In recent days, two significant figures have indicated their intention to withdraw from public life, namely, Robert Mugabe and Deputy Gerry Adams. One has to respect Deputy Gerry Adams for the way in which he drew Provisional Sinn Féin away from the gun and violence, and in so doing he had the very difficult task of facing down the hard men in his own group.

Therefore, it was with some surprise and sadness I heard him refer to the late Martin McGuinness as a proud IRA man. There is nothing much to be proud of in the IRA's record. My friends in Sinn Féin in this House are among the best contributors to debate in the Seanad. They are quite remarkable. They are very hard-working, very balanced and very left wing, which I like. For them, the future must be to distance themselves from the gun. They are clearly capable of change.

I was sentenced to death by Sinn Féin or the provisional movement many years ago. I ignored it. I went round and interviewed Mr. Joe Cahill in its headquarters. Nothing happened or, at least if it did, as Brendan Behan said, they carried out the death sentence in absentia. They can change. They were violently homophobic 30 or 40 years ago. They were terrible. They have changed and become among the most prominent promoters of gay rights and I salute them for this. In this new generation of leaders, whoever takes over-----

Will Senator Norris go for the leadership?

No, I would not join Sinn Féin but I would support its very positive contribution to public life in Ireland. I welcome it and it is terrific, but I would just say it needs to disinfect itself from the violence of the past. The Protestant side was just as bad if not worse, but that situation needs to be addressed.

I am sure our Sinn Féin colleagues will take the Senator's advice on board.

Gabhaim buíochas le Seanadóir Norris as a chomhairle. I am sure we will bring it to the next Ard Comhairle meeting for discussion.

Often, when we raise housing issues, the Leader lambastes us with figures of allocations from Rebuilding Ireland and all the moneys being made available for housing. No doubt he will probably come back today once I have finished my piece. For me, the facts and figures on housing are how many houses have actually been built and how many people are in them.

Reports yesterday show that since the start of 2016, local authorities have built just 430 properties, and new analysis shows that local authorities are using just a fraction of the land they own to build social housing. It is estimated that local authorities throughout the country own more than 1,200 ha of land with the potential for almost 38,000 homes. I am particularly perturbed that at the bottom of the league once again are Galway City Council and Galway County Council, which built zero houses in the city and county in that time, even though we have massive waiting lists and it is a big issue. Our neighbours in Mayo are a little bit better as they built one house in that time.

It defies logic that we have local authorities sitting on banks of serviced land with the potential to build houses. The Leader tells us buckets of money are available but the local authorities are just not building houses. We have people ringing our offices every day of the week distraught because they have no homes to live in and they are being put into homelessness.

All the talk needs to stop and we need to see much more action. There is no point in Ministers shaking their heads. The Government is in charge here and needs to ensure these things happen.

I congratulate Galway Traveller Movement on organising an excellent presentation on Monday. It has started a new campaign on Traveller community accommodation, which is an absolute disgrace across the country. We had huge fanfare on 1 March when the then Taoiseach, Deputy Enda Kenny, recognised Traveller ethnicity and all the wonderful words around that. However, Monday's conference, which was attended by Peter McVerry, heard harrowing stories of the appalling conditions of Travellers in substandard illegal halting sites because of a lack of accommodation from local authorities, etc. I call for a debate on Traveller accommodation. I note only one politician bothered to attend that campaign launch and there are no prizes for guessing who that was.

Do tell us.

We need much more co-operation across the board on the matter and the general housing issue.

This morning, along with Senator Lombard and other members of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine, we launched a report on the future of the tillage sector. As was rightly said at the launch, this document is a starting point for debate and discussion on a sector that is in severe crisis. I ask the Leader to invite the Minister to the House so that we can initiate that debate by bringing the report before the House as soon as possible. As a number of speakers have said this morning, I would like on that occasion to have a debate as opposed to statements. I agree with what has been said; I do not believe we get the best value out of statements especially on issues of importance. It should be a question-and-answer session or a debate as opposed to statements.

The irony for the tillage industry is that, as we are all aware, the drinks industry has probably been the success story of the economy in the past ten years, yet the farmers who supply the malting barley for distilling and brewing are in major crisis. It is not that the sector is without money. It has the money, but it is not filtering down to the base supplier. Brexit is on the horizon, which gets plenty of air time in here, and inclement weather is very detrimental to the agriculture sector. Irrespective of Brexit and the inclement weather, however, this is a sector in crisis. Brexit will only compound that as has the weather over the past two years.

We need a debate on the matter and we need to look at the possibility of diversification. We need to look at fairness in the sector where the exorbitant amount of money made by the drinks industry is not filtering down to the suppliers. Climate change can also be incorporated into this sector. We have an ongoing debate on climate change. Farmers are prepared to produce grain on the island of Ireland if they can get a price for it. Rather than pay them the price, we are importing grain for feed and malt from as far away as Russia. One can only imagine the carbon footprint on a tonne of grain coming from Russia to Ireland even though our farmers are prepared to produce it if they can get a reasonable price for it.

I support my friend and colleague, Senator Ned O'Sullivan, in his call for a debate on tourism and particularly his concern regarding the British visitors about whom we are all concerned. Sadly, their numbers are down by about 6% at the moment. I believe the tourism authorities are very conscious of the issue. A few weeks ago, the Minister of State, Deputy Griffin, participated in a large-scale tourism promotion event in London with Niall Gibbons of Tourism Ireland and others. I believe it was very successful. It is good to hear that British visitors travel throughout the land because of connections through relatives and so on. Killarney has many connections. The Senator and I are familiar with Killarney House and its previous occupants, the Earls of Kenmare and Lord Castlerosse, who wrote the "Londoner's Log" in The Sunday Express.

We have many strengths to play to as regards British visitors. I accept the Senator's point that we need to use it more and we need to be seen to do more. I support the call for a debate in due course.

I thank my colleague, Senator Norris, for his lovely remarks. However, I must correct the record; it was actually Elisha McCallion, the MP for Foyle, who referred to Martin McGuinness as a proud IRA man. We are proud of Martin McGuinness in his entirety - all of him and everything he did in his lifetime. This building, Leinster House, has pictures depicting many proud IRA men and IRA women hanging on the walls. When we have a Fine Gael Taoiseach-----

They should be hanging from the walls.

When we have a Fine Gael Taoiseach, we have a proud IRA man in the Taoiseach's office. When we have a Fianna Fáil Taoiseach, we have a proud IRA man hanging in the office.

All rubbish.

It is important to point out that the IRA left the stage in 2005, thankfully down to much of the work of Deputy Adams and Martin McGuinness.