The Minister of State is very welcome and I thank him for coming in to take this Commencement matter in which I seek a date from his Department for the appointment of a design team for the national monuments site at Nos. 14-17 Moore Street. It is more than 106 years since the 1916 rebels, including Pearse, McDermott, Connolly and Plunkett, surrendered on Moore Street here in the heart of our capital. It is more than 15 years since those buildings were declared a national monument site by a Fianna Fáil-led governmen…

I thank the Minister of State. Am I to understand from the reply that a design team will be appointed within the next three to four weeks? I hope that is what he is saying because there is genuine bewilderment as to what is happening. It is over a year since the report was submitted. The recommendations were accepted and endorsed, and they have been backed with €12 million of public funding. I hope the Minister of State is saying that a design team of experts will be appointed within the next three to four weeks an…

Please do.

I extend my sympathies to Senator Dooley and to Deputy Farrell, and to any Member of the Houses and the staff. Many of us have lost loved ones over the Covid period. It has been a strange time. I hope that everyone gets a bit of time during the recess to have that time to themselves. I thank all the staff in the Seanad who have assisted me and all of us. We have had a very heavy workload. It is a huge privilege to be one of the women of Seanad Éireann and to serve with such great women and men. It is a particular p…

I thank the Acting Chairperson for allowing me to contribute. I thank the Minister for his reply, his officials for all the work they have done on the Bill, and all the homeowners who have been in contact with me and my colleagues in counties Donegal, Mayo, Clare, Sligo and others. Everyone who speaks here today speaks with the best interests of the homeowners. Perhaps some of us are more motivated to deliver a package for homeowners that will allow them to reclaim their lives and restore their homes. The Bill has …

I thank the Minister for coming to the House this morning. I thank not only him but also his Department, everyone who has worked on the defective concrete blocks working group and all of the homeowners who have so patiently engaged with the Minister, Department officials and the local authorities concerned. This legislation is very important. This is about families' homes. This saga has been going on for more than a decade. I commend the Minister from a Fianna Fáil perspective. We were the only political party in t…

I welcome Deputy Troy and commend him on his role as Minister of State with responsibility for trade. He has been doing tremendous work since taking office in building trade relations and expanding Ireland's trade opportunities, which bring employment. I want to discuss the Intreo office on the Navan Road, which served people in the Dublin 7 area who find themselves without employment. While I welcome the Minister of State's presence, it is disappointing that neither the Minister for Social Protection nor the Minis…

Gabhaim buíochas. I appreciate what the Minister of State has said and I am not going to shoot the messenger in this instance. I must say, however, that his reply is revealing. It reveals that this had been in planning for a long time and that planning did not include any form of consultation with the clients of the Dublin 7 Intreo office. In fact, it demonstrates a complete disregard for those clients and the area. The reply referred to a review. Will that review be published and can we have sight of it? Who does …

I thank the Minister of State for attending the House to respond to my Commencement matter calling for a vacant property tax. No more than anybody else I do not like taxes. We must accept, as everybody does, the housing emergency gripping our State. The Government has provided unprecedented funding and made changes to housing policy since taking office. A glaringly obvious waste of built properties is documented in the recent Central Statistic Office census. Anybody would objectively say it is morally wrong to see …

I thank the Minister of State for the response. We all believe in reasonableness and fairness and we can all accept that properties can be from time to time vacant. Nobody has any argument with that. In fact, the joint Oireachtas committee states that reasonableness must be applied. I welcome the fact that the Department has made progress with the report and on its summary. I urge it to publish that report without any further delay. I take the point about the 30,000 properties in Dublin. What they are saying essent…

I again call on the Minister for Finance to commit to the introduction of a vacant property tax, which would discourage vacancy and encourage the renovation of vacant properties. Recent CSO figures indicate that there are more than 160,000 vacant properties nationally, with more than 30,000 in Dublin. In a housing emergency, it is morally, environmentally, economically and socially wrong to have so many vacant properties lying idle. We cannot let this go unchecked. We have talked about it for far too long. Since th…

I support what Senator Kyne said about timing, in particular the monitoring of online activity. We live in a 24-7 world and social media is in everybody's pockets or palms nearly every waking moment of the day. The electoral process is not one that is isolated to the 12 opening hours at a polling station. It is an ongoing iterative process every single day, so we should adopt a stop-start approach to this. We need to adopt a rolling continuous approach for the monitoring and management of online activity as it rela…

Now.

I also welcome these amendments. They come after other amendments that have been put in place by this Government over the course of the last year or so to protect renters, enhance their protections and increase their security of tenure, which is welcome. The protections that were put in place are all welcome and include: additional notice periods; caps on rent increases; and the extension of the rent pressure zones. They go a long way to helping with increasing renters' security of tenure. The leases of indefinite …

I would like to return to the issue of violence against women, which is an issue we have discussed in the Seanad. Yesterday, together with my colleague, Deputy Jim O'Callaghan, and other members of the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party, and with the support of Jason Poole, we launched our policy on tackling violence against women. The document is written from the perspective of the victims and their families. It is a comprehensive document that talks about the supports that should be put in place and the responses th…

I thank the Minister for coming to the Seanad. Last year, he included the wholesale fruit and vegetable market in Dublin 7 in the more than €121 million allocated funding for urban regeneration in the north inner city of Dublin. We greatly appreciate the funding. I have asked him to update the House on the progress that has been made by Dublin City Council in using the funding to reopen the fruit and vegetable market. I ask him to advise the House on how his Department can support Dublin City Council to achieve an …

Gabhaim buíochas leis an Aire. The Minister's commitment to the north inner city is unquestionable. It is spectacular that since he took office he has dedicated more than €120 million to just this part of the north inner city. Those funds will be used not just for the fruit and vegetable market but for Moore Street, Wolfe Tone Square where Dublin City Council has done a fantastic job, Mountjoy Square and the city library we need to see delivered as well. I hear the Minister's frustration and I share it. Locally peo…

I raise the issue of housing. As we all know, we are coming out of a decade of undersupply of housing, so I specifically welcome the latest report on housing supply and delivery that indicates the highest number of housing commencements on record in more than a decade. There have been more than 30,223 new housing commencements which are to be welcomed. These are new homes being built, and Housing for All is determined to deliver a mix of social, affordable and private housing through using State-owned lands. To del…

I thank the Minister of State for bringing forward the legislation. I also thank the officials. I also thank them for their engagement with the Oireachtas joint committee, which benefited from the evidence not only of the Department but of many stakeholders, political parties, political activists, people from non-governmental organisations and those involved in modern communications and social media platforms. We benefited from all of their inputs and they were very welcome. The Bill is very important. It is design…

Next Tuesday.