Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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Yesterday's Supreme Court decision has serious consequences for the protection of young girls. Today, it is not illegal for a man to have consensual sex with a girl under 15 years of age. This is a grave situation and requires action by the House. As a result of the ruling that section 1(1) of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1935 is unconstitutional, it is possible that people in jail for having sex with girls under 15 may be able to have their convictions struck down. There were 54 cases of statutory rape in recent years, raising the possibility of convicted sex offenders applying to have their names removed from the sex offenders register, which was put in place to protect young people.

The Government had fair warning of this. The Law Reform Commission recommended a change in this legislation as far back as 1990. We live in an Ireland that is very different from the Ireland of 1935, when this legislation was enacted. This is a far more dangerous country for young people in a society where drinking among the young has reached epidemic proportions and civility is absent in many areas. Protection of our young people must be a priority for legislators.

What urgent response will the Government make? What is the Taoiseach's view of the implications for those on the sex offenders register? Does the Government have a view on successful appeals to previous convictions arising from the judgment?

Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)
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This is an urgent and important matter, and in the absence of clear law, we must deal with it as speedily as possible. The Attorney General and the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform have been working on that last night and this morning. We must examine all aspects of it, including previous discussions on this, the 1990 Law Reform Commission report and the 1997 report. The judgment of 23 May has struck down the law under which sexual intercourse with an underage girl is an offence of strict liability, in other words, one where there is no defence of mistake as to age. The Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform is consulting the Attorney General's office on the implications of this and the scope and timing of amending legislation that would meet the terms of that judgment. We are examining the complexities and legal points of this but we must take into account all aspects. There is no return to law that has been struck down and we must bring in new legislation.

Deputy Kenny mentioned the 1990 report, to which I referred. The Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform published a discussion paper about the law on sexual offences in 1998. It addressed matters such as the age of consent and the defence of mistake as to age. The majority view of those who gave views on that paper was that no change should take place. The discussion paper led directly to the drafting and enacting of the Sex Offenders Act. Other legislation dealing with sexual offences is at an advanced stage of preparation in the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform.

Deputy Kenny referred to those who are in prison for such offences. The Irish Prison Service has been checking records and warrants from the court with regard to those in jail as a result of convictions for unlawful carnal knowledge and we hope to have a clear picture of this by lunchtime.

Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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This side of the House will be more than willing to facilitate whatever action the Government deems appropriate to respond to the Supreme Court ruling. We are dancing at the crossroads here and people will pay the price. This is an arcane law that belongs in the last century. I agree that there is no return to it. I am sure all parties will facilitate the introduction of new and urgent legislation. The question of young boys was overlooked in the 1935 legislation. The Taoiseach's response referred to examination of all aspects. I assume the provision regarding young boys will also be considered, as will the section dealing with 15 to 17 year old girls, which is equally open to challenge and might also be struck down. What is the Taoiseach's view? Will all aspects of the legislation be taken into account to deal with today's much more complex society? I consider this an absolute priority to protect young people, and I will support the Government in taking urgent action to deal with a serious lacuna in the law.

Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)
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I appreciate the support of Deputy Kenny and the Fine Gael Party in this matter. Like many laws, this law has been in place for three quarters of a century. Looking over the sections last night and this morning, I saw that it was framed for a very different society and age when people did not consider issues that we would all consider the norm today. While the point is very clear, the one raised by the Deputy and many others must be considered.

We must look back at what was said in 1990 and 1998. It is interesting that, when people examined the issue eight years ago, not 75 years ago, they saw no requirement for change. I am not sure why that was so or whether it was felt that it opened up a broad range of other complex issues. I think that may have been the case. In retrospect, looking at the judgment, one sees that it left something open, but we must ask ourselves what are the other ramifications. We must consider that urgently, and the Deputy mentioned some of those points.

The stark conclusion is that there can be no return to a law that has been struck down. In that case, there is no law, and we must move quickly to address that. Yesterday's judgment has highlighted that, regarding underage girls, where there is strict liability, there is no defence of mistake. I understand from the briefing I received this morning that any case would have to be taken individually. There can be no blanket cover for other cases, such as those of people in jail or on the sex offenders' register. It is not the case that people can walk free, but the judgment will obviously be examined so it is important that we move quickly in this case.

Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)
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Perhaps the Taoiseach will set out the Government response to the report by the Comptroller and Auditor General on housing rent supplement. He will know that the cost to the taxpayer of housing rent supplement went from €151 million in 2000 to €369 million this year. Whereas that is very bad value for the taxpayer, it is far more serious for the 60,000 people on rent supplement who cannot enter full-time work. This is a pot of gold for the landlords. In very many cases, it provides a bounty worth tens of millions to those already the beneficiaries of tax breaks to build the apartments that they now rent out. Once one is on housing rent supplement, one cannot enter the workforce, and that is surely the biggest poverty limbo created by this scheme. The Minister has made reforming comments at his usual Sunday afternoon press conferences, with some of which I agree. However, I have not yet seen the detail of any of those reforms.

The crisis is created by the absence of public authority housing. The Government has contrived to transfer its social housing needs to the private rented sector for the same reason. Taking public authority and voluntary social housing, approximately 6,500 units are being realised per year. That goes nowhere near meeting existing need. The cloud hanging over negotiations for a new social contract reminds one of the commitment made over three years ago to produce 10,000 affordable houses under Sustaining Progress, the social contract now expiring. That has not happened, and the reason that so many young women find themselves in such conditions is that they cannot afford a mortgage or get a public authority house.

My colleague, Deputy Gilmore, has been hammering away at this issue for years. On a recent Adjournment debate, he raised the issue of a young woman with three children who was paying rent of €1,200 per month. When she got married to someone earning €505 in a low-paid job, they immediately lost the €300 per week rent supplement, leaving them with €205 to live on, worse off than before their marriage.

The system is not working, but instead producing a social and poverty limbo. The Comptroller and Auditor General now bears out the arguments that have been made by Deputy Gilmore in this House for some time. I would like to hear the Taoiseach's response.

Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)
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Deputy Rabbitte's question concerns the Comptroller and Auditor General's value for money examination, which was undertaken to determine the factors that gave rise to the rapid increase in expenditure on rent supplement between 2000 and 2005, to establish whether the Department had managed the scheme with due regard to economy during that period and to review the roles of the Department of Social and Family Affairs and the HSE in planning, managing and operating the rent supplement scheme. Rent supplement is administered by the Health Service Executive's department of community service on behalf of the Department. It is viewed as a welfare safety net for those with short-term income problems.

The main finding, of which Deputy Rabbitte will be aware, was that recipient numbers have increased from 42,700 to 60,000. The increase in numbers claiming and in average rent supplement are the main factors in the cost increase. Single parents make up a large, but not the only, element in that. The point was made that the Department must capture and report data allowing for informed analysis, and the Department has spelt out its reply. It has been suggested that it did not adjust rent limits downwards when rents were falling, but there is no evidence to support that. The Department froze rent limits in 2002. Together with subsequent measures, that has had a stabilising effect on rent limits in the relevant market sector.

The potential loss of rent supplement would act as a deterrent to taking up employment, the point that Deputy Rabbitte has highlighted. My response is that substantial measures have been taken to remove possible disincentives. We have introduced an improvement disregard of almost €200 and the tapered withdrawal of benefits as earnings increase. The Minister has stated his intention to continue that as it has been very helpful for those who wish to work. Deputy Rabbitte's points were more relevant to the previous situation when there was neither a disregard nor tapering. As in all such issues, the more one improves matters, the more people will have the opportunity to work. There are employment supports and special retention arrangements for those taking up employment, and those are all good. In a recent report, the Minister spelled out other areas in which he felt these issues should be examined, and those are matters for the Department in its budgetary exercise. However, there have been a number of improvements.

The Comptroller and Auditor General's other conclusion was that rent supplement had evolved from short-term support to major social housing assistance programmes, a point also made by Deputy Rabbitte. That is being addressed under the rent assistance scheme. Local authorities now have a specific responsibility to meet the long-term housing needs of this category on the basis of a phased implementation. When fully implemented, the arrangements will allow rent supplement to return to its original objective of short-term income support.

On the social housing issue, it is true that somewhere between 6,000 and 7,000 local authority houses will be started or acquired this year. The needs of approximately 14,000 households will be met from the range of social and affordable housing schemes. The provision for social and affordable housing this year is more than €2 billion. That is more than double the expenditure for the first year into which this report looked. This increase of €1.4 billion in Exchequer provision is an increase of 13% this year, so it is incorrect to state substantial resources are not being provided.

The Government has honoured its commitment in social partnership to make available during the course of the programme sites from the State's holding of 10,000 units. We have surpassed that. As I pointed out yesterday, the houses are under construction. It was never the case that they would all be built within the three-year period. Perhaps the House wants to set aside emergency legislation and ignore zoning and planning. It takes a developer six years to follow the process. Nobody in the trade union movement believed it would be done in under three years.

Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)
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This crisis has arisen because of the rate of increase in house prices and the low output of social housing. Those are the twin causes so, therefore, it is part of the same problem. The output of public authority houses is now lower than in the mid-1970s. The Minister neutered Part V and, as a result, we now have approximately 4% of achievable affordable houses under that scheme. Under the savage 16 cuts made, the Government rowed back on many of the back-to-work measures to facilitate people entering the workforce. When the Taoiseach talks about the disregard, it is virtually meaningless in the context of a minimum wage which provides a basic subsistence rate per hour.

That €1.6 billion to landlords would have built 6,000 or 7,000 local authority houses. What we have had under Fianna Fáil is landlords benefitting from this pot of gold while the Taoiseach tells people they can live on sites. These 60,000 people cannot live on the sites which have been assembled over the past three or four years. They thought they were getting houses and not sites.

Jim O'Keeffe (Cork South West, Fine Gael)
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They could put up tents.

Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)
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At the rate of building, more people are being forced into private rented accommodation. Even though they are capable and willing to go out to work, they cannot do so because of the impediments in the scheme. That is the issue and there is no point trying to kerfuffle or obfuscate it. I would like to hear from the Taoiseach or the Minister in his next press briefing not an analysis of the problem, on which we seemed to be broadly agreed, but what is going to be done about it.

Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)
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The Minister for Social and Family Affairs has set out those issues, although Deputy Rabbitte might not like some of them. Substantial measures have already been taken to improve possible disincentives to allow people who want to work and are in receipt of rent supplements to do so. The Minister has improved income disregards. One cannot simply ignore them and have a situation where a person on any income can get a rent subsidy. The Minister has correctly improved the disregards. He would like to go higher than €200 over a period. He has tapered the withdrawal of benefits as earnings increase, which is the correct way to deal with this issue. We have given employment supports and provided special retention arrangements for those taking up employment.

In my world, one needs a site before one can build a house. I am not sure how one could do so otherwise. The State has done something which has not been done previously and certainly not since the 1930s. We have made available sites in the ownership of the State, including health board and departmental property, including Department of Defence property, so that we can provide affordable housing. Many of those houses are coming on stream, as are the Part V arrangements.

Comparing the situation with that in the 1970s shows how things have moved. At that time, proportionately, we were building more social housing.

Michael D Higgins (Galway West, Labour)
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Some 20,000 houses per year.

Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)
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The reason we were doing so was that people were not working and were living in poverty, which they are not living in today. We are now building four times more houses than in the 1970s. Through a range of schemes, including social and affordable housing schemes, the shared ownership scheme and the Part V scheme, people are able to purchase their own homes even when they are on lower incomes. That has been proved in the figures each year.

This year we will spend €2 billion on social housing for those people who totally depend on it. That is a sizeable support of taxpayers' money to social housing which will help the needs of 14,000 households. The figure over the three-year period, as set out by the Minister, is of the order of 15,000 units of affordable housing between 2006 and 2008. These are substantial figures.

Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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This day 15 years ago Donegal county councillor, Eddie Fullerton, a member of Sinn Féin, was shot dead in his home in Buncrana. Yesterday, Ken Barrett, the only person convicted of the murder of Pat Finucane, was released after three years' imprisonment and whisked away by the British Ministry of Defence to a secret location outside Ireland. Last Sunday marked the 12th anniversary of the shooting dead of Martin Doherty as he courageously prevented the bombing of the Widow Scallan's pub in nearby Pearse Street. Last week marked the 32nd anniversary of the Dublin and Monaghan bombings of 1974 when 33 people were killed.

Does the Taoiseach accept that, in all these cases, it is widely accepted that the perpetrators were acting as agents of the British armed forces in the Six Counties? Does he recall that, in March of this year, this House unanimously passed a resolution calling on the British Government of Tony Blair to establish a full independent public inquiry into the murder of Pat Finucane and that, before the debate even commenced, the Northern Ireland Office, so-called, issued a statement describing the resolution and the debate as flawed and misleading?

What sanctions does the Taoiseach intend to apply to the British Government for its dogged refusal to establish a full independent public inquiry into the murder of Pat Finuncane, recognising that it has rejected the unanimous resolution of this House and that the British Prime Minister has clearly rejected the Taoiseach's repeated calls for such an inquiry? Will the Taoiseach seek a special summit between himself and the British Prime Minister focusing solely on the issue of collusion and not as an item on a wider agenda, thereby helping to bring full international attention on this important issue?

What steps is the Taoiseach prepared to take in this jurisdiction to establish truth and justice about collusion? Will he establish a full public inquiry into the Dublin and Monaghan bombings as called for by Justice for the Forgotten? Will he establish a full public inquiry into the case of Eddie Fullerton as called for by his family, including by his late son Albert Fullerton?

Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)
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All these cases were part of, or were associated with, the Troubles and they are all sad. In the time available, I will not be able to go through each one. In regard to the central point about the Finucane case, Mr. Barrett was released yesterday after serving less than four years, under the terms of the early release scheme under the 1998 Agreement for all prisoners who had been involved in various atrocities in Northern Ireland. An independent board considers these cases and decides who is to be released, as in this case. It is hard for Geraldine Finucane and her family to accept this, as it is for all the affected families to see people released under this scheme. The board acted consistently. It is independent and it is a matter for the board to decide on these cases.

We agreed after discussion in Weston Park some years ago that a series of cases representative of some of the terrible atrocities in Northern Ireland between the late 1960s and the late 1990s would be examined by a tribunal mechanism. It took some time to find an international judge but Mr. Justice Peter Cory of the Canadian Supreme Court accepted the task, and reported. He deemed that we would have to inquire into certain cases in our jurisdiction and we have moved on those under the terms he set out. He also identified cases with which the British Government should deal.

The British Government has set up a different type of inquiry from that we propose. We have protested continuously about that. I have referred to it in the United States whose President I asked to raise it with the British Government. I have raised it in the European context. It is well known internationally, and legal and media friends of Geraldine Finucane have lobbied and placed advertisements in the international press presenting that case.

There is no doubt that the British Government is determined not to hold an examination that will bring members of MI5 and MI6, and of the security machinery into the public light. The government has made its position clear and that is not likely to change. This is not a question of sanctions. We continue to disagree and have stated that we will not co-operate with the British Government on this, as Geraldine Finucane will not. We continue to support her as this and all Irish Governments have done since the late 1980s. We continue to press for the full inquiry. We asked for an independent inquiry such as we held in the Buchanan and other cases. As long as the British Government rejects that we will have a difference with it.

Mr. Patrick MacEntee SC is examining the issues considered by the sub-committee of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Justice, Equality, Defence and Women's Rights, in respect of the Dublin-Monaghan bombings and the question of collusion. The British Government is supporting him in his questions and investigations proceeding from the work undertaken by Mr. Justice Liam Hamilton and by Mr. Justice Barron. That work continues.

Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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Will the Taoiseach join me in acknowledging that the Finucane family has not objected to the release of Mr. Barrett under the Good Friday Agreement but rather has stated that he was a British agent who was protected at every stage? Clearly, a deal was done and a guilty plea entered into, which prevented the full truth from emerging. It was an exercise in ensuring that the role of the British forces in the murder of Pat Finucane remained behind a dark screen.

The same happened with the other British agent, Brian Nelson, who was also involved in the murder of Pat Finucane. British collusion is ongoing. Does the Taoiseach not recognise that the British continue to protect their agents and there is a bounden responsibility on him not simply to accept that there is a difference between himself and the British Prime Minister, but to take up the gauntlet in the interests of the Finucane family and of truth and justice? Will he not seek a summit with the Prime Minister that focuses on the issue of collusion such as we have proposed time and again? It is not enough to let Tony Blair off the hook. He must be forced, in the full glare of the international media, to face this issue directly with the Taoiseach.

We are confident the Taoiseach will put the case but we ask that he seize the moment and put the British Prime Minister in the dock on this issue to prise from him an agreement to set up the full independent public inquiry for which the Finucane family has called, and which it deserves. Will the Taoiseach internationalise this call and bring it before the European Union and the United Nations? There are steps he can take.

Will he press ahead with the plan and proposals in respect of the Dublin-Monaghan bombings as presented by Justice for the Forgotten? On this day, 15 years after Eddie Fullerton's cruel murder, I ask the Taoiseach to heed the appeal of the Fullerton family to establish a full public inquiry into the murder of an elected representative.

Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)
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The Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform has been in correspondence regarding the late Eddie Fullerton, a councillor in Donegal, whom I knew.

It is correct to say Geraldine Finucane and the family accept the release of prisoners, as does every other family. We support the Finucane family's call for a full inquiry. The family does not lack international or Government support. Likewise, it has the support of this House, as was shown in March, and that of people, at the highest level who take an interest in Irish affairs in Canada, Australia and America. The British Government has not acceded to the form of inquiry that we sought. We will continue our effort, and the work of Mr. MacEntee SC will continue on the issue of collusion and the other issues arising from the reports of this House on the Dublin-Monaghan bombings.

Deputy Ó Caoláin states the obvious in respect of the difficulties surrounding agents and collusion. It is clear, without going on at length about it, that we have seen agents on all sides, including the loyalist side. We debated the role of agents and all the other issues here recently and Denis Donaldson was unfortunately murdered for his role. There is no doubt that agents working for anyone and everyone were all over the place during the Troubles. People are reluctant to give all the information on these issues and that is probably behind the British Government's refusal to inquire into them. We will, however, continue to press for information and see how far we can get.

Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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What about the summit?

Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)
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We will continue to work on this. I assure the House that we will maintain our consistent efforts to highlight, and fight for, the case of the Finucane family, ably led by Geraldine Finucane and her sons.