As others have stated, a protest will be held outside the gates of Leinster House between the hours of 12 p.m. and 2 p.m. by supporters of the Cuisle residential facility in County Roscommon. I raised this issue last week and I asked that the Minister for Health get involved. I understand the Minister met the group to see if a common-sense resolution can be found. Not only are there people travelling here today from Roscommon where the facility is located, there are also people travelling from different parts of Monaghan and Cavan. I applaud them for doing so. It is regrettable that people with disabilities and their families, must take time out at their own expense to travel here today to protest about this imminent closure. I take this opportunity today to impress upon the Minister again the urgent need that this issue would be addressed for the people who badly need that service. It reflects badly on society that these people must travel here today to protest.

It follows on from another example of how badly we are treating our people, especially the most vulnerable who have disabilities. Earlier this year, a €4-a-day charge was introduced by the HSE in respect of users of health facilities in different parts of the CHO 1 area, which comprises Monaghan, Cavan and other counties. It is a charge on the most needy in society. Most of these people are in receipt of disability allowance, which, as I am sure Senators will agree, is minimal. To ask them to take €20 a day out of that amount of money is most unfair. Most of these people would be entitled to a free travel pass card for public transport throughout the area. In the CHO 1 area, including Cavan and Monaghan, public transport is as close to non-existent as does not matter and people do not get any use out of the card. A possible solution to this problem would be that the travel card would cover this charge that is imposed by the HSE because they are not getting much use out of it anyway. I would ask the Leader to ask the Minister for Health to liaise with the National Transport Authority with a view to getting this €4-a-day charge covered by the travel pass so that these people will not have to pay €20 a week to travel to and from this key facility.

I agree with Senators Ardagh and Boyhan about what is happening in Dublin. Dublin City Council is now spending the bones of €1 billion. It has 6,000 employees and has outsourced most of its contractual activities. The circumstances in which the manager can effectively confront the elected representatives and dispute their budget on the basis that the Custom House has cut back the resources available to Dublin city are unacceptable. Dublin City Council needs to be reformed dramatically. Local government in Dublin is a bit of a sham. Many people are doing work which in the past was done by direct employees of Dublin City Council. Staff of the council are supervising other people but we are not getting value for money.

As far as the local property tax is concerned, there are people who live in modest former artisan dwellings up lanes in Dublin 2, 4, 6 and 8 whose homes are one-storey cottages and have a value now, because of pressure on rental space, of maybe €500,000. These are one, two and three-room homes. Those to whom I refer are being asked to pay in some cases twice what somebody living in a Victorian villa 50 miles or 60 miles outside Dublin is asked to pay by way of local property tax. In many cases, they have taken out considerable mortgages on which they are being charged grossly-excessive interest rates by the building societies and the banks whereas the people in the Victorian villa with the loose boxes around the side and the tarmacadam driveway 60 miles from Dublin may not have mortgages at all. The time has come for us to look at the local property tax and to ask if it is fair that people living in those circumstances pay twice what people who are far wealthier and living in objectively far more salubrious circumstances 50 miles or 60 miles from Dublin pay in local property tax.

I also thank Senators for their support in respect of the Cuisle centre in County Roscommon. This is a situation where the Irish Wheelchair Association seems to be doing its own thing. Various Oireachtas Members had a meeting with the Minister of State at the Department of Health, Deputy Finian McGrath, last week. I hope that we get answers to the questions that have been posed. This will inform all the stakeholders of this decision, which was regrettable and which should be reversed. If the decision is not reversed, a stay of one year should be imposed in respect of it. They came in and told the 48 staff that their jobs would be gone by Christmas but this is about the wheelchair users. For the past 20 years, people with disabilities have used the facility. We are proud of it. I look forward to meeting people from Roscommon and further afield to try to resolve this issue. I am delighted that the Irish Wheelchair Association is being brought before the Joint Committee on Health, of which is Deputy Harty is the Chair, in order to answer these pertinent questions.

Last night, I was invited to Westminster to attend an event relating to the integrated education fund. The fund relates to integrated education in Northern Ireland. We should applaud the work it has done over the past 30 or 35 years. In 1978, it was agreed that the fund could bring Catholic and Protestant schools together in the interests of integration. They set up their first school in 1981 and it was attended by 28 pupils. Today, there are 65 such schools and 24,000 pupils. I say this because Baroness Blood, who has retired, is from the Shankill and she believes in this initiative. The baroness states that people should not fear change. The only people who fear change in Northern Ireland are those who do not want it. We need to give as much encouragement as possible to these people. When, despite the fact that four out of five people back moves to transform children's education through integration and that two out of three believe that integrated education should be the main model of education, only 8% of the schools in Northern Ireland are offering integrated education, it begs the question as to why, despite all the work done by the fund, this is the case. I am seeking the support of the Seanad for the great work the fund has done and is doing in bringing communities and families together. The children of the first children who attended these schools are also attending them and this breaks down the boundaries which caused much of the trouble in Northern Ireland and in our country.

Yesterday, I spoke about the brilliant organisation, CareBright, and I mentioned that I had been in Bruff in County Limerick and had visited one of its centres for adults with dementia. I spoke of how extraordinary the centre was insofar as it had tried to create a family atmosphere where people could live independently but in a community, in what was a village within a village. They had their own bedrooms and places to eat, as well as artistry and cooking. They could live their lives even though they were suffering from dementia. I raise it again this morning because the Cuisle group is outside the door looking for funds and speaking about being closed down, while CareBright is at the end of its tether trying to keep open. It has to register as a nursing home because it does not have the facilities and there is no actual model. We have ideas but we do not back up the models financially. CareBright has deficits each week in the money it needs to stay open.

We are running around calling people fascists and racists and if we continue to do so it will become absolutely meaningless. We need to seriously look, internally, at how we treat people as they get older, become feeble and frail and need help. We should not be begging for money to keep facilities open for disabled adults, for people with dementia or those with Alzheimer's disease, and relying on the goodness of people outside the system. They have to be able to pay for themselves and I do not want to hear name-calling across the Houses. People should look in their own kitchen before shouting, roaring and bawling about what others do from the point of view of migration or immigration. My own pathology is that I am becoming an elder of this island and I want it to be a good experience for everybody, including the nursing homes and the people I meet when I visit them. This is extremely important and we keep pounding it and talking about it. I am not saying the Government is doing nothing - it is trying very hard - but it is extremely important that people have the money and do not have to eke out or make up a shortfall every week. The shortfall in Bruff is almost €300 per person per week. The home should not be in that position when it is doing such great, humane and creative work to make people's lives worth living as they face the trauma of losing the sense of their own feet on the ground.

We need to wake up and if I hear the words "fascist", which I heard from a Labour Party Senator in here, or "racist" again I will run for cover. We are neither of those and we are bandying around this language when we should be using the language of profit. Maybe we should be looking at the banks, which are back in profit and hoping we will not fine them any more. It is our profit and our USC but people like those in CareBright are striving and begging for money, making it up with fêtes, buns and other things around the country. The Seanad needs to get its priorities right because this is becoming tiresome. If we have nothing to do on Thursday we could visit Cuisle and, if we cannot find our way there, we could visit Bruff. We can see the brilliant things that are being done, as well as the gaps under the door that need to be filled, instead of talking through our heads about policies. We have a lot of policies but we do not see any practical application and I am sick listening to policy

Hear, hear. That is some passion. Lovely.

Hear, hear.

I echo many of the Senator's remarks, which I raise on a daily basis. We had a debate last night on St. Joseph's and the lack of funding for dementia sufferers there. It is despicable that we have to continue raising the issue. I wish to raise the question of how we treat our cities and towns. We look for foreign direct investment to create employment, which is delivered through our large cities and towns. I will make the argument for Dublin, though I am sure the Leader will make the argument for Cork very eloquently. We have to take our cities and towns very seriously and we have to fund them in the correct manner. I often ask myself what Dublin ever did to Fine Gael because Government policies have been very much anti-Dublin. Dublin was given a clear commitment that there would be no financial loss relating to Irish Water but we are facing a deficit of €8.4 million. There was a commitment of €4 million for the HSE to fund the fire brigade and ambulance services but the money has not been forthcoming. Dublin raises €65 million in local property tax but it gets to keep €3.9 million from it, according to Dublin City Council figures. People who have been paying property tax since its introduction are living beside a neighbour who has paid no property tax, which was supposed to be changed in 2016 but was not. We need a serious discussion about the funding of local government.

I believe in the local property tax and I make no excuse for saying that but it has to be done in a fair manner. Local government has to be funded and the best way to do it is to fund it locally. For many multimillionaires who lived in my constituency of Dublin Bay South, the only tax they paid was their local property tax as they were able to avoid many other taxes by various means, including living outside the country for a number of years. They were able to own a large house on Ailesbury Road and pay no tax apart from the property tax. We are now having a knee-jerk reaction to the funding of Dublin City Council. As Senator Boyhan said, Dún Laoghaire was crucified with the transfer of Dún Laoghaire Harbour to the local authority, giving it a shortfall of €10 million with no real plan and meaning services were curtailed in Dún Laoghaire. If we were talking about raising car parking and toll bridge fees with a strategic view to reducing the impact of climate change, I would be supportive, but one has to do such things in a holistic manner. We have to make sure people can get into city centres to shop and trade, so that small businesses can continue to pay their rates. If we cut off small businesses at their knees, they will not survive so when raising car parking and toll fees a public transportation policy has to be implemented at the same time, yet this is not happening. I very much support the calls for the Minister to come into the House to discuss the matter and to give his vision and strategy. We have been waiting for these things for three years and they still have not arrived while, in the meantime, Dublin is being crucified by Fine Gael. It is totally unacceptable.

I echo the sentiments of Senators Gallagher, Feighan and Marie-Louise O'Donnell on the Cuisle facility at Donamon in County Roscommon, which is very close to my heart and is a vital cog in providing respite to people with disabilities. I welcome members of the public who are here today to protest and are trying to save the facility. They are from all over Connacht, the midlands and the north west.

It is a really good facility. I also welcome the public representatives who have travelled here. The service users and their families really appreciate this facility. It is not adequate for the Irish Wheelchair Association, IWA, to suggest that this service could be outsourced to hotels and that these people could be accommodated there. This fails to consider the wealth of experience that the staff have accumulated in providing care for these individuals over the years. The facilities in hotels might be comparable to the facilities in Cuisle, but that does not take into account the wealth of experience staff members have in looking after these people.

I will also comment on the infrastructure. It is a fantastic facility which has a spa, hydro pools and jacuzzis. Much of this infrastructure was made possible by public fundraising over the years. It is a disgrace that it is being closed with only 30 days' notice. This has been parachuted upon staff members and families. There has been no consultation whatsoever. It is simply not good enough.

I want to mention the extensive fundraising for this facility that has taken place over the years. I will also highlight the serious questions that need answering. I brought this up in the private session of the Joint Committee on Health today. That is one of the reasons the Chair and members of the committee have agreed to invite the board of the IWA before it to answer questions. There are governance issues at play. We need to talk about the financial arrangements within the IWA, specifically in respect of the Donamon facility. Are there financial irregularities in this regard? There has been no consultation. The Minister of State, Deputy Finian McGrath, has been lacklustre in his enthusiasm to support the users of the service and their families. It is not good enough. This decision has been rushed. There are serious questions to be answered. I look forward to questioning the IWA when it appears before the Joint Committee on Health. It is important that this issue be highlighted. I thank my fellow Senators for their support on this matter.

I support my colleague, Senator Swanick, in what he has just said. It is a serious issue. I have also received contacts from concerned people in Roscommon with regard to the Cuisle issue. It needs to be addressed and the Minister of State, Deputy Finian McGrath, needs to come to the House to address some of those concerns.

I wish to raise the issue of today's commentary from the Central Bank around mortgage lending in the Irish market and the fact that Irish retail banks continue to overcharge for mortgages. According to European compiled data, our retail mortgage market is the fourth most costly in the EU, after only Romania, Hungary and Poland, which are essentially emerging markets. Our average mortgage rate is approximately 2.96%. This is way more expensive than mortgages in most other European countries. That average does not really tell the full story because new entrants to the mortgage market since the crash are getting rates of approximately 4.5%. If a young couple is looking for a mortgage of €300,000 from AIB, which would come at a rate of 4.5%, they will pay €1,520 a month over a 30-year period. The cost of servicing that loan will be €247,000; let us just call it €250,000. Will that house be worth that amount of money in 30 years? We can only speculate. We do not know. If the bank was to offer a rate of 2.25%, which would still allow it to make a profit according to the Central Bank, the interest over the lifetime of the mortgage would be reduced to €112,000. That is a difference of €135,000 to the individual over 30 years, or a difference of €374 in monthly repayments.

We have to get real here. The ways banks are allowed to operate in Ireland is absolutely disgraceful. They are getting away with murder. They are charging double the interest they need to make a profit on new entrants to the mortgage market. While the Central Bank criticises this, it is standing idly by. I would like to see us use a Thursday to have the Governor of the Central Bank come before the Seanad to discuss some of these issues. I ask the Leader whether that is possible. If not, I request the presence of the Minister for Finance in the Chamber to discuss this issue. There are many factors affecting the housing crisis. This is only one of them. Young people are going to get themselves involved in a 30-year mortgage, the repayments on which they may not be able to meet over the years. The banks will swoop in, take the house, and sell the loan to a vulture fund. This is what they are doing and they are getting away with it. We need to discuss this. We need to regulate in this area and to ensure that the Central Bank acts on existing regulations.

I join others in expressing concern about the closure of the Cuisle centre in Roscommon. Like others, I have been in contact with those who have been raising their concerns about the closure and about what it will mean for the service users as it is the only fully accessible holiday and respite centre available. I join others in expressing concern in that regard.

I call on the Leader for a debate on aspects of the Law Reform Commission's current work. I was delighted to be at its annual conference this morning. I know colleagues from the Oireachtas were also there. We heard presentations on two areas on which the commission will be focusing in respect of law reform, both of which will be of great interest to us in the Seanad. The first is the issue of regulation of technology and privacy in the digital arena. This is very significant in the context of the regulation of social media and online bullying, but also with regard to new technologies like facial recognition, deepfake technology and so on. We heard some very worrying examples of the ways in which technology has been used for negative purposes, although it has also been used for very positive purposes. I refer particularly to the purposes of harassment, bullying, and so on. We also heard about ways in which we could approach regulation. We might have a debate on the matter in due course.

The other area in which the commission is working is that of sex offence reform. In particular, it is looking at the definitions used in the law on rape and at consolidation of sex offence law. That is again something which we might usefully debate once the Law Reform Commission has completed its work.

I thank the Leas-Chathaoirleach for letting me in, I know he is up against the clock. I reiterate the sentiments of my fellow Senators, particularly those of Senator Swanick, who has a medical background, in respect of the Cuisle care centre. As we know, it provides a great service and the staff are second to none. The experience and skills they have gathered over the years are a credit to the whole area. I am aware of people from Mullingar, and people with whom I have been involved through St. Loman's or through one thing or another, who have visited Cuisle and who look forward to their yearly outing. It would be a huge loss to the whole area. The Minister has to address this. I know there is talk of teething problems but the budgets are in place, particularly in health. The Minister will just have to face up to this matter and address it.