No.

Sinn Féin has been in government for the past decade in Northern Ireland. I have been in government for close to two years.

I have been in government for a year and a half. We have identified the housing crisis as a key priority. We have to build more houses. All I see in Sinn Féin's policies is policies to win votes and not policies to provide solutions.

What Sinn Féin is advocating would depress supply. We need more supply. We do not need measures that would depress supply. That is my view. Supply is key. The Minister has made efforts and has introduced legislation to deal with this. We have been hit with a current wave of inflation-----

No, come off it - in terms of what has happened-----

We are going to respond to that. The Minister has been responsive and nimble in that particular issue. On the social housing income thresholds, I have indicated they are under review. I have sympathy with the position of the Deputy on it and we will continue to bring the matter to a conclusion. Deputy Murphy raised the issue of retrofitting houses. We also need to get on with it. I take his point that retrofitting should be at the standards laid out in Housing for All. I will check out what is happening in Limerick…

If we give councils the resources, they will do more of it. We need to get on with it because it will help with energy costs, better quality housing and so forth for tenants. I hope the case mentioned by Deputy O'Callaghan has been referred to the Garda, because it should. I take his point. Obviously over recent years, to be fair to everybody concerned, there was a need to ramp up emergency accommodation to deal with families, including families who come into the country at short notice and require emergency accomm…

First, I say to the Deputy that every party and every Dáil Deputy in this House is extremely well aware of and very concerned about the devastation wreaked on many families as a result of the mica scandal. The scandal is not about the absence of regulation; it is about a failure by certain operations to adhere to the regulations. We must call that out. Those responsible need to be held accountable for what transpired. That is the first point I make. Families need their houses rebuilt. To be fair to the Minister, De…

No Opposition party replied to a written request two months ago, after the working group report was published, to detail their specific position on how the scheme should be improved. You need to answer that fundamental question. You could have got involved. You could have come up with your proposals and your plan, but you had no plan and you had no proposal.

The reason you did not is that you simply want to exploit this, unfortunately, for electoral and political gain. We want to provide a solution.

The bottom line is that the Deputy behind Deputy Doherty endorsed the original scheme back in January 2020, a scheme we accept was not suitable. We are saying we must depoliticise the methodology around the costings here. The SCSI on an annual basis updates the square footage building costs. They accept a sliding scale. Most people involved in building and surveying accept the methodology of a sliding scale. We did not want to disadvantage the smaller houses. If you look at the property tax returns, for example, yo…

-----and the upfront costs being dealt with. They will not have to find that money.

The Deputy said the Government’s Covid-19 response in general was haphazard and chaotic. I would like to put that comment in context. More than 8.1 million vaccines have been administered in Ireland. We have the highest vaccination rate in the European Union, with 93.4% of the adult population fully vaccinated. The executive director today of the European Medicines Agency, EMA, outlined how Ireland has the highest vaccination rate in Europe and stated: ... the deaths per 1 million population over the last 14 days w…

First, we are living in a very fast-moving pandemic. No one, including the Deputy, at any stage suggested that we should, prior to utilisation of antigen testing, establish a regulatory framework governing them in advance. She has been an advocate for antigen testing for the past number of weeks and is of the view it should be happening much faster, etc.

Now she has come back around the scrum to say, well, actually, slow down somewhat now and do not have it as freely available on the basis of the quality.

Of course, and we need very strong communications around the types of tests people should buy.

What is important as well is that, in key targeted areas, like schools and the food industry, we are up to 130,000 and close to 100,000 in terms of close contacts, which have been dispatched freely. In key target groups, they are free, have been free and will continue to be free.

I went through all the different sectors where that currently is happening. More generally, the price range now has come way down, because of engagement, by €2 up to €3, which is a very significant advance.

However, we must always remember that PCR testing remains our core response and 210,000 were given out and done for free, properly so, last week.

As I said at the outset, the scheme, as currently structured, will cost approximately €2.2 billion for 6,000 to 7,000 homes. That is a substantial contribution by the taxpayer of today and the future and the Exchequer to any housing remediation scheme. That needs to be acknowledged in the first instance.