I am not putting up with that crap. The Minister of State has sabotaged-----

It is not agreed to.

It is sinister to keep files on vulnerable children and their families while the State tools itself up to protect against legal action by the families who are simply trying to assert their legal right and entitlement to equality. That is what we are talking about. It is their right to equality under the law to get the assessments, services, supports and so on to which they are entitled. Rather than the State vindicating those rights and providing those assessments and supports, it looked for ways to trash them lega…

There are worrying signs that all the talk about just transition in terms of developing climate-related infrastructure ends up just being talk and that people who want to profit from the climate agenda and from the development of climate-related infrastructure do not give a hoot about the working people whom they disrupt and impact upon when developing that infrastructure. I will cite an example on foot of conversations I have been having with fishermen who operate off the east coast, particularly Dublin Bay, for s…

It was a direct question.

Before I came in here, I spoke to the principal of a DEIS band 1 school in my area, Scoil Cholmcille, which was one of 281 schools that applied for the new hot school meals programme. The school was most disappointed not to have been selected for the programme. It is in a highly disadvantaged area. It seems that quite a few non-DEIS schools were approved for the hot school meals programme, but not schools in areas of extreme disadvantage which, let us be clear, have been hit very significantly by, and have felt the…

The scheme costs very little.

I have just read the NPHET letter. It correctly states we are in a very fragile and precarious position, as a result, in my opinion, of the Government refusing to impose the mandatory quarantine that NPHET asked to be introduced. The Government still refuses to do it for a majority of countries. Whereas the vast majority of people adhered to public health guidelines, enduring immense hardship in doing that, the Government has allowed certain favoured sectors off the hook. As a result, we still have dangerously high…

Covid-19 has further underlined the need for proper mental health services. We have thousands of adults and children waiting for assessments and services. I spent an hour on the phone last night to a young student studying to be a psychologist. She told me a tale of woe about the plight of people studying to be psychologists and trying to get on doctorate training programmes to be psychologists. In their MA programme, they pay €8,000 to €15,000 in fees. The number of places for psychologists in doctorate training h…

The People's Vaccine campaign, which is supported by 80 countries, many NGOs, the UN Aids programme, Oxfam and others, published a survey of epidemiologists, immunologists and infectious disease specialists in 28 different countries, 88% of whom predict that within nine to 12 months, variants of Covid-19 will have evaded the first generation of vaccines. That is a very stark warning. In roughly the same timescale it is anticipated that only 10% of the population of the some of the poorest countries in the world wil…

This Residential Tenancies Bill is, for the most part, a deception and a fraud. It is an attempt to suggest the Government is trying to protect tenants in the midst of the Covid pandemic when, in reality, apart from a tiny cohort of tenants for whom protections will be extended, literally a few hundred tenants, the Government’s real intention is, as of 5 April, to allow vulture funds and landlords to evict people in the midst of a pandemic purely on the grounds that the 5 km rule has changed. That simple fact seems…

Like the other Opposition parties, we have a series of amendments, which seek to extend considerably further the protections this Bill proposes to extend only until July. We have gone the furthest in saying they should be extended until April 2021 and I will explain why we think that is right. We also support all the other amendments that go considerably further than the Government. We also have amendments that oppose section 2 for the reasons that have been set out and explained by Threshold, namely, that this Bil…

The Minister is talking down the clock.

I move amendment No. 16: In page 4, to delete lines 35 to 39 and substitute the following: "(i) specifies a termination notice that falls at any time during an emergency period, and (ii) cites as reason for the termination any of the grounds listed in section 34 of the Act of 2004.",". I know time is short and we want to vote on this and the issue in section 2. This is a specific amendment. Of course, the Minister did not respond to the point and I doubt he will but we will see. This seeks to extend the protections…

On the issue of abortion rights in the North, anybody who is even vaguely interested in fighting for unity on this island would understand that the unprecedented movement from below of young people, particularly young women, unwilling to accept the control of their bodies and their right to bodily autonomy by the State was an all-Ireland movement. There were busloads of women, other young activists and people who want a progressive future for this island who came down and campaigned for repeal and helped that fanta…

I am shocked to hear that a Cabinet committee dealing with children and youth affairs has not met since last November. There are many groups of people who are suffering with mental health issues, stress and anxiety as a result of the Covid pandemic and the restrictions. One of those cohorts is made up of our young people and they are very significantly suffering. There is a lot of lip service paid to supporting people's mental health but not a lot of action. That the committee dealing with this area has not met sin…

I feel like I am living in a parallel universe whenever I hear the Government talk about housing. I hear about all these grand plans, but I believe there will only be one additional council house in my area this year and we only got one or two last year. All the rest is outsourced and now the Government is planning to outsource more through the Land Development Agency, LDA, and privatising public land. I wish to raise the fraud that is the Residential Tenancies Bill 2021, which will be before the Dáil today, in tha…

Wrong.

Stop privatising.

Over the last year I have repeatedly tried to get it into the heads of the Government just how crucified more than 20,000 taxi drivers have been by the impact of Covid-19. Thousands of them had to take to the streets in September to demand supports and assistance. Apart from a few changes they forced in the PUP, support for the thousands of taxi drivers has not been forthcoming from the Government. Many of them face the prospect of having to replace their cars this year. Where the hell are they supposed to get the …