I would keep going but, out of respect for my colleague, I will not.

Senators must be very clear about this. I looked at the Senator, and around the House, about five times and nobody raised their hand.

I was in a committee meeting

The Senator should be here every day for the Order of Business.

I am a committee member and I was at a meeting. We all attend other meetings. Last week, figures for homelessness rose above the 10,000 mark. According to the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government, 6,480 adults and 3,784 children were living in emergency accommodation in February. These figures included 1,707 families. The Minister said he was disappointed but disappointment is when something happens outside a person's control and it is not an appropriate response to what is an incredible rise in figures. The Minister should be mad and outraged and he should be finding solutions.

Rebuilding Ireland is not working, something I see in my own area of Carlow where homelessness is on the rise. Day in and day out, my heart breaks when I have another poor soul come to my office, broken, in tears and overwhelmed with disappointment because he or she has been passed over for a social house. I cannot tell such people why they were passed over because I do not know. There is no clear system for the public to know why or when a person will get their social house. When there is no system, there is no hope.

Last month, the United Nations condemned Ireland for what it called the financialisation of housing, accusing this Government of allowing multinational vulture funds to force tenants out of their own homes and to manipulate the market by buying up massive amounts of property at low cost and flipping them or charging hugely inflated rents. The report highlighted preferential tax laws and the weak tenant protections in our country, which I have raised in the Seanad and at committee meetings. On Monday, a Social Justice Ireland report stated that over 6,000 Irish people are living in substandard accommodation, which is unacceptable.

I ask the Leader to detail to this House what his response was to the letter he received from Leilani Farha, the UN special rapporteur, on the right to adequate housing. We were one of five countries to receive this letter and I understand she did not hold back on her criticism. I agree with her that we have no monitoring and no accountability mechanism. There is no transparency and no system to understand. In the end, the Government is failing.

I have already called on the Leader to respond. If anybody else wants to speak they should be here. I will reluctantly allow Senators Mullen, Conway-Walsh and Colm Burke to speak very briefly.

Is mór liom gur thug an Cathaoirleach an deis seo dom, go háirithe toisc go bhfuil ceist tábhachtach le plé agam inniu. Many of us have had New Zealand in our minds recently because of the appalling outrage of the murder of 50 people at the Al Noor Mosque and the Linwood Islamic Centre. It is appropriate to remember Ireland's affinity with New Zealand, on account of the emigration of our people to that country and similarities between the two countries in agriculture and the food industry. I learned recently that there are 600,000 people of Irish ancestry in that country, with 18,000 relocating from Ireland between 2011 and 2015 during the worst of the recession.

Perhaps because of that close affinity, I felt all the more shocked to hear of the case of an Irish family, the Suhinthan family, and its experience with the New Zealand authorities. Their mother, Nilani, is an IT consultant and the father a computer engineer. Unfortunately for Ireland, Nilani was headhunted for a high-paying job in New Zealand and the family decided to move there, as was their right.

She moved to Auckland in September on an interim visa and the intention was that the rest of the family would follow later. Preparing for that move has cost them approximately €15,000 to date. The New Zealand authorities issued residency permits to her, her husband and two of her three daughters but they were refused a permit for their third daughter, Bumikka, who is 15. Shockingly, the reason for this seems to be that she has Down's syndrome. As a result, the New Zealand authorities have told the family that she does not have "an acceptable standard of health" and that this would place demands on the health and education systems there. The family have made it clear that they do not expect the New Zealand state to fund any special health treatment or educational supports for their daughter and they have offered to fund that themselves but their appeal was refused in recent days and they are now in limbo with their family separated.

I accept, and I am sure the Leader would agree, that each country has the right to regulate its own immigration laws as it sees fit but, on the other hand, this is a situation where we have to ask what it says about a society that would welcome a highly-skilled couple with open arms and two of that couple's daughters but turn away their third daughter purely because she has Down's syndrome.

The New Zealand Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, in her speech at the Christchurch commemoration recently, stated:

Racism exists, but it is not welcome here. Assaults on faith and religion are not welcome here. Extremism in all its forms is not welcome here.

Listening to her speak and learning of the Suhinthan family's case, I am wondering if she could have added, "A child with Down's syndrome is not welcome here".

Does the Leader agree that the turning away of an Irish child from the borders of a country on such grounds is truly reprehensible and is not reflective of a tolerant society, if that is the reason? Can we have the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade in the House to see whether the Government has examined this issue closely and whether it has anything to say or do in what must be a very upsetting situation for the Suhinthan family?

That is the information I have based on the facts as best I know them and have received them. It is a truly disturbing situation if it is as I have said. I would be delighted to be reassured if there is any positive development in that case or if I have misunderstood any aspect of it but, sadly, on the basis of all the reports I have read, I do not believe that I have. It is a disturbing situation.

In dealing with the housing issue one of the factors that has not been dealt with is the number of vacant houses. I was in an area in recent days where I was told by residents that a three bedroom semi-detached house has been vacant for seven years. The owner owns a number of other properties and it is now not profitable for that person to let the house. I do not understand the reason for that but that person is not paying any additional tax by leaving the house vacant. At the same time, he or she is not losing any money because the value continues to increase. The issue of how we deal with vacant properties needs to be examined. Some properties are vacant for genuine reasons - people may be in nursing homes or whatever - but in respect of a large number of them, people are waiting for property prices to rise.

Allowing companies to come in and buy large lots of apartments needs to change. That policy needs to be examined because at the time of the change of Government in 2011 personal borrowing amounted to more than €200 billion. That figure is now down to €150 billion. In fact, the amount of personal savings exceeds the amount of personal borrowing. There is no excuse for allowing large companies to have a free-for-all in respect of acquiring properties because they can outbid everyone else. That should be looked at with a view to a change in the regulation and in the legislation.

I keep making the point that there is a cohort of people who do not qualify for local authority loans or to borrow from banks and who will continue to have to rent. They need security of tenure and the only way of doing that is to create a system of 20-year leases, with a five-year rent review and the tenants being responsible for the upkeep and maintenance of the apartment or the house. We need to move on that and it is something we should examine.

I welcome the decision by Clúid and Cork City Council to buy 75 completed apartments in the past week.

It is a welcome development on Bachelor's Quay in Cork city. It was a good decision by Clúid Housing, Cork City Council, and the Minister and the Department to provide the funding for that project to go ahead, and I hope that all the properties will be occupied within the next three months. It would be welcome to have a debate to deal with a number of issues that have been raised in a constructive manner rather than engaging in the blame game that often takes place in the House.

I appreciate the Cathaoirleach allowing me to contribute, given that I was delayed at the meeting of the Joint Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach, where we were carrying out scrutiny of the No Consent, No Sale Bill 2019 and trying to convince the Central Bank and the Department of Finance that mortgage holders need to be protected and that our economy and society need to be protected from vulture funds.

I commend the East Mayo Anglers' Association and Inland Fisheries Ireland on the wonderful facility that has been developed on the River Moy to allow people with disabilities to access the river and use it for fishing. I visited it last Friday and I encourage all Senators to do likewise if they are in County Mayo because it is a model of excellence, inclusion and everything else for such facilities. It has done an excellent job, on which I commend the committee and everyone involved.

Given that it is World Autism Day, I commend my colleagues, Deputies Funchion and Ó Caoláin, for the work they have done on the motion that will come before the Dáil tonight, and I thank all the families, particularly those in County Mayo, who contributed to making the motion what it is. I ask all colleagues to support its call for an all-party Oireachtas committee on autism to be set up in the immediate term and for the committee to be tasked with developing and publishing a comprehensive autism empowerment strategy within six months. It also calls for the committee to be mandated to hear directly from autistic people and their families. While I acknowledge Senator Reilly's Bill, which needs to be progressed through the Houses, without an autism strategy we will not tackle the issue of autism in the way in we need to.