Certain.

I want to go back to something Deputy Ó Broin said earlier. It goes to the point I am trying to make. I am dealing with a constituent at the moment who is in a semi-detached house. She has met the damage threshold but the house next door has not. If she can be included in the scheme and the house next door has been told it does not meet the damage threshold, by what mechanism under what is proposed tonight can they access the scheme?

I support the amendment from Deputy Ward. I too tabled an amendment about the arbitrary deadline of 29 March. I understand why the amendments were ruled out of order, because they place a charge on the Exchequer but the Minister needs to look at this again because the deadline is arbitrary. It is bad enough that the Government took a year to come up with what is simple legislation to lift the cap. Why did the Minister come up with the date of 29 March? Was it to coincide with the SCSI report? Surely the report woul…

I congratulate the Minister of State on her uplift to higher office. I welcome this Bill. I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak on it and more broadly in support of the arts, one of the most powerful forces shaping our culture, society and reputation around the world. The success of the Irish film industry is something we in the Labour Party are very proud of. It was Michael D. Higgins, as Minister for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht, who established the Irish Film Board way back in 1993. He had the foresig…

This decline is not sudden; it is the cumulative result of years of neglect. In the time I have available to me, I want to talk about the fantastic work being done in my constituency by Film in Limerick, which is an initiative of Innovate Limerick that provides valuable local supports and acts as a point of information and contact for film in the region. We had a film lab that launched in Limerick last July, bringing 18 producers from Ireland, Canada and Scotland together. We really need to see a return of the regi…

Hear, hear.

That is our-----

I am proud to stand here today as a Labour Party TD to close this motion. I commend Minister of State, Deputy Buttimer, on his very thoughtful and heartfelt contribution. It really reminded me why we are here and why we do what we do, especially compared to some of the contributions we heard before it. However, I am disappointed that this debate is coming to a conclusion at 11.45 a.m. I am disappointed by the nature of some of what Deputy Cullinane said. I am disappointed that Sinn Féin has not used its full speaki…

Hear, hear.

Gabhaim buíochas leis an Aire. After months and months, we finally have the Government's new flagship housing plan. After almost a year in office, we finally see how the Government hopes to bring an end to the housing catastrophe in this country. However, what did we get? We got very little. We got, essentially, an admission of failure and a total and complete lack of any vision or ambition. We got a plan that scrapped targets, provides no serious pathway to secure affordable homes for ordinary people and is not am…

As far as I understand it, the position at the moment is that the 2000 Act is still partly in force and the 2024 Act is only partially commenced. My understanding of this is that section 4(6) of the 2024 Act allows the Minister, by regulation, to modify any provision of the Act if there is a difficulty with bringing it into operation. Such regulations cannot be made more than three years after the relevant provision has come into operation. The unspoken assumption is that problems can only be identified in the proc…

I concur with what Deputy Mac Lochlainn said about the defective concrete block amendment Bill. The further amendments were only published at 3.30 p.m. We also need more time for statements on the housing plan.

This amending Bill is a tweak to a scheme that does not work. The scheme does not work because it is not an end-to-end redress scheme like the pyrite scheme that people on the east coast of the country have been able to avail of quite successfully for a number of years now. Recently, myself and Senator Nessa Cosgrove visited Donegal. We went to Letterkenny and met with Deputy Charles Ward and some of his councillors. We saw the scale of the human devastation. I will never forget the people I met or the smell in som…

That is not true.

That was an awful comment.

That was an outrageous statement.

The Labour Party, too, will support this motion. The move to allow more outdoor seating and socialising in our towns and cities was born out of necessity during the Covid period but it has been a really welcome development. In my city of Limerick, I have seen how welcome the parklets and outdoor dining in the city centre have been. I have also seen the opposite, where the council has gone in and unilaterally removed some of those parklets. In some cases, they needed to be removed because they were mouldy, decaying …

Ar dtús báire, gabhaim buíochas le Sinn Féin as ucht an Bille seo a chur faoi bhráid na Dála anocht. Today is International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. While I acknowledge things are changing slowly and that we have had the establishment of Cuan and the zero tolerance strategy, the fact of the matter is that when it comes to violence against women, far too often we are reactive and not proactive. Violence against women is at a crisis level in this country. I know from my clinics the number of…

Will the Minister outline a timeline for the implementation of the recommendations of the AHB strategic forum report? I ask him this in particular in relation to the gearing issue that is there and in relation to moving the AHB sector towards a sustainable delivery model. There is a real lack of clarity in the Minister's new housing plan on exactly how the Government will deliver its targets. How many direct-build social homes will be delivered under the new housing plan?

We know that AHBs are crucial if we are to have any hope of meeting our housing targets, particularly in terms of social housing delivery, but we also know they are approaching the limit of their borrowing capacity. A workable solution has been proposed by replacing the CALF loan element of AHB social housing with a Government-backed CALF equity grant support. It is the same level of funding as a grant equity but not as a loan. When will this be done by the Department? When the Minister appeared at the housing comm…