I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time." This Bill is about trying to learn one of the lessons of the Covid-19 pandemic and protecting a particularly vulnerable group of workers whose plight was highlighted in the midst of the pandemic. It was revealed as one of the central stories and scandals of the pandemic. That was the plight of migrant workers working in meat processing, horticulture, dairy and other similar areas within which thousands of people work and about 70% of whom are migrant workers. Repor…

I should have said in my initial comments that on the occasion of a Bill like this coming through it is worth considering the horrific events that took place in the English Channel this week with desperate migrants losing their lives in a boat that capsized. The seas around Europe have become a graveyard for thousands and thousands of desperate people - men, women and children - who are fleeing war, persecution and desperate conditions and losing their lives in the most horrible fashion. We saw a very stark example…

Sorry. I did not say that. Supermarkets. I did not mention their name. Sorry, it was a slip of the tongue.

Yes. The workers are on very low pay. Considering that the food we eat is one of the most basic things we need to sustain our society, it says something that pretty much everyone along the food chain, whether they are Irish, small farmers, migrant workers or the people who work in the shops, is pretty poorly paid. This Bill is part of trying to address that. If we are serious about some of the lessons we have learned, bearing in mind that everybody, including the Government, referred during Covid to the role of ess…

How many minutes do we have?

We will take four each.

We thought we had more. I thank the Social Democrats for bringing forward this Bill on this incredibly important subject. I also commend the former Deputy, Ruth Coppinger, who brought forward a Bill with similar objectives in 2018, the Provision of Objective Sex Education Bill 2018, which tackled the issue in a slightly different way but had the same objectives. That Bill was passed by the Dáil and it required changes in the principal Act essentially to remove the right of the ethos that is protected in that Act fr…

I have lost count of how many times I have raised the issue of reviewing the income thresholds for eligibility for social housing over the last four or five years. Whether it is the last Government or this Government, the stock response is that “it is under review” or “the review will be completed shortly”, and we have been told that for four or five years now. Of course, the result, let us be clear, is that thousands of people every year who go over the income threshold, who do not have the income to pay for the m…

First, will the Taoiseach give me a commitment that homeless families will not be evicted from homeless accommodation because they get a job and try to earn a bit of extra income? Will he give me that commitment now and issue that instruction to local authorities? Second, can I just point out that if they had been housed as they should be, or even got a HAP tenancy, they would not be evicted and their rent would rise with their income. People do not get evicted from a council house because of their income, but if t…

Why is there not a-----

They will not be evicted from homeless accommodation.

The Taoiseach should make a commitment on that.

These people would not be able to afford those houses.

The protests outside by hauliers are just the latest manifestation of the huge problems large numbers of working people, people on lower incomes, hauliers, taxi drivers and many others are having with the cost of living and the cost of energy and fuel. The Taoiseach asked that we give some suggestions. We have given suggestions. Under section 61 of the Consumer Protection Act 2007, the Government can issue an emergency order and control the price of energy and fuel. It should do that. That is what is required to de…

The threatened sale of the Killegar forest in Enniskerry, which I highlighted and on which I am glad to say Coillte backed off, and the one raised by Deputy Cairns that the Taoiseach was talking about earlier on, indicate a fundamental problem with the mandate of Coillte, namely, that it is operating to commercial imperatives, rather than as a guardian of the forest estate and as the entity that is trying to expand that forest estate to deal with climate change and carbon sequestration and to enhance biodiversity. …

Yesterday, I said to the Taoiseach that people cannot get a PCR test in Dublin for love nor money. Now that fact has been confirmed, although people in the Government's front bench were shaking their heads when I said that. Something else that the Taoiseach might consider is that, if people cannot get a test for a couple of days, they can understandably feel pressure to get a private test, which can cost up to €99. They can go to private hospitals to get a test and pay for it, which underlines the point about how u…

Over the past number of weeks, many taxi drivers were pushed off the pandemic unemployment payment, PUP. In fact, many of them could have stayed on it but voluntarily signed off because their sector was recovering. Now the sector has gone over a cliff because of the night-time curfew, the public health advice for people to reduce social contacts and the work from home provisions. Taxi drivers are being offered nothing. They have got it in the neck from the word go in this pandemic. Every measure that is taken impac…

Some were.

We need to urgently address the issue of testing and we need the Minister in here to discuss it. People cannot get a PCR test for love nor money in Dublin. People are hours and hours on the website, if they can get an appointment at all. People are talking about antigen tests being free, and they should be, but we need PCR testing and we need walk-in PCR testing to be available. The longer somebody is walking around while infectious or potentially infectious, the more the disease will spread. People have to be able…

Deputy Bríd Smith could not get tested all day yesterday.