What does Deputy Funchion think?

If the proposers accept the amendment, will the names of all the signatories from all parties, including those of the original motion, be on the amended motion or will it only be the of the signatories to the amendment? I would not want that. The whole point was that the amendment was in solidarity with the cross-party motion.

Can the Acting Chair just clarify that point? If the amendment was accepted-----

If the amendment was accepted by the proposers, would the names of all the signatories to the original motion stay on the agreed and amended motion? That is what I want to know.

I do not want it to be just our names.

Is that the way any motion passed would be?

So it does not make any difference. Then I will press it.

It is our view the leaving certificate should go because it has outlived its usefulness. It is a gatekeeping and streaming exercise which perpetuates inequality and limits or streams access to third level education. The Minister might not agree with all of that but she has committed to some sort of review of the leaving certificate. I want to know the status of that review because, particularly after Covid, a root-and-branch review is long overdue.

A lecturer in UCD told me that much of the modern examination system originated with efforts to populate the civil service in British-controlled colonial China. I do not know if it is true, but it is a structure that is about enforcing certain norms and notions of hierarchy. That is still true of the leaving certificate. There are some dinosaurs in the North or in Britain who might hark back to the days of the 11 plus, when people's access to secondary education was streamed through exams. We now think that is horr…

Could the Minister be more specific about when the report will be published and when this is going to happen? This cannot be long-fingered. As she said, Covid has highlighted the inadequacies that were there, but it has shone a sharp light on the problems and the unfairness of the leaving certificate. It is unfair to put large numbers of students through the incredible and unnecessary stress it imposes on them. That is damaging to the intellectual development and confidence of many students. Given that we recognise…

I may not need 20 minutes.

Like many other Deputies, I have been caught a bit on the hop with the speed of this, not just today but in catching up with the issue. I am quite happy to admit that. I agree with Deputy Connolly on the seaweed issue. It may be of interest to people, particularly those who are Bob Marley fans, to learn that his favourite food, which he thought was going to be available in abundance in Ireland, was a seaweed dish called Irish moss which is very popular in Jamaica. He assumed that when he got to Ireland, Irish moss …

With the decision to impose a curfew after midnight on nightlife and the recommendations to work from home from Friday, many people who work in those areas or who depend on those areas for work will lose income and, in many cases, lose their jobs outright. Against that background, it is completely unacceptable that today we should be reducing the PUP. Not only should we not cut the PUP but also we should restore the PUP and income payments for those who will be significantly affected by this latest turn of events w…

I hope the Taoiseach and the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage will address urgently what I hope is an unintended consequence of a new statutory instrument that was introduced in March of this year. The instrument changed the income assessment arrangements for social housing. I have been trying to get to the bottom of this because I am dealing with a family of eight who have been homeless for three years. They are currently in emergency accommodation in a hotel and are solely dependent on social w…

I thank the Leas-Cheann Comhairle very much and I appreciate this. I raise the issue of the residents of St. Helen’s Court in Dún Laoghaire, which is a multi-unit apartment complex directly across from my office, which was bought out by vulture funds a number of years ago. The first vulture fund made two attempts to mass evict on the grounds of sale, refurbishment or various other ruses. Because we fought them at the Residential Tenancies Board, RTB, it then flipped the complex to another vulture fund, which has ma…

I appreciate that the Minister has engaged and that efforts have been made. Here is the irony. This vulture fund went into the RTB and the tenants said they thought that the claim the fund was going to sell was a ruse because the fund owns 20 apartments and said that it was only going to sell the ones where there were tenants, and the ones that were sitting empty, where the fund had managed to drive the other tenants out, were not being sold. This was totally not plausible. The fund then evicted tenants on the grou…

No, absolutely.

I remind the Minister that this is a precedent, a point I put to Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council. There have been comments that people are skipping the queue. They are HAP tenants. They are on the list. Some are quite elderly. Some have children and are very vulnerable. They are well up the list. We have to remember that 13 empty apartments have been sitting there for two years while people are crying out for places. The whole thing is an utter scandal. Do not let bureaucratic box ticking stuff get in the way…

I appreciate that.

In the dead of August, a time when shady deals are often done, Ardmore Studios was sold to an American capital investment firm called Hackman Capital Partners and Square Mile Capital, an American real estate firm. This is the former national film studios set up in 1958 with State assistance. It was the National Film Studios of Ireland in the 1970s and it has now been handed over to a real estate investment firm. Is that not a form of cultural treason and privatisation that is absolutely indefensible?