In the limited time we have available, I have to be straight with the Minister. We cannot and will not support the Bill, which should come as no surprise to the Minister. Our colleague, the Labour Party's housing spokesperson, Senator Moynihan, made the party's position on this Bill very clear. She did so both in the Seanad and in correspondence with the Minister. We are opposed to the thrust of the Bill and the way in which it has been developed and presented to us today for a number of reasons. The Bill originall…

I support the thrust of this amendment and what it wants to achieve. I did not have the benefit of being involved in the pre-legislative scrutiny at the committee but my colleague, Senator Moynihan, did. I am familiar with the panel system which has been in place to nominate potential appointees from the nominating bodies. These are organisations, like the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland, that have been identified. Yes, the process is imperfect, requires modernisation and needs to be reformed. We are a…

Plus.

I thank the Minister for his response to my questions. What I do not hear from him, though, is any argument that would claim, from his point of view, that there is anything radically wrong with the principle of nominating bodies being involved in the process of appointing members of the board, as they have been in the past. I have not heard that from the Minister at all. It seems to me that he has simply made his mind up, or his officials have helped him to make his mind up, that this is a bad idea and that this pr…

I move amendment No. 2: In page 5, between lines 22 and 23, to insert the following: “(5) Each amendment to the Act of 2000 effected by this Act shall continue in operation for 18 months from the coming into operation of the amendment concerned, and shall thereupon stand repealed.”. It will be useful to read the amendment again to the House. It states, "Each amendment to the Act of 2000 effected by this Act shall continue in operation for 18 months from the coming into operation of the amendment concerned, and shal…

In my experience, Part 8 has generally worked very well. Certainly, in my experience as a local authority member for 12 years and as someone who is still very much engaged with my old council team in County Louth and east Meath, I cannot recall any particular problems in terms of Part 8, or any element of it representing a logjam for the council providing itself with permission, for want of a better description, to develop on its own lands, whether that has been for housing or a critical piece of infrastructure. I …

Housing is the foundation on which a decent and functioning society is built. Precarious housing leads to precarious lives. For this and the previous Fianna Fáil-supported Government's abject failure on housing, the citizens of Ireland and our society and economy will pay a severe price. I do not want to be flippant or in any way dismissive given the seriousness of the crisis we now face but, quite frankly, I have more faith and confidence in Santa Claus than I do in the Government to fix the housing crisis. The ho…

I share in the earlier remarks from Deputy Mairéad Farrell in wishing the Minister well over the next period of time without pre-empting anything. We all know that it is intended that he will move across the corridor next weekend. I wish him well and I am sure he will miss these occasions once a year when he is moving the Appropriation Bill, as the country watches in. I am equally sure that there is nobody watching the World Cup match this evening and they are all watching in attentively on this debate on the Appro…

The impact of the changes the Minister for Health will make to Navan emergency department, ED, or Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda from next Monday will mean that "patients may die". These are not my words. These are only some of the words of 17 hospital consultants of my own local hospital, Our Lady of Lourdes, in Drogheda, expressed in what was an alarming letter to the Minister last week. The Minister, Deputy Michael McGrath, has heard this all before. The Minister for Health has heard this all before. T…

This is an outrageous situation and simply cannot go ahead. I am disappointed the Minister, Deputy Donnelly is not here and that is no disrespect to the Minister of State. This is an issue that has been on his desk for many months. The reality is that he simply does not have a plan for Drogheda. The Minister of State has seen, heard about and read about the letter from the 16 hospital consultants in Drogheda. No additional resources whatsoever are being made available for Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda to…

I do not believe that a plan is in place. I have been seeking a meeting with senior representatives for months about the impending changes that the Minister for Health is considering. I have been stonewalled consistently. I do not believe that a plan is in place. The Minister of State referred to several important issues that need to be fully addressed before any transition might occur. There was a significant transition signed off on by the Minister that will come into effect on Monday. It is a significant transit…

-----but that is laughable. It is not true. The consultants counter that, and they do not agree with the Minister of State in the context of that assessment. They are the people we need to listen to.

I am incredibly proud to be a member of a party that has drafted this motion, and to call myself a comrade and a friend of Deputy Ó Ríordáin, who has pioneered reform in this space. It is beyond time that we woke up as a society and as law makers to the stark reality of drugs in our society. We have to face the world as it is, not as we would like our ideal world to be. The world of today, in the Ireland of the 2020s, we simply have to face the facts that by the law of averages, someone we care about, someone in ou…

I have a straightforward question for the Minister of State, Deputy Naughton, and her Government colleagues. When the Celtic Roads Group contract for the M1 motorway and the toll in and out of Drogheda town is up - it ends in 2034 - will the Government commit to dropping the toll entirely? The word from successive administrations has been ambiguous, quite frankly. I received replies from one of the Minister of State's predecessors, the then Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, Mr. Ross, in 2018, in which he s…

The first time I ever spoke in this House, I called for justice for the survivors of sexual abuse at the hands of the former surgeon Michael Shine. That was 12 years ago, and the survivors still await justice. Shine is the most prolific paedophile to have stalked the corridors of an Irish hospital. The number of boys he abused between the early 1960s and the 1990s is the hundreds. Many of them are friends and constituents of mine. Some are my age. It could have been me or any one of us. Shine was imprisoned in 2019…

We know what happens when we narrow the tax base, and that is exactly what is happening here. If the Government is to proceed with the plans enunciated by the Tánaiste, we are getting into a very dangerous zone. We know what will happen. We have been living with the consequences of narrowing the tax base and the fiscal challenges, to put it mildly, that has imposed on the State over the past decade. We have to learn lessons from that. There is nothing fair about a budget that introduces tax cuts to the tune of €800…

That is a very welcome development. I want to raise a related matter which was raised on Committee Stage last week in the general discussion on this section. It directly relates to the recognition of the service of those who worked within our public health service, on the front line, during the darkest days of the pandemic - the people who put themselves in danger. They are non-HSE staff engaged by the HSE for contracted services such as contract cleaning, security and other ancillary services in our public hospita…

"Rent price inflation hits record 14.1% on back of 'extreme shortage of extreme shortage of rental homes"; "Housing starts fall again in October ... [as costs rise]"; "‘Housing crisis is putting education system at risk,' say unions ....". Those are a flavour of the headlines we woke to this morning. Yesterday was a typical Monday for me, and probably most other Deputies, as it started with a weekly clinic. One young woman with three kids and a partner was at her wits' end. She received an eviction notice in Octobe…

There are other Members here.

Homeowners are scared stiff of the threat of rising mortgage interest rates. Markets expect the ECB to continue raising rates until the middle of next year, with a peak of 3% anticipated. Tracker mortgage holders, as we know, have already felt the impact, and variable-rate mortgage holders are next in the firing line. Has the Minister's Department carried out any assessment at this stage of the impact of rising rates on Irish mortgages? Will the Central Bank require any more tools, in the Minister's view, to help t…