Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am just trying to be helpful to the Senator. Amendments Nos. 71, 72, 81, 94, 106, 111 and 150 were accepted. Perhaps not all of them were Deputy Pringle's, however, a number of them were and his name was on a number of them. I welcomed his engagement on it, in fairness. It is not a criticism. It just shows that we accepted amendments in the Dáil and I would expect that if there are reasonable amendments that we can work in without delaying the enactment of the legislation, we will absolutely be very open to doing so.

On the matters raised by the joint Oireachtas committee, officials responded in detail to it last Friday on the matters raised. That is a matter of public record. I would expect Senators will make themselves au faitwith the contents of that response from my Department to the joint Oireachtas committee.

We moved a very long way. Why are we doing this? We are doing this to help families get their lives back on track. I visited homes affected and have spoken to homeowners who are affected. Government does not want to delay on this or is not in any way trying to put hurdles in place to stop people getting their homes done. If anything, we are doing the very opposite. We are actually recognising where the deficiencies were with the original scheme and addressing each and every one of them, while absolutely leaving it open. I said in my opening remarks, and it is a matter of record, that should other issues come to pass, they will be included in the scheme. There is no question about that. If some of the Senators opposite want to be honest with themselves, they should have a look at the changes made and at what I said.

I do not think anyone wants to delay the establishment of the new scheme that needs to be underpinned by primary legislation. Remember, the last scheme was set up by regulation only. It was actually on an unsound footing. On Wednesday if anyone wants to argue, as they are entitled to and I respect that, that we should put off this scheme, I would be very interested to hear what the basis for those arguments are, because opposing it means this scheme will not be put in place. It means we will go back to January 2020 and put off helping people fix their homes and lives.

I thank all Senators for their contributions, particularly for the constructive contributions from those in opposition and, specifically, from my colleagues in government. I look forward to engaging further with Senators on Committee Stage later in the week.