It contains the word “may”.

Liz Truss and the Tory right have faced a humiliating defeat over their attempts to cut taxes on the rich to the levels that we have in this country, as Deputy Paul Murphy pointed out. In better news, though, in another part of the United Kingdom, the Scottish Parliament has introduced a rent freeze and an eviction ban in response to the cost-of-living crisis. The Tories in Scotland are going mental about this development and making exactly the same argument that the Taoiseach has been making in opposing these meas…

The Minister has not read ours obviously.

As a member of the Business Committee, I was the one who asked for this debate to take place. I have been asking for it since several weeks before the summer recess. It was refused before the summer, it was refused until now and, finally, the Minister has deigned to allow a debate but has left before the vast majority of the Opposition spokespeople on housing even have a chance to respond to his speech. The reason I asked for this debate is because I think some of us have some things to impart to the Minister about…

This is insanity, yet the Government continues to allow it to persist, resulting in people entering into homelessness. Regarding income thresholds, I will return to the example of the woman in Nenagh. She earns too much to get social housing support, so she is living in a tent with her kids. For a year, I have been raising the case of a woman who has been in homeless accommodation with her kids for four years. She is working for a State agency that looks after vulnerable children. She is over the threshold, so she …

As the Minister of State may know, I also put in, before the summer, a whole series of detailed questions on this area of the OPW’s property portfolio. Since we returned to the House, frankly, I think we need to take a serious look at the management of that portfolio. Another thing to add to this debate is that in one of the answers the Minister of State gave me before the summer recess, we discovered that the OPW has 108 unoccupied properties, most of which have been vacant since 2013, and a small number are empty…

Do not sell Dublin Garda stations-----

I am sure, or I hope, the Minister is aware that we have a major crisis in being able to recruit and retain teachers, nurses, other allied health professionals and people in the mental health area and many other key areas, such as construction and so on. At the back of all of this, as the reports coming out make clear if it was not already clear, is the lack of affordable housing for people, particularly in areas like Dublin and the epicentres of the housing crisis. I ask what the Minister is doing from a public ex…

They are a hell of a lot more than challenges. There is one nurse to 14 patients on wards in St. Vincent's hospital. We have major shortages of staff across the healthcare system, including mental health services, and among special needs assistants, SNAs. Teachers are leaving Dublin - we have seen the reports - because they cannot afford to live here. Reeling off statistics about public sector recruitment will not cut it.

They may be facts but they do not explain why we have major staff shortages across our health service and, therefore, long waiting lists and a crisis in our emergency departments, and classes being cancelled because teachers have nowhere to live. What are we going to do about this? I have a proposal. The Minister stated that we should not spend the windfall tax receipts on ongoing expenditure. He was right. Why do we not invest those receipts in buying more housing instead of letting the large investment funds buy …

I do. I invite the Minister to drive with me along the N11 towards Cherrywood and down to Shankill. At the end of the road, he will find the LDA's first site, but there will not be houses there for another two years. Before we get there, he will see many large apartment developments that are nearing completion or have just been completed. Who will own them and who will live in them? Currently, international investment funds will own them. They will rent them for €2,500 to €3,000 per month, which none of the workers…

The following groups will get no Christmas bonus, no fuel allowance, no €400 payment and no double payment to help them through the cost-of-living crisis and energy price hikes that people are facing this winter: people on jobseeker's benefit, illness benefit, enhanced illness benefit, occupational injuries benefit, maternity benefit and disablement benefit. How is it fair or just that people on those social welfare payments, who are on reduced incomes, will not get the double payment, fuel allowance or the Christm…

That is not what they are being told by the Department of Social Protection at the moment.

I spoke on the budget on Tuesday night. As I said then, despite lots of highlighted figures and talk of unprecedented expenditure, the net fact about this budget is that the majority of workers, pensioners, social welfare recipients, people with disabilities and vulnerable low and middle-income households will be worse off next year than they were last year. The measures taken have not protected people from the spike in the cost of living or the ongoing housing crisis in terms of extortionate rents and house prices…

At the Business Committee, I suggested that we should do something to change the format of this budget debate. Quite frankly, it was designed to facilitate a lot of spin by the Government, and then to bore the pants off people for about five hours after that, to the point at which people would lose the will to live.

My point is that the real democracy was happening out on the streets of Dublin on Saturday when 20,000 people came out in what was one of the biggest demonstrations we have seen in recent years with workers, students, pensioners, people with disabilities, and people from all over the country. They are sick of this Government, sick of the spin and sick of the propaganda, when they know the reality is that they are facing an utterly disastrous cost-of-living and housing crisis. They did not believe for one minute tha…

It is not agreed. I will not call a vote but I want it noted that the final item is disposing of €5 billion. It is a big decision to put it into the rainy day fund rather than, for example, spend it on housing or other things. We should have a full debate and a hell of a lot more than two minutes each. I wish to object to that fact. I will not call a full vote but I do not agree to it in principle.

It is only because we will lose time later; it is Hobson's choice.

I will call for a voice vote.

First, I just want to correct the record. I am sure that it was not intentional by Deputy Danny Healy-Rae, but he got it wrong if he was suggesting that People Before Profit ever supported in any shape or form or voted for the carbon tax, because we most certainly did not. This year, as was the case in every year that it has appeared, we voted against it. We put it in our pre-budget submission-----