This is nearly as good as the Taoiseach's Ard-Fheis speech.

Stand up.

On numerous occasions, I have engaged with the Minister for Finance and the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage on the role of the banks in contributing towards redress for the affected families in this scandal. I recall one exchange with the Minister for Finance when the Dáil was sitting in the Convention Centre Dublin when he looked puzzled that banks, the mortgage lenders whose assets would be reduced to zero with houses impacted by defective blocks, would have their assets restored to full marke…

We do not.

It was about 12 weeks ago that the Minister, Deputy McConalogue, met representatives of the Irish fishing industry, who outlined the seriousness of the crisis and the impact of their break-even sum for fuel being 60 cent a litre while they had been paying more than €1. They explained how they could not afford to go out to sea and how other European member states had intervened, such as France, Spain, Sweden - I could go on. For whatever reason, however, the Minister and his Government have failed to intervene to pr…

Similar to Deputy Boyd Barrett, we support the principle of allocating funding to this fund but we do not have exact information in terms of the amounts. There is a bit of confusion in that regard. There is also doubt about whether the motion had to be taken. We are confused as to why the motion had to be taken tonight. The amount of time is very limited. I wish to express our real concern about that. We do not propose to call a vote and delay the debate that needs to take place on the resolutions, but we want it n…

The response of the Government to this energy crisis has been dithering, dithering and dithering again. If one looks at the league table of European countries and what they have provided to their people as a percentage of GDP, Ireland is right there at the bottom of the list. Only Denmark is worse. This is just a shameful response to an unprecedented energy crisis that our people face, be it home heating oil, solid fuels, or petrol or diesel for their cars. Wherever they turn, for businesses, for workers or for fam…

The Minister met representatives of a range of fishing organisations, which have made an unprecedented statement, as he will be aware. All the national voices of our fishing community have united to appeal to the Government to put together a fuel package to deal with the profound crisis threatening the entire sector. When is he going to introduce such a package?

As the Minister will be aware, it was agreed in Europe that there would be a financial aid package from last March but the Government did not avail of it. Another one has been voted for and announced in recent days and the Government needs to avail of it. The Minister referred to the Brexit Adjustment Reserve fund earlier and a tie-up scheme to compensate for the decommissioning of our fleet and the loss of so much of our quota. That is totally separate from the issues that have emerged in the context of the impact…

The Minister knows that in France and Spain, there has been a significant intervention, which has certainly helped their fleets. When I say "unprecedented", as the Minister will be aware, I mean all the producer organisations, including all those from the islands, IFA aquaculture representatives and fisheries local action groups. I have never seen every organisation unite. Some of them have certainly united previously but this is all of them, the entire sector, uniting to tell the Minister they cannot go to sea or …

Defective blocks, Charlie. Do you remember them?

Wrong.

That is not true.

To be frank, there is a strong suspicion that the reason the Minister has not ensured that testing of foundations would be provided for in this legislation, is that if a homeowner clears out the foundation and the blocks, and completely clears out the site, and seeks to rebuild again, that the house would be rebuilt to modern standards. The view is that the Minister would be denying people. In my Second Stage speech I spoke of the famous "gimlet eye" - as referred to by former Taoiseach, Enda Kenny. This mindset is…

I referred to this in my earlier comments. I just cannot emphasis strongly enough that it is madness to put forward, as the Minister said, billions of taxpayers’ money and base it on what is a flawed standard, namely, IS 465. Already there have been tests carried out by Petrolab in Britain. There have been examinations by Dr. Andreas Leeman, who is a highly respected international expert. There is absolute clear scientific evidence that IS 465 is not up to the standard required to invest billions of taxpayers’ mone…

Accept the amendments.

The gap is just five votes and we have seen the immense hurt felt by ordinary hard-working decent people from across the west of Ireland and how they reacted to that immense hurt.. These are traumatised families. This legislation is flawed. Those across the floor know that in their hearts. It is flawed and it would be wrong to get this wrong again. I ask for another vote so that they can reflect on this one last time. I ask them to please do the right thing.

As the gap is only six votes and as the entire Opposition voted against the outrageous allocation of two hours for the debate on such important and crucial legislation that involves billions in taxpayers' money and in respect of which 100 amendments have been tabled, we are asking for a vote by other than electronic means.

In July 2011, I witnessed the Minister of State's then party leader and Taoiseach, Enda Kenny, make a famous speech about the approach of the Vatican to victims of abuse. He said: "... the Vatican's reaction was to parse and analyse it with the gimlet eye of a canon lawyer." That was a famous speech. The problem has been that the approach of too many people who worked for Government and who were elected to be in government over the years who were dealing with the victims of this disaster, which has worked its way d…

As the difference between the "Tá" and "Níl" votes was ten or less, and considering that people in this country need help now and cannot wait until October, we ask for a vote other than by electronic means.