In the Dublin Rathdown constituency, which is not even my constituency, a family with working parents - one works in a bakery and his wife works in an insurance company - and two children have been evicted. They are HAP tenants, they have a court order against them and the sheriff is due around. The house is owned by receivers, Ernst & Young, which want to sell it. I contacted the receivers and asked if they would sell to the council. They said they thought they would get a better price on the market and they wante…

We regularly do that. The Cathaoirleach often gives the Taoiseach an extra five minutes.

It is normal practice.

It is done regularly, though.

I will have four and a half minutes and Deputy Barry will have two minutes.

It is swings and roundabouts.

When I studied economics in school, there was a debate about what created value in society. There was one page about Karl Marx, which stated that he argued that all value derived from the labour of workers. There was one paragraph that said Karl Marx was wrong and that it is much more complicated. It then went on to say that entrepreneurial skill, capital, rent and various other factors were also involved in generating wealth and value. Interestingly, the economics textbook did not mention that Adam Smith and David…

What is the Government going to do to prevent this continuing?

We need solutions temporarily.

I have two points. First, given the scandal of both asylum seekers coming to this country who are now sleeping in tents and are not being provided with anywhere to go, and the issue of homelessness, especially now it is likely to get worse as a result of the eviction ban being lifted, how can it be that the Jurys Hotel building with hundreds of rooms has been just lying empty for years? It is really insulting, frankly, when there are people in tents and families are being told they have to sleep in a car. Second, I…

Tomorrow night the now multi-award-winning film about the Debenhams dispute will be shown here in the audiovisual room. The Taoiseach is invited, by the way, direct from the shop stewards. Vincent Browne will be hosting a question-and-answer panel afterwards. The film highlights very serious questions about, obviously, the treatment of the Debenhams workers, but also how the whole insolvency was handled - certainly questions and possible corporate impropriety for which those workers suffered very grievously. As I t…

I thank Sinn Féin for bringing forward this important motion. Profiteering is the problem. It is as simple as that. Grocery prices have risen by 17%, an estimated increased cost of €1,200 for the average household. That is additional profit being made by somebody else. We all know who is making those profits. It is the big supermarket chains, wholesalers and meat processors. Their profits are going through the roof while ordinary people are crucified with unsustainable increases in the cost of groceries. That refle…

The Committee on Budgetary Oversight, of which I am a member, today launched a report on the section 481 film tax credit, which at the moment is running approximately €100 million a year to film production companies in this country to allow them to make movies, something we all want to see happen. The report suggests, however, that continued or increased investment in this area needs to be dependent on vindicating the rights of performers and writers under the copyright directive to their intellectual property righ…

The problem is the conditions are not being met. In the case of Irish Equity, the motion passed at its recent AGM calls on the Government "to add to SI 119/2019 on film regulations under Schedule 1, information to support an application to the Minister for a certificate under section 481 of the Act of 1997, that any such application must engage all performers, authors and contracts that comply with the letter and intent of the copyright, the relevant Act of 2000 and the directive". That is not happening. The produc…

To put it simply in the short time available, producers are happy enough with the status quo . They make actors, performers and writers sign buy-out contracts, but that is not good for actors and performers. Similarly, the fixed-term workers directive and legislation are very clear. Companies cannot abuse the successive use of fixed-term contracts. Workers who work on several of these acquire by law contracts of indefinite duration. In other words, through their service having worked across multiple productions it …

The certification - the actual issuing of the certs - is partly down to the Department of Finance.

Greedflation is something that now, somewhat indirectly, even the ECB is acknowledging. We see it in energy and the price of food. This question is about whether it needs to be tackled, and we believe it does, in the area of vulture funds and banks profiteering off the hikes in interest rates. Is the Government willing to respond by imposing a windfall tax on those banks and vulture funds that have made super-profits from the interest rate hikes we have seen?

It is a very spurious argument to say that because we saw a few banks leave, we should not consider taking any measures to put taxes on the superprofits that the remaining vulture funds and banks are making. They are doing so at the expense of the incredible hardship mortgage holders are suffering who have seen vulture funds charging 7% and 8% interest, which means thousands of additional euro. Even the mainstream banks are hiking interest rates and making superprofits. The banks that left did so in the tax environ…

This is not a general discussion about corporate tax rates; this is a specific call for a windfall tax on vulture funds and banks that are profiteering at the expense of mortgage holders who have seen an increase in mortgage interest repayments to the tune of €4,000 or €5,000. These are unsustainable increases in a situation of bonanza profits being made by these vulture funds that affects hundreds of thousands of ordinary people. Even the EU has agreed to exceptional windfall taxes on the energy sector, which the …

In the face of an absolutely diabolical housing and homelessness crisis that sees record numbers of people in this country with nowhere to live - nearly 12,000 now in emergency accommodation, including nearly 4,000 children, shamefully - it is even more shameful that, according to the census, we have 166,000 vacant properties, 48,000 of those vacant for six years and 23,000 of them vacant since 2011. Will the Minister introduce tax measures in the budget to deal with this scandal?