That is quite an extraordinary response from the Minister. In the beginning it was referred to as "a studio". This studio was set up with the assistance of Seán Lemass in 1958. It then became the National Film Studios of Ireland in the 1970s. It was where "My Left Foot" and "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold" were filmed. I could go through the list of classic films. This is part of Irish cultural heritage and history. I should also mention Troy Studios. Is the Minister joking in suggesting that public money did no…

What the EU says is countries are supposed to create with state aid to the film industry a permanent pool of skills and labour. Virtually nobody has a job in the Irish film industry. They go from film to film, as the producers keep saying. In cases before the Workplace Relations Commission, WRC, at the moment, film producers have come in and said to people who worked on those film productions funded by public money, "You are not my employee and you never were." That is what is going on. Every film production is fun…

It will transform their lives with a lot of cash. It will put big money in their pockets.

I refer to the basic income pilot scheme for workers in the arts and culture sector. Will the Minister give assurances that all disciplines of arts, culture and music and the crew that support the artists and performers, will be eligible to apply for the pilot scheme?

I appreciate what the Minister said. I and, more importantly, people in the sector have campaigned for this for a long time because income and employment insecurity is rampant. While I welcome this measure, let us not sit back on our laurels and act as if this is a panacea. We should remember that the background to this, which I acknowledge predates the Minister's tenure, is that we see spend six times less on the arts and culture sector, as a proportion of our GDP, than most countries in Europe. It also does not h…

As I said, I genuinely welcome this pilot. It is a step forward. It is a pity it took a pandemic for us to realise just how important culture and arts are to us and how life is so much diminished when those in the sector are not able to perform live and so on. I hope we have learned something from the pandemic in this regard. While I welcome the scheme, does the fact that it is for three years mean that we cannot expand it before those three years are up? Perhaps the Minister could clarify that. I would hate to thi…

The Minister first became a Minister in the Fine Gael-Labour Party Government in 2011. This was the Government that in its programme said it would eradicate homelessness in five years. That Government made a decision in June 2011 to discontinue capital investment in social housing and to rely instead on the outsourcing of social housing to the private sector. Since 2011, average rents have increased from €740 to €1,500 nationally. In Dublin, average rents are now €2,082. My area of Dún Laoghaire in south Dublin has…

It was not an accident, it was not an emergency, it was a policy. Let us just be honest about it. It was a policy. The reason so few houses were built in the year the Minister referred to was because a policy decision was made in 2011 to discontinue them. Meanwhile, we were selling properties, which we are now renting back at extraordinary cost. The target for HAP, RAS and leasing was not an accident. It was a policy. It is in Rebuilding Ireland. It was the Minister's policy that the amount of HAP, RAS and leasing …

The Minister of State should not be so modest.

I also want to mention the students of Coláiste Éinde in Galway, because they get it, in asking for the forest of the children, foraois na bpáistí, initiative of planting a native broadleaf tree for every child in the country. Monty Python came to mind for many reasons when I was thinking about this debate, partly because we just keep going around in circles in a debate that has been going on for years and we are witnessing the sort of slow train crash of the Irish forestry sector, but also partly because when you …

I add my voice to the condolences to Austin Currie's family on his recent passing. It is a sobering thought that the momentous events that propelled him into activism and the civil rights movement that followed in the North started with housing. It is on that question I wish to question the Taoiseach. Today's daft.ie figures are a further indication that the dire situation in unaffordable rents is becoming a catastrophe. It is contributing directly to homelessness and to incredible hardship for people. Will the Tao…

It is not actually.

What I propose is that we set up a rent authority to set rents and to reduce them to affordable levels based on people's income.

You did not even give me a minute.

You did not.

You did not.

I would not be jumping over myself to have a personal or political relationship with Boris Johnson to be honest and I am certainly no fan of his but did the Taoiseach discuss with him the differing strategies on dealing with the Covid pandemic? The one thing that I will give him a little credit for, and on which I think that the Taoiseach should take a leaf from his book, is that in the UK, you can get free antigen tests - as many as you want or need - as part of the effort to screen for the presence of Covid-19 wh…

Okay, then let us make them free as they are doing in the UK. I am not saying that Boris Johnson has been top of the class in dealing with the pandemic but this is a measure which many scientists and public health people are saying could be part of dealing with Covid. The UK policy of giving them out free to people when they need them, and as many as they need, is a good policy that we should follow.

The Taoiseach can throw his response into his answer on this next question. We need antigen tests on public transport.

I add my voice to the call made by Deputy Cian O'Callaghan on access for all. I commend the Access for All campaign for highlighting the constant problem at DART stations. We have many of them in our area. A key aspect of that is the lack of staff in DART stations to actually assist people when there are difficulties with lifts and to report these difficulties and so on. I also wish to ask the Taoiseach about something I have asked him about before, that is, the grants for taxi drivers moving to electric vehicles. …