The figure of 11,500 people who are currently homeless is going to continue to swell unless the Government takes urgent emergency measures to stop the flow into homelessness. The major reason the vast majority of those people are homeless is because they have been evicted; the vast majority of whom have done absolutely nothing wrong. Next Friday week, I will be going into court with a family, that is, people who have worked, paid their taxes all their lives and have not done a single thing wrong. Even during a supp…

People are being evicted at the moment.

They have done nothing wrong.

No.

No.

There are people being evicted on grounds of sale at the moment, who have done nothing wrong.

A report was done by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine approximately two years ago which suggested, astonishingly, that Ireland’s forest estate was a net carbon emitter. That was a shocking fact. Why might that be? It was because people who were interested in profit, rather than addressing climate change, biodiversity or, for that matter, supporting rural communities or farmers to engage in sustainable forestry, just grew plantations of Sitka spruce trees and cut them down too young for the market,…

Like others, I have raised on several occasions in the House this week what I believe to be a shameful proposed partnership between Coillte, the State forestry company, and Gresham House, a UK for-profit fund with a plan to buy up huge swaths of forestry and land in this country to make money. Last week, I met environmental and small farmer groups that have established a campaign using the slogans "Save our land", "Save our forests" and "Stop this deal". The Tánaiste is saying the deal that has been made is a done …

If the affair regarding the Minister, Deputy Donohoe, raises worrying and alarming questions about the relationship between politics and big business, the trip the Taoiseach will be taking to the World Economic Forum at Davos after Leaders' Questions, where he will spend a few days swanning around with some of the world's richest people and most profitable and wealthy corporations, also raises even bigger questions on a grander scale about the relationship between politics and the gross inequalities in wealth we se…

-----and to resource our hospitals to deal with the dire crisis we are facing in our health services. Will the Government now introduce a wealth tax to start to redistribute some of the huge wealth that exists in this country but which is not being shared equally with the people of the country who generated this wealth?

Yes, the Taoiseach is right. There is no conspiracy; it is naked, brazen greed. The Taoiseach's answer does not explain how the number of people with more than €50 million or the number of people with up to €5 million in personal wealth has doubled. It does not explain how corporate profits have trebled in the last ten years while ordinary people are suffering. Let me give the Taoiseach an example, just one of dozens that I encountered over Christmas and the new year, of a woman and her husband with an income of €5…

-----taking advantage of the cost-of-living crisis to enrich themselves at the expense of families like this. Would a wealth tax not be a way to address that gross inequality?

It is in the Central Bank report.

That family is not benefiting.

Paying their gas bill.

I also think there should be a question and answer session. I want to raise what I believe is a scandal. That is the planned deal between Coillte and the UK investment fund, Gresham House. It is essentially the State facilitating and financing a corporate grab by a for-profit investment fund of tens of thousands of hectares of land and forestry in this country. I asked the Chief Whip at the Business Committee last Thursday for an urgent debate in the Dáil about this plan. Small farmers, environmentalists and anybod…

A Cheann Comhairle-----

Will the Taoiseach confirm he is willing to allow a debate on the Coillte issue? I asked at the Business Committee and the members of the Opposition all agreed that they want a Dáil debate next week.

Will the Taoiseach confirm that he will facilitate that debate?

To subsidise investors.