I am not going down that road at all.

I will indeed. I was making a very quick point and I will move on. On the amendments, I commend the Minister of State on the approach she took on Committee Stage. It was very constructive and while some of these amendments are technical in nature, many of the amendments we are dealing with are ones that we discussed ourselves and they arose out of conversations and concerns some Members had. I appreciate that this is complicated, as the Minister of State said. We are dealing with second partners and issues around f…

Like the previous speaker, I will be opposing the Bill. I suspect the Government has the numbers to get it through, however. If the Bill is to be passed, the two proposed amendments would be better than the Minister's proposal to have a sunset clause of 9 October which could then be extended further. I support the two amendments and I look forward to the proposers of these amendments supporting my amendments later, which I am sure they will. I support the amendments and I oppose the Bill. The vote we have just had …

Because the result was decided by fewer than ten votes, and given that this legislation is being rammed through without sufficient scrutiny, under Standing Order 83(3)(b) I propose that the vote be taken by other than electronic means.

My question is about overcrowding in acute hospitals. I am sure the Minister will have seen the repeated warnings from healthcare trade unions over the past number of weeks to the effect that hospital overcrowding is very close to being back at pre-pandemic levels, which is unacceptable. We know overcrowding in hospitals is a symptom of a wider problem with regard to a lack of capacity. What are the levels of overcrowding in hospitals? What is the Minister going to do to increase capacity in our public systems to r…

It is the case that overcrowding is becoming a problem in hospitals again. That was always going to be the case as we came out of a very difficult time for those who work on the front line. I acknowledge that, as the Minister said, it a has been a very difficult year for those on the front line because of Covid on the one hand, which led to the cancellation of much non-essential healthcare and a slowing down at times of essential healthcare and then on the other we had the cyberattack. However, the waiting lists we…

If the Minister could send on all of that information it would be very helpful. However, an awful lot of what was promised has not been delivered. I accept what he outlined is additional capacity and that it is going to make a difference. Any additional beds and any additional staff member in the health services is something I will welcome but as I have said to the Minister on a number of previous occasions, the problems are not just ones of capacity, although that is one part of it. Structural changes must also be…

I move: "That Dáil Éireann: notes that: - due to the Covid-19 pandemic, guidance on visitation to long-term residential care facilities was issued by the Health Protection Surveillance Centre, which included requirements to facilitate window visits during all levels of pandemic restrictions; - this guidance was not placed on a statutory basis and there was no authority which could compel its implementation, monitor compliance, or sanction a non-compliant facility; - nursing home residents, their families, advocates…

I will start by offering my condolences to all the families who lost loved ones in nursing homes and, indeed, to people who lost loved ones over the course of the pandemic to Covid-19 outside nursing homes. This has been a very difficult time for everybody. I do not dispute the fact that all Members of the House, be they in the Government or in the Opposition, want to ensure there are the best levels of care for older people and that we do our best to ensure that whether somebody is in a public nursing home, a priv…

I support the calls made by Deputy Whitmore. She is right about that interview given by the Minister, Deputy Donnelly, on 21 June on Newstalk. What he did was raise expectations. In fact, those of us in opposition commended and supported the stance he took. It was exactly what campaigners had been calling for, which is that all restrictions would be lifted for the full labour and not what was called active labour, and all the caveats that had previously been attached. Yet, it has not happened. There is no uniformit…

The Minister of State's speech was peppered with words like "reports" and "timelines". It was full of caveats and, to be quite frank and straight, excuses, and there are no excuses. As the previous speaker said, we have been told time and again that the same public health experts, whom the Government is saying we must hang our coats on for with everything else, are wrong when it comes to maternity restrictions. It is not good enough. The Minister and the Government need to get their act together. The Government has…

I thank the Minister of State for bringing this Bill forward. I welcome it and offer my support for it. It is a welcome development that will undoubtedly create a better relationship between students, parents and school officials and will, all in all, create a much better environment in schools all around the State. Giving stakeholders a say is always the best approach in any scenario and so this legislation represents progress for all in the education sector. I wish to revisit an issue I have raised in the House a…

I will start by setting out a number of points I made when the tribunal was first established. Obviously, I will support what is a technical Bill to extend the period during which women may make claims to the end of July. It is welcome that this period is being extended. The fundamental question, though, is why it is being extended. I have spoken to members of the 221+ group and their legal representatives, and their view as to why it is being extended is that very few women have lodged claims. Rather than deal wit…

I accept that the amendments have been ruled out of order. The Minister dealt with some of these issues on Second Stage with regard to recurrence and the Statute of Limitations and the reasons he was not able to deal with these issues at the time the tribunal was being established. He also stated while responding to Deputies on Second Stage, and in dealing with some of the issues addressed in the amendments that have been ruled out of order, that we have to wait and see whether more women will make claims. He state…

I want to make a contribution on the amendment and make a wider point. The amendment seeks to improve the working of the tribunal. What we are all trying to do is find ways in which we can make the tribunal more attractive to women so they can make a claim in the first instance. We have had some discussions on the advantages of the court system by comparison with the tribunal. It seems the only thing we are doing here today is extending the timeframe for a woman to make a claim. Will it be possible at any other tim…

I have a question. I asked several parliamentary questions on the cost of the tribunal. I keep repeating that the cost is not the fundamental issue. The fundamental issue is to make sure we have a tribunal that works. Obviously, we also have to watch costs. By extending the time period by six months, taking that as the first part, are there are any anticipated additional costs? What are the expected annual running costs of the tribunal? As a consequence of this Bill being passed and the extension of the eligibility…

May I raise a point of order, please?

I fully accept that according to what is in front of the Leas-Cheann Comhairle, this is a statements-only session. However, any time that we have had exchanges on the vaccine roll-out, it has been a questions-and-answers session and I have always used that facility because we have questions to ask and we need answers to those questions. It is not a productive use of anyone's time for Members to stand up and make long statements when people are asking us questions they want us to put to the Minister but we are not t…

I thank the Leas-Cheann Comhairle. I accept that the Minister did not request this session format but essentially what he is saying is that he will not have the information we need at his disposal today, which is problematic. Briefings in private session, whenever they are organised, are not what we need. People are asking us reasonable questions on the supply chain, how many of the vaccines will be available for young people and when. The Minister made some announcements this morning, which we all welcome. It woul…

The Minister said, and rightly, that we all have a responsibility to get the message out about the threat posed by the Delta variant. We do. I take my responsibilities very seriously in that regard because it is a threat. Right through the pandemic, my overriding objective has been to keep people safe. That has to be what we all do. Decisions that have to be made are never easy and a curtailment of people's individual freedoms is really difficult. We had hoped that we were out the gap to some degree but now the Del…