I mainly wish to discuss open access to third level education. Before doing so, however, I welcome the fact that school profiling is not part of this proposal. That is very important. I also welcome that there are sanctions against the lobbying of teachers, which is also important. That took place in some areas last summer and it was completely unfair to the teachers. It is good to have the measures indicated in the Bill. The removal of the situation whereby teachers gave numerical rankings to their students last y…

I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time." I will be sharing time with Deputies Gino Kenny and Boyd Barrett. The only thing that will ever change the situation for workers in a liquidation is changing the statutory priorities so that workers are moved up the chain. That is according to Mr. Kieran Wallace of KPMG in an interview with the Business Post on Sunday, 2 May. Today, Deputies will have the opportunity to take a big step towards doing precisely that and moving workers up the chain. The Bill seeks to …

I will reply to some of the comments made by the two Ministers of State in the course of the debate. There is no argument whatsoever from anyone who is a serious observer of Irish labour law but that the proposals in the Cahill Duffy report would significantly improve rights for working people in this country. The report has laid on the Minister's desk for five years now and the recommendations within it have not been acted on. The Minister of State has some brass neck coming into the House and lecturing socialist …

What is under investigation here is a €119 million issue at Siteserv. By the looks of the figures that have been provided by the Taoiseach, the actual cost of investigating that issue could end up being close to €119 million. The figure of €30 million is certainly well short and the other figure of €70 million that has been mentioned is closer to the mark. The commission spent €4,000 on bringing a banking expert from Thailand and more than €1,500 was spent on tissues. I find it hard to get my head around that. We a…

Housing is a ticking time bomb. Is it a ticking time bomb that will blow up this Government? Daft has stated this morning that we have just witnessed the largest quarterly increases in rent since the middle of 2018. In Cork city, rents have increased by 6.3% in the first quarter of 2021 in comparison to the first quarter of last year. The average rent is €1,483. In County Cork there has been an incredible 8.7% increase, bringing average rents to €1,137. In the Munster area, there has been an 8.8% increase, with jus…

I welcome the coroner's conclusions regarding the Ballymurphy massacre. It is a vindication for the families who have campaigned so hard down through the decades. It is a real scandal that the British state prevented the truth from coming out for 50 years. Today also, the British Government has declared an amnesty for its troops, which is a slap in the face to the Ballymurphy families and others. There must be no obstacles placed in the way of families campaigning for truth and justice around these issues. In concl…

I had intended to ask the Taoiseach about the fact that more than 50% of Covid-19 fines have been handed out to people between the ages of 18 and 24. There has been an increase in Garda harassment of young people, who are also suffering disproportionately as a result of unemployment at present. I will ask the Taoiseach about that matter another day, however, Last night, or more correctly, in the early hours of this morning, we saw workers lifted off picket lines outside the Debenhams store in Waterford. They were p…

Leo Varadkar rolled out the red carpet, Mícheál Martin opened the door and seated the guests while Eoghan Murphy poured the wine but now the Government is throwing its hands up in horror because the guests are eating too much. What the hell did it expect? It gave them everything they wanted. It gave them tax breaks on corporation tax and on capital gains tax. It gave them what they wanted on the rent roll and on stamp duty. Last week the Government said it was going to sort it out but it has not been sorted out yet…

The Minister did not answer the question. Is the Government going to instruct its representatives at the World Trade Organization to vote in favour of waving intellectual property rights on the vaccines? That is the issue and the Minister has not answered the question. The Government has a choice to make. The Biden Administration has done a U-turn. It has changed its position under pressure from below. One option is to back the same position. The other option is to back the position argued by the pharmaceutical ind…

The Minister lifted the blanket ban on rent increases and evictions. He bowed to the landlord lobby when he did so. He was warned on the floor of this Dáil of what the consequences of his actions would be and, unfortunately, we are beginning to see the consequences of those actions already. Last Friday the Inner City Helping Homeless group reported the case of a healthcare worker who was evicted while at work. The healthcare worker had their belongings moved out of their place while they were at work. The notice to…

Massive investment in new ways of generating electricity from renewable sources will be necessary for the transition to a zero-carbon society. Essential to this drive will be investment in the electricity network. ESB network technicians will be key workers, helping to shape the nation's green energy future. When preparing for battle, a good general will pay particularly close attention to the morale of the troops. Yet, the Government and ESB have consistently pursued policies which almost look like they are design…

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There are hundreds of ESB network technicians who are waiting for an answer from the Taoiseach and they have heard nothing from him. It is very disappointing.

Where the Minister left off is precisely where I want to begin, that is, the affordable housing scheme, particularly the shared equity element within it. The Minister says it will bring down housing prices, but it is not just his critics on the left, as many establishment politicians as well as establishment economists have spoken about the potential for this to increase prices. I would like the Minister to comment on the issue.

Could the Minister comment on the breaking news of the statement by Deputy Lahart that Fianna Fáil is drowning in the shadow of Fine Gael's housing policy? I presume the Deputy is referring to the sweeteners to the vulture funds in respect of corporation tax, capital gains tax, rent roll, stamp duty and so on, all of which Fianna Fáil allowed it to make because it was propping up the previous Government. A former Minister for Finance, Michael Noonan, famously said he wanted to facilitate the attraction of foreign i…

Let us be clear about who has prevented young people buying their first homes: it is not Solidarity or the Socialist Party that have been in government while young people have been locked out of the market and developers have made a fabulous profit. Let us talk about house prices. Capping affordable housing for the equity scheme at €400,000 in the city of Cork is just unreal. What planet are the Ministers on with these kind of figures? I want to ask the Minister about a statement he gave to the Irish Examiner yeste…

I want to raise the issue of nursing homes. The four-visits-per-week rule comes into force next Tuesday. Under the restrictions in place for the last while, two visits per week were permitted. The organisation, Care Champions, says it is aware that at least 70 of the 580 nursing homes in this State, more than 10%, have not applied the two-visits-per-week rule. In many cases, this was not done for strictly public health reasons. The stated reason was staff shortages in the nursing home. I can only imagine how a husb…

Five hundred ESB network technicians are on strike today. They are striking over plans to outsource their jobs to private contractors and are making a stand against creeping privatisation. The company refuses to recognise their union, the Independent Workers Union, or to meet it at the Workplace Relations Commission, WRC, to try to sort out the differences. Instead, it is threatening to take legal action against the union. To be clear, this is the union of choice for nearly half of the workforce. The company's stan…

I want to express my support for the open letter published recently by more than 400 academics researching climate and environmental change protesting the worldwide attempts to criminalise non-violent climate protest. The letter states that those who put their voices and bodies on the line to raise the alarm are being threatened and silenced by the very countries they seek to protect. I agree with that, and I want to add my voice to this important issue. I want to draw attention to the fact that the Bill does not i…

The proposition before the Dáil at the moment is simple. The idea is that if a student cannot take up the place he or she has rented for public health reasons, whether he or she is ill, has to isolate or is unable to travel, the rents and related charges should be returned. The vast majority of people would say that is basic common sense. It is, however, a common sense with which the corporate landlords have not agreed over the space of the past year and more. Last year, in Cork, for example, the Uninest facility o…