I will have to double-check but my understanding is we plan to establish that commission this year. One of the matters we will ask the commission to consider is the possibility of a referendum enshrining the right to housing in our Constitution.

No.

This report is the story of a buried past, uncovering buried lives and a buried truth. In some respects, it confirms what was long suspected. In others, it reveals a more nuanced and more challenging narrative. The commission of investigation has spent many years finding the truth in order that we can now begin to provide some measure of healing and reconciliation, and, above all, make restitution. As a country, we owe a debt to Judge Yvonne Murphy, Dr. William Duncan, Professor Mary Daly and their expert team. Abo…

Joint provisional liquidators have been appointed by the High Court to four Irish operating companies that are part of the UK fashion group Arcadia. As the matter is before the courts and not a matter for Government, it is sub judice and I am limited in what I can say. I extend my sympathies to the workers who are in danger of losing their jobs. I fully appreciate how difficult the situation is for those involved, especially at this time of the year. It is important to say that a provisional liquidator does not tak…

The Deputy is absolutely right. Many of these workers live in my constituency and have been in contact with me already. There are 500 of them across the country. The first objective will be to save as many jobs as we possibly can save. The second will be to ensure that their rights and entitlements are guaranteed but with support and solidarity must come honesty. That means saying that, as people would understand, legal rights and entitlements are set out in law. A collective agreement is contingent on the ability …

What the workers will get is what they deserve, which is solidarity, support and total honesty. They may not get that from others. We will do the best we can to secure as many of the 500 jobs as possible and keep as many of the stores open as possible. We will engage with the union and, to the extent that we can, with the liquidator on that. As a Government we will ensure that the legal entitlements and rights of the workers are honoured but we will be honest in saying that they have the same set of rights as every…

I want to once again express the gratitude of the House to all of the front-line and essential workers who continued to provide services throughout the pandemic. The Organisation of Working Time Act 1997 sets out an employee’s entitlement to annual leave and the terms and conditions around the taking of that leave. Under section 20 of the Act, the times at which annual leave is taken is ultimately determined by the employer. This is subject to the leave being granted within the leave year to which it relates or, wi…

We will keep this under review and if we find cases of people who are being refused their annual leave, we will take legislative action if we need to. It is important to say that people can carry over their annual leave for six months into the next year and that we are encouraging people to take their annual leave, because people need a break and to rest. Even if they cannot travel abroad or outside of their county, they should still take that leave, break and rest. People in the public service are being encouraged…

That is a misrepresentation of what I said. If there are examples of people who cannot take their leave, where they are being refused leave by their employer, whether it is a public service employer or private sector employer, we want to know about it, because an employer in those circumstances is breaking the law. People are entitled to their annual leave and can carry it forward for at least six months into the second year. That is already the law. If people want to take their leave and are being refused that lea…

The Covid-19 restrictions support scheme was introduced to provide targeted compensation to those businesses adversely affected by the imposition of public health restrictions. It has advantages over the restart and restart plus grants as the amounts payable under the scheme can be varied depending on the length of time that restrictions are in place. The level of payment also reflects the turnover of the affected businesses under normal trading conditions. At present, businesses without a fixed premises cannot ava…

It is important to bear in mind that any and all firms can qualify for the employment wage subsidy scheme. That is designed to help with the cost of the payroll and keeping staff on. The CRSS is designed to help with fixed, non-employment-related costs of keeping a company going. Those non-payroll costs tend to relate to the cost of running a premises. I mentioned sectoral schemes for taxi drivers, wet pubs and private bus operators. There is €50 million for strategic tourism businesses and €50 million for the live…

A company like that qualifies for the employment wage subsidy scheme and so it would receive money towards its payroll costs. The question in regard to a company like that is what its non-payroll costs are. In other words, what are the fixed costs not related to payroll that it has to cover? That is the kind of issue we are trying to explore at the moment. Without a premises, a business's fixed costs should be relatively low. Even still, a company like that might be able to quality for the new strategic tourism bus…

The review of the national development plan is an important opportunity to assess our programme of investment in public infrastructure and ensure we are developing our physical infrastructure, human capital and cultural capital to serve the changing needs of our society and economy. The Government's priority is that we use our capital investment optimally to drive a jobs-led recovery and develop the longer-term capacity of our economy and the reorientation of our economy. The original national development plan was …

The original plan, Project Ireland 2040, and the national development plan which flowed from it stands. There was going to be a review in 2022 and we are bringing forward that review by a year. We should have the revised national development plan by the middle of 2021. There is more money going into capital expenditure than we intended so there will be some scope for new projects and others will have to be re-profiled because of various issues that have delayed them. There will be something of a change in focus whi…

As part of the budget for 2021, there is an increase in the capital allocation to Irish Water so it will be getting more resources. I am aware that water services are a significant development constraint in many parts of the country. If we look at the list of works that need to be done and the available budget, it does not mean that everything is going to be done next year or the year after, but hopefully we will be able to speed up some of the projects and perhaps add some more.

The Brexit loan scheme and the future growth loan scheme have very different objectives and were both established prior to the onset of the pandemic. The Brexit loan scheme was launched in 2018 to provide SMEs and companies with fewer than 500 employees with an option to access competitively priced working capital finance to help them to mitigate and react to the impacts of Brexit. It was intended that the scheme would be available for one year prior to and one year after Brexit. With the repeated deferrals to the …

I believe these schemes are targeted. There are many different loan and grant schemes. It may be the case that they are not targeted particularly to the Gaeltacht but they are targeted to small businesses. Microenterprises, which the Deputy mentioned, and enterprises with fewer than ten employees can benefit from the Microfinance Ireland loans, and there has been a very good uptake of that. That is effectively an interest-free loan for the first year and a low interest rate thereafter. I would also encourage small …

Tá an tacaíocht ar fáil do na daoine agus do na fiontair ar an talamh. I will take a look at that review. I received a brief summary of it but I have not read it from cover to cover and I will do that over the Christmas break. We have a package of grants and loans. There is, of course, more demand for grants than for loans because grants are not repayable and that will always be the case. Businesses taking on debt need to make a decision on whether they want to do this. One of the reasons the future growth loan sch…

The restart grant and restart grant plus schemes were designed to help small and medium-sized businesses during an exceptionally difficult time. The restart grant scheme was launched on 15 May, with a budget of €250 million. The restart grant plus scheme was launched on 10 August, with an additional budget of €300 million from the Government's July stimulus, as a result of the increasing demand for the scheme. The purpose of the schemes was to help with the cost of reopening or adapting business premises so normal …

I join the Deputy in thanking and congratulating the staff in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council, and county councils throughout the country, for doing such a good job in processing all these applications. It was not a part of their normal work. They were asked to do it and it took a few weeks to get going, but they did it and they did it well. We rightly congratulate and thank healthcare worker and other essential and front-line workers for the work that they have done during this pandemic, but we should not fo…