As I understand it, the applications are received by the Department of Rural and Community Development, which has a scoring system. It is against this scoring system that projects are assessed and a decision is made on which ones to fund. I cannot answer as to why no projects in the Deputy's constituency have been funded. There must be a reason and those who have put forward those projects and are promoting them are entitled to know why they did not receive funding. I certainly will speak to the Minister, Deputy Hu…

I thank the Deputy for raising this important issue. I am afraid I do not have an update to give him, but I know he would not raise it on the floor of the Chamber unless it was something of real importance to him and his constituents. I will ask the line Minister to prepare a reply for him and I hope it will be satisfactory. I know how much parents worry when they cannot get a place in a school for their child, but the situation is almost always resolved by September. There is a long way to go until then but we wil…

I am not familiar with the particular services the Deputy mentioned but I appreciate the importance of the issue. The fact he is raising it today is evidence of that. He mentioned that the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, has made a commitment in regard to funding. I am sure any such commitment will be honoured. I will be seeing her in the next couple of days and will mention that this issue was raised in the House and ask her to get back to the Deputy directly about it.

It is not opposed.

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue. Understandably, the "RTÉ Investigates" programme last week and the allegations contained within it have been distressing for many people. Parents and families will go to any length they can to protect their children's rights. Since last Thursday's broadcast, families have been wondering whether they are affected. Work is under way in the Department of Health to assess all the files and to see what contact may be needed so that families can be informed. I cannot say today w…

Those are all valid and reasonable questions but the answers are not in the briefing I have been given from the Department of Health and I am not able to give the Deputy the answers this morning. However, the Minister will be here this afternoon and I understand that nearly two hours have been set aside later in the day so that the line Ministers can answer any relevant questions and make statements on the matter. In the first instance health agencies always endeavour to provide appropriate services and supports to…

It is important to emphasise that the decision the Government made to revise the priority groups for vaccination was made based on public health advice and the advice of doctors and scientists, both in the national immunisation advisory committee, NIAC, and the National Public Health Emergency Team, NPHET. I often hear in this House, Government and Opposition Members saying that we should follow public health advice and that they always follow public health advice. I appeal to those in the Opposition who say that t…

The Deputy should get briefings on this. I will try to make arrangements with the Minister for Health and the Taoiseach's office to ensure that happens. On vaccines, 112,000 vaccines arrived last night which meant that we reached the target estimate of receiving 1.187 million vaccines in the first quarter. Supplies are now firming up. More than 800,000 vaccines have already been given and we expect that to hit about 1 million doses given by 7 April. We can never be 100% sure about supplies; things can always go wro…

I thank the Deputy. I only heard about those events in the past hour or so. Without knowing all the facts, I do not want to comment any further. However, I am of the view that the former Debenhams workers were very badly treated by their employer in the way they were laid off over a year ago. The Government has done all that it can to ensure that their legal rights and entitlements were upheld. Over €10 million has already been paid in statutory redundancy payments from the Social Insurance Fund to former Debenhams…

The Deputy knows full well that the legal entitlement to redundancy in Ireland is two weeks per year of service. That is statutory redundancy. If the House or the Government decides to increase that to three or four weeks, so be it. That cannot be applied retrospectively, however. The legal entitlement is two weeks per year of service. Sometimes people have collective agreements that entitle them to more in certain circumstances but, as is almost always the case - if not always the case - such agreements for additi…

I answered some of those questions earlier but I am happy to expand further on them. First of all, the vaccine roll-out is going really well in Northern Ireland. I want to congratulate the authorities in Northern Ireland, and in Britain, on the fabulous job they have done in securing vaccines and getting them to people very quickly. That is happening because the UK had a different set of contracts from the EU. Northern Ireland is part of the UK and benefited from that on this occasion. We do not know the exact reas…

I think it is the case that Britain and Northern Ireland are going to open up faster than here, largely as a consequence of the fact that the vaccine roll-out is happening faster there. However, the difference is going to be a couple of weeks. If one goes to Northern Ireland or England now, one is not going to find restaurants or non-essential retail open. None of those services are open there yet. They are a few weeks ahead of us but not as much as people may think. The Deputy should bear in mind that we are far a…

I absolutely acknowledge that there are many people who are annoyed or disappointed because they felt they were going to be prioritised for vaccination. Whether it was an assumption or an assurance they were given, many people believed they were going to be prioritised. It did not only apply to gardaí or teachers. The list mentioned by the Deputy could probably extend to hundreds of thousands of people who believed they would be prioritised. However, we have to do what is best for society as a whole. The advice fro…

My understanding is that the modelling done by NPHET and Professor Nolan does factor in our projections in respect of vaccination. The difficulty we have at the moment is that not enough people are vaccinated. Whereas vaccinating all those over 70 years reduces the number of deaths dramatically, it does not reduce the number of ICU admissions dramatically. That is why we need to vaccinate people in their 50s and 60s as well.

We anticipate that everyone who wants to be vaccinated will be fully vaccinated by the end of September.

These are probably questions for Professor Nolan rather than me. Vaccinations will not be 100% effective. There will still be cases.

It is a little strange for a spokesperson from a party that had been advocating very low Covid or zero Covid to then start lining up calls this week, last week and the week before for restrictions to be eased.

I may have misunderstood the Deputy's question. If I did, I apologise. I thought she was referring to unvaccinated visitors.

We all want to see these restrictions eased. We all want people who are having a baby to have someone there to support them. We want fathers to be able to be there for appointments - of course we do. However, bringing unvaccinated people into a hospital is a risk and there have been miscarriages as a result of Covid.

I do not think this is about billionaires flying in on private jets. That is just a conspiracy theory. This is about hundreds of thousands of Irish citizens who live in the US and France and hundreds of thousands of EU citizens who live here but call places like Poland home. The situation is that consultations are now under way, as is required under the legislation, about extending mandatory hotel quarantine to more countries. It will be extended to more countries. I cannot tell the Deputy now exactly when or exact…