On a point of order, there is not a quorum here. I need to leave. I have been here for a few hours. I am calling a quorum.

Well, I am leaving now. The Government could not even get a quorum for housing statements.

It is again very unfortunate the Minister is not here for a debate on a slew of new measures affecting the whole rental sector.

He is on the "Six One" news. He is not here, is what I said and the debate has been going on for an hour and a half.

We have not had a chance to question the housing Minister, that I can recall, since coming into this Dáil. I wanted to register that. We have already seen him raising this great idea of the housing tsar. Somebody commented that we have not seen a tsar disappear so quickly since 1917. That idea has gone. I will address some of the measures announced today. No-fault evictions have been banned for landlords who own four or more properties. How will the tenant know? How would a tenant have any idea how many properties …

What incentives will the Minister provide for public sector workers because of the acute shortages we are seeing? Some 382 roles in the national children's hospital are unfilled. There are 700 vacancies for psychiatric nurses. There are 529 unfilled posts throughout the children's disability network teams, CDNTs. Some 500 new social workers are required per year. Some 75% of secondary schools are unable to fill teaching posts. There are 9,000 unqualified individuals in our schools. Need I go on? This is having a ma…

In our mutual constituency, the resounding message at the doors is that young Castleknock is in Australia. That was said to me. I was told I would not meet anyone over the age of 23 in the area. The Mayor of London estimates that a worker needs £9,600 extra to live in inner London. There is a London weighting allowance, for example, for the NHS, whereby a worker in inner London is paid 20%, or up to £8,172, more. An allowance of 15% is available to those in outer London to attract NHS staff. The teacher shortage is…

In other words, the Government is not going to do anything. That is the reality. It is going to stick by these collective agreements that do not serve all groups of workers. I will give the examples of the Tories, who I would not be singing the praises of at any time. Due to the teaching crisis in the UK, a scheme was introduced to make bursaries available. To teach chemistry, for example, a prospective teacher will get a scholarship of £31,000 and a bursary of £29,000, which is much higher than the average industr…

This is a very important issue. It is about treating workers in a humanitarian way. We have a huge number of healthcare assistants, mainly working in private nursing homes, who the State brought here on special work permits because it could not find the labour in this country. These people are mainly women and mainly nurses. They are fully qualified nurses who work, if you like, below the level of their qualifications. We are getting added value from them. They work here as healthcare assistants to make a better li…

I am surprised to hear the review is still under way. People have made submissions. Unite trade union is now organising these workers. This is very positive because migrant workers have not traditionally been able to participate in the trade union movement. It is very difficult and scary for somebody working in a private nursing home to put their head above the parapet. These workers staged a demonstration at the Dáil last year. Again, that was historic as it was unusual to have workers coming from all around the c…

People often speculate about what they would have done in Nazi Germany or in the 1930s. The answer is that whatever you are doing now is what you would have done then. The Minister of State is in government and has power. I thank the Labour Party for moving this motion. I do not agree with every word it contains, however. There is no global community. That has been utterly exposed. Imperialism has been laid absolutely bare during this horrific genocide. The only global community is the Palestine solidarity movement…

I move: "That the Bill be taken in Private Members' time."

Babies are dying.

People are dying.

I move: That leave be granted to introduce a Bill entitled an Act to amend the Animal Health and Welfare Act 2013 to ban the hunting of a fox or foxes; and to provide for related matters. I understand we have an unprecedented situation where a Deputy will be opposing this Bill, but I will come back to it later. With fox hunting banned in England, Scotland and Wales, Ireland has become an outlier. In fact, it is ironic that the colonial powers that introduced fox hunting into this country have banned it and yet it i…

So much for freedom of speech.

The US President and regime are facilitating the carnage that is happening in Gaza. They facilitated it by opening up the prospect of Gaza becoming a tourist place but its Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is also facilitating the starvation of people. Food distribution is being used to kettle Palestinians when they gather at a food place. The director of that operation has resigned. This is US-led. The latest is that a school in Gaza has been bombed. At least 35 children have been killed in an air strike and another 15…

It will be too late.

We are big traders with Israel.

The overriding need in our society and in our economy is for housing. The Central Bank's director of financial stability has said 50,000 homes have to be built every year for the next ten years in order to fulfil the need. The targets the Government itself has set go nowhere near this. They are in the 30s of the thousands. Will the Taoiseach accept that the market cannot deliver the scale of this? This has to be led by the State. In fact, Fianna Fáil Governments in power previously were capable of doing this. What …