I am sharing time with Deputy Tóibín. If people pay into pensions in good faith, they have a legitimate expectation as to when they will receive their State pensions. No one should be forced against his or her wishes to retire at the age of 65 or, alternatively, forced to work on until the age of 68 in order to receive a pension to which he or she has made the contributions. Such people are legitimately entitled to their pensions, having completed those contributions. There are, however, also people who want to wor…

The Department of Finance expected people to spend over €7 million per day on the stay-and-spend scheme. We now find that people are spending just €1 million per month. I want the €100 million underspend to date on the scheme to be used to underwrite a gift voucher guarantee for the tourism and hospitality sector. I hope the Minister will look positively on this proposal.

The objective behind the stay-and-spend scheme was to tap into pent-up savings in order to save jobs in the tourism and hospitality sector. The Government, as the Minister says, has set aside €140 million for the stay-and-spend scheme up to 31 December. As a result of the lockdown, that will not happen. Rather than losing this money for the sector, however, I ask the Minister to ring-fence the €100 million underspend to date and to use it to act as a guarantee for those who purchase gift vouchers in the hospitality…

I welcome the fact that the Minister is considering extending the scheme beyond April. That is positive news. However, the reality is that it is far better to borrow money to protect jobs in the tourism and hospitality than to borrow money to pay social welfare. I ask the Minister to again look at this issue urgently. Employers have the option of giving staff tax-free vouchers worth up to €500 at the end of the year as a bonus. As a once-off measure, will the Minister consider increasing that limit to €750 on the c…

Childless couples and individuals with no sons or daughters should be able to leave their home to a niece or nephew, without him or her being taxed to the hilt. I am calling for a change to Ireland's inheritance laws whereby they will no longer punish people for not having children by issuing those to whom they leave their homes with huge tax bills.

If a person leaves a home with a market value of €300,000 in a will to a favourite niece or nephew, who might be the person's nearest relative, the recipient will be hit with a capital acquisitions tax bill of almost €88,275, while a son or daughter would get a tax-free inheritance threshold of €335,000. A nephew or niece is only entitled to a threshold of €32,500 before paying tax at a rate of 33%. By contrast, Britain has a tax-free inheritance allowance of £325,000, regardless of who the beneficiary is in the de…

I will put an alternative suggestion to the Minister. The favourite niece or nephew relief applies where someone has been working the land or working in a business with an uncle or aunt. Will the Minister extend the relief to a favourite niece or nephew residing in the home of the uncle or aunt who is providing care to the uncle or aunt? This happens regularly and these people can end up being hit with a significant financial burden after caring for an uncle or aunt. In the context of Covid-19, as referenced by the…

I move amendment No. 9: In page 42, to delete lines 12 to 15. I am joined by my colleagues in the Labour Party, my Independent colleagues and those in Sinn Féin on this issue. This amendment is simple and straightforward. It is to reinstate tax-free shopping that is about to be abolished, especially for visitors to these shores from the United States. This is a valuable sector of trade and business within the overall tourism trade. With the stroke of a pen, the Government is proposing to use a sledgehammer to crack…

I have set out my position on this. I do not want to see the House divided. From his response to us earlier, the Minister of State is willing to engage in compromise. If he is willing to compromise and take on board Deputy Howlin's suggestion, there is a mechanism whereby he could bring forward an amendment in the Seanad and we could deal with that amendment next week through amendments from the Seanad. The vehicle is there for the Minister of State if he is willing to do that and if he is prepared to indicate alon…

I will not rise to the Minister of State's bait but I want to correct the record, because I would not like people to get the wrong end of the stick. We accept that the Minister of State has gone as far as he is going and that is his prerogative. Let me make it clear that the threshold is being increased by 7,500%. The Minister of State should not try to twist it around to say that it was at €175 and that it is being brought down to €75. It is going up by 7,500%. The Minister of State is saying that he is afraid abo…

In the House on 3 November, I pointed out to An Taoiseach that we need to use Irish data to inform Irish decisions and not continue to rely on NPHET advice, which is based on what the EU health authorities are saying. On 6 November at a meeting with the Taoiseach, he will recall that I questioned Dr. Holohan, the Chief Medical Officer, on his presentation as to why the rate of decline of Covid-19 infection in Dublin had stalled. While I did not get an answer I specifically stated that we needed to have a further me…

At a cost.

Our job is to make decisions based on evidence. The Taoiseach should not allow himself to be fobbed off and told the output from the CRM system is being used because it is not. The Health Protection Surveillance Centre is using data from a laboratory reporting system that was never designed for this pandemic. Hospital-based occupational health doctors and some public health doctors investigating outbreaks do not use the CRM so many other health-related outbreaks are not entered on it. We are still seeing a huge num…

Prior to the pandemic, there were remote workers in roughly one in ten households, but today there are remote workers in four out of ten households. This is as a direct result of the Covid-19 pandemic. While Covid-19 and the resultant lockdowns will peter out over the next 18 months or so, remote working is now becoming mainstream. It is going to be a key part of our future working environment, as will the issue of blended working, where people will work at home for a number of days per week, may hotdesk for other …

We read in today's newspapers that there is a huge question mark over the future viability of Dublin Zoo. The Minister of State might be a bit surprised that I am talking about Dublin Zoo when we are talking about community and rural development, but it is hard to believe that something as iconic as Dublin Zoo is under threat. It has a phenomenal number of visitors every year. I bring my family there every year or maybe twice a year and a lot of us would bring our families there on the run-in to Christmas for the l…

Last August, Aptar announced the closure of its operation in Ballinasloe with the loss of 115 jobs. To put it in perspective, this is the equivalent of 1,380 jobs going overnight in the city of Galway. There has not been the same level of focus on the town of Ballinasloe as there would be with a similar scale of job losses in Galway city and we need a proactive approach to be taken by Government led by the Tánaiste.

I thank the Tánaiste for his reply. It is positive that 60 of the staff have found employment but the difficulty is that they are finding it not in Ballinasloe but elsewhere. I would like the Tánaiste to chair a meeting of all of the State agencies, along with the two local authorities in counties Galway and Roscommon, to implement a co-ordinated strategy specifically for the town of Ballinasloe. Previously, when there were significant job losses in various locations, the Tánaiste's predecessors did that on the gro…

I accept that the steering committees have been set up but there is a steering committee in the mid-west. When Molex Ireland closed in Shannon, the then Minister, Deputy Humphreys, went to Shannon and brought all of the players around the table. I am asking the Tánaiste to do the same because the one thing that Ballinasloe has going for it is the infrastructure. It has industrial land available and in State ownership, through the HSE, at St. Brigid's Hospital. It has water, waste water and fibre capacity. It is 15 …

In September 2019, Dáil Éireann unanimously supported a motion on the beef sector that called on the Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation under section 10(4) of the Competition and Consumer Protection Act 2014 to request the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, CCPC, to carry out a market study and analysis on the nature and scale of consumer and beef farmer issues in the beef market and make recommendations. This has yet to be implemented.

Fourteen months ago, the Minister of State and everyone else in this House supported the proposition that an inquiry into the beef sector take place in this country. At the moment, we are telling beef farmers to come forward with the evidence and present it to the CCPC. I made a submission to the commission but the reality is that unless a whistle-blower comes forward to provide documentary evidence, it cannot instigate an investigation into the beef sector. Does the Minister of State believe that there are anti-co…