Hear, hear.

Sentiment score: 0.00

The Minister of State should direct his remarks to the people in the Gallery.

Sentiment score: 0.00

No, the Minister of State do not.

Sentiment score: -0.30

The absolute neck of the Minister of State reading out that diatribe. He should have addressed his remarks to the people in the Gallery but he would be ashamed. He could not even look them in the face. My God, this makes me so angry. He is dragging people back to tenements. My mam and dad were born in tenement housing in the city centre in Dublin and they left, they moved to the suburbs so that they could make a better life for themselves and the slums were cleared. That is not good enough for Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil. They want to bring the slums back to Dublin city. Shame on the Minister of State, shame on him. Nothing that he read out in his script will give comfort to any person up in that Gallery that he is listening, that he understands, that he gives - I am not even going to say it because I am better than that. I want to talk very briefly about a lady who commented on a Dublin Live article on the conditions that she is living in. She is five months pregnant. Her home is overcrowded and no matter what she does, she cannot win the fight with the mould. She cannot buy anything for her baby because she knows that by the time the child is born, the stuff is going to be covered in mould. Imagine that when you are planning to bring a lovely newborn baby back to your place. Imagine that you cannot buy anything, not a Babygro, not a Moses basket, nothing for the child, because you know by the child comes home, by the time you bring your little baby home to your overcrowded, draughty, damp flat, the stuff is going to be covered in mould. She lies in bed every night, five months pregnant, terrified because of what she is breathing in, and worries that it is going to harm her and her baby. Imagine how she feels when the Lord Mayor of Dublin votes to jack up her rent five minutes before he hops on a plane to head off to California. She is trying to wipe the mould off the walls and she is listening to him tell her she has to pay more rent, that she cannot move, she must endure those conditions, and that this is the place she is going to have to bring her baby home to. Imagine listening to that, five minutes before he hopped on a plane and headed off on a first-class flight to California. The people in the flats are house-proud. If the Minister of State visited the flats, he would see that. He has been invited by Deputy McDonald to go to her constituency and see the conditions. He is their landlord. There are plenty of private landlords sitting on the Government benches but he is their landlord. If this was private renting, the landlord would not get away with it. It is getting away with it because it is the Government and it should be ashamed of itself.

Sentiment score: -0.08