The tenant in situ purchase scheme could be in serious trouble if recent examples are anything to go by. We have had Tathony House where, despite repeated requests from Dublin City Council to buy the property to prevent evictions, the owner has simply ignored the council. I highlighted an eviction last Friday that actually took place because a receiver refused requests from Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown to buy a property to prevent an eviction. There are other examples. We need emergency measures by the Government to ensu…

It is. I am sharing time with Deputy Gino Kenny. I thank Sinn Féin for introducing this Bill, which we are happy to support. Israel is not only guilty of ethnic cleansing, apartheid and settler colonialism on the historical land of Palestine, but it is now guilty of that at Dublin Airport as well. I received an email on 8 May from a young Palestinian woman who was studying in UCD and was taking a flight on a newly established route - I was not aware of it - with EL AL, an Israeli airline, from Dublin to Tel Aviv. S…

The Department's IGEES unit produced a report on planning permissions and housing supply at the end of last year. The evidence it provides directly counters the Government's narrative about planning. The Government says again and again the problem is too many planning objections and that is why we cannot ramp up housing supply. The Department has produced a document that says that is absolutely not the case and identifies land banking, speculation and viability issues as the problem. Has the Minister of State any c…

The Minister of State has not answered the question. Does the Minister pass on the information his Department gathers to the people who develop housing policy? The Minister of State gave an interesting summary of the document, which I am beginning to suspect he has not read. The Minister of State said the document says we need more documents with more data. That is not what it says. It mentions that and says more study would be useful, but what the document actually says is 85% of all planning applications are gran…

Again, the Minister of State really should read the report, because it says the grant rate for single dwellings is much higher and it is especially so in rural Ireland. It is almost over 90%. Thus, the mantra that planning objectors are slowing down applications for single dwellings in rural Ireland is just not true. Even in areas with the highest refusal rates the grant rate is 70% and usually 80%. The researchers then ask how there is planning permission for 42,000 apartments in Dublin, with that figure constantl…

It is in your report.

By the luck of the lottery I get a second chance to ask the Minister of State about this report.

Exactly. The big phenomenon the report identifies is uncommenced apartments. It states that the number of apartment complexes that are getting planning permission way exceeds the number that are built. What is the Government going to do about that?

The Minister of State has just read out the same note he read out ten minutes ago.

No, I did not. The transcript will show that I am trying to develop the argument while the Minister of State is just stonewalling because he does not want to acknowledge the fundamental point. This is evidence. It is not just someone's opinion or a political policy; it is evidence produced by the Minister of State's Department. What it shows is that there is no problem getting planning permission for housing or apartments, that the number of planning permissions far exceeds the number of completions by a multiple o…

I would say it is fortuitous.

The Minister of State's Department said that.

In other words, the Minister of State's Department completely ignores the data it collects and the analysis it carries out. The Minister of State continues to trot out mantras without the slightest evidence. I am afraid the evidence produced by his Department shows there is no problem with planning permission. The number of planning permissions being granted is increasing dramatically, it far exceeds the number of completions and the number of refusals is a tiny proportion of that figure. The Minister of State made…

It is not me. This is the Minister of State's Department's report.

It is sort of-----

Shortly after 9 a.m., the sheriff and ten private security employees, accompanied by two gardaí, acting on behalf of Ernst & Young receivers and a bank - I am not sure which bank - cruelly and ruthlessly evicted by force a family of four in the constituency of the Minister of State at the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Deputy Richmond. This is a family of two working parents with two children who always paid the rent and did nothing wrong, yet Ernst & Young and a bank threw them out. I acknowledge …

There is something kind of Orwellian about this Bill. It arises from European Union policy, although it also contains a national element, as has been described, to control the export of dual-use items, technology, things that might have apparently benign uses but can also be used for military purposes. We want to control the export of those things presumably to prevent greater proliferation of military hardware to regimes that we would be worried might put them to wrong uses. On the face of it, that is a very admir…

No problem.

I have just returned from the funeral of a very lovely man, Mr. Owen Gallagher, a friend and fellow activist. I once again pass on my sympathies to his partner, Carolann, and his family. I raise it under this particular question because I first met Owen when he was a bin man working for the council in Bray. He was fighting against the then drive to privatise waste collection services. He was very passionate, along with his colleagues, in fighting the privatisation of waste collection services. The other feature of …

Good idea.