Has the Minister's Department, in conjunction with the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, initiated the drawing up of anti-victimisation and blacklisting legislation within six months in line with the recommendation in the report of the Joint Committee on Social Protection, Community and Rural Development and the Islands entitled, Examination of Bogus Self-Employment, published on 16 June 2021? If it has, when will this legislation be published?

The reason the committee put forward that the legislation should be brought in within six months is that, in December 2019, at the Joint Committee on Employment Affairs and Social Protection, Mr. Tim Duggan, assistant secretary of the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection said: [L]egislative provisions are being developed to encourage workers to apply to scope section for clarity about their employment status. These are anti-victimisation measures that will allow workers to make a complaint to the …

That was made clear by Mr. Duggan in December 2019, when he indicated clearly that the process had started, that there were a few small issues to be addressed and that it would be published in 2020. It is now June 2021. The reason we put a period of six months in the report was to give a bit of impetus to the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment and, we hoped, the Department of Social Protection. We know from the committee, where we heard from various employee representatives and groups, that many workers…

The Irish banking system, based on for-profit private banks, failed disastrously in the financial crash of 2008 and 2010. The State was forced into a €70 billion bailout paid for with a decade of austerity, seriously impacting public services and, of course, a situation in which many homeowners lost their homes. This was a consequence of extremely risky speculative spending in a drive to maximise profits. Despite the bailout, we have since had the tracker mortgage scandal and there has been an exodus of foreign ban…

It was good to hear that the Minister will support the Bill. I listened intently to the point she made about what has happened since 2018 and about the audit completed and published in 2019. I was not aware of that. I have not seen that report. Maybe it went into committee and was discussed there but I think it must be brought into the Dáil or the education committee to discuss the issues. Travellers, as Ireland's most long-term disadvantaged group, experience gross disparities compared to the general populace in t…

I thank Deputy Bríd Smith and People Before Profit-Solidarity for introducing this retired workers Bill. I am very pleased to support the legislation, which would represent an important change for the up to 500,000 retired workers in this country. Many workers have had detrimental changes made to their pension entitlements with little notice and no consultation. These changes could mean a cut to their pension entitlements, a freeze for up to ten years in some cases or the breaking of the link between pay and pensio…

In response to a question from Deputy Gannon last week about the proposal for a Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, TRIPS, Covid waiver at the WTO, the Tánaiste told the House that a TRIPS waiver was not enough to do what was needed to be done and that the best thing we could do was to work together with industry to license this intellectual property to the global south and help to build the necessary factories and provide the money and know-how to do these things. There is a WHO initiative, the …

Will the Government support the CTAP?

Why are we not supporting the CTAP?

I welcome that there is at last some semblance of an idea and legislation in the Dáil on affordable housing. I question whether it actually is affordable housing, but at least there is something before us. I also welcome the cost-rental model being put on a statutory footing. However, the Bill will in no effective way solve the housing crisis. It will not make housing more affordable for many of those who want to buy. In fact, the Central Bank and the ESRI say that it could increase house prices. Why is there such …

I intend raising this issue with the Taoiseach later and I will be looking for a clear, direct answer. If the situation remains as it is with the St. Vincent's Healthcare Group refusing to sell the site to the State, is the Government preparing to compulsory purchase order, CPO, the site, and if it is too costly and if it is too lengthy is the Government preparing to abandon the St. Vincent's Hospital site and begin the process of looking elsewhere? Women have to draw a red line on this. It cannot go on. This would…

Yesterday in Questions on Promised Legislation, the Taoiseach stated the issue should have been raised in Leaders' Questions. He is getting those questions today because he still has not clarified his position on the new national maternity hospital. The decision to locate a State-built and funded, much-needed, modern national maternity hospital without clear clarification as to ownership of the site or governance and ethos of the hospital has resulted in the present mess. That mess has developed - and here I disagr…

We all want a safe modern national maternity hospital. No one challenges that. No one challenges the preference that it be co-located. The KPMG report in 2008 indicated that and the Government went by that report. However, eight years on from 2013 and 13 years on from that report, we are in a situation where the Religious Sisters of Charity still have control over this hospital being built. The St. Vincent’s Healthcare Group said it must retain ownership of the lands for clinical governance and operational reasons,…

They told the previous Minister for Health, Deputy Harris, that they were not going to sell the land.

Back in 2017 Orkambi was reimbursed for market distribution here in Ireland and it was a great boost for the cystic fibrosis, CF, community after a long campaign. A new drug, Kaftrio, has been approved in the USA and by the European Medicines Agency, EMA, in April of this year. I tabled a question to the Minister for Health in early May and I was told the applicants had put in the rapid review dossier for the drug. I flagged this with the Tánaiste yesterday because I hope the CF community will get some clarity toda…

I do not know whether the Minister of State, Deputy Madigan, meant to give the impression that everything is okay - perhaps she did not mean to use that tone - but it certainly sounded like it. It came across as if we should not look to the Government but rather look away. The reality on the ground for so many parents and children is a very different experience. I understand that both Ministers of State are working within a pandemic crisis, which is not an easy set of circumstances to respond to. It was already a c…

This Bill sets the stage for the future. The future is all those people who were out on the streets, the students in 2019, and all the NGOs that have been campaigning for a robust climate action Bill over recent years. We had hoped to get it from the Green Party but I am afraid that tonight, we did not get it in this Bill. The initial Bill was very weak. The committee did great work on the pre-legislative scrutiny, from which we have two pieces of wording. On climate justice, it is stated: ‘climate justice’ means t…

According to the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, based on its latest available data which are from 2019, there were 10,809 families from the Travelling community throughout the country in need of accommodation. Given other Travellers may have no engagement with a local authority or do not self-identify for the purposes of data collection, the true population is likely much larger. Many of these people are living in inadequate, unsafe and impermanent conditions. These conditions erode their hea…

I thank Deputy Connolly for bringing forward this motion and allowing for an urgent and timely discussion on the national maternity strategy. I also thank Ms Beibhinn O'Connor and Ms Rachel Hynes for the work they have put into this motion. I listened to what the Minister said. While HIQA made the point that there has been some progress, an awful lot of issues still have not been progressed. That is why this motion was put down, calling for an annual report and plan, and for that annual plan to be brought back to t…

How much time is left?