Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Labour) | Oireachtas source

It is important that everybody in this Chamber would realise that without taxpayers next week's budget would be impossible. Compliant taxpayers are the unsung heroes of this country. They pay for our nurses, gardaí, teachers and social welfare system, including pensions for older people. I would like to object to some of the rhetoric from Government sources in the past while regarding non-compliant taxpayers or those who avail of the tax exile system. A Fine Gael MEP has congratulated one tax exile on his supposed philanthropic donations to GAA clubs. This individual has decided that his money is not good enough to pay for teachers, nurses, gardaí and pension provisions in Ireland and has decided to reside overseas. We have a Minister of State who visited a convicted tax evader in prison and who made inappropriate advances to the Minister for Justice and Equality to intervene in the case. Now we have a Government that is reliant on the support of somebody with a criminal conviction for tax irregularities. I ask Fine Gael and the Government to realise that without people who do not avail of tax exile status, and are proud to pay their taxes, we would have no budget and we would have no capacity to pay for the public services that everybody in this country needs.

I would like to raise the issue of homelessness again. In particular, I refer to the disgusting suggestion that homeless people should be housed on a cruise ship docked on the quays of Dublin city. I am glad to here since the idea was - pardon the pun - floated that the Minister has come out and rejected the idea. The Government should do what the Fine Gael-Labour Party government did in 2011. When we realised that there was economic crisis, an Economic Management Council was established. The then Taoiseach, Tánaiste and Ministers for Finance and Public Expenditure and Reform met weekly to manage the economic crisis and found a way out of it. We are currently in a housing crisis. It has reached such a scale that it is time for the Government to take it as seriously as the economic crisis of a number of years ago and to form a housing management council comprising four the Taoiseach, Tánaiste and Ministers for Finance and Housing, Planning and Local Government. If this idea of housing homeless families on a boat is the best that Government representatives can come up with or defend on national media, they need to think differently about their strategies. Everybody in these Houses want the housing, rental and homelessness crises resolved. The establishment of a housing management council would be a practical measure. It would give some comfort to Oireachtas Members and the country that the Government was genuinely taking the matter seriously and were not sending out spokespeople to a defend disgusting suggestion to house people on boats instead of housing them in houses.