You cannot make it up.

It is all here in Dublin.

The Minister knows exactly and personally what I think of her. She knows she is highly regarded in places like Portmagee in County Kerry where she is held in the highest of respect. The only problem is when we are talking about the rest of her colleagues. We have a Minister for roads and transportation who does not like building roads, bypasses or bridges. The Green Party members have already held up numerous major infrastructural projects which we want to go ahead with in this country and, to be honest, their whol…

Hear, hear.

The members of fire crew KY 18 based at Kenmare fire station are picketing on days on which they are not on call. It is not for me to advise the Government, but must inform it that this matter is going to be sorted one way or another. Why in the name of God would the Government want to discredit itself by not being proactive and saying that retained firefighters deserve to be sorted out? This issue should have been resolved a long time ago. The Government is going to do it anyway, so why not knuckle down now, pleas…

I appreciate their work, and I know the Taoiseach does too. I am asking him to try to resolve this matter.

I was glad to raise this important issue with the Taoiseach earlier today. I spoke about Kerry firefighters, the members of crew KY 18 and all the other people who represent our county so well and do such important work. I thank Sinn Féin for bringing this motion before the Dáil. We in the Rural Independent Group welcome the opportunity it presents to shed light on a matter of the utmost importance. We fully support the motion. We call out the awful lack of Government action to address the concerns of our brave ret…

I have been providing accommodation for the past 35 years and I am glad to have been involved in it. I voted against ending the eviction ban. I believe the statistics in County Kerry prove I did the right thing in not agreeing with the Government. The people who come to my clinic say I did the right thing quite simply because of what has happened since in County Kerry. The county has been particularly affected by the ending of the eviction ban. I do not thank Deputy Cian O'Callaghan for bringing this motion to the …

This is the Social Democrats that comes in here and lectures us about housing. They are objecting to thousands of homes. The people who were stopped from having those homes would have a house today. Then the Social Democrats come in here to talk about housing.

Just one second. This whole morning is the biggest act of hypocrisy that has ever been seen on the floor of Dáil Éireann.

It is a disgrace.

Do something real and stop objecting to people building homes for God's sake and grow up a small bit.

It is absolutely ridiculous and shame on them.

Objecting to people building houses and then coming in here to speak about it.

Absolute insanity

Then they tell people they are worried about people having houses.

Facts.

Facts. What was said were facts. Absolute facts.

I want to raise the voids scheme, but I would rather have the name changed to what it is, namely, the empty houses scheme. When we talk about voids in local authorities, I would rather call them what they are: empty local authority houses. I want to highlight the fact that a local authority only gets €11,000 to do up a house, no matter what condition it is in, if it is vacant. The other anomaly is that if the house has received any funding since 2014, it will actually receive no funding whatsoever. In the county th…

I appreciate that the Minister is talking sense and calling them empty homes, not voids. It is nice to hear a person telling the truth as it is. I stand over the statement, because it is a fact, that if a house received funding since 2014, it cannot receive funding a second time. I would like the Minister to examine the empty house scheme and ask that local authorities are adequately resourced. In the brief time remaining to me, I will speak about our local authority, Kerry County Council. I appreciate its workers,…