What does the Taoiseach have to say to workers and their families today who are desperately trying to save to buy their own home? He can hardly tell them to stop complaining or to shop around. Cuckoo funds are outbidding household buyers by as much as 32%, paying on average €105,000 more per property than household buyers. Ordinary workers can shop around for an eternity, but increasingly they feel they are chasing shadows. They will never be able to outbid the cuckoo funds that are swooping in and snatching the ho…

Let me address the issue of private sector investment. Of course it has its place. It is a big part of the solution but it has to have constraints put on it. The Taoiseach stated that he has spoken to a lot of people in terms of designing the solution. I am wondering who he has been speaking to because the solution that has been designed really favours cuckoo funds over individual home buyers.

That is the obvious thing that is happening here. Does he ever question that he could be getting this wrong? Fianna Fáil has got it wrong before. Does he ever question that he is talking to the wrong people or taking the wrong advice? Look at the evidence. Look at the evidence of rental costs. Who can afford €2,000 a month in rent in perpetuity? It is only going to be a question of time before we see young people queueing up at airports to leave this country.

They will do so because they cannot live in it. Housing is critical to that. For the past decade, I have been speaking about the need to build social housing. When the housing assistance payment, HAP, was brought in, I said it would be a disaster if it was not accompanied by a big housebuilding programme and it would become a dominant feature with the amount of State money that went into it. I am sick to death of predicting things that turn out to be right. Perhaps the Taoiseach might listen to some of us rather th…

This is not working and anyone looking at those statistics knows it is not working.

I have been listening to that since 2012.

I apologise. I have come straight from the Committee on Public Accounts to the Chamber and I had to negotiate several flights of stairs in between. Like many aspects of the Covid-19 pandemic, the full impact on the workforce is probably yet to be seen. It will likely take years for us to fully comprehend the massive shifts that have and are taking place. The Department’s estimate is that between 25,000 and 56,000 people are expected to be laid off as a result of Covid-19. It is not something that will only be exper…

Please do not keep to the script.

I thank all the Deputies for their contributions on and support for this motion. I also welcome the return of people to the Gallery who have a particular interest in this area. I acknowledge Erica Tierney. She is the patient advocate in my area and we chat regularly. We purposely kept this motion narrow and focused because we think this is something that can be done. The Minister of State said she would have liked to have deviated from the script and I wish that she had. I did not hear the opposition to debt collec…

My office, like everyone else's, has been receiving lots of calls and emails since the news about reverting to the traditional leaving certificate for this year was leaked last night. Students and parents are extremely anxious and confused. Many of them are angry not only about what has been announced but, just as importantly, they are also angry about how that happened. One parent told me that their child has lost almost all of their resource hours because of the pandemic, and she is extremely distressed at today'…

The two reports, the report of the Ombudsman for Children and the report of special rapporteur on child protection, emphasised the point about all children being impacted but the ones who were most impacted were those who were disadvantaged and marginalised. Where did that come into the thinking on what has been presented? Where are they specifically represented? What about the parent who contacted me this morning about their child who did not get resource hours and who will never get those hours back? That is abou…

I welcome the debate and thank the Business Committee for acceding to it. Some of us have spent weeks of our lives on this issue over the years as members of both the line committee and the Committee of Public Accounts, forensically examining this and going through the process, which was flawed. Indeed, the Green Party was on this side of the House at the time. One bidder remained at the end of the process but we could not even figure out on the eve of the signing of the contract what the entities of that bidder we…

Will the Minister of State publish the contract in order that we can see it?

We also have a need for transparency and information, which I think the Minister of State will accept. The Currency produced the corporate structure, the names of which the Minister of State listed, and it has been described as Byzantine. It does not fill us with confidence, given we did not have any in the first instance, about the ability of the company to deliver broadband to the extent that was required and within the terms of the contract and how it was going to be funded. Eir has passed about 45,000 premises …

The point of the intervention area was that it was an area that was not commercial. Eir was one of the entities in the process and, from memory, it had spent about €7 million by the time it dropped out. The key issue is that we get everybody connected that needs to be and wants to be connected. However, within the plan, there is the encroachment area and compensation can be paid. It is absolutely valid for us to keep an eye on that and to ask questions on it.

We are close to 5 February, where there would be the requirement to determine what numbers are to be delivered within the next year - in any case, it is in or around the beginning of February. Where is the Minister of State on that? When are we going to know the numbers that are going to be delivered? The Minister of State talked about negotiating. I get worried when I hear that. This is not a two-way thing. Given this terribly complicated way of doing things, the Department should be dictating the process. The cap…

Will that be done within the next two weeks?

I am conscious of time and there are a few issues I want to get in. Terminology is very important. We were very conscious of that when we were debating for a very long period of time, backwards and forwards, the number of houses or premises passed and the number connected, which is very different. The number connected is actually very low in comparison to the numbers passed. We need to stop talking in circles on this kind of thing. We need to have monthly figures to give us clarity on what exactly is being delivere…

I ask the Minister of State to come back to me on that.

On a point of order, there is no Minister on the other side of the House.