Deputy O'Callaghan makes some very valid points but there is one thing we need to bear in mind. It is not so much the outlet that causes the virus to spread. It is not that shoe shops are higher risk than a newsagent or whatever outlet one wants to pick. The difficulty is that the more we allow to open, the more interactions there will be. It is not that the person may necessarily pick up the virus in the shoe shop from another customer or the sales assistant. It is that such people go into town, meet somebody at t…

I will abridge the response so I can fit it all in. There have been two grants, the restart grant and the restart grant plus. The first was worth about €250 million and the second about €300 million but we topped it up because there were top-ups along the way. About €100 million or so was transferred from the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform to my Department just the other day, and we are going to get that out to local authorities to cover the costs of the restart grant plus and some appeals that came in…

The Minister for Finance, Deputy Donohoe, is in charge of that scheme. He is working on it. The scheme is for businesses that are closed as a result of Covid restrictions or that have seen a 75% reduction in turnover, but the businesses have to have a premises. If we open it to all businesses that do not have a premises, it would be a very different scheme and a much more expensive one. Having said that, however, we are trying to work around issues associated with businesses that need financial support but that are…

In my statement on Tuesday, I clearly and definitely accepted responsibility for this. I used the term "sole responsibility" and therefore I have not sought to blame anyone else. I have apologised for it, I have accounted for it and I have said that I accept responsibility for it. I have not been equivocal about that in any way. I do not have a copy of the document that I sent to Dr. Ó Tuathail. I do not know how it is possible for the Deputy to make those comparisons because I do not have a copy of it. I am not su…

I do not recall there being a second document. I only recall there being one document. As I have said, I do not, as standard, keep all of my text messages. I do not think most Members of this House do. Obviously, anything I consider to be a public record - for example, if somebody sends an email to my personal account, which happens from time to time - I forward to my official account, which is in line with the Department of the Taoiseach's policy on email.

What is that plan for?

On the meat plants, we very much acknowledge they are high risk environments. It is to do with the temperature, the airflow and so on and that is why there is a surveillance programme of testing in meat plants. Thankfully, the percentage of results coming back positive has so far been very small. On international travel, I confess I am not across things as much in the past few days as I should be but this is an issue the Minister, Deputy Ryan, is leading on. I understand we are very much advising people that we are…

One of the issues we are going to have to consider is enforcement. As the Deputy knows, at the moment the requirement for a person to restrict his or her movements having come in from abroad is not mandatory. It is very highly advisory but not mandatory. Neither is it mandatory, however, for a person to restrict his or her movements if he or she is a close contact, which is a much higher risk than international travel. One thing we are giving consideration to as a Government is whether we need to make mandatory and…

The Deputy has raised a few important issues. With regard to the flu vaccine, there is very high demand for it at present, which is encouraging. People who did not seek the flu vaccination in previous years are seeking to be vaccinated this year and this is a real positive. Supply is short, not just in Ireland but internationally. There is more on the way. No matter what happens, we will vaccinate many more people against the flu this winter than we have in any winter in the past. Important progress is being made. …

We do recognise that and I know the chief medical officer recognises it also. One of the real concerns we have during the pandemic is what people call secondary deaths, for example, people who have a heart attack not going to the hospital because they think it is overwhelmed and they do not want to bother the doctors and nurses, and perhaps people who have stroke symptoms delaying seeking medical help because of the pandemic. This is a real worry we have, which is why we are sending out the message that everyone wh…

I thank the Deputy. I am genuinely not aware of the dispute with the polers that the Deputy has mentioned. I will see the Minister, Deputy Ryan, this afternoon and I will mention to him that it was raised in the Dáil and he might be able to inform me, or inform the Deputy directly, as to what is the difficulty. As the Deputy knows, the contract is given to National Broadband Ireland and it will employ and is employing subcontractors to do a lot of the work on the ground. There is an oversight mechanism in the Depar…

I thank the Deputy. If he can give me that information later, I will be happy to speak to the Minister, Deputy Ryan, about it in the afternoon. Given what I have learned in the last week, I will make sure that whatever the Deputy gives me is somehow scanned onto some sort of system so nobody can accuse him of being informal or something like that.

On the first part, we have the request from the Deputy’s party and we will be happy to give him any records we have. I might ask the Minister, Deputy Heather Humphreys, to answer the question on social protection.

I thank the Deputy. On the second point, HIQA has done a health technology assessment on rapid testing, which the Deputy may have seen. It was not as positive or favourable as I might have hoped it would be. There are definitely pros and cons to rapid testing and NPHET is very much working on that at the moment. I cannot say it will be ready by 1 December and that is probably unlikely, but it is being worked on. In regard to the first question, things are going very well. The number of new cases is falling faster t…

I thank the Deputy. I am familiar with this issue and I am aware of a constituent of mine who is in a similar position. I will speak to the Minister for Education about it again. What we would like to do, if possible, is to set up some sort of mechanism by which they could join the classroom from home, if that makes any sense. There would be a camera in the classroom and they could join the classroom electronically from home. At the same time, we need to balance that against the genuine benefits children gain from …

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue, which I have read about in the past couple of weeks. It is appalling to see an increase in this crime of people stealing pets off other people, often older and vulnerable people. I do not have a pet but I know many people who do and I do not think anybody regards their cat or their dog to be property in the way they would a mobile phone or something like that. It is almost like a member of the family being stolen. It is a serious offence and needs to be treated that way. I…

I thank the Deputy. As he mentioned, the Taoiseach met with the four Catholic archbishops to talk about what might be possible in the next couple of weeks. We are reluctant to change any of the regulations at the moment. I understand the point the Deputy is making about people being able to attend mass. In most countries it is allowed, for obvious reasons. It is allowed north of the Border but nearly every day there is one group or another making a good case as to why the rules should be relaxed, whether it is hunt…

It is a fair question and I would love to be able to say here that on 1 December we will to move to level 3 or 2 and give people the ability to plan their lives and businesses, but I am not in a position to do that. This virus can change very quickly. We have seen in the course of a few days or a week the numbers increasing dramatically, and as the CMO explained at the committee the other day, it is just too far away from Christmas or from 1 December for us to be able to give a reliable indication as to what level …

I thank the Deputy. I was not aware of that, but Pieta House is a mental health charity that provides excellent services and help for people who need help around mental health and suicide, in particular. As a Senator, Senator Doherty has no role in deciding what funding a charity receives. She is not a Minister and does not hold executive office. I do not think there is a conflict of interest there but perhaps the Deputy will say otherwise. I am not on any boards but I imagine there are many Deputies and Senators w…

This is really a matter for the Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications, Deputy Eamon Ryan, who administers that scheme through the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, SEAI. As is always the case with a grant scheme, there is a budget limit. There is no grant scheme that I am aware of where money is not limited. There has to be a limit on the budget and, therefore, there have to be some rules. Those rules might be around a needs test or means test, or they might state that somebody who has alr…