I want to raise two issues today, the first of which is that of family resource centres. Along with my colleague, Deputy Quinlivan, I stepped across to Buswells yesterday to meet a number of people from the Family Resource Centre National Forum, including the local one in Limerick, the Northside Family Resource Centre. We had a very good engagement on the crucial work they do. I think we are all familiar with that work. They give tremendous support to families, communities and educational schemes. It is also important to recognise what they have done for refugees, particularly for those from Ukraine but also from other areas, in reaching out and giving them the essential supports they need.

They had a very clear and simple message yesterday, that they really need to have their core funding increased. Indeed, 83 family resource centres are not actually receiving the agreed funding they should be getting. They have costed it and the cost throughout the State would be €3.3 million. I want to put in an urgent plea for a debate on this topic ahead of the budget, so that we can all get together and get behind the family resource centres. The Northside Family Resource Centre delivered more than 32,500 meals last year to 300 older people and 20 children. The impact they make on people's lives is incredible. Their early years learning is incredible, too, but again they talked about the challenge they are facing in recruiting staff. We know the issues around that. I call for the issues in respect of wages for early years educators to be urgently addressed. Right now there are 242 children on a waiting list in Limerick who cannot get resources. Part of the reason is that they cannot get the staff to carry out that essential care and early education. I hope we can have a debate in the near future to recognise the important work of family resource centres.

In the minute or so I have left, I also want to make Senators aware of the scandalous treatment of workers by Tesco Ireland at the moment. I hope colleagues are aware of this already. A number of workers, those who pick and deliver the goods for people's home shopping, are to have their wages cut by thousands of euro from next Monday. Changes to these workers' terms and conditions are being imposed without agreement with the trade union, Mandate. The difference it will make will literally be thousands of euro. We must bear in mind that Tesco has obscene levels of profits and does not need to do this. It is choosing to do so to increase profits even more at the expense of the very workers who earn those profits for the company. For me it is an issue of morality as much as workers' rights. I call for an urgent debate on this issue of workers' rights. We see the big corporates squeezing workers and squeezing terms and conditions. This is a prime example. Tesco is going to make its workers thousands of euro worse off each year. It is also going to cost them additional moneys in terms of child care because of the change to their terms and conditions. None of this is necessary. It is being driven by one thing only and that is corporate greed. I call for an urgent debate.

When it comes to the Israeli apartheid regime's crimes against the Palestinians, the international community is stuck in a cycle of condemnation and inaction. The UN has condemned Israel for violations of international law thousands of times but nothing has been done, partially because of the US veto on the UN Security Council. This pattern has fostered a sense of impunity within Israel. Israeli leaders believe they can do whatever they want without facing tangible consequences and that is extremely dangerous. Just in the last week we have seen an EU-funded school demolished in the West Bank and children killed by Israeli bombing in Gaza.

I introduced the Control of Economic Activity (Occupied Territories) Bill in 2018 to disrupt the cycle of condemnation and inaction. I would like the Irish Government to back up its rhetoric. We won the argument. We won the support of ordinary Irish people and we won the votes on the floor of the Dáil and Seanad. Unfortunately, the Bill was blocked but I will not give up on this issue. A development that makes me very optimistic is the formation of the Irish Anti-apartheid Campaign for Palestine in which I am involved. It is a civil society coalition of more than 20 organisation including trade unions, development charities like Christian Aid and Trócaire, NGOs like the Irish Council for Civil Liberties and Amnesty, and campaigning groups like the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Sadaka Ireland and Jews for Palestine. We are coming together to ask that the Government recognise that Israel is committing the crime of apartheid against the Palestinians and to take tangible action on foot of that recognition, including passing the occupied territories Bill.

On the 75th anniversary of the Nakba, the campaign is launching a pledge. That is what I want to talk about today. People from all over Ireland can sign up to signal their support for tangible Government action on Palestine. It is impossible to ignore evidence that solidarity with Palestine is an important political issue for Irish people. We want to be able to present this proof to political parties ahead of the upcoming local, European and general elections in the South along with a demand that they include commitments to recognise Israeli apartheid and to enact the occupied territories Bill in their election manifestoes and in the next programme for Government. The pledge is available at amnesty.ie. Amnesty along with many other groups will be outside Leinster House at 1 p.m. today as part of the Picnics against Apartheid event. I encourage Members to come out and show their support. Tomorrow I will be circulating the pledge among Members. I will ask Members to, please, sign on and share it far and wide. Empty words of condemnation mean nothing. The pledge is a commitment for moral clarity and tangible action. I ask Members today to sign up.

Well said.