Your time is up, Taoiseach.

We are increasingly seeing the consequences of this Government's failure to support working people. Today, National Ambulance Service workers are on picket lines across the country. Our ambulance drivers and paramedics, who do such heroic front-line work, have been driven to strike over pay and conditions. Like so many, they are struggling to make ends meet on their current pay rates. As a result, the ambulance service cannot recruit or retain the staff it needs. Crews are being asked to provide increasingly complex care, under relentless pressure. This is unfair and, above all, unsafe.

Those involved have my solidarity and that of the Labour Party colleagues today. It is not just ambulance staff. Across communities, people are grappling to get by, instead of being able to get on because of the Government's policies. Just like in the eighties, a generation of young people is again facing a choice between adulthood in their childhood bedrooms or a new life overseas. Unlike the eighties, there is no shortage of jobs here. Instead, runaway costs and a poverty of Government ambition on housing and public services are driving them away. Tá siad ag dul thar lear ag lorg oibre. Tá siad ag dul ar imirce. Níl rogha acu ach imeacht thar sáile. That is having devastating effects. Last week in Glasnevin, I met a woman in tears who told me, in her words, that she was about to lose her second child to emigration. Her children, like so many others, are leaving Ireland because they see no future for themselves here and have no prospect of owning or having a home of their own. A former constituent who is now living in Perth told me that from his graduating medicine class of 350, 100 have joined him in Australia. That is an extraordinary figure. More extraordinarily, 60 of his classmates are working in the same hospital with him. He said the move has been made easier. although it is far away, because there are so many Irish people his own age there with him. He said that life is just so much easier there.

The fighting talk from the Minister, Deputy Chambers, this week is an admission that the Government is not spending wisely. We know, and Labour has said, that before the election, money was no object. The Government was rolling out gimmicks to buy people’s votes with their own money. Now, however, when communities need supports, it has deserted them while continuing to favour the burger barons and the big builders. When the Government's hare-brained VAT cut comes in on 1 July, working families will still be worse off. Who will not be worse off? McDonald's franchisees across the country stand to be €20 million better off. Supermac's, with revenues of nearly €300 million, will save €12 million due to the VAT cut. There is no evidence that this will be passed on to consumers.

The message the Government is sending to ordinary people is that they are on their own and the Government has made its choice. However, there is another choice. Last week, Labour put forward a mini-budget that would offer a substantial package for PAYE workers and struggling families. We are asking the Taoiseach if, tomorrow night when it comes to the vote on our mini-budget, he will support it. Will he support the targeted measures that will actually help households in this cost-of-living crisis?

Regarding the National Ambulance Service and the dispute, I already outlined how the Government entered into good faith negotiations and agreed a very comprehensive outcome. The unions recommended that outcome to their members. It was defeated by the members. No one can charge the Government with acting in bad faith in respect of this. We acted in good faith and will continue to act in good faith, and the HSE is as well. There is a way to resolve it, which has to be through the industrial relations machinery of the State. I would urge all involved to engage in dialogue to resolve this.

Deputy Bacik referred to the 1980s. For God's sake, there was 17.5% unemployment in the 1980s. It was shocking. Do not compare the 1980s to now. It does not-----

There are jobs now.

I made-----

I lived through it. There is no comparison. It was depression after depression-----

The Taoiseach did not just live through it. He-----

-----because of decisions that were made at the time. There is no comparison to the current day. We need to have a sense of perspective in how we debate things. Yet, young people do leave the country for different reasons. The housing issue is similar all over the world. It is far more difficult to buy a house in Canada or Australia, for example, than in Ireland.

It is. I have talked to young people who have been to Australia and Canada. In 2025, about 31,000 Irish came back into the country and 35,000 went out. Our population has grown exponentially over the last two to three decades. The Deputy must know that. Employment went up by 8.5% between 2020 and 2025. It went up 52% between 1995 and 2025. Therein lies the challenge to public expenditure and services. I would acknowledge that. The overall size of the economy is growing significantly. Our GDP, GNI*, whichever way you want to measure it, has grown substantially over the last decade. The population has grown with it and, therefore, the challenge to meet public services is also growing with that in terms of education, health, policing, and so on. That brings its own challenges. We then add onto that four to five major global seismic shocks, from Brexit to the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, tariffs from America and the war in the Middle East. Yet, the Irish economy is staying resilient. Employment is staying very resilient in terms of the number of people who are employed in our economy - over 2.8 million, which is a record in the history of the State.

I accept that there are challenges and many issues, the most important one being housing in terms of enabling young people to buy houses that they can afford and rent, and that we can provide social housing for those who cannot do that.

I always acknowledge the global shocks and global context in which the Government has to make responses. I acknowledged that it was a different context to the 1980s, but the similarity is that we are losing many of our young people, who have come through medical school here and see a better life and future for themselves in Australia, for example. Here at home, it is the Government's response that has caused and exacerbated the cost-of-living crisis. Notwithstanding the global shocks, there are choices that the Government made and could still make. That is why we put forward the mini-budget last week, namely, to put forward to the Government an alternative set of choices and a set of targeted supports, not VAT cuts that benefited large businesses, but targeted supports for working families and PAYE workers who felt left behind. The Taoiseach is out canvassing, as I am, across Galway West and Dublin Central. He is hearing it, too. People are feeling this in their pockets and their families and young people are leaving the country.

Ní aontaím leis an Teachta. Tá an Rialtas ag déanamh gach aon dícheall cabhair agus tacaíocht a thabhairt do dhaoine agus do theaghlaigh atá faoi bhrú. Níl aon amhras faoi sin. Bhí pacáiste mór againn le déanaí de luach €750 milliún. Sin a bhí i gceist againn chun an brú sin a ísliú. We have not exacerbated the global situation.

This is a ridiculous assertion. How is allocating €750 million to the haulage industry, to farmers, to contractors, and-----

To PAYE workers?

-----to PAYE workers, yes, in terms of the reduction in diesel and petrol, which is universal across the board, exacerbating a global crisis? There are challenges and pressures on families and certainly the global situation is overwhelmingly responsible for that. Everybody knows that. There is a war in the Middle East that is resulting in a 20% contraction-----

I acknowledged that.

-----of vital supplies and that is a big problem.

Today workers in the ambulance service are on strike. This is a last resort which has been taken by front-line workers who have been left with no other option. We all know how hard paramedics and emergency medical technicians work and we all know the immense responsibility that comes with that role.

I spoke to paramedics today who came off a 12-hour shift and are now on picket lines ready to work another shift in a few hours. These are workers who go above and beyond, who do the most important work and who even volunteer after they finish work to provide that crucial emergency care. They spoke about how much they had to upskill over the years so they can provide better and faster treatment to patients and how the evolving nature of their role has not been recognised by this or any previous Government. Instead, these workers have been ignored for years.

Not only are these essential workers badly paid but they are not adequately resourced. The service is so understaffed that personnel numbers need to be doubled by hiring 1,800 workers. Is it any wonder the service is so stretched on the ground or that this is having very serious consequences for patients?

In my constituency of Cork South-West, I have been contacted by people who had to wait four hours for an ambulance. Imagine seeing a loved one in serious medical distress and waiting for hours for an ambulance to arrive. It is horrific and is the result of years of underfunding, and it is something that people in rural Ireland have unfortunately come to expect.

This is not the fault of ambulance workers who do their very best. The blame lies squarely with a Government that expects an ambulance service to run on fumes and workers' goodwill.

It is outrageous that this Government has allowed things to deteriorate to where we are today. Ambulance workers on strike, with the service running at 46% capacity. What does the Government have to say to those people who have been fighting to resolve these issues for years? The bottom line is that staff in the ambulance service must be fairly paid and recognised for the essential and skilled work that they do.

An independent report published six years ago has set out how that can be done but instead of just implementing the report as recommended by the Labour Court, attempts have been made to introduce preconditions which would see the number of trained paramedics in a crew go from two to one and in some instances actually reduce people's pay. You could not make it up.

This is not something that workers can or should agree to. This is now beyond a crisis, and this dispute must be brought to an end. Will the Government commit to dropping those preconditions and adopting the McHugh and Crabtree report?

Again, it was successive Governments that invested and took the policy decisions to change the whole nature of the first responder sector. The Deputy just made a comment that no previous Government ever did anything about this. It is such an outrageous comment to make and there is no reality attached to it at all. However, the Deputy thinks that she come in and just say it and that is grand. How does the Deputy think it happened? How does she think the Pre-Hospital Emergency Care Council was established? How was the first responder system and the professionalisation of the whole area developed?

Yes, all involved were fantastic in going with it and having the ambition to do it but let us not make throwaway statements that no one cared a damn about it until now when the Deputy got up to speak. That is ridiculous. The bottom line is this: genuine negotiations went on between the HSE and the unions. The unions agreed to put the proposals and recommended the proposals, which all of the Opposition Members ignore. They seem to be saying that no matter what is sought, just agree it please. There are always negotiations in situations like this.

We want to modernise. We accept it even further. We want to invest more. There is more funding on the table for investment. There has been very significant investment. Now, there are pressures on workers in that sector. Of that there is no doubt.

Reforms are important in public expenditure as well. We can always do things better and more efficiently and effectively, but the Deputy seems to be saying for us to forget all about reform. I do not think that is a sustainable position. Neither did the unions, for that matter, and correctly so.

Fantastic work is being done on the front line. We affirm it. We want to get this resolved. There is only way to resolve it, and that is through mediation and dialogue. I am confident that it can be resolved, the issues can be netted out and we can get to a conclusion. There have been tremendous strides made, despite what the Deputy has said, in this area in my lifetime, and certainly over the past two decades, because of decisions to change policy and professionalise emergency medical technicians and the entire service. That has been very effective because it complements and supports the acute hospital service. In other words, the first responder is the key person to anyone whose life is in danger or who has been in an accident. We have professionalised the service, and that all of those involved undertook the additional academic work, qualifications and so on is to their credit. No one is disputing that. The State has accepted from day 1 that pay structures need to be modernised. That was the subject matter of a previous engagement at the WRC, which concluded with very significant outcomes. I outlined those earlier. They were significant outcomes, but they fell at the ballot. We need to get this sorted.

I said that neither this nor any previous Government had acknowledged in terms of pay and conditions how much workers in the National Ambulance Service had upskilled.

That is nonsense.

In the past 15 years, they have gone from essentially being a patient transfer service to providing nearly accident and emergency-style services in any given situation.

We know.

It has not been acknowledged-----

It has.

-----that their pay should be representative of that. That is the truth. They are on picket lines because of that. I say to the Taoiseach and the Minister, who is tutting over at me, that paramedics have the same responsibility and amount of training as other medical professionals but are paid significantly less. That is fundamentally unfair. The Taoiseach and Minister must at least recognise that. The paramedics are going into a pay dispute and being told that, in order to get a pay rise, they have to accept a reduction in the number of trained paramedics in a crew and that, due to conditions around overtime, some of their pay might be decreased. It is ridiculous. Will the Government drop the precondition around pay?

First of all, Deputy, we are not going to negotiate an industrial relations agreement paragraph by paragraph in the Chamber. It is not feasible and we are not going to do it, but what I have said from day 1 is that there should be dialogue. The HSE remains available for engagement-----

These workers have been waiting for six years.

-----with the trade unions on this matter. That is the sensible way to resolve this. Anyone involved in industrial relations over the years realises and knows that. By the way, we are long gone from the day of ministerial interventions in every single dispute that could potentially arise. That day is gone. We have a very sophisticated way of resolving disputes that involves experienced people. There must be a will on both sides to resolve it. There is a will on the Government’s side to resolve it, and I am sure there is, too, on the union side, but people should enter into discussions and get into dialogue.