I wish to address a deeply disturbing matter of governance, specifically the recent revelations surrounding the Liberty Recycling scandal. We must be restrained in commenting as this is ongoing but it is our duty to demand accountability when public funds are compromised. The emerging details involving frozen bank accounts, liquidators and a Garda money-laundering probe must not be treated by this House as an isolated, exceptional edge case. I fear we are looking at a much larger systemic failure across an opaque and highly dependent NGO sector. For years this State has outsourced vital services to sprawling networks of non-profits. It has poured billions in taxpayers' money into these entities while completely blinding itself to their internal controls. We have created a regulatory vacuum in which the State blindly hands out funding while lacking any rigorous centralised oversight. To understand how we arrived at this point, we might home in on a catastrophic error of judgment made by this Government; namely, the abolition of Benefacts, which was established precisely to bring transparency and public accessibility to Ireland's massive non-profit sector. It provided a vital window into where public money was going. Rather than building on that essential work, the Government pulled the plug on its funding. It actively dismantled the very mechanism designed to ensure financial clarity, leaving us all to rely on sporadic, post-crisis regulatory interventions after the damage is already done. The collapse of Liberty Recycling is a symptom of a broken model. I call on the Leader to schedule an urgent debate on NGO governance, to address the profound accountability gaps left by Benefacts, and to ensure robust financial scrutiny is permanently restored to protect public funds.

Before I call on our next speaker I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Moynihan, and his guests, including I believe Mary Angland, and friends from Kanturk. Thank you for being here. I look forward to seeing you at the commemoration of a former Member of this House, Seán Moylan, which I believe is on this month. We might see you at that. Anois, an Seanadóir Lynch.

Go raibh maith agat, a Chathaoirligh. I would like to be associated with the votes of sympathy to the late Ciara Mageean and her family. She was a true inspiration to many women and girls in sport.

I congratulate the Cork federation of the Irish Countrywomens Association, which celebrated its 90th anniversary at an event two weeks ago that I was delighted to be invited to speak at. The Irish Countrywomens Association was founded in 1910 with the Cork federation being founded in 1936. It plays a massive role in rural areas by promoting women in leadership and skills development and saving many rural and traditional skills that would no longer be there without the association's efforts.

I also wish to raise the vacant over-the-shop living grants which fall under the croí cónaithe towns fund. I would like the Minister for housing to come in here to discuss this. It is a fantastic grant that provides up to €95,000 for a unit in a building above a shop that has been vacant for two years to bring it back into use. That could be for the owner to make it into a home or to rent it out as a home for somebody else. The scheme is working quite well. It is between €95,000 and €135,000 depending on whether you make one or three homes out of the above-the-shop space. However, the problem I see with Cork County Council, which is a problem across many local authorities, is that this scheme is confined to sole traders and individual owners. Access to this needs to be extended to companies, especially in our smaller towns and villages.

If you have a chemist, butcher's shop or grocery shop, the most practical thing you can do nowadays is have it in the name of a company rather your own name. If you own a property that is functioning as a shop in the name of your company, you cannot avail of the above the shop grant for bringing derelict properties back into circulation. I know it is a problem in Cork county, and from speaking to councillors across the country, it is a massive problem. If we really want to tackle dereliction and bring these vacant buildings back into use, we need to extend the scheme to ensure that it allows properties owned by companies as well as those owned by sole traders and individuals.