David Norris (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I raised the question of Hinkley Point in a major debate in Parliament several years ago and I strongly support the views of Senator Grace O'Sullivan on the subject. On the sale of 20,000 mortgages to vulture funds, I wonder if people have forgotten that "eviction" is a dirty word in this country. It is unconscionable that a Government would collaborate in any way in the selling out of the people of Ireland to foreign mercenaries, which is basically what is happening. Not only did these monstrous groups avoid paying tax they also, as Senator Butler pointed out, landed the taxpayer with the costs of rehousing people, leading to the laughable situation where the Irish taxpayer is paying for evictions. It is something we need to look at. The National Housing Co-Operative Bill is on the Order Paper and I gather Deputy John McGuinness will be introducing a revised version. It is something we must face. We have to face down the Department of Finance, which has behaved in an appalling manner in this situation, and the ECB. It is a moral outrage that the ECB should be pushing to have Irish people evicted from their homes as these are the blackguards who got us into this mess by forcing us to buy out bondholders at 100% when they were sold at 5% or 10%.

A group of Senators from different groups had a very positive meeting this afternoon about the decision of RTÉ to cease terrestrial broadcasting of political commentary programmes such as "Oireachtas Report" and move it all online. In a country which has a very patchy broadband network, this is ridiculous. RTÉ should be reminded that it is a public service broadcaster and if it treated any other programme in the way it treats "Oireachtas Report", it would have virtually no people watching. We will be having another meeting next week and it it hoped to invite RTÉ to send a representative. It would be very good if Seanad Éireann could show a united front in regard to this. We should not migrate from terrestrial broadcasting but should include online broadcasting as part of the service. If we can stick together on this we can get somewhere. We faced RTÉ down on the attempted cessation of long-wave transmission, which is of such benefit to elderly Irish people in England.