People who buy affordable homes from the Government scheme will own them, while those who go for the Sinn Féin scheme will not own them. Sinn Féin wants to be those people’s landlord.

I thank the Deputy. Like her, I have been always interested in this project and I have always had concerns about it. What prompted me, quite frankly, was a straight question from Deputy Bríd Smith. I would not have answered that question had I not been asked it. As the Deputy pointed out in her remarks, it might have been two or three years since I was last asked publicly or in this House to give my views on the new national maternity hospital project. I am conscious that negotiations have been under way during tha…

In my mind, we departed from the Mulvey agreement some time ago. Mr. Mulvey was appointed by the former Minister for Health, Deputy Harris, to-----

If possible, I would like to answer the question. As I was about to say, the Mulvey agreement has, in my mind at least, already been departed from by the Government in certain aspects. Initially, the building was not to be owned by the State. It is my understanding that this has now been resolved and the State will own the building. That was not originally the case in the Mulvey agreement. Discussions are ongoing around the composition of the board of the national maternity hospital. Initially there was to be no re…

We have not. We have changed it on the lease and on the ownership of the hospital, for example, since then.

The Deputy made some very good points in his remarks. As the House will be aware, the objective of the Central Bank macro prudential mortgage lending rules is to mitigate systemic risk and promote financial stability, to increase the resilience of the banking sector and households to the property market and to reduce the risk of credit spirals from developing in future. They are there to avoid a boom and bust in home values, people ending up in negative equity and a future banking crisis. They are there to prevent …

I hear the Deputy and I am sympathetic with what he has to say. As I said earlier, many people are paying €1,800 or €2,000 in rent per month. They could afford a mortgage of €1,500 and would be better off if they could get that mortgage but they cannot do so. I hear what the Deputy is saying and I hear that from people all of the time but I am not passing the buck in saying that the Central Bank is independent. It is independent and for good reasons. It sets interest rates independently of the political process and…

I know there are few people in this House, including me, who spend much time reading the manifestos of political parties but the commitment to increase housing supply to 35,000 to 40,000 new homes was contained in the Fine Gael manifesto for the last general election. I restated that ambition at the weekend and I stand over the fact that I did so. Back in 2016, we were only building 5,000 to 6,000 homes per year. We are now up to around 20,000 homes per year, notwithstanding the fact that construction was blighted …

I thank the Deputy and do not disagree with what he is saying. There are many different bottlenecks and points where one can run into trouble in terms of housing construction. All of those bottlenecks must be dealt with to allow for a clear and flowing pipeline of houses, which is what we want. I agree with the Deputy that every town and village in Ireland should be able to expand. I do not mean a return to sprawl or to development distant from the major cities, but any town in Ireland should be able to expand and …

I am not aware of any plans to look at alternative sites for the national maternity hospital. The Government considered it some time ago and decided, for good, clinical, patient safety and patient quality reasons, that all four maternity hospitals should be relocated and co-located with adult hospitals. That is the case in Limerick, with University Maternity Hospital moving to the Dooradoyle site. It is also the case with the Rotunda Hospital moving to the Connolly Hospital and the tri-location of the Coombe with t…

As the Deputy will appreciate, the IBTS makes its decisions based on scientific and medical evidence. There is no reference to the Government in that regard and the service does not require the approval of the Government and it is not a Government decision. However, I echo the Deputy's comments and ask the medical people, scientists and experts in the IBTS to have regard to what is happening in the UK and other countries that are taking an approach based on individual risk rather than picking out particular groups …

My view is simply that a TRIPS waiver is not enough to do what needs to be done, which is to make sure that the global south can manufacture vaccines and administer them across their populations. A TRIPS waiver is not enough in that regard. It is proverbially like giving somebody the recipe but not the kitchen. They have not been given the materials or know-how to produce vaccines. The first thing that should happen is export bans should stop. As trade Minister, I have instructed my officials to vote against export…

I would prefer not to comment on any individual case that is before the courts. I can say that any inappropriate cancellation of 999 calls is a serious issue. The Garda Commissioner has assured the Minister for Justice that when somebody calls 999, they can expect and trust that a member of the Garda will help. That should always be the case and should always have been the case. The Garda Commissioner is before the Policing Authority today and will give a full account of the serious shortcomings that occurred, outl…

I thank the Deputy. This matter has been raised by Ministers in our interactions with the banks. As the Deputy knows, it is a tricky issue. If somebody is in receipt of the employment wage subsidy scheme, EWSS, by definition, the company he or she works for must be down 30% or more in terms of turnover. While that does not mean that person's job is at risk, it means it is more at risk than someone who works for a company that is not in receipt of the wage subsidy scheme. Banks cannot turn a blind eye to that when i…

I understand that we are now up to approximately 50,000 tests per month. The driver testing services is scaling up again, both in terms of the online theory tests and the physical tests, and will be hiring more drivers to do exactly that.

As the Deputy will be aware, the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, Deputy Harris, is currently carrying out a broader review of SUSI. I appreciate the issues the Deputy has raised in the Chamber. I am not 100 % briefed on them so I will not say any more than that. I will certainly tell the Minister, Deputy Harris, that the Deputy raised the issue in the Dáil and ask him to contact the Deputy directly.

My expectation is that we will approve the use of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for children and young adults aged between 12 and 16. It is already approved for those aged over 16. We will aim to vaccinate them later in the year. I cannot give a date on that just yet. Obviously, the aim is to move down through the age groups and vaccinate people in their 30s now, moving into those in their 20s and then to people aged between 16 and 20. It is, however, the expectation and intention of the Government that we will vacci…

We had our best flu vaccine programme ever last year and, ironically, it was the year in which we had zero flu. That is the way these things go sometimes. It is probably the first time in a very long time, if not generations, that no case of influenza was recorded in the State during the winter period. We are not making the assumption that will be case this winter. There is a real risk, not just of new variants of Covid-19, but also the return of respiratory viruses such as flu and respiratory syncytial virus, RSV,…

I join the Deputy in welcoming the fact that the State's appeal was successful and now gives us assurance that SEOs are constitutional. We plan to have some more of them. The Minister of State at the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Deputy English, has launched the process to have one quite soon in the area of childcare. I will be happy to receive that evidence and information from the Deputy. Of course, local authorities and public bodies should be compliant and should not pay below the legal minimu…

I am afraid I have not yet seen the report to which the Deputy referred, which was released in the past couple of hours by the Minister, Deputy Foley. It seems that his long-standing advocacy on this issue has borne some results. I am glad to hear there is some welcome news for school pupils and families in the Limerick area. Public transport capacity will be reviewed in the context of schools and colleges going back in September and October. We just do not know where we are going to be in terms of vaccinations and…