Conor Sheehan
Limerick City · Labour Party · Ireland
“If a student does not have access to one of these devices or access to one at home, there is often no alternative and that could leave them excluded. Many families are forced to pay hundreds and thousands, particularly with the rising cost of microchips, for these devices.”
“I thank the Minister for her considered response. We need to get rid of voluntary contributions and move to generic school uniforms. This is something that has been done in the UK.”
“This digital divide is resulting in a severe and growing level of inequality where so many communities, students and families are unable to purchase the devices they desperately need for their children's education.”
“I raise the issue of the community access support team, CAST, in Limerick, which has prevented 133 detentions under section 12 of the Mental Health Act and reduced the number emergency department presentations. It has responded to over 1,000 incidents.”
“Do not worry. We need to have a debate this week before the House rises about the imminent report on Aughinish Alumina. There are up to 2,000 direct and indirect jobs at stake in Limerick. We cannot have a situation where the State is inadvertently complicit in the export of alumina to Russia. Where there is a will, there is a way.”
“It is absolutely reprehensible that planning permission has been granted for apartments on the site of the former mother and baby home at Bessborough. We have 19 mothers and 859 infants associated with Bessborough still missing. Now 140 apartments are going to be built on a mass grave. We need statements on this next week.”
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“I raise the issue of the community access support team, CAST, in Limerick, which has prevented 133 detentions under section 12 of the Mental Health Act and reduced the number emergency department presentations. It has responded to over 1,000 incidents. There is evidence for this and the University of Limerick published a report last week. It has been extraordinarily successful. It needs a dedicated core budget. It has been transformative in normalising a non-criminalising response to mental health. Will the Government formally establish this team as a national interagency crisis response service in the upcoming budget?”
“This digital divide is resulting in a severe and growing level of inequality where so many communities, students and families are unable to purchase the devices they desperately need for their children's education. What we are trying to do with this motion is to ensure that all students have access to the technology they need in school by ensuring that the guidance supplied by the Minister that schools cannot mandate the purchase of digital technology is mandated and enforced and that, in instances where technology is needed, there is funding and a national loan scheme to support students who are unable to provide these materials for themselves.”
“If a student does not have access to one of these devices or access to one at home, there is often no alternative and that could leave them excluded. Many families are forced to pay hundreds and thousands, particularly with the rising cost of microchips, for these devices. In a country experiencing a greatly increased cost-of-living crisis with everything having gone up exponentially in price, the last thing families need is another cost to deal with and that is the cost of these tablets or laptop devices. A study by the ESRI and the University of Limerick showed that of more than 720 schools, three in ten required the purchase of a digital device. We really need the Government to take action to address this and to help reduce the numerous costs so many families have to face just to secure a quality education for their children.”
“I thank the Minister for her considered response. We need to get rid of voluntary contributions and move to generic school uniforms. This is something that has been done in the UK. It is much more cost-effective and efficient because the average cost of sending a child to primary school in this country is now €1,794 and the average cost of sending a child to secondary school is €2,928. With our ever-increasing digital world, apparently everything is online and it is somewhat impossible to be a member of society and not have to rely on technology. Now more than ever, students are forced to rely on technology such as laptops, tablets and other devices in order to fulfil the basic requirements of their school education.”
“Do not worry. We need to have a debate this week before the House rises about the imminent report on Aughinish Alumina. There are up to 2,000 direct and indirect jobs at stake in Limerick. We cannot have a situation where the State is inadvertently complicit in the export of alumina to Russia. Where there is a will, there is a way.”
“What needs to happen now is for the Taoiseach and Tánaiste to meet the survivors as soon as possible and the Government needs to intervene and make a compulsory purchase order for the site and bring it into public ownership.”
“It is absolutely reprehensible that planning permission has been granted for apartments on the site of the former mother and baby home at Bessborough. We have 19 mothers and 859 infants associated with Bessborough still missing. Now 140 apartments are going to be built on a mass grave. We need statements on this next week. The Labour Party has sought that. I have gone through the report myself. It is disgusting. Its language is callous. It minimises the horror and the suffering of the poor people who were incarcerated and died at Bessborough. The State needs to intervene. The Taoiseach was clear when he said Cork City Council should have bought the site.”
“We have a situation in this country where we have so-called transport-orientated development with no bloody public transport. People are going at it hammer and tongs over car spaces in suburban parts of Dublin because they never got their train or DART services. They have been delayed and delayed again. The Minister of State cannot compare the two. Even the LDA, which comes under the auspices of the Minister of State's Department by extension, said the savings would be marginal in most units - it said they would be nowhere near what the Minister trumpeted them to be last year - and that is what they turned out subsequently to be. This is the core point. We are essentially paying way over the top. In many cases, the taxpayer and the approved housing bodies are paying out an absolute fortune for tiny shoebox apartments.”
“If the Minister of State will allow me to make my point, the average rent of a studio apartment in Dublin is €1,850. With these revised apartment guidelines, the Minister of State has allowed developers to build entire developments of tiny studio or one-bedroom apartments. When you go to someplace like Vienna, there is an appropriate mix of one-bedroom, two-bedroom and three-bedroom apartments. In addition, there are community facilities and amenities, which the Minister of State has also removed during the past year. He has removed them from the LDA. There was a big row with Dublin City Council about removing community space from apartment developments. When you leave your apartment in Vienna, you can board a world-class public transport system.”
“We will go and do this, and that will be fine, and it may stimulate some expensive build-to-rent residential development, but unless there is a fundamental change in approach, either the Minister of State or somebody else will be back here in two to three years' time looking to go further and smaller again.”
“Every time we have reduced apartment standards, we have had the same heavy, developer-led lobby coming along every two or three years and claiming the viability measures introduced around design guidelines or size do not work and that we need to go smaller and cheaper. The entire model we are using is not working. The State is in many cases paying way over the top for apartments. With these revised guidelines, we are not going to get the high-quality, decent, permanent, sustainable homes that people actually want to live in. I think that gets completely lost in this discussion.”
“These apartments will mainly be occupied either more permanently by people who are social housing tenants or, if they are occupied by renters, those renters will not be protected by any sort of meaningful protection in respect of the cost of their rent. They will be paying upwards of €3,000 in cities like Dublin. They will barely be able to afford it, or they are not going to want to live there long term. It is going to contribute further towards hollowing out the urban core of places like Dublin, driving people out of inner city communities. Many previous Ministers have gone down this road, including, truth be told, one of my own party colleagues, going back as far as 2015. It has not worked.”
“It is now coming back with this national planning statement on the revised apartment guidelines, which will result in smaller, darker apartments without dual aspect, studio apartments that are just 32 sq. m. Einstein's definition of madness is doing the same thing and expecting different results. We have a method that has been tried and tested and has failed. We know that, with soaring construction inflation, the mooted cost savings the Minister gave at the time have been all but wiped out in the last year. By going down this road, the Minister of State is creating a system of making apartment living unviable for people as a permanent living solution, as someplace where they can build a home. We will end up with very small, dark, expensive apartments that will be very hot in the summer. That is a point that is not often made.”
“There was a couple of things I wanted to say on this. I, too, am opposed to sections 61 and 62, for many of the reasons that were outlined by my colleague. When I think about stimulating supply, the type of supply that these new apartment guidelines will stimulate, if any, will be expensive, high-yield, build-to-rent apartments in Dublin and only very specific parts of Cork. It certainly will not build anything in Limerick, the city I represent. We saw last year the debacle when the Minister, Deputy James Browne, tried to use section 28 and the Government failed to undertake an environmental impact assessment, and then had to basically pull the guidelines.”
“I also support this amendment. It is important because we need to determine the exact implications of this piece of legislation, which is being rushed through the Houses. When the debate on Second Stage took place last week, the deadline for the submission of amendments preceded that debate. This is a recurring theme with the Government across multiple Departments. It is concerning because we should be able to tease out the substantive issues relating to Bills. I laid out my concerns on Second Stage. I am not going to go into them again, other than to say that I hope the Minister of State engages sincerely in respect of this amendment and the intention behind it.”
“(5) The Minister may by regulations make further provision for the purposes of this section, including provision for— (a) the form and manner of an application under subsection (1), (b) the information to be provided by a household in support of such an application, (c) the circumstances in which a material change in circumstances under subsection (2)(a)(ii) may be found to exist, and (d) the procedures to be followed by housing authorities in giving effect to this section.”.”.”
“(3) Where the receiving authority recognises an assessment under subsection (2)(a), the household shall be placed on the housing list of the receiving authority with effect from the date on which the household was placed on the housing list of the assessing authority, subject to the application of any scheme of letting priorities made under section 22 by the receiving authority. (4) A household may appeal a decision of a receiving authority under subsection (2) in accordance with section 20B.”
“(2) On receipt of an application under subsection (1), the receiving authority shall— (a) recognise the assessment of the assessing authority as establishing that the household is qualified for social housing support in its functional area, without requiring the household to submit to a fresh assessment, unless— (i) the assessment of the assessing authority was made more than 3 years before the date of the application under subsection (1), or (ii) the receiving authority has reasonable grounds for believing that the circumstances of the household have materially changed since the date of the assessment, and (b) where paragraph (a)(i) or (ii) applies, carry out a fresh assessment of the household’s eligibility for social housing support in accordance with section 20, taking into account such information as was provided to the assessing authority as the receiving authority considers relevant.”
“(1) Where a housing authority (in this section referred to as the ‘assessing authority’) has determined under section 20 that a household is qualified for social housing support, and a member of that household subsequently establishes a connection with the functional area of another housing authority (in this section referred to as the ‘receiving authority’), the household may apply to the receiving authority to have the assessment of the assessing authority recognised for the purposes of social housing support in the functional area of the receiving authority.”
“I move amendment No. 24: In page 15, between lines 27 and 28, to insert the following: “Social housing assessment: transfer and recognition 11. The Act of 2009 is amended by the insertion of the following section after section 20B (inserted by section 8 ): “Social housing passport 20C.”
“(3) The Minister shall, as soon as practicable after the completion of an equality impact assessment under this section, cause a copy of the assessment to be laid before each House of the Oireachtas. (4) Nothing in this section shall be construed as precluding the Minister from commencing section 8 following the completion and laying of an equality impact assessment under this section, notwithstanding any findings contained in that assessment.”.”
“I move amendment No. 22: In page 14, between lines 27 and 28, to insert the following: “Equality impact assessment 10. (1) The Minister shall, before making an order under section 1(4) bringing section 8 into operation, cause to be carried out an equality impact assessment of the residency requirements imposed by section 20A of the Act of 2009 (as inserted by section 8 ). (2) An equality impact assessment under this section shall assess the likely effect of the residency requirements referred to in subsection (1) on persons sharing a protected characteristic within the meaning of the Equal Status Acts 2000 to 2018, having regard in particular to— (a) race, nationality and ethnic or national origins, (b) family status, and (c) membership of the Traveller community.”
“(12) A housing authority shall provide such administrative support to an appeals officer nominated under subsection (10A) as the appeals officer may reasonably require for the purposes of deciding a social housing appeal.”.”
“(10) The Minister shall, for the purposes of subsection (9), establish and maintain a panel of persons eligible for nomination as appeals officers, being persons— (a) who are officers or employees of a housing authority other than the housing authority whose determination is the subject of the social housing appeal concerned, and (b) who, in the opinion of the Minister, have sufficient knowledge and experience of housing law and social housing assessment to discharge the functions of an appeals officer. (11) The Minister shall nominate a person from the panel referred to in subsection (10) to act as appeals officer in respect of a social housing appeal within 7 days of receiving a request under subsection (9).”
“I move amendment No. 18: In page 13, to delete lines 25 to 35 and substitute the following: “(9) On receipt by a housing authority of a social housing appeal made in accordance with this section, the chief executive of the authority shall request the Minister to nominate a person to decide the appeal (in this section referred to as an ‘appeals officer’).”
“I move amendment No. 14: In page 11, after line 38, to insert the following: “(13) Nothing in this section shall be construed as— (a) restricting or qualifying any right conferred on a person by the Treaties of the European Union or by the Regulations of 2015, or (b) requiring a housing authority to act in a manner incompatible with the State’s obligations under the Convention within the meaning of the European Convention on Human Rights Act 2003.”.”
“The rent-a-room scheme works reasonably well but this will have the effect of distorting the spirit of the scheme because there will be completely unregulated, stand-alone private rental businesses in residential back gardens. I again call on the Minister, if he is going to do this, to at least look at the licensee system and the loopholes therein.”
“We have had a number of issues with it, in that there are major loopholes and, unfortunately, people have been exploited as a result. There is no safety net or protection against rent hikes, spikes or eviction. I am afraid that this could end up disproportionately targeting vulnerable people. I am thinking in particular of students, including international students. We have had loads of issues in recent years with international students being stacked into accommodation. Now they will potentially end up being stacked into what are, in effect, beds in sheds. Local authorities already find it difficult enough to inspect private rentals. Removing the requirement for RTB registration means it will be very hard to know exactly where any of these structures will be.”
“We in the Labour Party support the need for more flexibility when it comes to exempted developments. What I do not support is the whole idea of allowing landlords to rent out "Cummins cabins", effectively, without any protection for tenants. The fact of the matter is renters will have no Part 4 protection or rent controls. They could be subject to summary eviction. Due to the fact these dwellings will not come under the RTB Act and will not require planning, it will be hard to identify where they are and to make sure that they are of a decent standard. I have no issue with more flexibility when it comes to exempted development. In fact, it is necessary. A couple of months ago, I asked the Minister if he would at the very least conduct a full review of the licensing system to make sure that it is sound.”
“We did not need homeless NGOs or the likes of FLAC to tell us this would lead to an increase in rough sleeping. Common sense will tell you that this will lead to an increase in rough sleeping. In respect of the lack of an appeals process, the Minister said in one sense that you can apply and apply again but essentially that means that if somebody keeps being refused, the only recourse they have then is to try to seek a judicial review, which is absolute nonsense because anybody who needs emergency accommodation does not have the capacity to do that. I would appreciate if the Minister addressed those questions.”
“I thank the Minister for his response. I am none the wiser from his response either as to why the arbitrary eight to eight time was chosen. It seems sort of strange to have a situation where in winter, you could have empty emergency accommodation beds and people outside in the cold because of this arbitrary eight to eight rule. I do not understand why this is being codified in legislation in the way it has been done. The Minister will store up problems for himself. He made a very bold comment when he said this Bill will not increase the number of rough sleepers. Where is the Minister's regulatory impact assessment for that? Where is the data to show that definitively will not happen when every homeless organisation, NGO, etc., has told us it will?”
“I will be supporting Deputy Ó Broin's amendment as well because at the very least, we need to have an appeals process. It cannot be done as rigidly as the Minister is proposing.”
“I have had situations where a house that is virtually in the middle of nowhere with no public transport links has been offered to somebody living in emergency accommodation with no car. Let us be blunt, somebody from a migrant community or background might not be able to go and live in a certain area because of genuine concerns for their personal safety. That is fact and I have had situations like that. There needs to be a bit of discretion there. Removing the safety net of emergency accommodation for people most at risk of homelessness and creating these additional administrative barriers might help the Minister's figures, so to speak, at the end of the month but it is going to create a whole host of other problems. It is going to lead to an increase in rough sleeping.”
“We will see a huge increase in rough sleeping. Going back to the legal and habitual residency condition, this alters the situation and the discretion of the local authority to provide emergency accommodation to anyone meeting the statutory definition of a homeless person. When I look at the amendment to withdraw emergency accommodation, theoretically I have no issue with it, but in the way the Minister has put it forward, the amendment is far too rigid. There are some cases where you have to withdraw emergency accommodation - I am in no doubt about that - such as when an individual is behaving dangerously or is disruptive to other people in emergency accommodation, but we cannot withdraw emergency accommodation from somebody just for refusing one offer. I deal with my own local authority, as every Deputy in this House does.”
“These are foundational changes to statutory housing rights and we have had no proper, full, transparent parliamentary debate and committee scrutiny. We had that on the Bill as initiated but not on what is in the Bill now. I feel the way the Bill has been brought in and heavily amended is being done purposefully in order to bring the figures down in terms of emergency accommodation. The knock-on effect of that will be an increase in rough sleeping. This seems a deliberate policy decision when you look at the demographic of people in emergency accommodation, including those coming from State accommodation, particularly from IPAS, into emergency accommodation. The Bill is being done in this way in order to remove what the Government feels is currently a pull factor. I do not think this is the way to do it.”
“For many marginalised and excluded people - I am thinking of Roma people, people from a migrant background and Travellers - it will be impossible for each resident in a family unit, for example, to fulfil the legal and habitual residency test. This Bill and these amendments could justify forcing an individual or family in crisis to navigate a complex, document-heavy bureaucratic housing application to secure a crisis bed for the night. Why did the Minister not bring forward the amendments as a stand-alone Bill or when the Bill was initiated, so we could hear from the people who work in this sphere - the housing charities, the likes of Focus Ireland and FLAC, and the people who will have to deal with the real-world consequences of this?”
“Will the Minister elaborate on what exemptions will be built into the legislation to counteract this? The local connection test is controversial, in many cases, and can be quite arbitrary. When it is being codified like this, these strict local links will prevent people, in some cases, from accessing emergency placement outside of their home district. I say that because I represent a constituency that is on the edge of another constituency and which has people flying over and back on a bridge between Counties Limerick and Clare. What statutory guarantees or emergency exemptions will be built into the Bill to make sure people in crisis who will not successfully complete these rigid paperwork checks are not legally forced onto the street?”
“What is the rationale for codifying that, as opposed to the safety net discretion that exists at the moment? I have no issue with the statutory framework for how local authorities assess who qualifies for emergency accommodation and long-term housing support, but this is effectively stripping away a humanitarian safety net. There will be a loss of discretion. Under the previous policy guidelines, which were more flexible, local authorities could use discretion on humanitarian grounds to provide shelter to people. I am concerned by the rigidity of the Minister's amendments. These strict statutory definitions will remove a vital safety net. They will legally force councils to turn away people who are in unique and complicated situations and who do not fit into neat legal boxes.”
“Theoretically, I have no issue with this Bill or with the basic principle of codifying circulars around access to emergency accommodation and social housing eligibility. I do, however, have a big issue with the Minister using the motion to instruct. This is the second time this has happened in a year. I am only in this House a short time. The Minister has effectively tacked a whole new Bill onto a tenuously related Bill that we discussed already on Second Stage and Committee Stage. Far-reaching and significant amendments to the Housing Act 1988 came to us yesterday and they came with a two-hour guillotine and with very little time to discuss the far-reaching consequences they will have for people trying to access emergency accommodation. I have a number of questions. One relates to the strict, arbitrary two-night limit.”
“I had hoped the Minister of State would accept the amendment. We brought it forward in good faith to make sure the legislation is not left too open to function properly. I am concerned that we have a scenario where a police force, maybe in Europe or further afield, could potentially use live FRT at a protest or civil disturbance, and would then request that gardaí scan those images against their own files. The Minister of State said that a code of practice has to be laid before and agreed by both Houses. I would welcome it if she would clarify whether, under the legislation, as amended, it is possible for a police force to use live FRT at a protest and then request that gardaí scan those images against their files.”
“As drafted, it could permit a Garda biometric analysis to be carried out in aid of co-operation with any domestic or foreign law enforcement body for any criminal offence without that co-operation being tied to a specific or defined treaty, agreement or statutory framework. What concerns me is the lack of definition in what the Government is proposing. Our amendment would limit the use of this provision to co-operation through Europol, or at least through an international agreement designated by the Minister. We believe these are common-sense guardrails to protect the independence of our policing. It is disappointing that, as Deputy Carthy noted, we have not had the chance to properly scrutinise this measure in the Oireachtas, because it is a significant expansion of the Bill's original drafting.”
“I thank the Minister of State for her response and welcome her to her new job. This is our first exchange on these issues. We are not instinctively opposed in totality to what the Government is trying to do here. We support the spirit of what it is trying to do. The issue that we have is as follows. The Seanad wording refers to criminal offences generally but it does not refer in a defined and narrower way to "arrestable offences", which is the term used elsewhere in the Bill. When the Minister of State referred in her reply to, for example, child sex offences, I understand the rationale for that and I understand where the Minister of State is coming from. However, we want to make sure there are sufficient guardrails in this legislation to ensure it applies to arrestable serious offences.”
“Will circumstances arise in which gardaí are expected to perform biometric analysis on behalf of a foreign police force investigating a crime in its country that would not be subject to criminal investigation in Ireland? Will gardaí be expected to handle biometric evidence that has been gathered by live facial recognition abroad? I will elaborate further when the Minister of State responds.”
“2 adds a fourth principal purpose of "cooperation with one or more other law enforcement agencies in relation to the prevention, investigation, detection or prosecution of criminal offences." This is materially broader in an important respect because it allows for biometric data to be used for the purpose of co-operation with external agencies rather than by reference to any domestic investigative process, which means the trigger for use of the technology is partly outside the control of the Irish law. The scope is broad, extending to any police force or authority anywhere outside the State responsible for prevention or prosecution of criminal offences. There seem to be no legislative guardrails on who can make such a request, how it will be assessed and decided on, and for what purpose. That poses obvious risks.”
“It was introduced at the last minute on Report Stage in the Seanad. When the Bill passed in the Dáil it confined the permitted purposes of biometric analysis to three, namely, the prevention, investigation, detection or prosecution of arrestable offences; the protection of the security of the State; and the search for missing persons. All three are tightly defined. The use cases in section 43C(6) are keyed to them but the Government's amendment No.”
“Our amendment simply seeks to put some legislative guard-rails on a provision that was introduced at the last possible minute. While we in the Labour Party have been clear that we are not opposed to the Bill, which is to give An Garda Síochána the ability to use emerging technologies to do its job of investigating crime, we have also seen that the use of biometric technology carries real risk and we must guard against scope creep. We have been clear, for example, in opposing any further moves to legislate for the use of live facial recognition technology or the development of a national facial or biometric database. The Government's amendment No. 2 is an example of that scope creep. The amendment is to address this significant expansion that was never debated in this House.”
“We are not opposed to the Bill on the basis of this limited scope but we are opposed to further expansion of biometric data usage beyond this identity governance, IG, such as a national database or live facial recognition, which the Minister has previously said will be introduced via further legislation. The Government introduced amendment No. 2 on Report Stage in the Seanad, which allows gardaí to carry out biometric analysis for the purposes of co-operation with law enforcement agencies abroad in relation to criminal offences. We believe this to be a significant broadening of the original scope of the Bill, introduced at the last minute in the legislative process. It is very broadly drafted, with seemingly no guard-rails on how this will work.”
“I move amendment No. 1 to Seanad amendment No. 2: To delete paragraph (d), and substitute the following: "(d) without prejudice to section 43B(b), cooperation with one or more other law enforcement agencies in relation to the prevention, investigation, detection or prosecution of criminal offences, being cooperation that is carried out— (i) pursuant to the Europol Act 2012, or (ii) pursuant to an international agreement or arrangement designated by the Minister by order for the purposes of this paragraph.". This Bill allows gardaí to use AI technology to compare biometric data, that is, facial images, across pieces of evidence they have already gathered in the course of an investigation. It does not allow for the use of live facial recognition technology or the scanning of data against a database.”
“I was born in 1993. I am a child of the Good Friday Agreement. I never knew violence on this island, and thank God for that, but I firmly and sincerely believe that our Republic is incomplete. This Bill charts a pathway to a better, brighter future. I urge the Government to work with the Opposition on it, let it go to Committee Stage and let us lay the groundwork and start to prepare for bringing all our people together in the spirit of an inclusive new Ireland.”
“We must work together to reunite our people. As John Hume said, "You can't eat a flag". We need to win hearts and minds. Achieving Irish unity is more than just a geographical or political construct. We have so much more in common on this island than that which divides us. We must come together in a new spirit of inclusion and tolerance and we must do so under the umbrella of the greatest peace project in the world, namely, the European Union. I sincerely urge the Government not to block this important work. Letting the Bill go to Committee Stage would allow us to begin that work. We can work out the timelines, which are fairly arbitrary. My party leader brought forward a Bill last week to which the Government made a timed amendment. We were not particularly happy about that but it is something that could work with this Bill.”