blatant breach of international law.

Where should he go and where should the thousands more go like him?

I think we need to continue our work when it comes to reconciliation, when it comes to investing in the shared island fund, when it comes to the reconciliation fund through my own department, so that when we do get to that point, that enough work is done to ensure that enough people have benefited from the Good Friday Agreement and that we're not still dealing with the troubles and the legacy of the past.

If the state can run a passport office in London, as it should, surely it is reasonable and necessary to establish a permanent passport office in Belfast and Derry to provide this basic public service closer to home for hundreds of Irish citizens in the north.

Taoiseach, something has to be done, we just cannot afford.

Increasing supply is the single most important lever we have to moderate prices, improve affordability, reduce homelessness and increase home ownership for families and ordinary workers.

There was outcry and scandal and we still do not have any actual accountability.

Minister, your amendment is an actual insult to every person, to those over 7,000 families who got notices to quit in the first three months of the year, and the thousands of families who got notices to quit at the end of last year.

You must start on the ground, and maybe people don't like talking about sewage, but you can build houses if we don't have waste treatment plants, and if we're still waiting for water in a place.

I voted against that because I feel very strongly about democratic rights and I always believed that if someone owns a house... they were entitled to do what they wanted to do with it.

He never listened to one word that we said.

Correct the record you haven't given any protection to existing tenants.

This government is one of the cruelest and most callous governments we have since the foundation of the state.

It's acting with reckless abandon and in my view consistently in breach of international humanitarian law.

There is a growing perception that the leadership is more concerned with signalling its progressive credentials to a small, urban, liberal audience than with listening to the instincts of their own traditional base.

Too rich for social housing and too poor to survive on the private rental sector.

The principles and purpose of the agreement remain central to what my Government does and how we foster relationships across these islands, including through the Shared Island Initiative.

We have here a tale of two islands. Working people playing by the rules, abandoned by government and told to tighten their belts. And top brass executives at RTE who believe the rules don't apply to them. Who believe they can do what they want without consequence.

This government's housing record is not just a failure, it is a disgrace.

This is an absolute travesty and a waste of money.

If you're calling it a protected area, the main focus must be the conservation of biodiversity and then any benefits to fisheries are kind of secondary in a way.

This had been achieved not as a sort of a big bang or a sudden enlightenment, but through steady day-to-day work from the marine protected area staff.

You and your government sided with institutional infestors and big landlords and true renters under the bus.

This government's housing policy is not just a failure, it is outright betrayal of the Irish people.

That is your fault and your government's fault. That is why we have the situation we have today.

When you target something you're going to leave somebody behind.

It looks like human life comes last when it comes to this government.

The only, only thing that will help this woman in the short term is a ban on evictions.

You have done it knowingly, you have done it deliberately and you have done it for no good reason.

Renewables give us a pathway to reducing costs for everybody, and we just need to make sure that we get the balance right in terms of the different energy sources so that we can get costs down permanently for people.

In the meantime renters have been thrown to the wolves.

This is the opportunity to get a legacy bill through that can sustain and that this current government is the government in Britain that can deliver that.

The three public dental schemes, the Dental Treatment Services scheme, the Dental Treatment Benefits scheme and the school dental scheme are in chaos.

Hands off rent, charge whatever you can get and the more get evicted and the more homelessness there is and the bigger demand the higher the rents that the landlords can charge.

We're facing homelessness on an unprecedented scale.