How was the land put up for sale?

How did it end up for sale?

The Tánaiste did.

But he lied about where he was living.

Without The Ditch , Deputy Troy would still be a Minister of State and Deputy English would still be a Minister of State. No wonder the Tánaiste is attempting to undermine The Ditch because it has been quite successful in exposing corrupt and unethical practices by Ministers in the Government and in the Tánaiste's party. The Tánaiste would leave everyone with the impression that the meeting, on 15 January 2007, of Bruff Local Electoral Area Committee may as well not have happened as it did not have any power. It co…

What is clear is that Deputy Niall Collins participated in the decision to put the land up for sale. Without that decision, his wife could not possibly have bought the land and increased her money massively in the way she did and his family would not have been able to enrich itself in the way it did. That is absolutely clear unless it is the case that he had no idea that his wife had expressed an interest in buying the land, which is extremely implausible.

It is there in black and white. The Government just wants to cover it up.

Exactly. It is and the Tánaiste is standing over the Minister of State.

The Minister of State said the majority of the market are people that "we" know. Does that not encapsulate the problem? Yes, they are people the Minister of State knows, people Fianna Fáil knows, and people the Healy-Rae landlord party knows. A major political problem in this country is that we have a landlords' Government accountable to a landlords' Dáil. The last time this Bill was debated, it was defeated by only 14 votes. If the landlord Deputies had done the right thing and recused themselves, our Bill would h…

Surely landlords should not be voting tonight on this issue. There is a conflict of interest.

Surely it is completely inappropriate for Deputy Healy-Rae to vote on something that affects his personal economic interest.

That is the essence of the issue here.

It is landlords voting here in their own economic interest rather than in the public interest. They should recuse themselves from the vote this evening.

It is a particular class of landlords. It is not like-----

Will it not be on Thursday afternoon when the Ceann Comhairle invites him?

Will the Ceann Comhairle make sure we get lots of notice for it?

It is not agreed on the grounds that it includes the removal of Deputy Neasa Hourigan from three committees which, in effect, is a punishment of her for voting against the eviction ban. She was right to vote against the eviction ban and she should not be punished on that basis.

I want to ask the Taoiseach about the crisis facing many children who are in Tusla's care. I spoke to an impressive young man a couple of weeks ago. He is a 16-year-old who is in care. He has been in care for about ten years. He lived with his mother for the first five or six years of his life and then he was taken into care. He is currently 16 and lives with his grandmother. He said that up until he was about 15 and a half, the service he had from Tusla was amazing. He always had a social worker who was very suppo…

Will the Taoiseach join us in calling for Murphy International to reinstate the so-called Murphy 4. These are four workers with a combined 50 years' experience in the construction company Murphy International who were sacked in what was a very clear and blatant attempt at union busting. Murphy International is a massive company generating more than £1.27 billion in revenues last year. That is revenue generated by the workforce, including the four Unite members who have been dismissed. It is vital that companies are…

I move amendment No. 1: In page 6, line 7, to delete “ “hatred” means hatred” and substitute “ “hatred” means a state of mind characterised as intense and irrational emotions of opprobrium, enmity, and detestation rooted in bias, prejudice or hostility”. We are going to withdraw amendment No. 1. I will speak to amendments Nos. 2, 3 and 4. As a general remark while I have the time, and to be clear, we are in favour of hate crime legislation but we want to see it done correctly. We want to ensure that there are no is…