The review has not started. Just to be factual----

The Ceann Comhairle cut me off 20 seconds before I was finished.

Just to put it straight, that review is not happening until the second quarter of this year, which will mean that medical card holders will not have had access to dental treatment and primary pupils will have had no dental check-ups for 18 months.

I am just putting the facts right.

Will the Minister provide details about the expert group she intends to convene on the matter of the individual complaints mechanism for harmful online content under the Online Safety and Media Regulation Bill, and will she make a statement on the matter?

Could the Minister outline who will make up the expert group and when it will begin its work? In terms of the timeline, will the group's work affect the passing of the Bill? Will there be a delay? The Minister will also be aware that the joint committee flagged that the lack of the individual complaints mechanism was a major deficiency in the general scheme of the Bill. There was a prolonged and extensive engagement with stakeholders and the vast majority of them were very much in favour of an individual complaints…

How will that delay affect the timeline for the passage of the Bill? The Minister has said we may have to regulate on an EU basis. Has that been absolutely confirmed? Even if that is the case, it should not prevent us from going forward with this. Funding could be sourced through Europe and, of course, the big technology companies could also fund the individual complaints mechanism. Something like that should not deter us. If we are successful in what we are doing, other European Union countries will follow suit. T…

I only have a couple of minutes. It is certainly not enough time to speak to the enormity of the problem of violence against women in Ireland. First, I wish to give my sincere condolences to the family of Ashling Murphy and to her partner and friends. Their loss is unimaginable and we are all thinking of them at this very difficult time. Since Ashling was murdered, we have been hearing an outpouring of anger from women. We know that violence against women and the threat and fear of violence is pervasive in Irish so…

I ask the Minister of State what measures are being taken to incentivise public transport use for commuters in the Laytown and Bettystown areas of County Meath in order to ensure increased use of public transport and a reduction in car journeys. Will she make a statement on the matter?

I tabled this question because there has been a major increase in population in the Laytown-Bettystown area. The majority of those people have relocated from Dublin and travel to Dublin every day. We have a situation where the cost of an adult monthly train fare from Laytown to Dublin is €247. The fare from Balbriggan to Connolly Station in Dublin is €145 a month and Drogheda to Dublin is €264 a month. The average cost of an adult return ticket to Balbriggan is €11.05 and the equivalent to Laytown is €21.15. There …

The NTA has no interest in extending the short hop zone to Laytown and Bettystown. The Minister is responsible for policy. When we talk about getting cars off the road we are happy enough to slap a carbon tax on people, but not to make a basic adjustment to extend the short hop zone to that area to encourage more people to leave their cars at home. Is the Minister of State seriously saying that the Minister cannot direct the NTA to extend the short hop zone to Laytown and Bettystown? If that is the case, it is farc…

That is a separate issue.

I do not think anyone would have anticipated that we would find ourselves in such a precarious and difficult position again this Christmas after the shocking situation last Christmas and January. We are contending with consistently high case numbers as well as the arrival of the Omicron variant, which is wreaking havoc in other jurisdictions. The first issue I want to raise is testing. It applies in every county, but in Louth there is still an ad hoc response to demand. There have been pop-up test centres for a few…

The dental treatment scheme is on the verge of collapse right across the State. I raised this with the Taoiseach previously and nothing seems to have happened. All medical card holders, including people with cancer, kidney transplant patients and people with diabetes, have no access whatsoever to dental treatment. Dentists are leaving the scheme in their droves because funding for the scheme has not increased in almost 15 years. Some 80% of medical card holders right across the State have no access to dental treatm…

I want to raise the issue of serious deficiencies in the Passport Office in the processing first-time passports for babies. When my office contacted the Oireachtas urgent queries service to address the issue, we were told that they did not have access to the email sent to the Minister’s passport email address. My question is what is the purpose of the Oireachtas query service, if it does not have access? Why is the target date for a passport application pushed back by 40 days every time a new document is needed to …

I wish to raise the same issue about pop-up test centres. Last night, I asked the Minister, Deputy Stephen Donnelly, if he would make a commitment to contact the HSE in Louth in relation to it providing a pop-up test centre for Drogheda and he said he would respond in his closing statement, but he did not. As the Tánaiste will probably know, Louth has the highest case numbers in the country and Drogheda has been particularly hard hit with one in 40 people testing positive in the last fortnight. I contacted the HSE …

The recent surge in Covid cases has proven that the Government does not have a coherent plan to get us through the surge we are experiencing. There is a range of measures we should be using, including free antigen tests, adequate PCR tests and booster jabs. The feeling in the general public is that the Government is dithering and indecisive and that the result is thousands of daily cases and unsustainable numbers of patients in our hospitals and ICUs. Earlier today, 13 counties had no testing appointments available…

I thank the Minister. Also, the booster jab regime has been far too slow. As others have said, we need to speed it up. There is confusion among some groups. When will those who got the Janssen vaccine get the booster? They should have been given one three months after their vaccine. Many of them were vaccinated over six months ago and there is no sign of a booster yet. There is concern amongst this group of waning immunity and a lack of protection from the virus. Everyone will need a booster jab eventually. Where i…

I suppose the question everyone across the State wants an answer to is why the Government has decided that there should be a hierarchy on suffering. Who made that decision? Children who were boarded out, many used as slaves and many abused, have been excluded along with children who were less than six months in these appalling institutions. A number of homes and institutions and all the survivors who spent time in them have been excluded. That means they cannot access the enhanced medical card or the financial redr…

We are all aware of the enormous pressures on our health service. Covid laid bare the enormous deficits. We are reaching crisis point again in respect of hospital capacity, including ICU capacity. The National Ambulance Service, like many parts of the health service, is in crisis. Staff are reporting that morale is at an all-time low. Staff are completely burnt out. Paramedics often have to travel over 200 km to a call-out due to disparities in ambulance coverage in different parts of the country. Staff have report…