The Government has had 250 days.

Over the past three years, I have repeatedly raised the plight of tenants in the St. Helen's Court apartment complex in Dún Laoghaire. They have faced four attempts by two different vulture funds that bought the complex to evict them using loopholes in the Residential Tenancies Acts. They tried to increase the rent by 60% at one point, they then used substantial refurbishments as grounds for eviction and are now using sale of the property for that purpose. They failed to evict ten tenants and are now trying to evic…

I did not get an answer to my previous question about vulture funds being allowed to evict people. I would appreciate an answer on that because it is happening in the teeth of Christmas. On public sector reform, the Government has thrown a considerable amount of mud into people's eyes in response to the demands of the student nurses and midwives to be paid for their work on placement, to be respected for the role they played during the Covid pandemic and not to be financially punished with the shocking fees they mu…

I ask the Taoiseach to give a brief answer regarding the student nurses.

They are understaffed.

The most pressing and urgent issue that we face on a shared island basis at this moment is the threat of Covid-19. The scenes in the North last night of ambulances lining up outside hospitals and massive overcrowding in the emergency departments because of Covid-19, frankly, had fairly alarming echoes of what happened in Italy early this year. That is a warning. Already, there are signs that in Border counties the high infection rate is spilling over. The parties in the Executive and the Government here should reco…

On a number of occasions in recent weeks and again with the Taoiseach today I have raised the issue of access to the vaccine on a global basis being critical to the effectiveness of the vaccine anywhere. If access is not provided to the vaccine for poorer countries, this potentially will create a massive hole in vaccine cover which will allow for mutations and potentially undermine the efficacy of the vaccine. We are literally all in this together. The report from Johns Hopkins University public health school today…

Two people contributed a very important concept to our understanding of modern society: Hegel and Karl Marx. They spoke of the concept of alienation, which was brilliantly captured by Edvard Munch's famous painting, The Scream. While there are advantages to meetings on Zoom and Teams, the substitution for real human social interaction of endless Zoom and Teams meetings for all time to come with regard to how we interact to discuss the future of society is the definition of alienation. We will have a nation of peopl…

I have a few legitimate points to make.

Five minutes.

I thank the Acting Chairman. That is very generous of him. I made my points on Second Stage but I will briefly summarise them because the Minister was absent at the time. I am unsure whether he is aware of the points I made.

I heard those comments and I will deal with them in a minute. Actually, I will deal with them now. The Minister should not attribute quotes to me that I never made. I never, ever used the phrase "tsunami of evictions". A very well-known housing activist who is not a Member of this House used that phrase. In my opinion, his concerns were just concerns, given the heroic role he plays in dealing with the homeless in this city and his awareness of how most of the people with whom he has to deal were evicted from privat…

I will try to be brief because I am conscious there are many other amendments coming up on other important aspects of this Bill. I ask for a serious response from the Minister on the issue of public meetings. I support amendments Nos. 5 and 6. There are good suggestions in both amendments and they revolve around the importance of public meetings and the involvement of the public in the development of a county development plan. Interestingly, Deputy Mattie McGrath and I do not always agree-----

Absolutely. Here we are ad idem in warning the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien - I am being deadly serious about this - about something that the great revolutionary and philosopher, Karl Marx, called "alienation". It is a very real thing. If the Minister wants to know the modern definition of "alienation" in the midst of Covid, it is "If I have to attend another Zoom meeting, I'll scream." We all know that feeling. Zoom is a good technology. Teams is a good technology. It has its uses and it can even expand public…

They discuss plans to rezone lands. They also need to acquaint people with the process, which many people do not understand. There is a huge deficit of participation in these things. On many occasions l have seen last-minute proposals for rezoning of land, sometimes from members of the Minister's party, where there has been no consultation. The public often alert us to such moves. During a Zoom meeting, funnily enough, a young person who is developing technology warned me about what used to be a small pitch and put…

Nor your good self.

As with many of the things we are dealing with in this final week - we had discussions about the complexity of the previous Bill and the multiple issues introduced, some of them at the last minute - it is worth noting that this Bill deals with a significant matter relating to the financial vehicles through which the Irish and global super-rich get even richer. This very significant Bill being dealt with on the second last day of the Dáil in the dead of night effectively focuses on the enormous investment funds and …

I commend Deputies Eoghan Murphy and Duncan Smith on seeking this debate. The 50th anniversary of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons is an important occasion to remind ourselves of the utter obscenity and horror of nuclear weapons. If the Nazi Holocaust was probably the greatest crime that was ever committed against humanity, a very close second is the decision of one of the most wealthy, powerful countries in the world, the United States - a country that claims to be civilised - to drop two nuc…

As the Ceann Comhairle will be aware, I objected at the Business Committee to the short amount of time available for the debate on the vaccine. I will add to the points that have already been made. This is a huge undertaking, and People Before Profit is very pleased that we have, or hope to have very soon, vaccines available. We have no doubt about their importance in trying to combat the pandemic, but significant measures need to be put in place to make this vaccine roll-out campaign a success. We need a major pub…

Today is day 250 of the Debenhams dispute. Almost 1,000 workers, most of whom are women, and their families have suffered terrible hardship. They have endured a long battle for a just and fair redundancy and still, in the teeth of Christmas, they remain out protesting. I heard the Taoiseach's response to Deputy Barry earlier. He spoke about not engaging in a blame game. I want to be very clear that this Government and the previous Fine Gael-Labour Party Government have a responsibility for the failure to legislate …