That is the reality of that.

There has also been the real rent freeze of 2% or less, the freeze on childcare fees, in addition to improvements to the Student Universal Support Ireland grant, which will come in later in the year. As I said, when it comes to the specific issue of energy costs, the energy credit will be legislated for quite soon. We will deduct it from people's bills, hopefully, by the end of March. We are looking at other mechanisms to help because we appreciate that the cost is very high.

I have not had a chance to read that article. The report is being done at the moment by the Secretary General of the Department of Foreign Affairs. It is entirely appropriate that he should do that; he is the Accounting Officer. We should wait until we see that report. We will pass judgment when we have it.

The Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, is working on the legislation at present. There will be a chance to debate and tease out these issues. One issue that has come up is that if we start to exclude or exempt particular types of residences, it makes it much harder to do. It seems it is quite straightforward to knock €100 or €113.50 off every domestic bill, but when we start to create different categories of people or residences it then becomes much slower and more expensive to administer. We have to bear that in mind.

I will have to check this with the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, but my understanding is - I might be incorrect - that estate agents and landlords cannot refuse to accept HAP. This is an enforcement issue. Perhaps a complaint should be made and investigated.

I thank the Deputy. I have not seen the tender documents so I am not sure if they have been prepared yet but my understanding of the Government decision is that there will be four bases. The four bases are named as the existing bases of Sligo, Shannon, Waterford and Dublin.

It is valid question. I had this experience myself recently. For years, I have been using Internet banking and phone banking and using my card reader at home and so on, which I have found very good. I had not been in a bank for a long time, but I recently visited a bank on Baggot Street because I had to change the personal identification number, PIN, for my card. I had to interact with this very strange large machine that looked like an automated teller machine, ATM, but was not an ATM. It was very complicated. All…

The Deputy raised an important and sensitive issue. I do not have up-to-date information for her, but I will let the Minister know that she raised the matter and ask him to come back to the Deputy directly on it.

As I said earlier, one of the things we absolutely have to make sure happens now, if it has not happened already, is that the children affected and their families get not only the supports and services they should have got in the first instance, but also any additional help they need to undo the harm and remedy the situation. We need to try to make things better for them in any way we can. Where there have been other serious events where there were failings in our health services, the HSE has put in place packages …

I thank the Deputy. I note the Central Statistics Office housing figures came out earlier today. They showed that 20,000 new homes were built in Ireland last year. That was not as many as we needed but it was a reasonable performance, given that construction was shut down for a long period last year. We expect that figure will go well above 20,000 this year. We know that we need more homes of all types in Ireland. We need large family homes, three-bed, two-bed and one-bed homes. The greatest shortage and need is fo…

I am aware that many dentists around the country have withdrawn from the dental treatment services scheme, DTSS, which is the medical card scheme. I am not sure about the details in Mayo specifically but many dentists have withdrawn from the scheme in different parts of the country. The budget for the scheme is being increased and discussions with the Irish Dental Association about getting the scheme working well again will soon be under way, if they are not under way already. I will ask the Minister to give the De…

The energy credit requires legislation. We anticipate that will be done quite quickly and, with the help of the Houses, it will be done within the next couple of weeks. It is intended that €113.50 will be knocked off people's bills by the end of March.

Waiting lists are far too high. That was the case before the pandemic and they have got considerably worse as a result of the pandemic and the cyberattack. We need to turn the tide in that regard and ensure those waiting lists and waiting times improve over the next couple of years. I absolutely agree that we need to look at the regional disparities. There will always be regional disparities to a certain extent but there should not be gross regional disparities where people in one part of the country have to wait m…

My engagement with the company has been done through the Industrial Development Agency, IDA, which manages the relationship with National Pen. Unfortunately, some jobs are going to be lost. The operations are being outsourced to eastern Europe, to either the Czech Republic or Hungary. These redundancies, unfortunately, cannot be prevented although there will be job increases in other parts of the company. National Pen remains committed to Dundalk, which is welcome. We are advised that a decent or generous redundanc…

No.

The Deputy is welcome back. It is important to state that there are three elements to what the Government announced yesterday. The day of remembrance and recognition will recognise the 9,000 people who have died from Covid on this island and all workers, all volunteers and the general public for the efforts they made to help us bring this pandemic under control. That is the first element. There will be a four-day weekend, running from 17 to 20 March, with a State ceremony and service most likely on Sunday, 20 March…

The Government decision yesterday was that this will apply only to employees of the State, but that includes agency workers working for the State. There are different types of carers, as the Deputy knows. There are HSE carers, carers who work for agencies, family carers who are in receipt of carer's allowance and carer's benefit and family carers who are not in receipt of those benefits. Home carers employed by the HSE go around to lots of houses. They may have been exposed to dozens or hundreds of people through t…

I acknowledge that the cost of living is rising very fast. We had a prolonged period across the world of very low inflation. That is now over; we now see inflation at about 5% in Ireland, Britain and other parts of the world. We have not seen that in a very long time. The rising cost of living is causing a real squeeze on family budgets and has resulted in rising costs for business. Most of the factors driving this are outside the control of the Government, at least. They are largely driven by increases in energy c…

The Deputy is absolutely correct in saying the cost of living in Ireland is higher than the EU average. It is important also to point out that average salaries and wages in Ireland are much higher than the EU average. Both have to be taken into account when considering such matters. There are two areas in respect of which Ireland is a particular outlier, namely, the cost of childcare and of out-of-pocket healthcare expenses. As I indicated on Sunday, that is an issue on which I will focus in the next year or two. I…

I thank the Deputy for raising this important issue. It has been mentioned to me on a number of occasions. It is a case of getting the balance right between ventilation and temperature control. No child should be in a classroom and having to wear an anorak and gloves because it is so cold. I know that some children do have to experience that, often because of prefabs and inadequate buildings, even though we have replaced many prefabs in recent years. Things can be taken to an extreme. If a classroom is so cold, bec…