-----and we tabled no amendments today. We are being criticised by Deputy McAuliffe for not putting forward amendments to this Bill. We tabled more than 100 amendments when the Bill was in the housing committee. We were criticised for putting forward amendments there. This is typical of Fianna Fáil to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds.

Deputy Matthews spoke earlier. I know Deputy Matthews is a new Teachta Dála but I would invite him to contact any local authority or to come to County Cork. We have buildings in North Main Street in Cork city that are crumbling. Cork City Council has to look at compulsory purchase because the compulsory purchase provisions were not strong enough. It is the same in this Bill. It will not go far enough to get what we need, which is land to build houses on.

The compulsory purchase laws are not strong enough. The Minister should come to Cork and I will show him vacant properties-----

I will be brief. There are just a couple of points I wish to make. When I listen to Government Deputies in the Chamber, in particular Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael Deputies, I sometimes wonder whether they have group amnesia or are living in a parallel universe. Deputy Ó Broin and I submitted more than 160 amendments on Committee Stage. We were actually criticised by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael for tabling so many, and now their Deputies are saying we have not tabled enough. There is no keeping them happy. In response to…

Deputy Carroll MacNeill raises a very good point in relation to insurance. This is an issue that we have been looking at in Cork city for the past ten or 12 years. I discussed with the Minister a number of weeks ago the fact that there are 92,000 vacant homes in this State but we have only three full-time vacant home officers. The Minister of State said that a grant of €50,000 is available to local authorities but that is only a drop in the ocean. There are vacant properties in areas where there is insufficient lan…

There has been a small error with the Bill. Naming a Bill that will drive up house prices and offer rental at €1,100 a month in Cork as an Affordable Housing Bill is a farce. Affordability cannot be based on the market price; it has to be based on income. House prices in Cork rose last year by 11%. For most of my constituents, the average family home in Cork is so far out of their reach that they cannot even imagine owning their own home. Telling them that affordable housing will be less than €400,000 in Cork gives…

Did the Minister hear what I said? I said I hope this Bill delivers.

I was talking about this matter with Fianna Fáil Deputies and councillors who were voting against it in Cork 20 years ago.

I thank the Ceann Comhairle for allowing me to speak today. No one should be made homeless, especially in the middle of a pandemic. This is common sense. In years to come, people will find it difficult to believe that our housing Minister stood by and allowed evictions to happen in the middle of a global pandemic. Without proper protection for renters, there is a real chance that this will be the Minister's legacy. I have been contacted by people who have received notices to quit - in other words, families and indi…

I welcome some of the changes proposed in the Bill, especially those that will impact on students. It is good that there will be limits in regard to how much landlords can request as deposits but, unfortunately, there is a loophole. Let us be honest, if unscrupulous landlords who abused the system last year find another loophole, they will do the same again this year. That is why one of our amendments, which will delete from the section lines 18 to 22, inclusive, seeks to stop the exploitation of students and their…

I thank Deputy O'Reilly for giving me an opportunity to speak on this important motion. During last year's general election, I was canvassing with the Sinn Féin president, Deputy McDonald, in Blackpool shopping centre in Cork. A number of people came up to us to explain how angry and frustrated they were at what they perceived as a betrayal by the previous Government and Fianna Fáil on the retirement age of 65. In particular, one man stood out. He told us he got his first job when he was 14 years old. He worked for…

What will the Minister do to bring forward a fund to get young people to engage in sport and the arts, given the significant impact the Covid-19 pandemic has had on youth engagement? Young people have really suffered as a result of the pandemic restrictions and need support now.

I acknowledge that there has been investment in capital expenditure and on equipment. That is to be welcomed. My question goes further than that because, unfortunately, young people are not returning to sport or to the arts. As a result of the lockdown restrictions, people were isolated at home and could not train. Some of them have not gone back. I recently spoke to a coach who is a GAA academy co-ordinator in Cork city who told me he believes that one in five children between the ages of 11 and 16 has not returne…

I expect everyone in this Chamber would be of that opinion; we want to get as many people as possible involved again in sports and in the arts. Yesterday, I was in Churchfield industrial estate visiting the Golden Gloves boxing and fitness club, a thriving young club for boys and girls of various ages. It was fabulous to see the return to sport and the energy and excitement up there. One of the problems for the club is that it does not own its own facility, it rents it. The other problem for the club is that it pay…

Last week, the Ombudsman for Children published a scathing 72-page report into the conditions in which children are living at the Spring Lane site in the heart of my constituency. It is a site with which I am familiar and I have tried to do a lot of work on this issue in the past. Spring Lane was originally opened in 1989 as a ten-bay halting site but it was overcrowded from day one as 16 families originally moved in there. This goes to the heart of Cork City Council’s mismanagement of the site from the very beginn…

Today the ESRI published a report detailing the need for the State to take a new approach to housing. The approach outlined is to borrow money and build houses. Sinn Féin has been calling for this strategy for years. While the ESRI's calculations are on the conservative side, it still found that the most effective and viable option to solving the crisis is to borrow and to build. In my maiden speech at Cork City Council in 2009 I warned the Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil councillors that the State was in a housing crisi…

The Minister of State accuses me and Sinn Féin of quoting the ESRI when it suits us, but is this not what he is doing? The ESRI stated that the Government needs to double its expenditure on housing if we are to solve the housing crisis. That is what it stated. Does the Minister of State not accept that as a bona fide fact, or does he say that the ESRI and Sinn Féin are incorrect? There can be no doubt that Sinn Féin's housing policy is the only way to solve the crisis. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael would rather spend €…

On a point of order, in January 2020 Fianna Fáil councillors voted against social housing in Cork.

One of them was the Taoiseach's brother.

Ask the Taoiseach's brother how he voted.