That will not deal with it in the short term. I have mentioned the St. Helen's Court residents on multiple occasions to the Minister, the previous Minister and probably the Minister before that. They are banjaxed. They are waiting for the vulture fund that has successfully evicted them en masse from an apartment complex and they are overholding because the eviction date has passed. They have nowhere to go, they are vigorously looking around and they cannot find anything even remotely close to being within HAP limit…

I do not think she is going to be here.

I will briefly recapitulate on a few points from yesterday and add a few points on behalf of Deputy Bríd Smith, who could not make it along. A parents and children's schools charter is not a bad idea in principle. It is a very good idea in principle to have proper grievance procedures and transparency concerning the expenditure of school funds and voluntary contributions, even though, frankly, they should not exist. I will come to that point in a second. It is a good idea for people to have information and real eng…

Today is the last day you can sign on for the pandemic unemployment payment, PUP. Despite the Government's promises that there would be no cliff for people on income supports such as the PUP, that cliff is now being created. For example, if you are a musician or a performer, and you benefit from the live performance support scheme, LPSS, over the next two months, you cannot go back on PUP, even though you may only get one bit of work. That is a cliff for all of those people. There is also a cliff for anybody who go…

Many in the Opposition have pointed out what a disgraceful move it is to push through this amendment which will incentivise vulture funds to buy up estates if they can lease them back to local authorities. The Taoiseach asked a legitimate question but no one has really answered him. He asked whether we want to turn off the supply of social housing, as if it is a choice between having vulture funds and not getting social housing. What is the answer to that question? If we need to deliver social and affordable housin…

It was not.

It is better than letting the investment funds do it.

Purchase them.

It still does not justify-----

I gave the Taoiseach a proposal.

We should, to get the answers.

Following the attempt at ethnic cleansing in Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem and the conflict and military brutality from Israel that provoked, the Government agreed to pass a motion that acknowledged illegal settlements were taking place on Israel's part, but it voted down an amendment I tabled that sought to characterise the situation as it is, not simply as illegal settlements but as an ongoing process of ethnic cleansing by an apartheid state, and consequently the state of Israel needs to be treated as the apar…

To be honest, I am worried about this legislation and what it is trying to achieve. In theory, the principles of having proper grievance procedures, having a charter for parents and students, having proper information that is available about how the school operates, its funding and where the funding goes, are not bad ideas. However, I worry that it essentially lets the Government off the hook and brings with it an internal focus, wherein the school board and the staff are held responsible for failings which are act…

I pointed out to the Minister and to other Ministers previously that certain cohorts of people who should get support and tick all the boxes for the support schemes are mysteriously excluded from them, which is really unfair. Obviously, I support the CRSS and have done so previously. I agree that the new business resumption support scheme dealt with in the Bill should be established but, once again, unless I am wrong - the Minister could just answer the question directly - I am assuming that drivers of public servi…

Since I entered the Dáil in 2011, I have been railing against the policies pursued by the Fine Gael-Labour Party Government, the Fine Gael-Independents Government and the current Government in that they have actively encouraged vulture and cuckoo funds to come in and take over what was virtually the entire NAMA portfolio. Now they are coming in to buy up new estates and they are pricing the first-time buyer or ordinary working person who wants to buy out of the market. The policy is inexplicable. The only beneficia…

That is for the whole debate. Let us get to the vote.

There are many uncertainties with the Covid pandemic, particularly now with the emergence of the Delta variant. There is uncertainty about whether we can win the race in terms of vaccination to get ahead of this variant and ensure that things do not go into reverse, plunging us into lockdowns and more people getting sick and going to hospital. It is still unclear, given where we are at in the vaccination programme, whether the rise in the Delta variant will lead to higher levels of hospitalisation, sickness, admiss…

This business of attacking the Opposition and accusing it of sloganeering really has to stop. I do not think the Taoiseach would accuse Dr. Mike Ryan of being a left-wing sloganeer, but he is supporting the people's vaccine. Médecins sans Frontières and UN aid agencies are supporting the people's vaccine. Many of the countries that for years suffered the consequences of the refusal of big pharmaceutical companies to share the combination therapies to deal with AIDS and HIV until they were forced to back down by a p…

Why will they not do it?

The practice of guillotining critical debates is back with a vengeance, despite the Taoiseach's party in opposition often joining us in railing against the practice of guillotines. We have seen it on two Bills of critical importance, one of which is the Finance (Covid-19 and Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill, which includes the shocking amendment by the Government at the last minute to exempt vulture funds from a tiny and inadequate stamp duty being imposed on them, thus incentivising them to buy up houses and price o…