I am not saying that I am.

Four out of ten first-time buyers needed family help to buy their homes in the first six months of this year, amounting to an estimated €210 million, and the typical first-time buyer needs a deposit of at least €52,000. My Labour Party colleague in Dún Laoghaire, Councillor Denis O'Callaghan, has been working on a co-operative housing proposal for ten years to deliver 42 homes on Loughlinstown Drive. It was to be delivered by Co-operative Housing Ireland, CHI, which had 34 social housing apartments. It also include…

I think it can be saved.

I understand the Omicron variant is in Ireland. The Taoiseach might take the opportunity in his reply to confirm what he knows about this. It is important that the House is updated immediately on this. Obviously, it is a very serious, but not surprising, issue for us. I wish to raise the matter of the two letters issued by the Department of Education and the Chief Medical Officer, CMO, on school masks in primary schools, because there is utter confusion in relation to how this was done. The communication process ar…

Not being comfortable with it is one thing; not being legal is another. I am concerned about this. There is a big difference between primary and secondary schools. Many people have followed the guidance but will have an objection to this. I do not, but some do. I want to know that principals are protected. We have trawled to see what the legal basis is to cover principals and boards of management and we cannot find any. The announcement was on non-headed note paper. There was no signature on the PDF that was sent o…

What is the legal basis?

What is the legal framework for this?

Are the principals protected? The Taoiseach is not answering that question.

The Taoiseach is not answering the question. He cannot answer it because there is no answer.

No, but I can still get advice.

I can get advice before issuing a circular.

Yes, but there must be a legal basis for it. The Taoiseach did not come in here with legislation to provide for this. There needs to be a basis for regulations. Will the Taoiseach tell the principals who are going to be at the gates of schools what he has told me?

Senator Rebecca Moynihan has raised an issue with me which I want to raise with the Taoiseach in respect of the impact of new travel rules on women who are travelling to the UK for terminations. It is not clear if those travelling for essential medical treatment not available here are required to have a PCR or antigen test when returning home. Guidance is needed on that. It adds a layer of stress to women. Second, the Health (Amendment) (No. 3) Bill 2021 for mandatory hotel quarantine was published yesterday. The o…

At the start of the pandemic, NSEC published a series of papers on the crisis, including one on protecting enterprises, employment and incomes. One of the key Government policies was the employment wage subsidy scheme, EWSS. I have long called for this to be turned into a permanent short-term working scheme - a call which the Government has obviously ignored. More critically right now, cuts to the rates of payment under the EWSS come into force today. I ask the Taoiseach to reverse that. As I was sitting here, I re…

Quality of life is an important metric. During Covid, we saw a drastic increase in domestic abuse cases as lockdowns led to an increase in emotional, physical and sexual assaults, particularly against women. We had the shocking revelations about the 999 calls, as the Taoiseach knows, and there is a bit of work to be done on that yet. According to Safe Ireland, an average of 180 women and 275 children looked for emergency accommodation every month between March and December 2020. At the same time, 2,159 requests for…

It was 2,159. That is deeply worrying. The facts speak for themselves; we need more capacity in the system. Will the Taoiseach consider a timeline to provide the additional requirements and spaces that we need, particularly as we have signed up to the Istanbul convention? Ultimately, we are failing these people by not being able to provide such services.

The Residential Tenancies (Amendment) (No. 2) Bill 2021 went through the Seanad last week and is in the Dáil this week. It is the Government's latest effort to deal with this issue. We have been calling for a rent freeze of three years or more and I urge the Taoiseach to consider it. I do not buy any of the argument about it being unconstitutional. I know because I got the constitutional advice from the then Attorney General. Our housing spokesperson, Senator Moynihan, has highlighted a major flaw in the latest Bil…

All of the Deputy's crowd up in the North.

After the discovery of the Omicron variant, one would have to wonder whether other countries are going to do the right thing and behave like South Africa. It has been turned into a pariah. In fairness, it did its job on behalf of all the rest of us. We do not even know whether the variant came from South Africa because there is community transition across Europe and the rest of the world. What are we doing as regards genomic sequencing? The Minister said we have a rate of 10% but, according to figures we have seen,…

We need the TRIPS-----