Having looked at this report, I can see where the financial crash started. I can see an Ireland that was not about the ordinary person in the street who was not able to pay back a mortgage. It was about total corruption during a time when people had to emigrate, when people lost their homes and when many people lost their lives worrying about repaying loans. I remember clearly someone asking me a simple question back in 2008 or 2009. They asked where had all the money gone. They said it cannot just have disappeared…

Businesses trying to build an enterprise on green energy are having obstacles put in their way. I understand that it is proposed in a Bill on Committee Stage to introduce planning regulations that will allow 60 kW of solar panel power generation. That is not sustainable for any business because any business needs 100 kW of solar panel power. Any house that was built in the 1980s and 1990s would have run on 12 kW of energy. Any house built from the 2000s onwards with heat pumps and geothermal heating needs 16 kW of …

I am a member of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage, along with other colleagues who are present. The manner in which these amendments have been brought before us at such short notice, with the use of the guillotine procedure, is another insight into the state of the Government. I am involved in a lot of planning in County Limerick. The granting of planning permissions in the county is being held up by serial objectors. There is also a lack of clarity in the process. Businesses…

The city-based Cabinet has taken €6 billion from people in this country and there are no alternatives. They are backed up by career politicians from the county. An 18-year-old girl, Jessica Sheedy, died in University Hospital Limerick because management did not do due diligence and put many more people at risk. The Minister was in the hospital and found nothing wrong. We were told to invest in white gold in 2011. Farmers are now being told to reduce the herd by 30% by a city-based Government. No infrastructure has …

I thank Raise the Roof for its work, but before you can do any work on raising the roof you have to have infrastructure. I have been in construction all my life and I know the importance of having infrastructure in an area. I will use the example of Limerick and the statistics I have. For 38 years Askeaton has been waiting for the Government, the previous Government and the governments before it to put infrastructure in place to stop raw sewage going into the river. Dromcollogher, the Deel and Hospital have been po…

He did not even speak to me this morning. For the record, he ran out of here today when I was speaking.

Is that all the Minister of State, Deputy Burke, can do? Laugh and giggle?

They are not personal attacks.

My question asks that in view of the many skills and positions shortages within the health sector, would it be possible to look at a three-year academic degree, with a fourth year to be completed in practice? This would alleviate the lengthy waiting lists for children in respect of speech therapy, child psychology, orthodontics and many other areas.

While I realise that the Minister has opened up new places in research through the Innovate for Ireland programme, there has to be further openings within the postgraduate programmes. For instance, psychiatric nurses have worked for many years in different speciality areas. They could provide therapeutic roles and alleviate huge backlogs in the child and adolescent services areas which currently have waiting lists of 3,914 children. The nursing and teaching areas have merged their work placement programmes very suc…

In order for a three-year degree course to happen, the colleges and universities will need more supervised placements in all allied health areas, such as language therapy, nursing, midwifery and psychology. Qualified people will be needed to supervise the placements. Surely this is a real possibility in the context of the many critical skills shortages within the various areas of health. The ultimate significant benefit would accrue to the children on waiting lists. Those lists are growing longer every day. Has the…

I thank all the groups from Donegal, Sligo, Mayo, Clare and Limerick. If the Minister looks up he will see that the Gallery is full. It is a long time since we have seen it as full as that. I hope he takes heed of that and of the amount of work those people have put in. I also thank my colleagues on the housing committee, who have spent long hours debating this legislation with the Minister's Department. I am disgusted that the Department was too afraid to sit down with me and my colleagues for another six hours to…

I will simplify it for the Minister. When I was a child I had child-size shoes. That was to do with my size and my weight load. Now I am a big boy and I have adult shoes. I have big foundations so I need big shoes. When you consider a house built in the 1980s and 1990s and the foundation structure that was put in at the time, it was based on the roof structure, which was lighter timber than that used today. This means that today, with heavier timbers and a heavier roof structure, if you have a trussed roof you do n…

I move amendment No. 12: In page 7, line 31, to delete “may” and substitute “shall”.

I move amendment No. 13: In page 7, line 33, to delete “may” and substitute “shall”.

I concur with all the other speakers. IS 465 is out of date and needs to be updated. The Oireachtas Joint Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage had specialists on pyrite, which is more than what the Department had. Specialists understand pyrite and understand the regulations. IS 465 is like putting the cart before the horse. We need to get this right. It needs to be up to date. Fully independent people, experts in their field and outside of the NSAI, need to do the review.

I move amendment No. 27: In page 11, line 26, after “home,” to insert “voluntary community housing,”. We will withdraw the amendment.

I concur with the previous speakers. Again, I say to the SCSI that when it is updating its figures, the template stays the same. All it has to do at the moment is update the existing costs; it does not take three months. We updated our data sheet on 1 July when we got all the price increases from all the different providers across the country. We got the costings we are voting on tonight in February. How much has that changed since February? The costings from all the different suppliers and providers that are comin…

Outdated.

First, I thank the people of Limerick, Clare, Donegal, Sligo and Mayo for the unbelievable work they have done. I am sorry for what they have had to go through. I will simplify it for the Minister of State: I will talk about the foundations in this Bill. If the Minister of State had a tree in his garden and there was a problem with the leaves, would he treat the leaves or the root of the problem? In the same way, the Minister of State will stand up and walk out of here in a few minutes and, unless he has a good pai…