First of all, I could not agree more with the Deputy in terms of the wonderful day we had on Sunday with the visit of Mark Carney and his wife Diana back to their home town of Aughagower. I pay tribute to Colette O'Toole and the entire community in Aughagower, including Fr. Tod and all involved, for the celebration of the mass there and the wonderful sense of community spirit which illustrates the strength of community spirit in Ireland - it is still very alive and well. There was a certain degree of pride that the grandson of one of their own was returning as Prime Minister of Canada and, in addition, strengthening also the political and economic links between Canada and Ireland and Canada and the European Union, and we will have more of that during the Irish Presidency of the European Union. On Westport, the Deputy was right to mention Rosaleen Heraty. The people of Mayo did themselves proud in terms of how they organised at community-based level and that was evident in the civic reception. I want to give a mention to Cuimsiú, which Chuck and Mairéad Dunford created, which facilitates special needs children participating in live traditional music. It was fantastic to witness. It was their own child coming back home in the car said to them, "When will I be playing in the Fleadh?" They went to Comhaltas and a Comhaltas branch in Mayo has started this. Now two or three Comhaltas branches are doing it, which is sending out a signal to the rest of the country and the world that we want Comhaltas branches ultimately trying to embrace this. They put on a show and performance which was heartwarming and fantastic, and their daughter, Hannah, led the way. Hannah has a wonderful personality and performed on a number of instruments and sang, etc. It was a wonderful experience. In terms of social housing income thresholds, I have spoken to the Minister, Deputy James Browne, and the Minister of State, Deputy John Cummins, and we have had discussions on this. Yesterday's announcement was very significant. The €1 billion announced by the Minister will unlock thousands of houses. I am in favour of increasing social housing income thresholds substantially and significantly. There are issues in terms of the coupling of that with housing assistance payments and so on, but we need to bite the bullet on this because working people need an opportunity to access social housing, particularly workers who will not be at a level that they can borrow. I said to the Department that there are all these traditional reasons we cannot do something but we did it in 2023 with the €5,000 increase. Family composition should be weighted more as well. If a family have two children or three children, there should be a higher weight to family composition and eligibility for a social house also. It is interesting there have been misleading articles and so on. Because we are nearly at 10,000 social houses a year being built-----

Sentiment score: 0.34

I will deal with that argument later.

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Indeed, I must pay tribute to Councillor Sean Carey as well for the leadership he gave to the council at the weekend. One of the challenges is that somebody could be on a list for four years, five years or even longer in cities and then an increase in income could suddenly take them out of the eligibility. We have to watch that as well. The Minister is examining it and will come back to us with his proposals on this. The Minister will come back to the House on that because there are many cases similar to what the Deputy articulated and illustrated. That is the general direction of travel that we want to go in as a Government.

Sentiment score: 0.15