Hear, hear.

Hear, hear.

I thank the Minister of State for being here to take this Topical Issue matter. I will use an individual case, but I will not say the woman's full name. I am raising the case on behalf of a person to highlight the issue I have, which is about the limitations of the supplementary welfare allowance and the manner in which it is applied. It often seems that a decision is made by the Department of Social Protection that a scheme will be put in place to respond to a need, but the scheme is then not changed and not adapt…

I appreciate that the Minister of State is here. She listed the qualities of the scheme, including flexibility and so forth. However, here is the thing: ESB Networks considers Diane to be a vulnerable customer. It has put her in the category of a person who should not have her electricity cut off because she is a vulnerable customer and person, not due to any wrongdoing on her part. It is because she is sick. She has not done anything wrong. Some 16,000 people are homeless. She does not want to have to join them. H…

There should be no difficulty there. I thank my colleague, an Teachta Farrell, for bringing forward this legislation. I also thank her, as the Minister of State did, for all her work on this issue. I cannot quite make sense of the Minister of State's amendment to postpone the Second Reading of the Bill for 24 months. I operate according to the principle that it is never the wrong time to do the right thing. The Minister of State said it is necessary to put it back to allow for consideration of complex legal issues.…

This morning the DNG report tells us that in Dublin the average cost of a second hand home is €600,000. I have a very simple question for the Minister of State. Who is buying these houses? Who is earning the money to pay 600 grand for a second-hand house in Dublin? People want to live near their family, which is not an outrageous thing to want. They want to live in the city they were born in. They want to raise their family there. Does the Minister of State accept that because of his Government's policies that is b…

-----to the solutions put forward by the Opposition-----

-----this crisis-----

-----will continue to get worse.

Here, here.

Obviously not.

You can hear him on the record.

You did.

There are people in my constituency living in homes that are falling down around their ears. Their homes are literally falling apart. People are doing their best in terms of minor repairs to stop bits of the walls and roof from falling down. The Remediation of Dwellings Damaged by the Use of Defective Concrete Blocks Act 2022 allows for country councils to be admitted to the remediation scheme. My local authority, Fingal County Council, applied in September 2023. My understanding is that the Housing Agency report, …

It is a series of one-off houses. They are not all together. There is one block, then a number of individual houses. I will provide the details to the Taoiseach's office.

The constitutional convention met in 2013 to consider the issue of voting rights for citizens living outside this State. A clear majority backed voting rights for citizens in presidential elections. Sinn Féin first tabled legislation to give effect to this recommendation in 2014. The Bill passed First and Second Stages and we have retabled it in every Dáil since. A motion on extending presidential voting rights was passed in the Northern Assembly earlier this year. This is absolutely massive. This is the Government…

Maidin mhaith do gach duine. As is often the case, my question is very simple and straightforward. It gives the Minister the chance to explain why a category of workers, particularly those in seasonal, casual, short-term or part-time employment, such as school caretakers and secretaries but not exclusively, are excluded from the Government’s new pay-related jobseeker's benefit.

I will hold the Minister to that. I will be back here in September to check against delivery, as the Government often states regarding its statements. The Minister has not advanced any satisfactory justification for why the group has been excluded. He states they can predict they are going to be unemployed, but even if you know you are going to be broke or are surprised by being broke in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis, you are still broke. At the committee meeting last week, the Minister spoke at length abou…

I ask the Minister to charge the people doing the review with the responsibility of looking at seasonal workers. To be frank, that is possibly the least that the Minister could do but I ask that he do that. There should be some engagement about the people who are excluded with the trade union, Fórsa, because it represents the bulk of the secretaries and caretakers. It is not just them but all seasonal workers. There is a more favourable rate of jobseeker's benefit available and a group of low-income workers is excl…

The issue of having to purchase devices is coming into my office a lot. It is probably coming into everyone's office at this stage. While obviously there is a benefit to parents of not having to buy schoolbooks, that benefit is entirely undermined if they then have to spend the equivalent amount or more. I welcome the Minister's recent announcement of the extension of the back-to-school clothing and footwear allowance to foster families, but they will be means tested for it, which will exclude a lot. I know I am ta…