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Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 23 Feb 2022

Vol. 1018 No. 5

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions

Cuirim fáilte ar ais roimh an Taoiseach.

Last Wednesday night, the Government voted again to ensure cuckoo funds continue to pay no tax and outbid workers and families for homes they desperately need. Those funds were back in the news at the weekend. The first story was about a Dutch outfit paying €110 million to hoover up 280 family homes in Dublin. The CEO of that outfit said it could own the houses for 50 years and is not selling them. In 50 years, the grandchildren of those struggling to buy a house today will be looking for a home of their own. Another story concerns a couple who cannot buy a house and are living in the house of a family member, which is a common story, even though they had saved a substantial deposit. They are infuriated that the Government continues to support cuckoo funds at the expense of ordinary home buyers.

Here is another story. Bartra, the private developer awarded the contract for O'Devaney Gardens, is threatening to sell 500 family homes to a cuckoo fund unless the Government dances to its tune. Bartra was given the valuable public land at O'Devaney Gardens effectively for free.

Not content with that sweetheart deal, and a huge subsidy from the public purse, it now wants more. It demands that the Government buy these homes at inflated prices of more than €400,000, or it says it will sell to a fund, which in turn will fleece people with rip-off rents. The developer is effectively trying to blackmail the taxpayer and is using the powerful presence of cuckoo funds as leverage. This is not its first act of bad faith; far from it. There have been huge delays in building these homes. It has challenged planning decisions and mounted a judicial review. It is now brazenly attempting to hold the Taoiseach's Government to ransom.

This would not be happening if the Government had provided Dublin City Council with the financial support needed to develop these homes back in 2018. That proposal would have seen the delivery of 800 homes that ordinary people could actually afford to rent or buy. That is what we in Sinn Féin and others called for. Had the Government listened to us, O'Devaney Gardens would be at an advanced stage of construction, ready for families to move in next year. Instead, this deal, which the Taoiseach has championed to the hilt, means that these homes have not been built. When the first homes eventually come on stream, Bartra will slap a price tag of €400,000 on them, which will be way beyond the reach of ordinary workers and families.

Cinnteoidh talamh poiblí a dtugtar saor in aisce do na forbróirí chun tithe a thógáil atá róchostasach i gcomhair daoine go leanfaidh géarchéim thithíochta ar aghaidh. Is de bharr pholasaí an Rialtais go bhfuil forbróirí ag bagairt tithe teaghlaigh a dhíol le ciste cuaiche a mbrúnn cíosanna ríchostasacha.

The fiasco at O'Devaney Gardens is a mess of the Government's own making. The Government was warned at the time and again that this was a terrible deal for tenants, homeowners and taxpayers. The Government was warned that sidelining the local authority and gifting public land to private developers was a really bad idea. Does the Taoiseach now accept those facts? What is his response to Bartra and its attempts to blackmail the taxpayer? What does he say now to Bartra? Will he now rein in these cuckoo funds by ending the sweetheart tax deals that his Government has afforded to them?

I thank the Deputy for raising the issue of housing, because I have repeatedly said that, in my view, housing is the single most urgent and important social issue facing our country at this point in time. Access to housing is fundamental to our security, stability, health and progress as a society. If we do not recognise the scale of the challenge and respond in kind, then this has the potential to be profoundly destabilising for society and to deprive many younger generations of the capacity to access housing and of being able to buy or rent at affordable rates.

The Housing for All strategy developed by this Government in the last year and a half is unprecedented in scale and investment, with more than €4 billion in State investment. It is the largest ever amount of social housing to be built year-by-year, with well up to 10,000 in 2022, between local authorities and approved social housing bodies. I refer as well to providing and supporting the provision of affordable housing, as well as cost rental and private development. As I said to the Deputy the week before last, regarding private rental, for example, of the 33,000 units that we are aiming to provide year-by-year, about 6,000 of those will be private rental. The Deputy acknowledged that there would be a need for private housing, in addition to social housing, State-supported affordable housing and cost-rental housing.

The Deputy is rewriting the narrative again today, because, unfortunately for her, the housing issue has all been about politics. The O'Devaney Gardens project would have been built a long time ago if it was not for people playing politics with it. It is either the Sinn Féin way or the highway. We either build houses its way or we will never build houses. It will always be against any sort of mixed tenure approach, or an approach that involves a mixture of social, affordable and private housing. Dublin City Council would have been very involved with O'Devaney Gardens. The project goes back to 2015, in more recent times-----

It goes way beyond that. The REIT developer friends-----

It goes back beyond that, and the Deputy's party keeps saying no. It always has an excuse and a reason to say this project cannot go ahead and so on.

The crisis is so big that we need to get on with it in terms of allowing projects and rezonings to happen. The scale of the house building that must occur means the rezoning of brownfield sites. Let us be clear about that. It is not going to be possible to get 20,000 or 30,000 units per year if we do not do that. We need cities to grow in a compact way where services already exist. All we have, though, is objection after objection.

It will mean the disposal of property. Councils will have to dispose of lands-----

We do not control any council.

-----to enable housing to happen. Old industrial sites in cities will have to be rezoned for housing. If councils have land, they should dispose of it to ensure that housing happens-----

Dispose of it to whom?

To get housing built, and perhaps in partnership, as we are doing in some places across the country.

(Interruptions).

Please, Deputies.

The context here is very clear. We need to build houses at a far greater scale than we have been in recent years and we must do it quickly.

People and the cost of living-----

No one party can say, "It is our way or the highway, or that you do it in accordance with our ideological framework or not at all." That has been the nature of the Deputy's party's position for a considerable time. The Housing for All strategy is ambitious and has a strong delivery mechanism to get houses built. We need to get to 33,000 houses per year, with a mix of social, private, affordable and cost rental, and we are going to do it.

If ever there was a salutary tale and lesson of Fianna Fáil in government, the party of the Galway tent, brown envelopes and a cosy relationship with developers, it is O'Devaney Gardens. Look no further.

The reason this has dragged on and on is that its buddies that had a public-private partnership, PPP, arrangement with the State at the time went bust and let the entire community down. I could go on and on, but I do not have the scope to recount the corruption and the corrupted nature of its relationship with the people to whom I have referred. Its plan fails again because it is a myopic and limited view. I put it to the Taoiseach that the funds the Government now mollycoddles and the sweetheart deals it affords them are now coming back to bite it. Bartra has said that unless the State steps in and buys back homes at inflated prices, it is going to offload them to cuckoo funds. Those funds, in turn, will let out these homes and skin people for extortionate rents. I would like to know what the Taoiseach proposes to do about this as the Head of Government.

I thank Deputy McDonald. The time is up.

Does the Taoiseach believe the State ought to buy these 500 homes?

Please, the time is up.

Furthermore, does the Taoiseach believe that the sweetheart tax arrangements with these funds should continue? That is the Government's policy in the here and now, and it is this policy that is causing so much hardship for an entire generation of people that the Government has locked out of homeownership and who endure extortionate rents. This is happening on the Taoiseach's watch. Those, my friend, are the facts.

The Deputy used the word "corrupt".

Sinn Féin is the last party to talk to anybody about corruption.

The Galway tent.

Deputy McDonald's party corrupted public life in this republic for well-----

Ansbacher, Galway.

-----on 40 years to a far greater degree than any other party in this country.

It corrupted the moral code of our country and society by the murder and mayhem that it perpetrated, and that it still endorses.

(Interruptions).

It still supports the narrative of murder, mayhem and so forth.

(Interruptions).

Quiet, please.

The party also supports the undermining of women-----

-----who were raped by IRA volunteers-----

(Interruptions).

The Deputy's party covered it up.

(Interruptions).

Do not come into this House-----

What about Bessborough?

-----and lead with your chin, telling this party that we were corrupt. We had faults and flaws, about which there is no doubt, but we faced up to them. We never, ever attempt, as Sinn Féin consistently does, to try to rewrite the narrative and bury the truths.

The level of corruption Deputy McDonald's party engaged in-----

The Taoiseach cannot even defend his own policy.

To come to the housing issue, what Sinn Féin is good at is rewriting narratives and spinning. In terms of Dublin City Council-----

-----we have allowed city councils to engage with partners to get housing developed, to get mixed tenure, to get private, affordable and social housing built.

What does he say about Bartra?

What is the Taoiseach's response to Bartra?

We are doing that.

He does not have one.

What is the Taoiseach's response?

Business as usual with Bartra. On you go.

In addition to that, we have provided €4 billion. The Deputy does not like the truth-----

Will the Taoiseach answer a straight question?

We are going to provide €4 billion year by year.

Deputy McDonald needs to start answering some questions now.

I will when I am in your seat, with pleasure.

The Taoiseach needs to answer the question. Waffle.

How is she going to double housing output? She keeps using slogans that she articulates from time to time but there is no meat behind it.

The Taoiseach has no answer to the question.

There is no flesh on the bone. There is no reality behind what she is saying. The Deputy can wave all she likes but it does not hide the truth.

I hope she will be in your place soon enough.

Can we just restore some order, please? I call Deputy Alan Kelly.

The prospect of a full-blown war in Ukraine is edging closer. It is a sovereign country that is dealing with neocolonial actions by Russia that we should all condemn. It is not too late for diplomacy to try to de-escalate the crisis because thousands of lives are at risk. Open war is edging closer and an emergency that we have not faced in many decades is on our doorstep. Ukraine will soon declare a state of emergency and has advised its citizens to leave Russia. It is a deeply concerning time for Europe. Collectively, as a House we should, if possible, unanimously condemn what the Russian Federation has done by recognising its client states in the Donbas region of Ukraine. I hope there will be cross-party support for a motion. I formally ask the Taoiseach to put forward a motion to the House that all of us can support. We want to avoid war but it is clear who the aggressor is.

At the UN Security Council yesterday, our ambassador made clear our unwavering commitment to Ukraine's territorial integrity with its recognised borders. What further action will Ireland take at the Security Council? The Taoiseach met with the German Chancellor yesterday, who announced that the certification process of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline would not go ahead. Will the Taoiseach send a clear message about what sanctions will be put in place?

As documented by Fintan O'Toole yesterday, between 2005 and 2017, €118 billion was funnelled through the International Financial Services Centre, IFSC, to Russian entities. Let me repeat that figure: €118 billion. We are at risk of becoming the best small country in the world to funnel corrupt dirty Russian oligarchs' money, mostly through section 110 companies that pay little, if any, tax and with no real transparency of who the beneficial owners are. Oligarchs are washing money through countries like our own because they cannot trust their own banking system because it is so corrupt. If sanctions by the US, the UK and the EU lead to a clampdown on Russian billionaires, there is a likelihood that oligarchs and their shell companies, thousands of them, may seek to use Ireland to continue to funnel money. What are we and the Government going to do about it? I do not need to tell the Taoiseach about the impact all of this has on energy prices and the costs that will affect consumers. Can we look for a derogation from the EU on our historic 13.5% on electricity and gas to allow it to be reduced and then returned?

There are three components to my question. What actions will Ireland take at the Security Council and what sanctions will the Taoiseach implement? Will he bring forward a motion that we can collectively support and show our true colours by condemning the Russian Federation for its actions? Second, will he ensure that Russian money flowing through Ireland is targeted, because this is deeply concerning? In addition, will he look at the cost of energy prices going forward and look for a derogation from the EU on VAT rules?

I thank the Deputy for raising this very important issue. In the first instance, along with the Deputy and in the clearest possible terms, I want to condemn Russia's aggression towards its neighbour. It is unilaterally, without any justification whatsoever, threatening and undermining the integrity of an independent democratic state, and this is unacceptable. I agree with the Deputy and I have no difficulty in agreeing a joint motion in the House because Russia's behaviour deserves the unequivocal condemnation of everyone in the House. Our country's support for Ukrainian sovereignty, territorial integrity and its right to choose its own foreign and security policy is unwavering.

We have to send out a clear and strong signal of our support for Ukrainian sovereignty. We made that clear at the UN Security Council emergency meeting, which was held on 21 January, and this continues to be our position. The situation at the Security Council in itself is challenging. Russian is a permanent member of the Council and has veto power. We have witnessed a major escalation, which clearly contravenes international law in the Russian decision to proceed with recognition of the non-government controlled areas of Donetsk and Luhansk as independent entities. The decision to move military personnel to those areas represents a major escalation and creates a challenging situation all round.

On sanctions, we are part of the EU-wide sanctions regime. The European Union along with the United States, and working in concert with other like-minded countries that value democracy, have agreed a range of sanctions in the listing of individuals, 27 influential oligarchs, business people, politicians, and military leaders, the Russian minister for defence, military commanders leading the operation, individuals from the media, propaganda sectors, 351 MPs in the Russian Duma who voted for the recognition, of which 22 are already listed, the listing of entities and asset freeze. This is in addition to the myriad of the Crimea-related sanctions regime on imports and exports into the Donbas region, as well as financial restrictions prohibiting lending to the Russian central bank, and asset freezes of two private banks.

On the IFSC and the report to which the Deputy referred in respect of 2005 and 2017 and billions being funnelled through the IFSC to Russian entities, we will share in any sanctions with the European Union and we will support all sanctions, including the targeting of the ability of the Russian state to access the European Union's capital and financial markets, which will be a significant sanction in itself. The financial services offering of the IFSC, as the Deputy knows, relates to special purpose vehicles. Since 2018, legislation has been enacted in regard to money laundering and other matters.

I welcome the fact that a motion will be brought forward condemning Russia's actions. I believe we should do it as soon as possible. We will work with the Taoiseach on that. It is absolutely necessary that everybody in the House supports this and shows their colours on this.

I have a deep concern in relation to the issue of Russian money coming into this country and being cleaned. My colleague, Deputy Howlin, brought forward the Proceeds of Crime (Gross Human Rights Abuses) Bill, known as the Magnitsky Bill, in 2020. We should bring this through the House, because the legislation of 2018 referred to by the Taoiseach is, unfortunately, simply not covering it. Collectively, we must seriously consider it. Deputy Howlin brought this Bill forward and we are open to changes, but this is absolutely necessary now.

This country has to lead by example in what is going on. This is a very dangerous period for the world and Europe and we have to lead by example. We have a big role in the UN Security Council. In fairness, the Taoiseach had a big meeting yesterday, but we also need to lead and show that we will not tolerate a country that behaves in this manner, namely, the Russian Federation, and that we will deal with it through the legislation I propose. Will the Taoiseach support this? Will he also outline when he will bring forward the motion to condemn Russia's actions of recent weeks?

I thank the Deputy for what he said. We will work with the Whips through the Business Committee or otherwise to consider the motion. We support the idea of a cross-party motion condemning Russia's actions. Yesterday, I met with the German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, who made a significant announcement in regard to Nord Stream. The approach all along by the European Union has been to work in concert and that unity is our strength.

It is a very dark moment for European history and the Continent. It is very serious. The sheer scale of the militarisation on the border of Ukraine is something we would have thought was a relic of the past, of the Second World War or previous wars. The whole ideological approach from President Putin, the idea that the Bolsheviks got it wrong and that Ukraine does not have a right to exist, has a chilling impact on small states like our own which enjoys 100 years of unbroken democracy. The era of states believing they have a sphere of influence and can control smaller neighbours and tell them they cannot join an organisation and must do this or that is over. We can never accept that. The most troubling aspect of the last couple of days has been the content of that speech. It harks back to a completely different era in a different century. It is very serious.

Since the cost of living crisis erupted and ordinary people face being crucified by energy and heating price hikes and rising accommodation and rental costs, we have sought to point out that this is not some natural phenomenon but that some people are benefiting from the misery and hardship that others are suffering. Last week we pointed out the enormous jump in profits for energy companies, electricity suppliers, oil companies and so on.

The latest evidence for the argument we are making, which the Government is determinedly ignoring, comes in the form of IRES REIT's accounts. It is the biggest landlord in the country, a property investment fund that saw its profits jump in 2021 by 15.8%, up to €67.5 million. Its investment properties grew by 6.7% up to €79.7 million. A figure I find really shocking is that its net rental income margin was 79%. The corporate landlords, the property investors, are absolutely creaming it on the back of the cost of living misery and absolutely obscene rents that are being charged to their tenants. We can just see it.

The daft.ie figures at the beginning of this month showed rents were up by 10.3% year on year for the last quarter. It had been 7% during the pandemic, already dramatic increases, rising as soon as the pandemic ends. In some parts of rural Ireland rents are up by as much as 22%. Average rents are now €1,524 a month. In south Dublin the average is €2,258 and across Dublin city it is €2,145. This leads directly to more people facing homelessness. During the pandemic when the Government was forced, under pressure, to introduce an eviction ban and a ban on further rent increases, the number of families and individuals in homeless accommodation dropped to about 7,000. It has steadily risen since those bans were lifted and is now up to 9,000. We do not have the figures yet for the beginning of 2020 but I can tell the House they are going to go up. We will be back towards the figure of 10,000 individuals and families who are homeless.

Will the Taoiseach finally do something about the profiteering and price gouging of landlords and introduce actual rent controls similar, for example, to those that have been introduced in the last two years in France, where they are now setting maximum reference rents above which landlords cannot go?

We have introduced rent restrictions in this country. I am just back from Berlin. The rent freeze there did not work at all; it had a completely dysfunctional impact on the market. We have to learn lessons. I read the daft.ie report. The fundamental point is that we need to build more houses. Building 20,000 houses a year is not enough. It is a very significant factor in where rents are. We have really to concentrate on getting houses built as fast as we possibly can. That means social and affordable houses and private development as well. Some of that will be private rental. The institutional funds represent about 7% of the rental market across the country, not the entirety of the market at all. As I have said repeatedly, of that 33,000 figure we expect 6,000 on an ongoing basis would be of a private rental nature but the bulk of it will be up to 10,000 social houses directly built through funding from the State through local authorities or approved social housing bodies. The biggest rent supports are through the housing assistance programme, HAP, and rental accommodation scheme, RAS, which are funded by the State and the taxpayer.

There is an enormous, unprecedented allocation of funding to get houses built in this country. Thankfully 31,000 homes were commenced in 2021, which really illustrates for the first time in quite a while that we are making progress. The pandemic and long lockdown did hit us and impact on construction and supply in 2020 and 2021 but we are catching up fast. The figure of 31,000 homes is the highest since 2008. We had about 20,400 completed in 2021 and the number of apartments completed increased by over 30%. We actually need that increase. We need a whole range of house and apartment types built if we are ever to get near the scale that we need to be at consistently over a ten-year period. There are times when I think people do not realise the scale of what is involved or the need to do what we have to do. About 46,000 homes were purchased in 2021, about 30% of which were bought by first-time buyers. There were nearly 40,000 planning permissions granted in the year to the third quarter of 2021. On the capacity of the industry, construction apprenticeship registrations in 2021 increased by over 40% compared to 2019. Employment in construction is back to pre-pandemic levels. Housing for All is working but it is going to take a number of years to get to where we want to be, unfortunately. Rent restrictions are in place; 2% or linked to the cost of living index.

Seriously, the Taoiseach's arguments are utterly threadbare. He mentioned HAP. I just told him rents in Dublin are over €2,000. The highest HAP payment anyone can get is €1,950. Someone looking for a HAP tenancy in a housing crisis might as well just walk up to the nearest homeless hostel. That is the reality of what is going on. The biggest fantasy the Taoiseach is peddling is that the Government is delivering additional social housing in any substantial numbers. In the first three quarters of last year, actual construction of new social housing by local authorities and approved housing bodies was 1,084 in the entire country. The Government is getting the rest from the same build-to-rent private developers who are creaming it and charging extortionate rents. They are not only charging extortionate rents to tenants; they are also crucifying the public coffers with the long-term leasing arrangements. The Government is not building the social housing.

The Taoiseach should just walk around Dublin, around my area, and look at all the cranes and apartment blocks. I guarantee him that virtually none of them is social housing. All the construction workers that should be building affordable and public housing on public land are actually building housing to make profits for property investors. That is why we have the housing crisis and the Taoiseach will do nothing about it.

The Deputy is wrong. The last number of housing projects that I opened were all social housing projects, completed. In the first quarter of last year we had a lockdown. The Deputy knows that. There was a full lockdown of construction.

Walk around the city. Check how many are public housing.

We are and we have introduced rent restrictions. We are going to develop cost rental houses also. In the rent pressure zones, we have capped rent increases at 2%.

Supply is the ultimate answer to this. We have to build houses of all types and we need all sectors involved in housing. The Deputy's problem is he does not believe the private sector should be involved at all. That is his ideological position. He is entitled to it-----

I just do not think the State should be facilitating its profiteering.

The Taoiseach's ideological position is responsible for the crisis.

-----but that will not guarantee housing at the scale we require. We need private builders to build houses. We need local authorities to build houses. They are doing so, and we have resourced them to do it. We need approved social housing bodies to build houses, and they are doing so to an increasing extent and to very high standards, as I have witnessed when opening a variety of schemes so far.

Zero council houses-----

We need to develop cost rental housing, which we are going to do, and continue to provide protections for renters, including in respect of indefinite duration.

In recent times, senior civil and public servants have been mired in controversy. The public purse is being used by those at the most senior level to enhance their own salaries and, in other cases, to advance policy initiatives the Government has not underwritten. We have seen these questionable practices in the appointment of the Secretary General of the Department of Health on an unjustifiable salary and the actions of the Office of the Planning Regulator in the application of policy other than that of the line Minister. There are many other examples.

In early January of this year, following a complaint in 2019, the Standards in Public Office Commission, SIPO, issued one of the most damning reports in its history. It exposed most inappropriate behaviour by Wexford County Council's chief executive, Tom Enright, and the then cathaoirleach, Fianna Fáil councillor Michael Sheehan. Mr. Enright was found to have used the weight of the public purse in an attempt to influence the editorial output of South East Radio, something you might see in Mother Russia. Within two days of the issuing of the report, the Fianna Fáil chair of Wexford County Council, Councillor Barbara-Anne Murphy, called a meeting to immediately push through a vote supporting the chief executive, ignoring the findings of the SIPO report, her own legal advice and established custom and practice for dealing with serious disciplinary matters concerning a chief executive. It was an action for which she herself should be sanctioned. The vote was controlled and rammed through by councillors of the two main parties, namely, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, the parties in government. They made a laughing stock of SIPO effectively by giving it the two fingers. SIPO's 376-page report had taken two years to compile. Other senior officials, including the county secretary and directors of services, made contact with councillors to impress upon them the importance of supporting the chief executive in a vote. Implicit in that contact was that the potholes and footpaths in councillors' areas would not be attended to if they did not support their man. This action should be investigated in its own right and for which those concerned should be sanctioned. As one junior official in Wexford County Council put it to me, these votes will cost the council money.

Do the Taoiseach and his party recognise the importance of SIPO and its findings as a mechanism for maintaining public confidence in the civil and public service? I believe the Taoiseach does. He mentioned corruption earlier. In that circumstance, what sanctions does he propose for councillors Sheehan and Murphy for aiding and abetting the chief executive in this debacle?

We are travelling into previously unvisited territory.

Absolutely.

I perfectly accept the validity of exploring issues around a SIPO report but I would have concerns about mentioning people who have not been mentioned heretofore and who are not here to defend themselves in any way.

It is all on the public record, having been reported in local newspapers.

All right. Just let us tread carefully.

First, there has always been a tradition in this House of not making allegations against people who are not here to defend themselves or respond. Second, my understanding is-----

The Taoiseach has never respected that.

The Taoiseach, without interruption.

The Deputy's case went the whole way to the Committee on Procedure and Privileges when she abused privilege in this House.

The Taoiseach might address the question.

She never apologised for her abuse of privilege.

I exercised my privilege.

She abused it. We need to adhere to those traditions because if people are not here to defend themselves or respond, it has to be taken into context.

In any event, to make a general comment on public servants, we are fortunate in this country to have high standards of public service across Departments. There is no doubt there are strengths and weaknesses, but overall Irish public servants have done well by the State since its foundation. That has been made manifest most recently in the public service's response to Covid-19, an unprecedented once-in-100-years pandemic, at national and local levels. Therefore, let us not tar everybody with the same brush regarding one particular issue, development, incident or action in one local authority. I believe in the Irish public service. I have my criticisms and frustrations, but fundamentally in respect of how this State is organised, we need a strong public service and to ensure it is adequately resourced and given the leadership it requires. That is fundamental to a parliamentary democracy. That is my view on that.

On local democracy, we delegate authority to local councils. They may not always decide on policies or issues we are happy with or agree with and we may disagree with actions taken. My understanding of the first council meeting is that councils are obliged under statute to convene a meeting after a SIPO report. I can check that, but that is my understanding. The first meeting would have been adjourned until a subsequent meeting. A SIPO report should be taken very seriously, of course, in respect of actions. With regard to a more general principle — I do not have the full background here — as far as I am concerned there has to be a very clear demarcation line between governments, be they local or national, and media. The independence of media is a central tenet of our democracy and should always be respected and protected.

Yes. I notice the Minister of State, Deputy Browne, gave the Taoiseach the information on the meeting. It is correct. A meeting was convened, and there was to be another within seven days. Even when an independent councillor voiced his opinion that he had not had sufficient time to consider the 376-page report, the council proceeded with the vote, against legal advice that it could be subject to judicial review.

Without a shadow of a doubt, the Taoiseach is a decent person and has the public interest at heart, even though he is well able to spin. I am not going to stand here and be lectured to on whether there is no accountability at local level. The reality is that if we do not have accountability at local level, we cannot have accountability anywhere else. The members in question are members of the Taoiseach's party. These are questionable actions by directors of services and the county secretary, in which case they actually garnered a vote, and that has to be addressed. This whole debacle has served no purpose other than to emasculate SIPO. Is there an answer to that? Can the Taoiseach tell me what the purpose of SIPO is if this is not going to be addressed? To me, it is a complete waste of the public's money if something that took two years for SIPO to compile took less than seven days for Wexford County Council, under a Fianna Fáil chair, to do nothing about.

There are many parties on that council; let us be clear about that.

The chair is a Fianna Fáil chair.

The SIPO report will have an impact and, I would put it to the Deputy, is already having an impact. When a report like that is published, even though it is specific to a particular action by a chief executive officer in a particular local authority, it has wider implications and ramifications for other chief executive officers in local authorities throughout the country.

Not if there is no sanction, Taoiseach.

Yes, it does. I would not agree with the Deputy. Not everyone is going to behave in the same way that one council does or one chief executive officer may do. Others will take note of what was laid down by SIPO and its findings regarding this issue. That is my view. It will have-----

The message is that we will all do what we like.

-----far-reaching impacts on the future behaviour of councils.

There was no impact. It made no difference. He got a standing ovation and a round of applause.

Deputy, will you let the Taoiseach respond?

Other councils will take a different view and take on board the SIPO report and its conclusions.

There cannot be any attempts to influence the content of any local radio discussion, debate or its treatment or coverage of any issue-----

That is what the report says.

Even if there are advertisements that emanate from the council and so on, that is not correct. It can never be used for that purpose by anybody. I am very clear about that.

But nothing was done.

Nothing about the flawed legal advice that was offered.

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