Regina Doherty (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will arrange the debate in the next couple of weeks and I hope we will do that.

Senator Murphy raised an issue that was raised at our parliamentary party meeting last night. Maybe the momentum has not grown because people are suffering from the cost-of-living crisis on top of their mortgage costs or maybe it is due to the fact that fixed-rate mortgages or interest rates generally in Ireland have not been impacted upon quite the same as other European countries, but by all means it will. One of my colleagues mentioned last night that they know someone whose mortgage has increased by more than €1,000. I do not know any family who could be expected to take such an increase on the chin and carry on, especially when the cost of everything else has increased. It is something we need to debate, but I will certainly ask the Leader to draft a letter to the Central Bank raising our concerns. What concerns me are the statements by the Governor of the Central Bank in recent weeks that there is nothing to see here and we should just carry on and expect it. I do not think we can expect people to suck it up when mortgage rates could probably increase by anything between 40% and 50% due to the increases from 2.6% or 2.8%, which is currently the average here, to anything between 4% and 5%, which would be catastrophic for some families. I thank the Senator for raising the matter.

Senator Boyhan spoke about mother and baby homes. The debate was quite difficult to listen to last night because the concerns that have been raised by individuals, their families and their supporters are very real. That is notwithstanding that the current offering goes beyond what the commission that conducted the investigation offered or proposed to offer. There are still some queries to be debated and we will do that in the House when it comes. I thank the Senator for raising the issue.

What Senator Seery Kearney raised is startling and it is not unique to Drimnagh, Dublin City Council or any other council. We have councils that receive enormous development levies in particular areas and those moneys are spent in other areas. Senator Keogan also knows this to be true. It is not good enough. The question of holding local authorities to account at the Committee of Public Accounts or at any other committee has been raised on numerous occasions and it is not viable, apparently. We therefore have local authorities that are not accountable to anybody other than their own board, which is the elected county councillors. Either they do not agree in such large numbers or, as we know, local areas only have a smaller number of councillors on local area committees than the wider council.There is definitely something not right, and we definitely have areas where communities have had to take very large developments, maybe not as openly or willingly as they would have liked. They have to take them yet the spoils of those benefits go somewhere else, and it is not right. I will raise the matter with the Minister and maybe ask him to come here for a debate to see what we can do to hold the developers more accountable or if we can put directives into the rules relating to the Local Government Act to make sure there is an equality of distribution of rates once the council accepts them through the development.

I will ask for a full debate on the matter Senator Clonan raised. It is not scheduled for next week because we did not know whether we would have all the documents from the Department of Health next week, but it will certainly be scheduled for the week after. As for the disability payments, sometimes I think I cannot be shocked any more by some of the things we uncover, but I am so shocked that a memo that was not even brought to the Cabinet for approval could somehow have become policy in the Department of Social Protection. Having been in that Department for so many years, I am shocked to my core that we would have treated people in such a vulnerable situation in this way simply because we thought the State was paying for their keep in some other congregated setting. I do not know who in the Department leaked the documents or who the whistleblowers are, but they are certainly bringing to bear information that we, as a society, absolutely need to know, as well as recompense. I am very pleased that the Taoiseach yesterday said unequivocally that there needs to be redress in respect of the disability payments and that we need to find out exactly who these people are and make sure they are compensated. More importantly, however-----