The Order of Business is No. 1, statements on budget 2027 - Department of Public Expenditure, Infrastructure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation, to be taken at 5.15 p.m. and to conclude at 7.15 p.m., if not previously concluded, with the time allocated to the opening remarks of the Minister not to exceed ten minutes, group spokespersons not to exceed eight minutes, all other Senators not to exceed five minutes, and the Minister to be given no less than ten minutes to reply to the debate.
An tOrd Gnó - Order of Business
I support the Order of Business as outlined by the Leader. As we mark Domestic Violence Awareness Month this October, I want to remember Jennifer Poole. It would have been her 30th birthday last Thursday. On that day last year, I stood in the Seanad and committed to having Jennie's Law on the Statute Book by her 30th birthday. Thanks to an unwavering and courageous campaign, that promise has been kept. It is something that I am very proud of. Ireland's first ever domestic violence judgments register is officially a reality. That would not have happened without the support of the Minister for Justice, Home Affairs and Migration, Deputy O'Callaghan, or without Jason Poole, who gave all he had to an incredible campaign.
His extraordinary strength and determination turned unimaginable grief into a legacy that will protect and save others.
My thoughts over the weekend and today continue to be with Jason, Jenny's children, Zack and Nevaeh, her loving parents, Jackie and Joe, sister Clare and brother David.
I extend congratulations to the Ireland women's rugby team on their brilliant victory against Japan in Cork on Saturday. In particular, I congratulate Rita McInerney, who earned her first cap. She is the daughter of County Clare councillor, Rita McInerney, and it was lovely to see her photograph on the front of Saturday’s papers. However, behind the scoreline, dominant performances like this reinforce the drive for equality in sport by commanding the same visibility, respect and backing as the men's game. These athletes prove that equality is not the exception; it is becoming the norm. That is why we need absolute equality and equity in funding.
I had the opportunity yesterday to once again visit Kildare Wildlife Rescue. It is incredible. I recommend it to everybody. Dan Danaher and his team are doing incredible work. On one day during the summer, they had 906 damaged and hurt wildlife, both birds and animals. They had about 13,000 reports of distressed animals last year and they surpassed 2025 by August of this year.
The visit was a very sobering reminder of how everyday human activities such as road collisions, litter and habitat destruction directly cause suffering to local wildlife. Kildare Wildlife Rescue is the only organisation in Ireland that has an oiled wildlife treatment facility. It was interesting to see that and how, when there is an oil spill, a group of volunteers can support and help the wildlife affected.
The centre needs all our help both at local and national level. I particularly commend Senator Noonan. When he was a Minister of State, he went to the centre and committed to supporting it, and he was there again yesterday. I admire and respect him for continuing that.
I would like to see a debate on how we support wildlife and organisations, such as Kildare Wildlife Rescue, in this country. It is based in Kildare but works for all of Ireland.
I raise an issue regarding the accessibility of public transport for wheelchair users. The National Transport Authority has statutory responsibility to promote and develop an accessible, integrated and sustainable public transport network. The responsibility has to mean more than simply having an accessible vehicle in the system. It means that a person who uses a wheelchair can actually make a journey from A to B with certainty and in a reasonable time.
I have been contacted about the experience of a young student who started university in Limerick in September. For a student who does not have any accessibility requirements, there is a private bus service from Donegal town to the university which takes approximately four hours and is a straight journey. For someone who requires an accessible bus or facilities, the story is completely different. At present, the journey involves travelling to Ballyshannon first, after giving two days' notice, then changing bus in Galway, travelling on to Limerick and then hoping an accessible taxi is available in Limerick to get from the station to the university. This journey can take seven hours. Seven hours each way, twice a week is simply not an equal or realistic alternative to a journey that anybody else can have. Going to college is about independence. It is about meeting people, studying, building a career and having the same opportunities as everybody else.
This case highlight a wider problem in the public transport system. In Donegal town at the moment, people have to go to the Abbey Hotel, where there are limited facilities, to access the normal bus, but people have to travel to Ballyshannon if they want to get the accessible bus.
We need the NTA, Bus Éireann, TFI, the local authorities and the private providers to join the dots. If we want people with disabilities to have the same opportunities as everyone else, access to education must include getting them there first.
I was in the Dáil Chamber this afternoon listening with interest to the provisions of budget 2027. It reminded me of a saying my mum used to have, that it is better than a kick in the shin. If you got something that was less than you had expected, she might say: "Well, that’s better than a kick in the shin, isn't it?" It struck me that earlier this year, the Taoiseach, Deputy Micheál Martin, famously said that people cannot just rock up to O'Connell Street with a tractor and expect to get a meeting with the Taoiseach, but that is what happened. The fuel protesters arrived on O'Connell Street and other places and, lo and behold, the Government released a package of €755 million to alleviate the price of fuel and the cost of living crisis. That is what happened.
As a parent of a disabled adult child, I have been outside the gates of Leinster House for 24 years. I have been at protests for 24 years. This summer alone, we went down O'Connell Street twice, and I saw carers and adult children in wheelchairs with feeding tubes and oxygen bottles. The humiliation of it - to be begging for the cost of disability in Ireland to be alleviated. It is estimated by the Government's own research to be between €15,000 and €20,000 a year. There was much discussion of a cost-of-disability payment. While I welcome any assistance, €500 as a once-off payment in January, and only to those in receipt of disability allowance, is not quite a kick in the shin. It is a kick in the teeth.
I wonder, as a parent, and watching the parents of other disabled children see their children die on waiting lists, what we have to do to get this Government and this society to "Straighten Up and Fly Right" when it comes to disability rights. To remove means testing for carers, the hardest working people in this State, who can be carers even in their 90s, would have cost between €600 million and €1 billion. The fuel protesters get it, but our community, who endure moral distress and the trauma of not knowing what will happen when we die, get a €500 once-off payment. We need a debate in the House about the abject state of disability rights in Ireland.
I want to raise again today what is happening on the Garvaghy Road in County Armagh. I raise it again because I want to make sure that everybody in this Chamber understands that this is not simply about a march. It is about a community that has already endured far too much, a community that has been absolutely traumatised. For 28 years, the people of the Garvaghy Road have tried to rebuild their lives. They have raised their children, watched grandchildren arrive, built their community and tried to move forward from some of the darkest days in our island's history. Twenty-one people lost their lives during those terrible years, three of those being the little boys, the Quinn brothers, Richard, Mark and Jason. Families have carried that loss, carried white coffins down that road, and the community has carried this trauma. This is the point that we need everybody to understand. Now, after 28 years of peace, old wounds are being opened again. This community is being re-traumatised. I have spent time on the Garvaghy Road and listened to the residents. I have never seen such resilience and generosity as I have seen in that community.
It is great to see the support for the residents from other Oireachtas Members, and I particularly mention Senators Patricia Stephenson and Nessa Cosgrove, as well as all of my Sinn Féin colleagues. However, it is clear how little support there is from the Government parties, and how little support there is from people across this House.
Sinn Féin will continue to stand with them, day and night. When something is wrong, you call it out and I am proud to stand united with them.
This is happening less than two hours up the road. That is why the response of our Government is so disappointing. Where is the urgency? Where is the leadership? Where are the ideas? Where is the determination to find a solution? This is not some far away place in another country. The Taoiseach would be very quick to visit anywhere else. This is less than two hours up the road. Why can he not take the time to go to the Garvaghy Road and listen to the residents? He forgets that the Irish Government has a responsibility, as a co-guarantor of the Good Friday Agreement, to use every political and diplomatic avenue available. These residents should not feel like they are living alone or are second-class citizens.
This comes down to something simple, which is that people have a right to live peacefully in their own homes and communities, free from sectarian harassment and intimidation. After everything the people of the Garvaghy Road have endured, there can be no going back. There can be no Orange march down this road.
There are more than 2,500 unionist parades in the North every year, which is an average of just less than seven a day. There is absolutely no justification for adding another, especially along the Garvaghy Road, where people have endured 28 years of peace after enduring decades of violence associated with the Orange Order. I urge action from the Government. It should stand up for the citizens of the North who want to live in peace and free from intimidation. It should support the people of the Garvaghy Road. I urge people in this Chamber to take the time. I do not speak for the residents. They are well capable of speaking for themselves. I urge those in the Chamber to go and listen to them.
Similar to Senator McCormack, I am going to speak about what it happening in Portadown, Drumcree and the Garvaghy Road. It has been a tense few weeks for residents. It is important that we step back and realise the context of what is happening. I know that most people in the Chamber are aware of this, but it has never just been about a parade. For residents, it is about fear, triumphalism and provocation.
I recently spoke to a woman from the North who told me about the fear she had when she was a young mother. In 1998, she had three sons. She told me about her intense fear of not knowing when the violence was going to end. She talked about the murders of the Quinn brothers and how they affected her deeply as the mother of three boys herself. It affected many people. Local residents have lived with a constant dread that the violence would grow and intensify. At the time, they wondered how many people would die and how many would be seriously injured before this came to an end. In that time and in that moment, no one could see past the immediate violence or comprehend that there would ever be a chance of lasting peace. No one could imagine that the North would enter into a peace process that would last so long and be so successful.
As we already heard, there were 21 deaths associated with the Drumcree protests. That has become a part of a collective memory and a living trauma and pain for many people. The decision by the Parades Commission was wrong. It was the incorrect decision. It does not reflect what is happening on the ground. It has reopened old wounds and brought people back 30 years. If they have experienced trauma, people know that it does not disappear with time. The events of the Garvaghy Road in recent days have re-traumatised those who lived through those days of never-ending violence and fear.
This is not about 35 men walking down a road. Thousands of marches take place every year with no disruption or protest. This march has a specific context in history that matters greatly. Some memories do not fade over time. The march could go elsewhere. There are plenty of different routes. All the community is asking is that there is not a march down that particular road. It is important that we, as public representatives in the South of Ireland, re-engage when we talk about peace in the North. Peace is not merely the absence of violence. There is more to positive peace. The past few weeks have demonstrated how fragile the Good Friday Agreement or Belfast Agreement is. It has vulnerabilities. We on this island cannot go backwards. No one wants to relive the years of sectarian fear and violence.
I commend the 140 unionists who signed a letter in support of the Garvaghy Road residents. In particular, I commend Ms Linzi McLaren, who spoke eloquently on Saturday.
I also underline there is a really positive message from the last few weeks, which is that there has not been any violence. Despite the peaceful protest and the demonstrations, peace in its most real sense has prevailed. We as legislators have a real role to play in providing leadership in this space on a cross-community basis.
Before I move to the next speaker I welcome Thomas and Neasa Randles. They are guests of our colleague, Senator Kelleher. I hope they enjoy their visit to Leinster House and especially to the Seanad.
I raise the significant public transport gap that exists between Loughrea and Athenry, which are two of the major towns in County Galway. At present there are remarkably few options available to somebody who wants to travel by public transport between the two towns, despite their growing nature. There is a local door-to-door service between the two towns but it operates once a week, on a Thursday, and must be booked in advance. That cannot be regarded as adequate public transport between two large and growing towns. Athenry is an increasingly important public transport hub, especially because of its rail connections. Loughrea is one of the largest towns in County Galway. There are fewer than 30 km between them yet somebody without access to a car cannot get on a regular bus in Loughrea and travel to Athenry for work, education, an appointment or to connect with an onward train. That is particularly difficult to understand when we are investing significantly in improving rural public transport elsewhere.
The National Transport Authority has already introduced the 439 service connecting Loughrea with Galway city through Craughwell and Oranmore and the 548 now provides regular services from Loughrea towards Athlone. Those investments are very welcome but there remains an obvious missing link between Athenry and Loughrea. A regular service would not simply connect two towns but give people in Loughrea access to the wider rail network through Athenry, provide another sustainable transport option for commuters and students and give people who cannot drive, especially those who are young and older, considerably greater independence. A park-and-ride facility connecting Loughrea to Athenry Train Station would be a game-changer. I ask the Deputy Leader to raise this matter with the Minister for Transport and the NTA and to seek the introduction of a regular seven-day public transport connection between Loughrea and Athenry. This is a very obvious gap in the public transport network in County Galway.
I draw attention to something that as a nation and a House we can be justifiably proud of over the last couple of weeks, that is, the behaviour, energy and cop shown by the Irish football team in the shell-like atmospheres in Hungary and Serbia. I am old enough to remember many fine hours from the Irish soccer team but what happened in the last week or so with those very trying matches against Israel was possibly the FAI's finest hour. God knows, it has caused us a lot of angst over the years but this was a wonderful display of nuanced patience and cop in the face of terrible provocation by an entitled nation. I note the way the manager Mr. Hallgrímsson, the whole FAI brigade and the players, who are so young, behaved and comported themselves with their black armbands during the national anthem. As far as we could all see they put up with quite a lot. When "Hatikvah" was being sung by the few Israelis there they bowed their heads very coolly and with great dignity. Over the last day or so I have looked up the words of "Hatikvah" and it praises sovereignty, freedom and self-determination. It is worth pointing out these are not the preserve of the Israeli nation or the Israeli football team. Those values extend to Palestinians and oppressed people all over the world. This House should perhaps contact the FAI and tell it how we were of proud of the way the team behaved and the great dignity they showed in such trying circumstances.
Yesterday I met a number of residents of Eglinton Place in Donnybrook, who make up ten council tenants in a block of 148 private apartments.
The way they are being treated by the management company, Dillon Marshall, and Dublin City Council is nothing short of shameful. They moved in in October 2024 and in May 2025, the residents were suddenly excluded from the community spaces in that development. They have been humiliated and embarrassed on a daily basis since March of last year. It is, effectively, housing apartheid. They have been locked out of the roof garden, communal areas and parking. When fire drills were being carried out, they were not even notified about them. They have offered to pay the management fees, yet the management company, Dillon Marshall, has ignored them. There is no interaction at all. In one case, one of the residents overheard new residents being introduced to the development by a person from the management company who said, "In the interests of full disclosure, we have council tenants here." It is honestly hard to sum up or find the words to describe what sort of attitude that is.
The public tenants are being held responsible for the bad behaviour of the privately owned apartments. Their children go to local schools. Could you imagine if a child was told to sit at the back of the class and was excluded from activities? There would be outrage and rightly so. Why are council tenants being treated like that? It is indefensible. A similar discrimination case was won in the Workplace Relations Commission, WRC, and I believe if this goes to the WRC, they will win too. Dublin City Council is not without responsibility either. The engagement and search for answers from Dublin City Council by the council tenants is shockingly bad and unacceptable.
Ultimately, this comes down to Part V and the housing Minister. This is the problem that Part V creates. If the Government is failing to produce good quality public housing, then this is what happens. Housing apartheid is forced onto tenants of Dublin City Council. The Minister needs to come in here and explain and justify this sort of behaviour.
I wish to bring a shocking failure of professional accountability to the floor of this House. I am speaking about the defective concrete blocks scheme and downgraded homeowners in Donegal. There are 98 families fighting for roofs over their children's heads under this scheme. While €70 million has been allocated to defective homes, I doubt it will be enough. Two years ago, I stood in this Chamber and raised the alarm about how these families' homes were systematically downgraded. While independent engineers stated that these crumbling, mica-damaged houses required full demolition, State-vouched chartered engineers conducted unprofessional desktop-only reviews and overrode those decisions, forcing families to live in crackling, mould-infested limbo.
Today, those families stand completely vindicated. Independent statutory appeals panels have annulled every single downgrade decision adjudicated upon to date, exposing multiple significant errors in both fact and law. These State-vouched engineers failed to inspect homes in person or consult geologists and signed off on retaining foundations that were actively falling apart. While the legal system has vindicated the homeowners, the professional regulator has completely failed them. In September 2024, these families submitted detailed, evidence-backed ethics complaints to Engineers Ireland. Two years later, those complaints remain completely unresolved, with zero scrutiny or accountability. This is a massive threat to public safety and trust.
The Government cannot disclaim responsibility for the actions of engineers acting as agents of the State. I call on the Government to immediately launch a review. We must ensure that any professional work that has been legally proven by a statutory appeal panel to contain serious and significant errors is held fully accountable, and even removed from making life-altering decisions over State-funded redress schemes.
I would like to talk about the attitude of this Government to some of the most important people working in this country. Teachers, nurses and SNAs have been crying out for years about pay, staffing, working conditions and the pressure they are under. They have raised these issues repeatedly and they have been ignored again. I was surprised to see the Minister, Deputy McEntee, coming out and saying strikes will not benefit anybody. It is not like these workers woke up one morning and decided they would go on strike. This has been building and they feel that they in particular have been ignored. These people have been telling the Government for years that there are serious problems and they feel they have been left with no other option.
There is a serious issue with how the Government treats public sector workers. For example, I have made representations on behalf of student nurses in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Louth. They spent four years studying and completing placements. They were promised that at the end of this long process they would be guaranteed a job in Drogheda hospital. They were given written communication that the class of 2026 would be offered permanent HSE contracts. They planned their lives and their futures around that, only for the HSE to now say it cannot guarantee the jobs will be available. This is not how you build a health service. It is no wonder nurses feel devalued and under-appreciated when this is how they are treated. Student nurses who have completed their qualifications in Galway are saying the same thing, that jobs promised to them are not available in University Hospital Galway. We cannot keep telling teachers, nurses and SNAs that they do an unbelievable job in the service they provide to the State while treating them as an afterthought when it comes to pay, staffing and job security.
I want to say a few words about a recent trip to Norway that I was asked to lead on behalf of the housing committee. We went last week. I went with a colleague, Senator P.J. Murphy. I came home with a very different view from what I went out with. I have stood here many times criticising the housing crisis and talked about what we need to do, but I had presumed these problems were largely peculiarly Irish. When I was in Norway, which is one of the wealthiest countries in the world and has a population more or less the same size as ours, the housing minister there told us that homelessness is rising, that child poverty is rising and that there is a huge and growing concern that for several years they simply have not built enough and demand is far outstripping supply. He mentioned the numbers and a target of 130,000 houses to be built before 2030, yet they are building only 20,000 a year. I was able to share our numbers of 300,000 by 2030 and how we are building approximately 40,000 to 50,000 a year.
It struck me that what is happening around Europe is very similar. The Norwegian housing bank, Husbanken, came to meet us. The minister has strengthened the state bank by giving it 36 billion kroner. Some 60% of people who get loans from it are people who would not get mortgages from any commercial bank. It has no losses. The interest rate is roughly 1.75 percentage points less than that of a commercial bank. It has worked out very well.
I also went to see Norway's co-operative housing. We could learn so much. They are also cutting back on unnecessary planning, simplifying the planning legislation and making sure that vacant and derelict properties are coming back into use.
We are not on our own, but we have a lot to learn. I do not think we are too proud to learn. Will the Leader organise a debate with the Minister on whether a State housing bank could be a model that we could follow in Ireland?
Before I call the Leader, I welcome Jamie Anderson from Greystones and Aoibhinn Callan from Portumna, guests of our colleague an Seanadóir Rabbitte. They are very welcome. I hope they enjoy their visit here today, especially to the Seanad. I call on the Leader to respond to the Order of Business.
Before I respond to the questions from colleagues, I was not here last week and I did not get the opportunity to pass on my condolences on the passing of Seamus Carroll, an usher who worked in this building for 11 years.
I was at the funeral at the weekend. It was actually lovely to see a guard of honour from the ushers. That family team they have within this building is so unique. Although it was an incredibly sad day, it was lovely to see the people who were there to remember him. Our thoughts go out to his wife Treasa, his two kids and his grandkids and to the team of ushers as well because it has been a tough couple of days for them. He was a proud Tipperary man, which is always a good start when someone is talking to me, and big into hurling. This building is a lesser place with his passing.
Hear, hear.
Hear, hear.
Hear, hear.
Hear, hear.
Senator O’Loughlin brought up domestic violence. She has done much work over a long number of months in terms of Jennie's Law and trying to bring forward that domestic violence judgments register, which is so important. Jason has been working on this for a long time on behalf of the whole family and in conjunction with the Senator. What has happened is really significant and I am sure there will be an opportunity to discuss that even further in this House.
It was a good weekend, with the ladies' rugby team winning against Japan. It is another instance of so many examples of success in sport we are having, particularly with women. Obviously, people talk about Katie Taylor, but it is right across the field of sport. We have a massive soccer match with the ladies' soccer team next week against Kazakhstan in Páirc Uí Chaoimh - a sellout - where they could qualify for the World Cup. We had an amazing camogie final only a couple of months ago, where Sorcha McCartan scored incredible points on the day for Cork. We had good victories in the European championships in athletics and swimming as well. It shows that if we invest in and fund sport, particularly for women, we see the success on it. What that does, as we have learned through the likes of Sonia O'Sullivan and others, is create sportspeople ten and 20 years down the line. That is hugely important.
In relation to the Kildare wildlife organisation, it is important to acknowledge the work of the former Minister of State and now Senator, Malcolm Noonan, work on that. It is important that we have a debate on that. We have not had one in this House. I will contact the Minister to see if that is possible.
Senator Boyle spoke about the public transport network for wheelchair users. He has raised this a number of times. He gave a very good example of how what others think is a long-ish but simple journey to go from Donegal to Limerick can be so awkward for people who need transport that is wheelchair accessible. It can almost take double the length of time to get from one place to the other. Particularly when they are students and are trying to get an education, it is something we need to be able to fund and support better. An awful lot of funding has gone into transport but we need to highlight the challenges, in particular for people who have accessibility issues or are wheelchair users.
Senator Clonan mentioned the budget. We will have debates later today with the Minister, Deputy Chambers, and tomorrow with the Minister for Finance about the packages. There will be an opportunity to raise concerns and observations about the finances and the supports for people with disabilities. There have been a number of measures over the last number of years in the disability sector. Some have been welcomed; some have not gone far enough. The programme for Government outlines where we want to get to. The Senator mentioned removing means tests. That is something that Government wants to do within its lifetime - the sooner, the better, obviously. We will have the Minister of State, Deputy Higgins, in the Chamber in two weeks’ time, hopefully, once I get it confirmed. That will be an opportunity to outline the House's view on where we should go on the matter.
Senators McCormack and Stephenson spoke about the Garvaghy Road residents, who have obviously had a traumatic week, or eight days now. It has been a very difficult period for them. In relation to the Irish Government's involvement in it, Helen McEntee was in Northern Ireland yesterday speaking to her counterpart in the UK and everyone is of the same view that we do not want to go back to where we were. We want a peaceful resolution to this.
We note the decision that was made in the courts yesterday. In fairness to Senator Stephenson, she outlined exactly the history, emotion and feelings that these events bring out for people. We thought we had moved on from this a long time ago. For the situation to be stoked up again has really amplified emotions. It is a job for the leaders within Northern Ireland to try to defuse it as much as possible. The Government, including the Taoiseach and the Minister for foreign affairs, will work with all leaders in Northern Ireland and with their counterparts in the UK to make sure that whatever happens, we never go back to where we were.
Senator Curley spoke about public transport, particularly in rural areas. As I know from my own county of Tipperary, there never can be enough investment in public transport to support people in rural areas, especially the elderly and the young. To be fair, the Senator acknowledged the increased funding for public transport. However, there are always areas in which more investment is needed. He spoke about the Loughrea to Athenry route and the need for a park-and-ride facility in each town. He requested that I talk to the Minister about that, which I will do. The Senator is very passionate about this issue in his area. He has raised it previously and I am more than happy to speak to the Minister about it.
Senator Conway referred to the Irish soccer team. It has been a strange time in that the past two weeks have been both good and difficult. When we look back on this period, from a team perspective and the competitive side of it, we will see, in time, that it has bonded this group of young players. When young sports people come through difficult periods as a group and stay united, they are the better for it in the future. We sometimes forget these are young men with families. It has been a difficult time. I am not sure we will get broad agreement on the Senator's statement that it has been the FAI's finest hour but I agree in the sense that the situation was not of its making. The FAI did not want these games to happen but it had to manage them as best it could.
I have often asked myself what the Stop the Game protestors were actually asking people to do. The president and the CEO of the FAI put the matter out for decision by the members of the association as to whether the games should go ahead. Both the members and the players said they wanted to go ahead. Were we supposed to ask the CEO and the president to go against the membership and stop the matches? I never heard a concrete proposal from anyone on how the games should be stopped. We could not have expected the president and the CEO to go against their own membership. That would have been totally unprecedented.
The important thing is that we have got through it. It has been very difficult and I think the players have been very respectful in terms of how they have conducted themselves. We have had reports of incidents on the pitch, which, if true, are disgraceful. However, it is now time to move on. Fortunately, we got through it. Senator Conway asked me to write, on behalf of the House, to congratulate the FAI. I am happy to do so but I suspect there will not be full agreement in the House on that proposal. Maybe we should write to Senator Andrews to see whether agreement can be reached on it. I suspect it will not, but I certainly will relay, if only on my own behalf, congratulations to the FAI that the players have come through it, and come through it together.
Senator Andrews spoke about Eglinton Place in Donnybrook. I do not know the area or the residents well but I do not doubt what he is saying about the way they are being treated, particularly by the Dillon Marshall management company. It is just not right if, as the Senator has suggested, new residents in the estate are being warned about people already living there, who are being blamed for everything that is happening in it. The Senator said this relates to the Part V planning provisions. The mixed tenure provision is there for a very good reason but nobody should be degraded. It should not make any bit of difference whether people are in social housing, private housing or any other type of housing. Especially when it comes to children, there certainly should be no difference. I am not sure we should go back to where we were in the seventies in terms of having full estates of public housing. There were problems with that too. A mixture is good.
We certainly should not have people who are in positions on management companies and Dublin City Council trying to differentiate between different classes of people who are living on the same estate.
Senator Keogan spoke about defective homes. We had a debate on that issue last week. Perhaps she did not know about them last week but a lot of her concerns are not really for me to answer. I suspect she would be much better off going to the Minister directly, rather than tabling a Commencement matter. It is important to highlight the issue in the House to ensure people are aware of if but if there such concerns following a judgment in the courts, it is important to go to the Minister directly with those concerns. If the Senator is not having success, I will be more than happy to do it for her.
Senator Sarah O'Reilly spoke on the public sector pay deal. It is frustrating for everyone that a deal has not yet been made. I am confident a deal will be agreed and, obviously, the sooner the better. A package of €2.1 billion was announced by the Government today to support public sector pay. That is important. While the Senator did not mention it, there has been huge investment in increasing the number of teachers, SNAs and nurses. The number of gardaí is almost at a record level. There has been an increase in the defence budget to increase the numbers in the Defence Forces next year as well. There is money available to increase numbers and provide support but we also need to make sure the wages people are on take into the account the dramatic increases in the cost of living.
Senator McCarthy spoke about the visit by members of the housing committee to Norway last week, which he led on. It is another good example which shows that while we in this House sometimes think the only housing crisis in the world is in Ireland, it is actually replicated across countries. Sometimes I think we should send more people on committee visits to see that other countries are suffering from similar challenges to the ones we are suffering.
On a serious note, every country brings forward different schemes and initiatives to try to support their citizens to start to buy a home. Norway has invested a significant sum of money to support banks to be able to support individuals. We have done it slightly differently, in terms of setting up schemes like the first home scheme for first-time buyers, which helps people who maybe cannot afford a house in their area. Under that scheme, the State will pay for between 5% and 40% of the equity in a house to support them. It is a positive scheme but not as well known as one might think. When people come into my constituency office they will know of the first-time buyer's grant but not of the scheme where the State takes equity in a house to support people at the start. I will be more than happy to have the Minister come to the House for a debate in order that we can learn lessons from how other countries are managing their housing crises.
Order of Business agreed to.
Cuireadh an Seanad ar fionraí ar 4.50 p.m. agus cuireadh tús leis arís ar 5.17 p.m.
Sitting suspended at 4.50 p.m. and resumed at 5.17 p.m.