Last week, I spoke to a woman who was the victim of a blatant and gross abuse of power. She was in court seeking a protection order and was under immense stress. After the court case the Kerry judge, who is now retired and who I will not name, contacted her. He texted her and called her persistently. He told her she was beautiful and that she should not tell anyone else about the contact he was having with her. He pressured her to meet up with him. When she met up with him out of fear it became very clear that he w…

I also want to focus on the question of quality employment. I will return to some of the questions I posed to the Taoiseach yesterday, on which I received no answers, regarding the so-called work placement experience programme, which is a new free labour scheme for employers where workers will get less than the pandemic unemployment payment, PUP, and are expected to live below the poverty line while working. It is JobBridge 2.0. The truth of the scheme is that workers who are on it will get an extra €3.43 per hour …

There were 783 new cases today. That is the highest daily case number since February. The seven-day average case number has doubled in the course of the past month. In the Netherlands, case numbers have gone up by 500% in the course of one week after reopening hospitality. Look at the graphs of what has been happening in Britain, and then in a delayed fashion in the rest of Europe, when indoor hospitality is reopened. The case numbers in the context of the Delta variant shoot through the roof. What follows inevitab…

Does the Deputy have a death wish for the population?

That was an interesting contribution to follow because, in fairness, it was an honest defence of the Government's position. I do not agree with it and I will explain why. This is unjust. It is absolutely unjust and unfair to discriminate against people on the basis of their vaccination status. It is doubly unjust to do so at a time when almost half of the adult population has not had the opportunity to be fully vaccinated if they want to be. It is triply unjust to force hospitality workers who are not vaccinated to…

Let us take the time to debate the legislation.

A Cheann Comhairle, it cannot be acceptable that the Taoiseach gets to ramble through three minutes of an answer and that is then the end of the process.

Yesterday, the Government unveiled the so-called work placement experience programme. It is a new free labour scheme for bosses whereby workers will get less than the pandemic unemployment payment and will be expected to live below the poverty line while working. Put simply, it is JobBridge 2.0. Workers on the scheme will get an extra €3.43 an hour for working 30 hours a week for six months without a guaranteed job at the end of it. Bosses can have up to ten workers on the scheme without paying a single cent. This …

Will these case officers be outsourced in JobBridge 2.0?

I want to point out that the Taoiseach did not answer any of the questions that were put to him.

It is appropriate that we have a question on the parliamentary liaison unit of the Government because the behaviour of the Government towards the Parliament in the past week has been striking. The Government has taken a bullying approach, using its majority to bulldoze things through without proper discussion. There have been two examples in the past week. Last Thursday, there was a motion to ram through the increase in the property tax without pre-legislative scrutiny and without the agreement of the relevant comm…

The Taoiseach is making a serious and reckless mistake again. The Government is risking the health of hospitality workers who are mostly unvaccinated. It is risking hundreds of unnecessary deaths, tens of thousands of potential cases of long Covid and a fourth wave and another lockdown, which people would find utterly demoralising. I have two specific questions to ask the Taoiseach. Has NPHET agreed to the Government's alteration of its recommendation by saying that children aged under 18 of parents who have been v…

I am listening to this debate and some people here are in need of a history lesson, as well as perhaps a mathematical lesson in terms of what progressivity means and what it is meant to relate to, which is income and wealth. In any case, I will deal with the history lesson first. The local property tax was first introduced in 2013 as part of the Fine Gael and the Labour Party Government's austerity agenda to make working people pay for the economic crash and the bank bailout. It was met with a massive campaign of o…

I thank the Leas-Cheann Comhairle. I appreciate her giving me the time. The Government is about to make a big mistake in approving the business case for the MetroLink to go to Beechwood, without considering the main alternative of going to south-west Dublin. I received an answer from the Minister to a parliamentary question, which seems to imply that the alternative cannot be considered outside of the formal six-year review process. That rule would not make any sense and that has already been broken. It also means …

On a point of order, can we not discuss the proposal for at least a minute? He is attempting to ram this through.

On a point of order, a Cheann Comhairle, for the Minister to come to the House on a Thursday, just before the close of business, to attempt to ram this through with no discussion whatsoever-----

This will have an impact of €500 for hundreds of thousands of homes.

A Cheann Comhairle, we need to debate it at least.

I also want to focus on the incredible U-turn in the direction of a big sign saying "profits for cuckoo funds". For two days in the Dáil now, the Taoiseach has been seeking to avoid answering the question of what prompted this U-turn. Two months ago, he at last admitted that something had to be done to tackle the domination of Irish housing by vulture and cuckoo funds. He pledged that he would clip their wings. Then, the Taoiseach sneaked into an unrelated Bill an incentive to bulk-buy new housing. Two months ago, …

Why not?