These are crucial amendments. Amendments tabled by members of other parties would have a similar effect in terms of ensuring this aspect of the legislation does something meaningful for those who are facing 8% rent increases, rather than just pretending to do something meaningful. I will tell the Minister about Jane, who came to me more than a month ago regarding the €160 a month rent increase she was facing, bringing her rent to €2,140 a month, an increase of almost 8%. She lives with her kids in an extremely ordi…

On the substantive issue, the Minister asserted that the Government is not pretending to do something. The issue we are discussing is that of people facing 8% rent increases. It has become a significant issue, so much so that the Fine Gael by-election candidate was forced to say that it is both a revelation and outrageous and called on the Government to do something. It has become a political issue to which the Government has been forced to respond. Effectively, however, the Government is doing nothing. That is the…

Yesterday, the ESRI issued a report which refutes the key justification the Government has put forward for cutting the pandemic unemployment payment, PUP, in September. For months we have had to listen to millionaire business owners, like Pat McDonagh of Supermac's, calling for cuts to the PUP and claiming it was so high it meant that workers were better off not working. Yesterday's ESRI report exposed that as being simply untrue. In fact, it highlighted the major damage that cutting the PUP would have in taking mo…

A month ago I raised in the Dáil the need for us to take action to slow down the spread of the Delta variant in Ireland, including mandatory hotel quarantine for travellers from Britain. I raised it again with the Taoiseach last week and he said the Government is not taking any risks in terms of the Delta variant. When I first raised it, we had a small number of cases of the Delta variant in Ireland but now one in five cases is the Delta variant. In Britain, they have slowed down and delayed the reopening. Belgium …

I am sharing time with Deputy Bríd Smith. I first want to make a point that is relevant to this motion and to a number of other motions passed by the Dáil in the past number of weeks. The Government is taking an extraordinarily cynical approach to motions brought forward by the Opposition in that it is supporting them, with no intention of doing anything about the issues raised. They are doing this because they do not want to see bad headlines in the media to the effect that they are against something. Tomorrow, th…

I am sharing time with Deputy Barry and, possibly, Deputy Boyd Barrett. In May 2019, the previous Fine Gael Government, propped up by Fianna Fáil, declared a climate and biodiversity emergency. So far, more than two years on, even with the Green Party now in government, those in power have completely failed to follow up that declaration with adequate action. The science is very clear on this. We must deal with the climate and biodiversity crises together. This is especially the case when it comes to our oceans. A d…

I will finish shortly. They have no protection in terms of health and safety. They suffer injury in many cases. For many of these fishers, it comes to an end when they suffer a significant injury and are no longer able to continue. They are then off the boat and the owner of the boat no longer cares about them. It is an absolute scandal which continues in this country. The International Transport Workers' Federation has done excellent work in highlighting and campaigning on this issue but we need action by the Gove…

I thank the Ceann Comhairle. That was a cop-out by the Taoiseach. Last week's details of a so-called rental protection Bill suggested this would be a plan to stop the double rent hikes many tenants are facing in the next month, but the details of the plan fail to address the actual scale of the problem. Hundreds of thousands of tenants are living in fear of rent hikes of €150 or €200 per month but the Government's proposal will only protect a few hundred. Worse still, even for those few hundred, it kicks the can do…

The Taoiseach has taken a number of big gambles in the management of the Covid pandemic. The biggest was the decision to reopen at the end of November last year. To put it mildly, those gambles did not pay off. The Taoiseach is taking another big gamble now in relation to the Delta variant. We hope that gamble pays off and we are able to achieve sufficient levels of full vaccination, in particular of vulnerable groups, before the Delta variant becomes dominant here. If, however, the gamble not to introduce mandator…

The Taoiseach stated that he had not taken gambles in terms of Covid. That is not historically accurate. I hope that we will have a public inquiry into the management of Covid and it will be for that inquiry to judge, but the Taoiseach also said something that is for us to discuss today, that no gamble is being taken at the moment. There is a gamble or, to use a different word, a choice involved. The Taoiseach clearly accepts that there is a problem with the threat of the Delta variant becoming dominant here, that …

I raise a particular case of human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia and ask that the Taoiseach raise it at the European Council. Yesterday, the Saudi authorities executed a young man called Mustafa Hashim al-Darwish. He was arrested as a minor in 2015 as a result of participation in protests. He was held in solitary confinement and brutally tortured and in those conditions he confessed to various crimes. When he was brought before the court he recanted his confession because it was a result of that torture. Nonetheles…

We condemned it in the debate about Belarus last week.

I thank the Leas-Cheann Comhairle. I did not think she would get around to me so quickly. I am very happy to be named on the amendment. I have two points to make. The first is that it is scandalous that the Government is putting a guillotine on this, the most important - or what should be the most important - piece of legislation we will pass in this Dáil. We are not getting sufficient time to debate the issues because the Government, and the Green Party in particular, do not want to deal with the inadequacies of t…

Did the Taoiseach discuss the Delta variant with the Prime Minister? Despite the vaccination programme in the UK being well advanced, the spread of this variant has forced the Government there to delay the reopening. When I raised this issue in the House three weeks ago, we had 70 cases of the Delta variant here and now we have 130-plus cases. There is a real danger of it getting out of control. The variant presents a real danger to people's health, to their lives and to our ability to reopen society, provided it m…

Five years ago, after Clerys left its workers high and dry, the Duffy Cahill report proposed a series of measures to prevent such an occurrence from being repeated. Five years of delay meant the Debenhams workers were left without legal protection when their company did the same to them. The promise was always that the Government would eventually take action. Last week, the Government announced what it would do about the key recommendations of the Duffy Cahill report, namely, absolutely nothing. The key demand of w…

Yesterday, the Taoiseach was quoted in The Irish Times as stating that the leaving certificate is fair but does not measure the breadth of a person's ability. We could debate this. The Taoiseach is using a very narrow definition of what is fair and unfair. Yesterday, there was another story in The Irish Times on something that even in this narrow definition appears to be very unfair for a select group of students. This is the fact that, according to the newspaper, significant numbers of leaving certificate students…

Terence Wheelock left his home to buy a paintbrush 16 years ago yesterday. He never came home. He was picked up and arrested by gardaí and brought to Store Street Garda station. Terence entered a coma as a result of injuries he received there and he died in hospital three months later. The gardaí state that he hanged himself, but his family do not believe that and there are very good reasons to not believe it. The family continues to campaign for a public inquiry. The question then is whether the Minister will meet…

I met the Wheelock family yesterday. I pay tribute to their bravery and courage in continuing to campaign for justice. The members of the family are not satisfied with the response they have received. It is open to the Government to initiate a public inquiry. It is a power which rests with it. Regarding the GSOC inquiry, does the Minister not think it was problematic that it was led by a former Garda who had previously worked, not at the time of the death, at Store Street Garda station? Turning to the legal proceed…

The point about the cell renovation was not that cells were renovated subsequently but that the cell in question was immediately painted and renovated before it could be investigated. That is suspicious rather than something good. The suggestion is that with his bare hands, Terence tunnelled into the walls of the cell, found an anchor point to tie the cord of his tracksuit, which he was left with, and hanged himself while he was on his knees. This is very problematic. I have two basic requests from the family, the …

Apologies from Deputy Bríd Smith who was originally due to be here and wanted to be here to speak. She is our representative on the Oireachtas Committee on Key Issues affecting the Traveller Community but she is tied up with the climate change Bill. The housing crisis we are talking about and the particular crises facing the Traveller community is one reflection of the gross State and societal racism, discrimination and oppression they face. It is one gross and horrific aspect of it but it is clearly part of a wide…