Before speaking to the Order of Business, I join colleagues in expressing tribute to Senator Jimmy Harte on the announcement of his resignation. On behalf of my Labour Party colleagues, I echo the warm sentiments expressed about Jimmy by the Leader and Senator Darragh O'Brien. Jimmy is well known and well loved by all of us. He has had a long and distinguished political career. He was first elected to the council in Letterkenny in 1994 and has since been very much a leading light in his community in Letterkenny. He is a keen sportsman, as all of us are very well aware. He ran many marathons. He was chairman at one time of Finn Harps Football Club and has played a range of different sports. As a Seanad colleague, he was an exemplary colleague and a true gentleman. I think all of us, on both sides of the House, were extremely shocked at his accident two years ago. We have been following his progress since then with keen interest. All of us wish him and his family, his wife, Mary, and their four children, the very best for his continued good health and full recovery and wish them the very best into the future. I wish to note that on his resignation today.

I welcome everyone back and ask the Leader if we might in early course have a debate on the dreadful humanitarian crisis arising from the migration of Syrian refugees towards the European Union and into EU countries. All of us have been shocked by the distressing images and reports of refugees on the borders of different EU countries. I am glad of and welcome the Government's announcement that Ireland will play a strong part in welcoming Syrian refugees here under resettlement and relocation programmes, but I would like us to have a debate in the Seanad on this issue. A number of us came together at a cross-party meeting on 10 September to discuss how Ireland can best respond. There are different considerations around resettlement and relocation as well as practical and logistical issues which we should debate in this House while we see the process moving on with the Government's task force and the NGO consultations. We should be as generous as possible towards people who are fleeing dreadful conflict in Syria.

I can inform colleagues that we considered the Fennelly commission report today at a meeting of the Joint Committee on Justice, Defence and Equality. Mr. Justice Fennelly's interim report was produced on foot of a request by the committee for an interim report on a number of issues. The committee will be writing to the Government seeking to have the interim report and the full report, when it comes out, brought within its remit for discussion at the committee.

I welcome the signing into law of the Marriage Equality Bill and the fact that we will see in a very short time, I hope, the first gay marriages taking place in Ireland.

I also echo the sentiments and best wishes to Senator Jimmy Harte on his retirement.

People are sleeping in tents in Tallaght. They are people who often through no fault of their own are not only without a home but are also without shelter. We have a shelterless crisis as well as a homelessness crisis. Reports this week are that 50 families a day are without emergency accommodation in south Dublin. We have a shelterless crisis in Tallaght and throughout the nation and the land, and in a culture where we have this extraordinary seanfhocal which says that we live in each other's shelter and shadow. There still is a little bit of that going on in Tallaght. I experienced it last week. Under the shelter of the oak, beech and chestnut trees alongside the parking lot of the priory in Tallaght village, not far from the famous Friar's Walk, a group of volunteers who call themselves VISIT set up tables, brought food and started to serve people who were shelterless and homeless that day. They have been doing this four times a week in the past year and the numbers they serve are growing. Ask them what they do when it rains or downpours. They say they walk over to the covered entrance to the priory itself. Why do these civicly minded, generous volunteers have to do this in the rain? Why do they have to do it at all? The narrative of Ireland's recovery rings hollow close to the Friar's Walk.

The Taoiseach said yesterday that the housing and homelessness crisis was not just a matter of money and I agree with him.

Not only have we not invested enough money - austerity politics was no excuse for that - we have not fixed the local, regional and national systems in order that our investments can pay off with shelter for everyone. The Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, Deputy Alan Kelly, said yesterday at the publication of the first report on Threshold's brilliant Dublin tenancy protection service - hats off to the leadership of Senator Aideen Hayden and her CEO, Bob Jordan - that rent increases were a moral issue. I agree with the Minister on that issue, too. It is a moral issue for all of us, not just the landlords. Will the Leader ask the Minister when his solutions or proposals to the rent increase crisis will be tabled and implemented? The people who are sleeping in tents in Tallaght want to know the answer to that qeustion, too.