For the Department of arts to wash its hands of a vibrant and vital artistic and cultural space, home to hundreds of artists, is crazy. Whatever about the finer points of demarcation between the OPW, the Department of Finance and local authorities, for the Department of arts to be indifferent or to say, "It is nothing to do with us" is not good enough. It needs to be banging heads together. A crisis meeting is happening this evening in The Complex for artists and people from the local community. A marathon gig is p…

I ask the Government to urgently review social housing income limits. The situation is getting worse and worse. One of the biggest phenomena I am coming across is people who are on working family payment, a payment that has given to people precisely because they do not have enough income to live, getting the payment and then being knocked off the list as it takes them over the threshold. It is unbelievable. In most of those cases, their income is too low for them to be able to avail of cost rental because it has to…

That is no good to people who are off the list.

One of the biggest atrocities and national security breaches was the Dublin-Monaghan bombing carried out by the Glenanne gang. There were headlines yesterday stating that there was no collusion in the Dublin-Monaghan bombing. First, the Kenova report yesterday dealt with Stakeknife, not the Dublin-Monaghan bombing. The Denton report will not be published until January.

The report states that the British Army had the names of the killers on the night of the bombing but nobody was ever arrested. The representatives of the families think that smacks of collusive behaviour. The authors were also extremely critical of the Irish authorities, including the Garda, and the British authorities for destroying much of the files and evidence so that the people compiling the report could not gather conclusive evidence. The whole thing stinks to high heaven. The representatives of the families …

I am assuming my amendment was ruled out of order on the basis it goes beyond the scope of the Bill or something to that effect. I understand why, technically, this might have been ruled out of order. To my mind, however, it very much is, or should be, part of the Act this Bill is amending to make the grants and loans the Irish Film Board gives out for film productions far more strictly conditional on the film production companies that receive those grants and loans providing quality employment and training. They a…

Exactly. The actors, writers and performers do not know where their rights have gone. These are their intellectual property rights. Equity has been campaigning on this and is asking for contracts similar to the PACT Equity in the UK, where there are superior contracts. Often, a guff answer is given back by the producers, that the PACT Equity contract is an English agreement and not suitable to Ireland. That is just nonsense. This is what the actors want here. The actors, writers and performers are getting inferior …

Thank you, Minister.

I do not know if the Minister has an answer to these matters and I would appreciate it if he would look at them. The aggregate is over a very long period but it is €20 million to €30 million a year and then another arm of the State gives about €100 million or more. It is a lot of money each year and it builds up. One point I will make, and the Minister really needs to consider it, is that for all that money added up over time, the State has nothing - zero. We have nothing. We do not own anything. That money has pai…

We used to own one third part of Ardmore Studios. I would be in favour of that.

With the money we are investing, is it not worrying that, at the end of it, we have nothing? It is not just section 481. There was a slight batting off of the thing and saying this is section 481, and I understand this is the film board, although the idea that these two things are completely separate is a bit ridiculous. They both go to the same film producer companies. Every single film produced here gets money off the film board and gets money off section 481. The combination of State moneys is a significant fact…

In the minute that is left, I want to make it absolutely clear that nobody here is saying it is about quantifying arts in terms of pounds and pence, or whatever the expression is. A lot of art has to be subsidised because it gives a big cultural benefit, but it should not be the case that people who work in the industry and are increasingly getting degrees, qualifications and all sorts of things have absolutely no security about the possibility of working in film production. I know it cannot be the same as any othe…

I joined disabled activists and disability groups in a protest outside the Dáil this morning. They were protesting over the fact that the recent budget has plunged them into poverty. One disabled person described how, for example, he has to sit down and consider whether he can put one bar or two bars on the gas heater that he sits beside. He described his own personal humiliation at having to go to food banks to get sandwiches because he cannot afford food. They were pleading with this Government for an emergency w…

This innocuously named Arbitration (Amendment) Bill is a sell-out to the corporations. It is the definition of the corporate takeover of Europe and the Government wants to sign us up to this. If we do, it will be very difficult to get out of it. As Dr. Oisin Suttle in the Maynooth department of law wrote in a thing I was reading this morning, in other areas of international law, where a state signs up to them, you can get out relatively easily. You give a bit of notice. We sign up to international agreements, such …

It is there.

I thank Sinn Féin for tabling this motion. I thank, in particular, Cara Darmody and her father for their fantastic campaigning. It is an absolute shame that Cara is out there in this weather at the moment and that she feels the need to do this in storm conditions because of the failure of the Government to vindicate the legal rights and entitlements of children with additional needs and disabilities. It is absolutely shocking that she has to go these lengths. It is obviously beyond disgraceful that the waiting list…

The residential zoned land tax, RZLT, was introduced with the intention of trying to deal with land hoarding and to activate land that could be used to build housing. The first liability date was 1 February this year and payments were due in by May of this year. How much revenue has been generated? How many landowners who sought exemptions from the tax? How many were granted? What percentage of the overall land covered by the tax was granted an exemption? We want to see how effective this is.

Eight per cent was deemed exempt. Am I right in saying that a significantly higher proportion has been deferred?

Which means that about a quarter got referrals. That is a significant rate of deferral. Will the Tánaiste indicate the reasons for those deferrals? Will he provide any information he has on them? Obviously, the whole point of this is to activate land in order to deliver housing and deal with the scourge of land banking and speculation. As we know, both are widespread. If one quarter of those involved received deferrals, we need to know why they got them and whether they were justified.

As I reflect on the figures, I can see that the main purpose is to activate land and to deal with land hoarding. If three quarters of the people involved paid the tax, that means they are not acting on it. They are willing to pay the tax. We have said from the outset that we thought 3% was too low because the appreciation in the value of land that people are sitting on is probably significantly in excess of 3% at the moment. It can still pay for land speculators and hoarders to just sit on land. They pay the tax - …