The Taoiseach should please forgive me, as I did omit the issue of infrastructural failures from my list. I thank him for jogging my memory. In fact, the mythical metro of which he speaks has gone on for decades. It is a bit like the children's hospital. It is one of these things that is spoken of in hushed tones, billions are allocated and maybe one day we will wake up and it will be a reality, or maybe not - certainly not on the Taoiseach's watch. I would not have any great hope.

It is the Taoiseach who engages in spin and soundbites when he is called out about the reality of people's lives on the ground and the fact that people are struggling with their bills. He refuses to help. In fact, he takes action to make matters worse. The fact is that he has spectacularly failed our children, in particular those I have listed who are awaiting assessments of need, looking for school places or living with scoliosis and spina bifida. He has no answer to that because his is a government of failure, legislatively and-----

I thank Deputy McDonald. I call on the Taoiseach to respond.

----- on a day-to-day basis in very practical ways, in making people's lives easier.

I call on the Taoiseach to respond.

In fact, it seems to me that his ambition is to make people's lives more difficult. How is that for a Christmas bonus for people?

That is a bit silly. The bottom line is that we are prioritising children and we want to do that. It is accepted that there are issues facing children in this country, but we provided for a major 20% increase in investment in disability services. As the Deputy knows, we are now developing a new education therapy service, which will be transformative. It will start in special schools early in the new year. It will be expanded into all special schools in the school year beginning in September of next year. Then we will expand it into the mainstream classes. That will have multidisciplinary teams in schools for children with disabilities.

In parallel with that, we are investing in disability services. We are amending the assessment of need to make sure we prioritise the provision of therapists to children, as opposed to them being behind desks doing all sorts of assessments that are not the optimum use of their time. We need therapists to work with children on the ground. We have 400 new special classes this year, and we also have 300 new special school places sanctioned for the 2025-26 school year.

I thank the Taoiseach.

A total of €3 billion has now been invested in special education, and rightly so. It will continue.

I call Deputy Lawlor.