What was it?

We will not be opposing the Bill, at least at this Stage, because we want to see affordable housing as a matter of urgency. We will undoubtedly introduce amendments on the next Stage and will try to be constructive. We supported the Residential Tenancies Bill even though it was incredibly limited and did not go half far enough. We did not block that legislation. We sought to amend it but the Minister chose not to take on board any of our amendments. We will see what the Minister does with any amendments or suggesti…

It is the costs.

It is the costs.

It means that a person will be paying higher rent even though his or her income is the same as other people. That is not fair. I mention the fact that the Minister or previous Governments have not raised the income thresholds. I laughed at the Minister's response to a Topical Issue matter tabled by Deputy Ó Laoghaire the other day, in which the Minister announced the income threshold review for social housing. Does the Minister know how long that review has been going on? It has been going on for approximately four…

Okay. Let us hope it is gone but it appears again here.

That is fair enough. My office told me there was no change.

It might have. We need a mole in the Minister's Department.

We absolutely need a mole in the Minister's Department. The phrase "undue segregation" appears here again, as if there is a due or acceptable level of segregation. There is not. Why does it appear? I will tell the Minister why it appears. It is because the de facto pragmatic solution is actually about new forms of segregation, and new forms of classification of cohorts of people, who will be suitable for different types of housing based on another phrase I really dislike and find insulting, frankly, which is "socia…

The Minister had 20 minutes and there are five Fine Gael speakers.

The Taoiseach said there would be no cliff edge for people on the pandemic unemployment payment. Taxi drivers informed me yesterday of something I did not know and I ask the Taoiseach to confirm it. It now turns out that there is a cliff edge in September and then again in November. If someone's payment reduces from €250 to €203, he or she will immediately be pushed to go on jobseeker's payment. The whole point about people on the PUP is that they are not jobseekers. Taxi drivers, musicians and others will be force…

There is a cliff edge, but the Government did not announce it as a cliff edge.

There are several hundred musicians and performers outside the Dáil as we speak who have come here to protest about the abysmal failure of the Government to engage with them about a roadmap back to work, clarity as to when they can get back to work and their concern about the plans to essentially make them jobseekers. As I previously told the Taoiseach, the cliff edge for them is a reduction of their pandemic unemployment payments when, as a result of Government measures around public health, they have not been abl…

Why are they outside Leinster House?

I want to push the issue of Dublin Bay up the agenda of the Cabinet environment committee. Dublin Bay is a UNESCO biosphere and a place where fishermen-----

Sorry, I should have said "fishers". It is a place where fishers make a living in what is left of the decimated fishing industry. Critically, it is a precious public amenity where huge numbers of people swim. We have a major capacity problem with the Ringsend waste water treatment plant, which will not be dealt with until 2025. In the meantime, there are discharges of untreated sewage going on all over the bay, both from the plant and from storm overflows because of the lack of investment by Irish Water in rehabili…

The first issue I want to raise related to tenancies and tenants relates specifically to the pandemic. I found this out in the past few minutes and would like the Minister to do something about it urgently. Somebody who I know personally has just found himself homeless. He lives in Dún Laoghaire. He has been told that the only accommodation available is to share with five other people in Frederick Street North. This person has a chronic respiratory condition, very bad asthma, and is extremely vulnerable. I will not…

I am putting it on the public record because I really want that not to be the case.

I would really appreciate it that the Dublin Region Homeless Executive, DRHE, Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council or whoever needs to be contacted, is contacted as a matter of urgency and told that a cocooning place must be made available for such people. They cannot be put somewhere where their health will be put at risk. They are not vaccinated yet and so on. They got a doctor's letter today confirming all of this. It really would be unacceptable if that were the case. That is my first point. We will, of course…

I move amendment No. 2: In page 4, between lines 9 and 10, to insert the following: “ “Act of 2020” means Emergency Measures in the Public Interest (Covid-19) Act 2020;”. Before I speak directly to the amendments, I wish to say publicly that I raised with the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, earlier today an issue relating to a person who is homeless and who it had been suggested might be put in shared homeless accommodation in spite of a chronic respiratory condition. I thank the Minister for responding immediate…