We welcome this opportunity to speak to this important report on an area of Irish life which has seen a huge level of public policy failure over many generations and possibly since the foundations of the State. I will speak to some of the key findings and challenges it presents us all with and some of the solutions. The Minister of State has spent some of his allotted time on the report, but there are key findings about lone parents who are significantly affected and of whom less than 25% reported home ownership, c…

The Labour Party has tabled a priority question on the decriminalisation of drug users for answer on Thursday. The Department of Justice has told us it is a matter for the Department of Health and, as a result, this priority question will not be answered by the Minister for Justice. The reason our courts are full of people with drug addictions is that this is a justice issue. It is dealt with by the Department of Justice and falls under the legislation that the Minister for Justice oversees. If we are to have this …

-----because Members of this House and those we are trying to represent are not well served by Departments and Ministers who are ducking issues that affect very vulnerable people.

I thank the Taoiseach.

I thank the Minister. The Labour Party supports the Bill because at its heart is addressing an issue that should have made everybody in Ireland feel extremely uncomfortable, that is, that a multimillionaire tax exile who owns several radio stations and did not like what certain journalists were writing about him decided to ban entire publications and representatives who work for those publications from speaking on the radio stations he owns. This ban even extended to the sports programmes on those stations. What wa…

I can only assume the Government has learned from what happened in December 2020 when decisions were made which were against public health advice. People may remember that we then had more cases of Covid-19 and more deaths from Covid in January 2021 than we did in all of 2020. I understand where the Government is coming from in this regard. It wants to end restrictions entirely on 22 October, while leaving the legal framework in place until early January 2022 in case anything happens. The Labour Party can understan…

The National Campaign for the Arts, NCFA, has put together quite a substantial document which it is hoping the Minister will consider in the budgetary process. I am interested in hearing the Minister's reflections on that budgetary submission and her vision for the future of the arts which, as she will appreciate, has gone through a hellish 20 months.

I am delighted to hear that and know they will impress on the Minister the stark findings contained in their report. The latest analysis indicates that two thirds of workers in the sector are earning less than €20,000 per year, 60% of artists and arts workers have neither health insurance nor private pensions, and 74% of performing artists and creative practitioners are reliant on another source of income. The Arts Council reports that 48% of professional artists have considered abandoning their career in the arts …

I appreciate what the Minister is saying, but the NCFA document argues that it could take until 2024 to recover from the past 20 months in what is already a particularly precarious sector. I am seeking a commitment from the Minister not just to deal with what has happened in the past year and a half but to deal with the long-term situation. It is a source of frustration to the arts community that whenever Ireland is marketed abroad as a tourist destination, the icons put forward from our history are always from the…

The Labour Party and I want to work with the Taoiseach and the Minister for Education on the issue of back-to-school costs. The Taoiseach will agree that this topic comes up every September and then goes away again. I am concerned that the book publisher, Folens, has now acquired the teacher training institution, Hibernia College. An educational book entity, which exists for commercial interests, is now effectively the largest provider of teachers for the education system. In Northern Ireland, schoolbooks are free;…

I am sorry.

We need a moratorium on evictions and a three-year rent freeze. Last week the Government did not oppose the Labour Party's renters' rights Bill, proposed by Senator Moynihan and Deputy Bacik, but there does not seem to be any enthusiasm to change quickly the Government's policy or the law. We know from statistics that the main reasons for terminating a tenancy are the sale of the property, which accounts for 51% of reasons given, or the use of the home for a relative, which accounts for 24%. Our Bill would restrict…

I am delighted to get an opportunity to ask about an issue that falls under the remit of the Taoiseach's Department. The programme for Government includes a commitment to a citizens' assembly on the issue of drugs. As he knows, many people are working on a campaign for the decriminalisation of the drug user. I do not want the word "decriminalisation" in this context to be confused with the idea of decriminalisation or legalisation of drugs. We are talking about the decriminalisation of drug users. The objective is …

Michael Barrett, Richard Bennett, Carol Bissett, James Buckley, Paula Byrne, Caroline Carey, John Colgan, Jacqueline Croker, Liam Dunne, Michael Farrell, David Flood, Thelma Frazer, Michael French, Josephine Glen, Michael Griffiths, Robert Hillick, Brian Hobbs, Eugene Hogan, Murtagh Kavanagh, Martina Keegan, Mary Keegan, Robert Kelly, Mary Kennedy, Mary Kenny, Margaret Kiernan, Sandra Lawless, Francis Lawlor, Maureen Lawlor, Paula Lewis, Eamon Loughman, George McDermott, Marcella McDermott, William McDermott, Julie…

I thank the Minister of State for the reply. Nobody, certainly not me, wants an unseemly political row over what is an intensely traumatic and sensitive issue. The families, however, feel the funding has not been made available to their satisfaction. There is the potential for 47 families not to be involved in the inquest if things continue as they currently stand. While I understand the Minister of State, Deputy James Browne, is not the decision maker in this regard, I urge him to ensure that he speaks to the Mini…

I thank the Minister for his comments. I acknowledge the work put into the Bill by my colleagues, Deputy Bacik, and Senator Moynihan, our housing spokesperson. We appreciate that the Minister is not opposing the Bill and some of his comments reacting to the Bill are welcome. Some of the commentary made outside this House, however, has been particularly disappointing. My colleagues referred to that earlier. It just makes us all wonder where is the priority of Government. Whom in the housing market is it actually try…

Nobody should be in any doubt that the reason we are debating this legislation is the catastrophic failure of the Irish financial system due to reckless property speculation and the appalling mismanagement of some of our financial institutions. It is the business of Deputies in Dáil Éireann, as legislators, to create the law, it is the business of the Executive to govern and it is the business of the Judiciary to interpret the law. It is not our job as Deputies to interpret the law or administer justice and it is e…

I sent a message to the Taoiseach and the Minister for Education this morning relating to a second-level school in Donaghmede that Deputy Duncan Smith and I visited this morning. The conditions in which the children and staff are working are quite deplorable. I ask the Government to address the issue as soon as it possibly can. I want to raise the issue of the return to school. In our view, there are thousands of children out of school unnecessarily. There are asymptomatic children being kept out of school for 14 d…

Now we have upwards of 14,000 children out of the system and that will only get worse.

We are trying to find solutions to this. Perhaps we can find a mechanism to ensure it does not get worse.