The discrimination against PUP recipients is a shambles worthy of the Government. Ten minutes before Leaders' Questions began, the Minister responsible was in the House announcing what sounded like a partial U-turn on the policy. It leaves PUP recipients wondering if the discrimination has ended. It leaves those who have been penalised wondering if their money will be reinstated. They need clarity on this. After Deputy McDonald asked about this issue, we got five minutes of speechifying from the Taoiseach about eve…

The Taoiseach has been in the House a lot longer than I have but my understanding is that this session is called Leaders' Questions. The implication is that we ask questions and, I presume, we get answers as opposed to policy statements, rhetoric or anything else. I will restate the basic questions people need to know. This is not a question about whether there will be reviews of individual cases. Rather, it is a question of policy. The Taoiseach is responsible for questions of policy. The question is simply whethe…

The way the Government and the political establishment have been marketing the July stimulus, one would think that it is going to transform the economy and that it will be a landmark for the Government and will show that it is up to the tasks ahead. The reality, however, is that the stimulus package is socially unjust and regressive and is economically irrational from the point of view of the majority of people in this society. Moreover, the propaganda campaign that the Government has used to sell the stimulus is f…

What we needed was a real extension of the evictions ban and rent controls to bring rents down, but that is not what we got. This Bill is a triumph of spin over substance, with the Government getting headlines about extending the evictions ban while in reality the Bill slashes the rights of tenants and opens the floodgates of evictions by removing important protections for renters. In recent months we have seen a decline not just in Covid-19 but also in homelessness. Now, due to mismanagement by the Government, we …

It is not agreed. The PUP recipients losing their income on the basis of travelling is extremely serious. Not only does it appear to have no sound legal basis, it is also blatantly discriminatory. When Mr. Billy Kelleher MEP of Fianna Fáil openly broke the travel guidelines there was no impact on his income. We know that the rules were changed to facilitate tax exiles, maintaining their status during the pandemic. There is also the example of high earners who are recipients of substantial tax benefits under the spe…

Certainly. The point is that we have a motion on the Order Paper which would annul the statutory instrument and end this blatant discrimination. We believe the Dáil must debate and vote on it today.

I ask the Taoiseach to address the question.

There is a law before the House.

Yesterday, the reports were that members of the Government were taking a 10% pay cut, but it later emerged that it is not a pay cut at all and, in fact, the Taoiseach will be more highly paid than his predecessor, Ministers will be more highly paid than their predecessors and junior Ministers will be more highly paid than their predecessors. If the Government was a shop which advertised a 10% off sale but it turned out the prices were actually higher than they were a month ago, it would be in breach of the consumer…

I have two questions. If it is possible to follow up on the nursing homes issue that Deputy Gino Kenny raised, I will start with one and get an answer. The Minister underplays the HIQA report. The rate of non-compliance with infection prevention and control regulations was 50% across all nursing homes inspected. The regulation on suitability of premises had a non-compliance rate of 32%. Some 21% of homes had staff shortages. One of the key findings was about how infections got into the homes. It reads: "inward tran…

My next question is about schools and their reopening. We are sitting in a massive venue, which the public pays for, so that we can work in a safe environment. Will the Minister give a commitment that he will not force teachers and students back and endanger communities by having schools return and operate in conditions that are less safe than those in which Deputies work?

I will be brief and will focus my remarks on what is the scandalous inclusion of the extra €16,000 a year for a super junior Minister, on top of an annual salary of €124,000. Before I discuss that point, I wish to make one point about higher education. There is a crisis of funding in higher education right now which is a consequence of a model of relying on non-EU students as a cash cow. Very quickly, the same sorts of pressures we saw for many years will come to pass again where universities will be rightly crying…

The point I was making was that a return to fees or an increase in the so-called student contribution charge could be on the agenda in the course of this Government and the student movement needs to be awake to that and needs to be prepared to mobilise to defeat it, as has happened in the past. We have a situation where the student movement has been on the front foot and has demanded correctly the scrapping of this nonsense of a student contribution charge. Commitments have been given by various political parties i…

"Public homes on public land" is the demand of the housing movement, a movement which has seen what the disaster of allowing developers to make a killing from public land means. I offer the example of O'Devaney Gardens. This promise made its way into the Green Party manifesto and, interestingly, the Minister of State has uttered this slogan twice so far during our half hour of discussion. However, the indications are that the privatisation of public land is set to continue with the development in Killinarden under …

I think the Minister engaged in a bit of a sleight of hand in his response - the same sleight of hand in which the programme for Government engages - when he said he will ensure that "public housing rental stock on public land is under the control of local authorities, approved housing bodies or other similar bodies". The point about the slogan "public homes on public land" is not primarily about who has control of public homes, although that is important. The point is that all of the public land that exists in the…

The slogan "public homes on public land" should mean using all public land for public homes. In the case of Killinarden, even setting aside for a moment the unaffordability of the so-called affordable homes, 400 of those 500 homes will be sold by the developer for whatever price the developer wants for private profit. Does the Minister agree with that and, if not, will he halt the sale of the land? The scale of the housing crisis is such that a one-bedroom apartment in Exchange Hall in Tallaght has gone up for rent…

The programme for Government promises to improve the lives of people with disabilities and for the most important people in their lives, their carers. Next Wednesday, from 12.30 p.m. as part of the Enough is Enough campaign, carers will be outside the Convention Centre calling for just that. Concretely, they will be calling for the reopening of adult day services. All around the country carers are screaming out that they are physically and mentally exhausted but they feel that nobody is listening. Will the Governme…

I note that the Taoiseach is following his predecessor in leaving the Chamber before Solidarity-People Before Profit speaks on this issue.

Perfect, I thank the Minister of State. We await the next European Council statements because this happened on every occasion with the previous Taoiseach. There exist two dominant narratives about the outcome of this European Council. The first is that of the establishment of the European Union, and echoed very much by the Taoiseach here today, where this is a victory for European solidarity. On the other hand, we have the more blunt and, in reality, more honest narrative from, among others, the Dutch Prime Ministe…

The Minister of State's response to our motion and the Government's amendment to it are an insult. The amendment is an insult to the workers who have been taking action for 104 days. What the Minister of State has offered is more tea, sympathy, crocodile tears and generalities about what the Government is going to do for workers in the future and what it is going to do in terms of legislation. There is nothing - not a word - about what it is going to do for the workers who are facing this crisis right now, as set o…