That is a good idea and I welcome the offer from an Opposition party to work together on this on a collaborative basis because none of us wants to see the rise of racism in our society and none of us wants to see far-right groups or political forces taking hold in our Parliament in the way that has become the norm across the European Union. A lot of work is being done on the new national ant-racism strategy and that should be ready in the near future. On the particular issue of an additional committee, that is some…

I thank the Deputy for raising this important issue. We are experiencing an epidemic of domestic violence and violence against women in particular. We have a zero tolerance strategy in place to make improvements and change things in this area. I do not want to go into all the details of it here because there is too much to go through but on the particular issue of the number of refuge spaces, we have a plan to double the number up to 280, and that plan is being implemented.

The nature of any means test is that there will always be people who are just a few euro above the threshold. No matter where the threshold is set that will unfortunately always be the case. I acknowledge the point the Deputy makes, that the income limits have not increased in a very long time and have not taken account of inflation or rising incomes. However, the number of people who qualify for a full medical card is 2.095 million and an additional 535,000 people qualify for GP visit cards. Money was provided in …

The Deputy knows as well as I do that Coillte is not being sold. That is not the case. No public land is being sold and nor will any public land fall into private ownership. The State is an investor in the Irish Strategic Forestry Fund but I am sure we will have a chance to debate this and go through the facts at another stage.

I thank the Deputy for reminding me about this issue. As I am sure he will know, Deputy Carey is also onto me about this regularly. I do not have an update on it. I thought some money was allocated last year but maybe that is not the case.

It has obviously not been fully agreed for this year and future years but I am keen to make sure that it is agreed.

I thank the Deputy. We will certainly be happy to check out that. If the Deputy wants to send some details to me or to the office of the Minister, Deputy Foley, we will check it out. It happens sometimes in government that different schemes under different Departments are not quite aligned. Where anomalies exist, we try to fix them.

I thank the Deputy. On the issue of emergency department overcrowding in general, we have made a lot of progress since the early part of this year when we saw record numbers of people being forced to wait on a trolley for a hospital bed. We see now, and have seen for the past couple of days, that the number waiting for a bed is running at a lower level than was the case this time last year. That is in part due to the extra beds, the extra staff and the extra investment that has been put in. As the Deputy will be aw…

I thank the Deputy. I was not aware that west Cork was the wedding capital of Ireland but if that is the case, I am willing to accept it.

I imagine Deputies from Kerry, Dublin and other areas might have a different view on that. As the Deputy will be aware, the Government has decided that the concessional VAT rate of 9% will go back up to 13.5% at the end of February. That was a cost-of-living measure. However, we will have to make some decisions at Government level in the next week or two on what measures we might be able to extend. We cannot extend them all but we will try to extend some of them.

I thank the Deputy. As he will be aware, we are putting record amounts of money into home care at present. The problem is no longer the money; it is finding staff who are willing to work in the area. We have plans for a statutory home care scheme. We have opened up the work permit system for home carers to come in from abroad and work in home care in Ireland. We have not yet seen the impact of that because it is relatively new. I will ask the Ministers of State, Deputies Richmond and Butler, to examine whether we s…

I thank the Deputy for raising this matter again. I know he feels strongly about it and has raised it on many occasions. I support an independent inquiry into the State's handling of the pandemic, not with a view to pointing fingers but with a view to getting to the truth, understanding what happened and learning lessons for the future. We are scoping that out at present. It will go beyond any particular nursing home or beyond health. It has to cover the economic response and other things too. We will have to see, …

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue. It is similar to the issue that Deputy O'Dowd raised earlier. I would hope to have a public inquiry into the response to Covid up and running this year, ideally by the middle of the year, but it needs to be scoped out. It will be extensive. It could go on for quite some time. We are keen to get it right. I extend my profound sympathy to the families of people who died in nursing homes. Covid was a difficult time for all of us, but particularly hard for those who could not …

I thank the Deputy. I am not sure if it is fair to characterise it as a tactic. As a Government, we do not want to divide the House on an issue on which we should all be united precisely so that nobody tries to use children as a political football. That is why we decided not to oppose the Deputy's motion.

Of course, the Minister will respond to that in his remarks. Many of the suggestions the Deputy's party put forward are good ones. We will try to implement them but, unfortunately, there are always constraints to these things.

We plan to make a decision on this before the middle of this month in order for people in business to know where they stand for March and the spring. Two measures are in place for businesses at the moment that are valuable to them, namely the temporary business energy support scheme, TBESS, to help with energy costs and the 9% VAT rate. We need to work out what we can continue and what we cannot. The Deputy must bear in mind that none of that was budgeted for. There will be costs for anything we extend beyond the e…

As the Deputy is aware, the scheme is currently being reviewed by the Ministers, Deputies Michael McGrath and Coveney. The Deputy is correct to say that the take-up is much lower than we anticipated. The current plan is to end the scheme at the end of February but we are now looking at the possibility of extending it because energy prices are still very high for businesses. We are also looking at changing the terms and conditions. We still have not quite figured out why the take-up is not what we thought it would b…

I am afraid I do not have an up-to-date note on that, but I will let the Minister of State, Deputy Browne, know the matter was raised in the House and ask him to contact the Deputy.

I appreciate the disparity the Deputy has outlined. The short answer is that I do not know. I will need to ask the Minister for Transport to revert to the Deputy on it. Sometimes the reason is the projects that are put forward. I am not saying that is the reason. It is the responsibility of the local authority to put forward the projects. They cannot be funded unless they are put forward. It might be the case that the projects put forward were not strong enough or that there were not enough projects put forward for…

Yes, my attention has been drawn to it and I have seen the analysis in the Irish Examiner . It seems there has been an increase in excess deaths this winter relative to other winters. It seems it is a phenomenon that is not unique to Ireland. It is an international one. I have asked the chief medical officer, CMO, for her opinion and advice on it. The likelihood is that it is related to a number of factors such as influenza, respiratory syncytial virus and Covid-19 all circulating in the community. People's immunit…