The Government is letting the homeless population of the country down by its inaction.

It is happening under the Government.

The Government's policies are not working.

It is because of the Government's policies - those of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael.

I have never vilified anyone.

The Minister's press conference yesterday to announce the detail of his budget was a very apt metaphor for his term of office. Just as he started to make overinflated claims about his success, the alarm bells started to ring and he, his fellow Ministers, departmental staff and the assembled media had to be evicted. What that tells us of course is the gap between the Minister's claims and delivery on the ground is growing ever wider. With the greatest of respect to the Minister, it takes a certain brass neck to clai…

The Minister is failing. There are rising house prices, rising rents, rising levels of homelessness and anaemic social and affordable housing delivery. Only a real alternative budget to deliver 20,000 genuine social and affordable homes will change the crisis. The Government promised it in the election, and it failed to deliver. That is why the Government is out of time and out of ideas. We need a general election, a change of Government and for the current Minister, just like at his press conference, to be evicted…

I thank the Minister of State. This is probably the least controversial Bill he will bring before the House in his time in office. Given the unseemly row we had the last time he was bringing forward legislation, it is probably better for both of us this close to the weekend. However, the fact it is not a controversial Bill does not mean it is not hugely important. It does say something about the slow-moving wheels of government that it has taken ten years from the initiation of the review of the potential merger of…

Across the State, tens of thousands of homeowners, private and social housing tenants, are living in defective buildings with defective blocks and pyrite in the foundations but also many with fire safety, water ingress and other structural defects. All those people are waiting very anxiously on next week's budget announcements to see what, if anything, the Government has in store for them. Sinn Féin will continue to make the case for the need for substantial amendment to the defective block remediation legislation …

I thank the Minister of State for telling me what the report published two and a half months ago said. There were ten paragraphs in his speech. There was half a paragraph containing one sentence in response to the question I asked. I hope after next week's budget announcements homeowners will be somewhat the wiser as to the Government's intentions. One of the issues constantly raised by homeowners and their representatives through the Construction Defects Alliance and the Apartment Owners Network is the anger that …

An Bord Pleanála is in the midst of a deep crisis. That crisis has, in part, been created by an avalanche of concerning revelations since April of this year. The crisis has also been caused by Government policy, in particular, a number of very controversial mandatory ministerial guidelines introduced by a previous housing Minister and a failure of successive Governments to implement a number of key recommendations of the 2016 report into the operations of the board. The combination of these three factors has led to…

I thank the Minister of State. When the Right to Water movement was campaigning against the then Fine Gael-Labour Government's attempts to privatise our water services one of the many concerns we had at that time was the decision of that Government to locate the water utility in Ervia. In fact the view at the time was Ervia being the most commercialised of the then Government's State companies it would be the ideal place to frame the development of the emerging water utility in a way that would make it most conduci…

The Ceann Comhairle got it right.

Freud would be delighted.

I thank my colleagues, Deputies O'Rourke and Doherty and others for tabling this important motion today. Like Deputies right across the House, pretty much every day I am dealing with families who are experiencing a level of financial stress that I certainly have never seen in my time as a Deputy in this House. For example, I am dealing with housing assistance payment, HAP, tenants who are unable to keep up with the cost of living and their top-up to the landlords. They are begging their local authorities to give th…

I wish to put on the record my objection in the strongest possible terms both to the motion and, more important, to the way these amendments have been introduced at a very late stage with virtually no possibility of Oireachtas scrutiny. That is not only a breach of proper procedure, but it is also treating this House and its Members with appalling disrespect. More important, it shows disrespect to the public, many of whom will be directly impacted by the negative and possibly unintended consequences of some of thes…

Renters desperately need a break. Renters are paying rents that are far too high, and they are continuing to rise. Tenancies are increasingly insecure and there is a very significant rise in family homelessness, as evidenced in Dublin. The most recent Daft.ie rent register shows that the cost of an average rent for a whole year is €24,000. In Cork city, the Taoiseach's constituency, the cost of an average rental is €16,000. In the Minister of State's constituency of Longford-Westmeath, in Westmeath it is €14,000 a …

In speaking to this group of amendments, it not only confirms the concerns of the Deputies who spoke earlier but demonstrates how much worse it is than that. This was meant to be really important legislation. We have spent in committee a considerable amount of time working on a cross-party basis, probably more so than on any other legislation we have dealt with in this Oireachtas, to ensure the Electoral Reform Bill and the important and long-overdue provisions would secure cross-party support and, therefore, publi…

Even the Ceann Comhairle is confused by that.

I want to put on the record that we will be back here at some point to deal with amending legislation. This Bill is going to end up in the courts. It is almost like a mirror image of the substitute consent legislation we will deal with shortly, the first version of which was not right and was rushed through at the end. That legislation was subject to significant legal challenge, which forced the Government to bring forward amending legislation. In the case of this Bill, we could do it the right way by way of amendi…