Mark Daly (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I speak in a personal capacity and as a Senator. For a Minister to say he is speaking in a personal capacity on an issue to do with his own Department defies belief and credibility. He needs to explain what he is doing.

Something else which needs to be explained is the fanciful figure-making represented by the recent pronouncements by the Government on house building. Lorcan Sirr was on "Morning Ireland" this morning and filleted the numbers, as well as the spin put on them by the Taoiseach's spin unit, which obviously has not gone out of existence. The Minister of State at the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government, Deputy Damien English, was in Cork last week and said the Government had built 7,000 houses. The cumulative figure for social housing from July 2016 to date was put at 2,592 which, less the total completed in 2016 of 652, gave a subtotal for 2017, including Part V houses, of 1,940. Without the Part V houses it was 3,000 and the total local authority and social housing build completed in 2017 was 1,640. One would have to have a PhD as Lorcan Sirr does to read the report. The report states in one place that Part V houses are not included but elsewhere states that they are included. The Government's report is lying to itself - quite an achievement by any Government. The Government has to get a handle on the facts before it can get a handle on the housing issue. At the moment, it is making up its own facts.

I wish to propose an amendment to the Order of Business, which is that we take No. 61, motion 14, on the Order Paper. The motion states, "That Seanad Éireann recognises the outstanding achievement of the Storm Lake Times Newspaper, Storm Lake, Iowa, winning the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing by its editor Mr. Art Cullen, whose ancestors came from Ireland."

This Saturday there is a memorial mass for Fr. Joseph Cullen, who was the last surviving son of the 1916 leaders. He was in Kilmainham Gaol the night before his father was executed. He was two and a half years of age. The last letter from his father told him, "My little man, be a priest if you can". Fr. Joseph ended up as a missionary priest in Hong Kong, where he served for over 60 years. I had the honour of sending him a birthday card on his 100th birthday and he wrote back to me. He said he had got a letter from the then Taoiseach, Deputy Enda Kenny, congratulating him on reaching his 100th birthday and one from Sinn Féin but he had only written back to Sinn Féin. On his 102nd birthday I organised two first class tickets for him to return to Ireland for the 100th anniversary of the Rising. I rang him up to ask him if he had got them and he said he had, but "too old". I told him to see how he felt the following year but he said it was not that he himself was too old. It was that his doctor was too old, at 85 years of age. He passed away at the honourable age of 104 and we should remember him and his family for their great sacrifice.