That is a €55 million scheme that will be administered by the Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media, Deputy Catherine Martin. She and I are working closely together on tourism and hospitality issues because there is such an overlap between enterprise, employment, tourism and hospitality. I will certainly bring that matter to her attention but I cannot make a commitment here. The Department of Finance and I are working on a modification to the Covid restrictions support scheme, CRSS, or ind…

I again acknowledge the difficulty that the Aptar job losses present for Ballinasloe and the surrounding area, in particular the individuals and families directly affected. I met with the western regional enterprise steering committee on Friday 11 December by videoconference. The committee is comprised of representatives of various agencies, including Enterprise Ireland, IDA Ireland, the local enterprise offices, LEOs, the local authority chief executives, the regional skills forum manager, the Western Development …

As the Deputy knows, the IDA is going to market the Aptar site to alternative investors. The Deputy is correct that the 50 acres to which he refers is a valuable piece of land that can be developed for industry and employment. Ballinasloe has a lot of assets, including good transport links. I would have to talk to the IDA about the HSE lands. The IDA acts autonomously and, as a Minister, I am always cautious about getting involved in land deals or transactions or commercial transactions in any way, though I appreci…

We do not have any plans to change the IDA regions. No matter where these boundaries are drawn, there will always be people who argue they should be somewhere else. There are merits and demerits but we think including east Galway and Roscommon in the west rather than the midlands makes most sense. I take the Deputy's point on Athlone as a designated regional growth centre in Project Ireland 2040. I will ask the IDA to examine those HSE lands to see if they are appropriate for acquisition. I am told that the IDA con…

I thank the Deputy. I should mention that there are low-cost loans in place, for example, through credit unions. When I was the Minister for Social Protection, I established the "It Makes Sense" loan, which was a low-cost loan provided through credit unions. People could repay it through their weekly social welfare payments or, as was often the case, the household budgeting service. I am unsure as to whether the scheme still exists, but it was set up with the express purpose of providing access to low-cost loans, e…

I will take the matter up with the Minister for Finance and see what his thinking on it is. There may well not be evidence, but the absence of evidence does not necessarily mean it is not happening. As the Deputy knows, moneylending at extortionate rates happens off the books, which makes it inherently unofficial, and there will not be evidence unless someone comes forward and says it is happening. However, I have an open mind on this matter. It may well be the right thing to do in 2021 to say that no lender can ch…

I am afraid I am not in position to answer the Deputy's questions. I have not seen these documents. The Deputy said there are 300 of them. I understand none of them relates to me or communications involving me. It is difficult to answer a question about documents I have not seen and which do not contain any communications involving me. From the documents and what I have read in the newspapers, I understand it was indicated that the appointment might be made at Cabinet on 6 January. In the end, it was not. There wer…

Again, these are questions that do not involve me directly so they are difficult and impossible for me to answer. What I do know is that the memorandum was not taken to the Cabinet meeting on 6 July. It was two or three Cabinet meetings later that the memo was taken. At that point, the Minister for Justice had, of course, spoken to the Attorney General and all the party leaders, and came forward with one name which she recommended to Cabinet. That was agreed by Cabinet unanimously. I know from my experience as a Mi…

As the Deputy rightly said, that was a pressurised period. There was a rush on to procure personal protective equipment, PPE, and ventilators and we were seeing what was happening around the world with countries short on PPE and staff getting the virus and dying from it in some cases. We also saw what was happening around the world with a shortage of ventilators and what that meant in New York, London and other places. Thankfully we never got to that situation in Ireland. There was a rush on to buy necessary equipm…

What was the question again?

I do not but again I would have to check my records from the time.

I will raise this with the Minister for Health. I do not personally recall any contact with that company but as I said at the time, we were inundated with people who were offering to help out. We got some legitimate offers and some quite suspect offers. We even set up a website at the time to which people could submit their offers and so on. I imagine that anything provided to anybody in a political role would have been passed on to the HSE, as the relevant authority for procurement.

I know this issue has been a contentious one and is a matter of real importance to the people of Waterford and of the south east more broadly and has been for a long time. The programme for Government commits to the provision of a second cath lab in University Hospital Waterford. As set out in the HSE's options appraisal, the preferred option for a second cath lab and associated 12-day ward providing six additional beds, is on the roof of the existing cardiology department in Waterford. I know from working with Gov…

As the Deputy will be aware, the trend across the world when it comes to specialty services, such as complex cancer surgery or primary PCI, is to reduce the number of centres in order to have a smaller number of centres with a large number of staff able to sustain a 24-7 rota permanently, and a large patient load to achieve a certain level of standard. The Deputy mentions that there are two centres in Dublin. There were three centres. We went from three centres in Dublin down to two, and those two centres cover a p…

None of this relates to promised legislation. The Deputy is missing out on one key detail. That appointment was not brought to the Cabinet on 6 July.

The appointment was not brought to the Cabinet on 6 July. It was not brought until several weeks later. During that time, the Minister had ample time to consider all the names and also to discuss the matter with me, the Taoiseach, the leader of the Green Party and the Attorney General, which she did.

I can confirm that it is anticipated now that the European Medicines Agency will meet on Monday and will approve the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, and that will allow the first people in EU countries to receive the vaccine on 27, 28 and 29 December.

I cannot say exactly which date will be the case in Ireland but we expect that the first people in Ireland will be vaccinated before the new year. I cannot give the Deputy an exact date. They will be given evidence of the fact that they have had the vaccine but at present I cannot tell the House exactly what the format will be.

There are 200 countries in the world and Ireland is probably in the top 20 in terms of wealth and living standards. That is not because we have fabulous oil wealth or gas or diamonds. We have to pay our way in the world. That means we have to produce goods and services and we have to trade them internationally. That is why we are a relatively wealthy and prosperous country. There is nobody in the world willing to pay us a basic income. Accordingly, our jobs and our economy are dependent on trade, on what we produce…

There was a bailout of the banks 12 years ago. The Taoiseach misspoke yesterday. He said that himself this morning. In fairness, he corrected himself quickly in the Dáil yesterday. What he meant to say was that the banks' owners, the banks' shareholders, were not bailed out. Those who owned the banks and those who had shares in the banks lost all, or almost all, of their money. Some were very wealthy people; some were not. Some were just everyday people who bought bank shares as part of their pension. We need to be…