I would like it noted that People Before Profit proposed three amendments to the Government's motion, all of which have been ruled out of order. For the record, I should say what they were. First, we proposed that the stamp duty should be 90%, not 10%, as the Government is proposing, or 15% or 17%, as the other Opposition parties are proposing. We need not just to disincentivise funds or make purchasing a little more costly but, rather, to exclude them completely from the market in order that they cannot bulk-purch…

We should note for the record of the Dáil that a whole series of other amendments were submitted and were ruled out of order, including three proposed by my party.

That is the problem. You try to put in an amendment that will actually achieve something and it gets ruled out of order.

The revelation that Ireland Strategic Investment Fund was financing cuckoo funds is really quite shocking. I am referring to the financing of entities that are worsening the housing crisis, pricing people out of the market and charging extortionate rents. In many cases, the State and the people pay again, with local authorities leasing properties from the same entities.

My point is that we need an explanation. Hundreds of millions of euro in public money are involved in financing these entities. We need a detailed explanation immediately this week.

I am proposing that the Minister come in here and give us an explanation stating precisely how much money was invested and the rationale behind the investment.

The programme for Government stated explicitly that the annexation of Palestinian territory by Israel was a crime against international law and that the Government would respond appropriately using its positions. What will the Government's response be? I believe it should expel the Israeli ambassador and impose sanctions immediately. Israel is not just annexing territory. It is ethnically cleansing Palestinian land, most recently the ethnic cleansing of 28 families from Sheikh Jarrah, inciting the current escalatio…

There is no equivalence-----

It worked with apartheid South Africa.

That is a myth.

I got my notification that I will get my vaccine tomorrow in the Aviva Stadium. I am delighted with that and I would like to thank-----

Would a football match not be nice? I wish to thank all the front-line healthcare workers and all those involved in carrying out the vaccination programme. Nothing tangible has really been done in terms of a meaningful "thank you" to all healthcare workers. There should be some sort of financial acknowledgement for healthcare workers and, indeed, other groups such as the student nurses and midwives whose issues I and my colleagues have raised many times in the House and who should be paid for their placements. Alon…

I will be sharing my time. I will take seven minutes and Deputy Barry will take three. I thank Deputy Ó Broin for using his party's Private Members' time to bring up this important discussion on affordable housing. It is very difficult to know where to start with the Government's narrative. It comes in here and says that the Opposition just criticises for the sake of criticising and that we have no constructive proposals. That is such a dishonest narrative. I am really quite sick of it at this stage. The Government…

The Tánaiste mentioned the Israeli ambassador. I was at the Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defence this morning and the ambassador came in with a brazen and really outrageous defence of the ethnic cleansing that Israel is engaging in against the people of Sheikh Jarrah in Jerusalem and the murder of innocent children in Gaza, where 17 children have been killed so far and more than 70 people in total. Given the outrageous breaches of international law, is it not time to expel the Israeli ambassador and to im…

As we are discussing education, it would be appropriate to begin my remarks by paying tribute to Seamus Deane, one of Ireland's great academics and intellectuals, who has just passed away. I was privileged enough when I was studying English literature in UCD, having entered there in 1987, that Seamus Deane was already an intellectual legend teaching in UCD. I remember reading his wonderful book, Celtic Revivals , which was a tour de force of an introduction to and critical essays on some of the great Irish literary…

I think and, I hope, that when the names of taoisigh, tánaistí and Deputies who were in office over the past year have been long forgotten, the memory, inspiration and the legend of what the Debenhams workers have done over the past 15 months will still echo through the annals of working-class history. I have no doubt people will be singing songs, reciting poems and writing plays about what these workers have done, as was done in respect of the Dunnes Stores anti-apartheid strikers, because they were fighting in th…

When it comes to the housing crisis, I am afraid the Taoiseach is living in a parallel universe. Every single day, evidence of the disastrous consequences of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil policies piles up. In the past few weeks, there has been evidence about cuckoo funds pricing ordinary working people out of being able to buy homes. Yesterday, evidence emerged of rents rising across the country by 7% and starting to rise again in Dublin. Today, there is report about house prices rising 3.7% last year and increasing b…

For 15 years I have been campaigning to get public and affordable housing on the Shanganagh prison site, so the Taoiseach should not say that we do not want affordable housing. Fianna Fáil- and Fine Gael-controlled councils in our area have not seen one sod turned and now the Government wants to hand it over to the LDA. People need to read the Bill. The only mention of social housing in the Bill is in reference to concluding arrangements with commercial investment vehicles. All of that land is to be set up as desig…

I do not want the Government to sell off the public land bank.

I agree that we clearly have to find a cost-effective and more efficient way to deal with these important matters of public interest. While we absolutely have to do that, it should not deter us from facilitating necessary investigations into injustices or serious matters of public concern. In the context of the current housing crisis and the debates about that situation, we need to look at the experience of the National Asset Management Agency, NAMA, more generally and learn some lessons from it. In the case of Geo…