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Could a levy on alcohol help suicide prevention?

Senators think it could raise €200 million a year to help improve mental health services. They’ll be discussing this and several other topics today.

WHAT’S GOING ON in Leinster House?

Every day the Dáil and Seanad are sitting, TheJournal.ie brings you the most comprehensive guide to what our lawmakers are getting up to in the Houses of the Oireachtas.

So, here is what we can expect to be happening in the Dáil, Seanad and Committee rooms today…

3 things we’ll be keeping an eye on

  • 12 pm, Dáil: Micheál Martin, Gerry Adams and a member of the Technical Group will have Enda Kenny in their sights during Leaders’ Questions.
  • 12 pm, Committee Room 2: Minister Frances Fitzgerald will appear before the Justice Committee to discuss the establishment of ‘Eurodac’ - a system that would enable countries to compare the fingerprints of asylum seekers and some categories of illegal immigrants.
  • 5 pm, Seanad: Fianna Fáil senators Marc MacSharry, Terry Leyden and Darragh O’Brien think that adding a levy to alcohol purchased on licensed premises but intended for consumption at home could net €200 million annually to help fund suicide prevention programmes and mental health treatment. As such, they are looking to establish the ‘Suicide Prevention and Mental Health Levy Fund’.

Everything else happening in the Dáil

  • 9.30 am: Joe Costello, Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, will be answering questions from his fellow TDs.
  • 10.45 am: Three Bills will be discussed:
  • - The first seeks to dissolve the Competition Authority and the National Consumer Agency and transfer their functions to a new body: the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission. The Bill also looks at amending the law in relation to media mergers and updating grocery sector regulation.
  • - Health Minister James Reilly’s much-discussed Bill to introduce plain packaging for cigarettes will be examined.
  • - Focus will then turn to the Merchant Shipping (Registration of Ships) Bill 2013.
  • 12.21 pm: The Order of Business will be read.
  • 12.52 pm: Members of the lower house will discuss the recent European Council meeting.
  • 3.16 pm: TDs will ask a relevant government minister about a number of Topical Issues.
  • 4.04 pm: Morning Business will be concluded.
  • 7.30 pm: Sinn Féin will table a motion on mental health that calls on the government to “ensure a consistent high standard of care and support for all requiring access to mental health services”.
  • 9 pm: The Dáil will adjourn.

Everything happening in the Seanad

Everything else that’s happening in the Committees

Communications Committee

  • 9.30 am, Room 4: Communications Minister Pat Rabbitte will attend a meeting to discuss Broadband provision throughout the country. 

Foreign Affairs Committee 

  • 2.30 pm, Room 1: His Excellency Dan Mulhall, the Irish Ambassador to Great Britain, will address the committee on relations between Ireland and the UK – which are considered to be at an historic high following President Michael D Higgins’s State visit to England in April.

Here’s how to watch what’s going on in Leinster House today:

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89 Comments
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    Mute VoiceOfVanguard
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    Oct 14th 2014, 3:54 PM

    90,000 on the social housing waiting list, of which 50,000 non-nationals.
    That’s more than 55% of waiting list (non-nationals account for 13% of population).

    Why?

    104
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    Mute steven23
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    Oct 14th 2014, 3:56 PM

    Coz they move here for our generous Social Welfare system

    93
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    Mute johngahan
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    Oct 14th 2014, 3:58 PM

    how about what % have criminal records, what % have more than 5 kids, what % have never worked a day in their lives, what % have been nasty neighbours in their previous social housing.

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    Mute NatalieReaves
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    Oct 14th 2014, 4:30 PM

    Yes good news for non-EUers and other queue jumpers etc anxiously glued to their TV’s listening to news of the soft touch Ireland’s budget of what they can expect when they scam into Ireland. Free council house, more pay for each churn-out-child.

    47
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    Mute NatalieReaves
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    Oct 14th 2014, 4:41 PM

    IRISH QUEING FOR 7YRS LOSE OUT TO IMMIGRANTS
    From Nov 09 to March 2010, out of 19 council houses, allocated by Tralee council 11 went to immigrants. Many Irish people are on the housing waiting list, some waiting for 7yrs, and the houses are going to foreigners.
    Kerryman 14/4/10

    OVER HALF ON HOUSING LIST ARE FOREIGN
    MORE than half of the applicants for council homes in north Dublin are from abroad, new figures show.
    It is the first time that there have been more foreign than Irish people on Fingal’s social housing list.
    “For the first time, more than half those on the waiting list for social housing in Fingal County Council are non-Irish nationals. A third are from outside the EU,” Fine Gael’s Kieran Dennison said.
    http://www.herald.ie/news/over-half-on-housing-list-are-foreign-27973856.html

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    Mute Damien Moran
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    Oct 14th 2014, 6:32 PM

    Because they are the new working class.

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    Mute Paudi Onail
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    Oct 14th 2014, 11:23 PM
    4
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    Mute Alan McLoughlin
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    Oct 14th 2014, 3:55 PM

    Great, 2.2bn to be spent on “social” housing for anti-social people…

    86
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    Mute Bob Moore
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    Oct 14th 2014, 4:07 PM

    Ah, the great Divide and Conquer debate with prejudice and disdain for the less well off. We’ve been expecting you, Come on in.

    31
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    Mute SeanieRyan
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    Oct 14th 2014, 4:10 PM

    Any couple on a combined income of less than 60k a year in Dublin city are looking at Social housing.

    Any individual on less than 50k a year is not going to afford a house out of a high social housing density area.

    The hubris of the past still lives but no one wants to face up to the numbers. Being poor is as cheap as ever but being middle class like we thought it was in the 90s and 00′s is not anymore and given the overwhelming % of people who live in households with less than 70k per annum, does the middle class exist anymore liked we imagined it.

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    Mute NatalieReaves
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    Oct 14th 2014, 4:34 PM

    tis true to an extent, over-weaning SW makes people irresponsible, have a look at the SW brats homes, places are in sh*t. Left to working class employed to clean their areas up while being abused for doing so. Some SW ok, the amount we have simply makes people spoilt and less responsible, a culture of expecting everything and for everything to be done for them.

    29
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    Mute SeanieRyan
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    Oct 14th 2014, 4:38 PM

    My post above is very much Carrie from Sex and the City monologue. It was on in the background and I got it like 2nd hand smoke.

    4
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    Mute Pete Foley
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    Oct 14th 2014, 4:04 PM

    More houses for local authority to have to maintain. higher Lpt for private houses

    28
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    Mute Dan public
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    Oct 14th 2014, 3:51 PM

    Sean Dunne is on the way back home

    25
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    Mute Darryl Weathers
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    Oct 14th 2014, 3:59 PM

    Can’t wait to hear what the Socialists and the Anti Austerity Alliance et al have to say about this.

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    Mute Norman Hunter
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    Oct 14th 2014, 4:01 PM

    What do you expect them to say?

    9
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    Mute Norman Hunter
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    Oct 14th 2014, 4:01 PM

    Helping people get a home when they can’t provide one for themselves is a bad thing ?

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    Mute Darryl Weathers
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    Oct 14th 2014, 4:10 PM

    Well for one AAA are going to have to undergo a name change because austerity is now dead with this budget. My larger point is that I can’t wait for leftist groups to try and pick this budget apart they’ll find something to complain about even now their austerity boogeyman is no more.

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    Mute Norman Hunter
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    Oct 14th 2014, 4:16 PM

    Austerity is not dead, you really need to think before you type.

    20
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    Mute Bob Moore
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    Oct 14th 2014, 4:18 PM

    YAY! Austerity is over. Let’s all party. The Good times are back., Woohoo.

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    Mute Inntalitarian
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    Oct 14th 2014, 4:21 PM

    Darryl, €5 here and 0.5% there does not even come close to starting to erase the enormous drop in income and living standards people have endured as a result of years of successive cuts.

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    Mute Bob Moore
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    Oct 14th 2014, 4:23 PM

    The pints of Irish Water and extortionate mortgages are on me.

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    Mute Darryl Weathers
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    Oct 14th 2014, 4:26 PM

    Looking at that budget and the growth forecasts austerity seems as dead as the dodo to me. This government have done a tremendous job turning it around.

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    Mute Norman Hunter
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    Oct 14th 2014, 4:33 PM

    Darryl they followed the path laid out by FF, and I’d wait for the final details before clapping them on the back.The sting is normally delivered by a junior minister when no one is listening.

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    Mute Bob Moore
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    Oct 14th 2014, 4:43 PM

    What a wonderful rose tinted world you must live in, Darryl.

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    Mute Darryl Weathers
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    Oct 14th 2014, 4:59 PM

    Bob I’m dealing with facts growth forecasts are up across the board, unemployment is down across the board, income tax returns higher than they’ve been in years, more new cars being sold year on year an finally with this budget the initial easing of austerity measures. These are facts Bob.

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    Mute Colette Kearns
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    Oct 14th 2014, 4:33 PM

    Cant help but wonder will they make a b***s of this & we will end up once again with more ghost estates.

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    Mute SeanieRyan
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    Oct 14th 2014, 4:41 PM

    We running at a shortage of about 20k houses a year, the building boom was 7 years ago. Long time with hardly any building.

    If we get up to 40k houses a year then we might be having a few too many built.

    Ghost estates are mostly gone in Leinster and Munster at this stage.

    4
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    Mute Pam El A
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    Oct 15th 2014, 12:21 AM

    Come to Clare seanie, plenty still left here! (Not all classified as ghost but still huge under occupancy with many homeless people being shipped to Limerick for emergency accommodation)

    1
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