First, the most important people in this are the students. The Deputy is right that the young people in this year's leaving certificate class have had a year unlike any other. They have suffered probably more than most and as much as anybody else, other than those who went through illness or lost their lives. They have suffered most in terms of the quality of their lives at this critical time. In my experience, anyone making decisions in this entire process had the interests of the students at heart, first and fore…

The parties had all been working collectively. The Ministers, Deputies Harris and Foley, were working on sorting out the issue and getting to the stage where we had final detail on the estimated numbers, what the solution would be and how we would manage this. We wanted to get that right and we will get it right. The real issue here is those students. The American company is reviewing and checking the code. The Deputy is right that the characters are not the important thing. The fact that it was a coding error is n…

I am on the side of every worker in this country. Our partnership process, our model of working with unions, employers and the various interests, is critical. The social democratic partnership model is the strength of our country and vital for our country. If there is one first priority it is social justice and rights. Those rights are preserved when we have law. The rights of the workers are protected in law so that employers are not able to exploit them, which would happen in the absence of that legal system and …

I read out those details which were given by the public service because I want to let people know the facts of what people are entitled to under the law. With regard to the Duffy Cahill report, as I said, the Government is seeking to implement a whole series of measures and is reviewing whether the current legal provisions surrounding collective redundancies and the liquidation of companies protect the workers' rights effectively. It is reviewing the Companies Act 2014 with a view to addressing the practice of trad…

In the long run, it will undermine the strength of workers when it comes to the need for legal protection in any such instance.

The Government is ultimately responsible for managing our public administration system, the laws and the spending of taxpayers' money. The Minister for Education and Skills, specifically as part of the Government responsible for this particular area, her Department, the calculated grades office and all the tiers of administration we have are responsible. To assist this calculated grades process - no one wanted to do it but the pandemic forced it on us - they decided they wanted to get in some of the best internatio…

I have said that confidence in the system is critical. I prefer that I am here able to answer some of the valid and appropriate questions Members of the Opposition have. The Minister for Education and Skills will be able to answer any further questions this evening. I would prefer to be able to stand up now with the full knowledge, as I do now, of what had actually happened, which I do not believe would have been available or was not actually available earlier this week. It was more important to get the facts right…

I commit to that. In an ordinary year the Government would provide about €300 million in public service obligation supports to the public transport system. This year we will provide that, but we will also provide an additional €460 million because carriers have lost fare revenues owing to the Covid restrictions. If necessary, we will do the same again next year. Bus Éireann has announced that it is seeking to withdraw from four of its intercity express services to consolidate the other 14 services and to provide ad…

I spoke earlier about confidence in our systems. We also need confidence in the return to schools. People should have that confidence because-----

What we have seen is our schools and the public transport system supporting them - Bus Éireann is the company that has been largely managing this and it has managed it well-----

What we have heard from the health authorities is that any increase in incidences of the virus have not come as a result of the return to schools. We have actually managed it well, both within the schools and the public transport and other systems we have been using to get our children to and from school. It has actually worked. We have not seen a spike and an increase. However, at the last minute the health authorities came to us saying that because they were worried about rising numbers, as an extra precaution th…

We said that to be absolutely sure we would deliver those extra buses-----

-----and we will deliver those extra buses.

There was a detailed discussion on Monday night between the three different parties. It was agreed we would ask the Ministers, Deputies Harris and Foley, to continue to work on getting the exact details and all of the information, for the same reason I said here-----

On what basis would they go to the HEA and say they did not know the numbers and they did not know the exact consequences? It was appropriate to get those details and other arrangements correct.

It is very much involved now. It was informed in time so it has done a slightly revised third round offer for a variety of reasons it is best placed to make. It will make a further fourth offer next week, towards the end of the week. That is my expectation. From the best advice on how this can all be sorted out, it was far better to get that right and to get the pieces in place so we can adjust and ensure every student gets the third level they should have got and that is what will happen.

My understanding of why it was not seen is that the predicted results were very close to what was expected. There was a variance from historic patterns by, I think, 4%. All the analysis done by all the different tiers of State expertise and officials mentioned by the Deputy came to the conclusion that that was roughly what we expected. There was no other variation that in any way indicated that this coding error had been made whereby the bottom two of the junior certificate results were counted rather than the top …

Apologies for that.

I absolutely agree with Deputy Whitmore that our levels of breastfeeding are shocking and a disgrace to the country. It is a very difficult subject for a man to speak about but I know the science, research and health evidence show that breastfeeding has huge benefits to health and all sorts of other outcomes. We need to radically improve the incidence and level of breastfeeding. We have the right strategies and our maternity strategies have improved in recent years. I would have been very critical about this a numb…

I am informed by the Deputy's own Whip of some of the details on this. Unfortunately, the Bills Office only became aware of this today or yesterday.