-----municipal districts. That is an issue that has to be factored into whatever we do. I do favour at least establishing a pilot programme whereby we look at certain areas of population of a certain scale where we could reintroduce councils. We talk about connection to people and we talk about democracy. The town councils were that connection. I was in some places recently where flooding had taken place. The absence of a town council and a basic administrative capacity was sorely felt over the past number of years…

It probably would be an unfair characterisation to say the task force is full of insiders. The Minister of State has just informed me that about five councillors are on the task force. They were nominated by the representative bodies of councillors. There will be a serious, genuine and substantive look at the issue. It will then fall to the Government to act on the report. As I have said, I would like to see this happen in new areas where there has been significant growth in population and in historic areas where p…

I thank the Deputy for raising the question. I do remember my days in the Kampus Kitchen. Actually in the students union, we led a protest when there was an increase in the price of coffee, even though I did not drink coffee, but it did not stop us having a great time having a protest.

We set up our own coffee operation and we realised that there were very high margins in coffee - that was a take-away - and tea. I do not want to be promoting any more of this kind of activity but, anyway, the company was not too impressed. I can see Richard is nodding in agreement.

If we had had Deputy Boyd Barrett at the time, we probably would have had a more effective protest. Welcome back. In any event, I think the third level education situation has a broad range of issues. First of all, we have to have really sufficient funding and core funding so that the quality of third level education is high and that it rates internationally. That is very important. There have been, to be fair on the last Government and this Government, sustained increases in the core funding of higher education ov…

-----and make sure the cost for them is reduced significantly.

The publication of a strategic student accommodation approach or strategy is imminent. The Minister took it to the Cabinet subcommittee recently. It involves looking at the specific issue of how we can give capacity to the technological universities in particular to facilitate the development of student accommodation, either on the site that they may have, adjacent or wherever. The Minister has quite innovative approaches, which will draw on the need for the private sector to be involved. The scale of what is requi…

The key to this is housing supply. Our initiatives since the beginning of the year have been designed to get more houses built more quickly. The rate of increase is in decline, but that is not enough. We need far more supply to deal with the rental issue. Some positive news is that the percentage of first-time buyers has been steadily increasing, as I said, from about 23% of all household buyers in 2015 to 35% in August of this year. We want to continue that momentum. If we look at the situation internationally, ri…

The situation is unacceptable. I agree with the Deputy's approach in respect of the professional bodies and CORU. People who are trained in the UK or across Europe should be accelerated. The Minister has had an engagement with CORU in respect of therapies and the professional bodies. The professional bodies also need to look in a realistic way at the thresholds, so it should not need a PhD-based qualification to deal with the primary care scenario. Master's degree levels should be sufficient in my view. This is som…

There has been a significant increase in health personnel in the last five years - dramatic increases.

In all services.

If we are honest, what is required here is a more radical look at the model. It is not working.

Just a minute. It is not just more, more, more from the State. People have to look radically at this. Professional bodies have to look at it, in terms of how people are assessed and dealt with and how services are provided, because the number of therapists has increased with recruitment and so on. We are open to doing more, and we have provided more funding for more.

The model has to change as well in terms of how services are structured and provided. The HSE did develop a primary care intervention targeted approach in respect of speech and language therapy, occupational therapy and physiotherapy. It needs to do it now, and it is going to embark on one for psychology as well.

Yes, we are, but these are legally binding targets that both the Government and Europe have imposed. I would argue that the last Government did more than previous Governments in moving this forward and step-changing the nature of the response, but it is very challenging. I disagree with the Deputy's analysis. He disparagingly referred to tech companies. Tech companies in this country put bread on the table of many families. We are talking about workers here. We are not in thrall to any company or corporate headquar…

-----in the country in such companies, be they indigenous or multinational. The Deputy just dismissed them.

It is as if work does not matter.

Work matters. Is Deputy Murphy saying to the workers that they should be laid off or that we should reduce the investment in the companies?

We will deal with it. In terms of the energy reserve, the Deputy is also wrong. It is a security imperative that we develop an LNG facility. We are dependent on two connectors, which are vulnerable from a security perspective.

I know the Deputy does not want to see any evil in terms of Russia's designs and so on, but that is a problem.