The purpose of this Bill is to extend the emergency period specified in the Planning and Development, and Residential Tenancies, Act 2020 until 12 January 2022. The aim is to further assist tenants who are being financially impacted by Covid-19, while recognising and balancing the rights of the landlord. Under the new regulations, which the Government plans to have passed into law by the summer, renters will only be required to supply a deposit and a month's rent in advance. The total value of that will not be allo…

Tomorrow will see the biggest national organised protest seen in this country for many years as the fishermen and women of this country from Malin Head to Mizen Head converge in Dublin, similar to the protest in Cork two weeks ago, in a show of solidarity about the scandalous way that they have been treated for decades and especially for the last 12 months under the Taoiseach's leadership. This will be the second of many protests since fishermen have had enough of inaction, spin and lies. They will take the Taoisea…

The Taoiseach mentioned the weighing issue and suggested it is the business of the SFPA. The bottom line is that the SFPA and the Minister knew in December that there was a crisis. They did not consult with the industry and they are only doing so now when it is too late. Listening to the Taoiseach today convinces me that the Government does not have a plan for fishing other than to kick the can down the road until next year. All the fishermen are being fed is spin and more spin, going around in circles and leading …

In July 2020, the European Council, comprising the Heads of State and Government of each EU member state, adopted an historic €750 billion recovery package for Europe. This package, NextGenerationEU, is Europe's shared response to the severe health and economic crisis caused by Covid-19. The European Commission announced on 28 May that it had received an official recovery and resilience plan from Ireland and Sweden. Sweden, with a population about twice that of Ireland, had requested a total of €3.2 billion in gran…

I fully support the motion to restore the pension age to 65. The pension age was a key issue in the general election in February 2020. Voters across the State expressed their opposition to the pension age increase throughout the election campaign. The Fianna Fáil and Green Party Government that was in power from 2007 until 2011 decided to increase the pension age to 67 in 2021 and to 68 in 2028. The subsequent Fine Gael-Labour Party coalition put that into law in 2011. The current Government pledged in the programm…

Will the Minister confirm that the continuation of the Northern Ireland planned healthcare scheme, formerly the cross-border directive, will be placed into law in the State? This is crucial to thousands of our citizens on waiting lists across the country and it is a serious recruitment and retention issue for armed forces who rely on the scheme for treatment in hospitals in Northern Ireland through the Permanent Defence Force Other Ranks Representative Association. I ask the Minister to confirm the funding has been…

I thank the Minister for his reply. Next week bus 67 heads to the North from both Cork and Kerry. Deputy Danny Healy-Rae and I have been organising those buses, as the Minister has acknowledged. He says that we should get away from people needing to go to the North and I fully support him in that. It is not just the cataracts; it is the hips and the knees, and getting a simple thing like an MRI scan. Someone cannot get an MRI scan done without waiting for weeks here. We are light years away from resolving these iss…

Any new services to be provided in Cork are to be greatly welcomed and I appreciate the Minister sharing that information with us. The problem is that the pandemic has led to enormous waiting lists throughout Cork and the rest of the country. People from Dublin, Waterford, Limerick and elsewhere have contacted me looking for services such as hip, carpal tunnel, knee and obviously mainly cataract surgery. The Minister has said that work is being done on the long-term development of the scheme that is there at presen…

I am delighted that we are having this long-awaited discussion on fisheries. I thank our leader, Deputy Mattie McGrath, for pushing the matter at the Business Committee on several occasions and eventually getting his way to have this very important debate take place at a very difficult time for Irish fisheries. I have been pushing very hard in recent times to get more debates in the House. In fairness, it was said earlier there are not many Deputies here but everybody took up their slots, bar Labour. In fairness, t…

On a point of order, the Minister, in my view, misled the House in saying I was trying to create a set piece and that I was a hurler on the field.

I am entitled under Standing Orders to seek a debate at any time. It is an entitlement of every Deputy. It is misleading to say I was trying to create a set piece. I am entitled to do that. Fishermen were almost killed off Castletownbere in the last two days and I wanted a debate on that issue. It is an urgent issue. It is wrong of the Minister to make that statement and he should correct the record. I am entitled to do that, as he is.

As all Deputies know, the housing crisis is out of control. Far too many people are being refused the basic human need of shelter. Their need is not being met through absolutely no fault of their own. Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil have failed repeatedly to build the housing our citizens need in the right place, at the right price and in the right quantity. The crisis is touching every demographic. It can be felt across the country and has victims numbering in the hundreds of thousands. Housing has become too costly and…

The Irish fishing industry has stumbled from one crisis to another in the past 12 months, with penalty points, the terrible Brexit deal for the industry and, in recent weeks, the weighing crisis that the Sea-Fisheries Protection Authority, SFPA, and Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine have known about since Christmas but did not inform the sector of until 16 April. Now we find out that the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine and SFPA have made an agreement with French, British and Belgian vesse…

I have been involved with farming organisations while a farmer. I once said to a politician that if one does not wear a pair of wellingtons, one does not know what farming is about. Being involved in CAP negotiations through farm organisations down through the years, I always wanted to make sure that the family farm was sustainable. It has not been sustainable, and it is not sustainable because of previous CAP agreements. If this does not change, will we be in the same situation where some farmers receive €250,000 …

People also come to west Cork to see the beautiful greenery, as the Minister does, but he has forgotten this when it comes to the Bill. The Bill is a complete attack on rural Ireland. I want to speak on the amendments. To think that 239 amendments were tabled, 75 of which were tabled by the Rural Independent Group, and the Minister is going to reject every one of them. Does he think we do not care? Does he think we did not meet climate action groups in west Cork who advised me on the right way to roll out a good cl…

On a point of order, he needs to take that back. I certainly spent hours discussing this and our amendments. Every one of our amendments was refused and Deputy Bruton had better wake up and smell the grass growing. He and his party have been representing the rich farmers for all of his life-----

-----and what he wants to do here today is represent the wealthy-----

-----and the rich while the ordinary person is burnt alive on the ground.

I have never heard the likes of it.

He has been representing rich farmers all his life.