I thank the Deputy. I am afraid I am not familiar with the individual case so I am not able to comment on it but if the Deputy provides the details to my office or to the office of the Minister we will follow up on it.

I will certainly take it up with the Minister, Deputy Foley. I do not have detailed knowledge of exactly how the staffing schedule works. I will certainly let the Minister know the Deputy has raised it and ask her to come back to him on it. I understand the point he is making but it is equally worth pointing out that most disadvantaged children do not attend DEIS schools. DEIS schools are disadvantaged but many disadvantaged children do not attend DEIS schools and we need to bear this in mind also.

It is fair to say the scheme did not work out as well as we expected or hoped. Notwithstanding this, more than 5,000 people were recruited to our public health service this year, including 800 doctors, 800 nurses and 1,600 therapists, healthcare professionals and healthcare workers. A lot of direct recruitment has happened in the past eight or nine months. In the budget announced this week, the Minister, Deputy Stephen Donnelly, secured funding to recruit and hire directly, and not through an agency, 15,000 additio…

I welcome the opportunity to speak today. Throughout this pandemic, Irish businesses, small and large, have shown remarkable grit, determination and adaptability. Business models have changed, premises have been refitted and staff retrained as enterprises find new and innovative ways to serve us, their customers, and keep everyone safe. It has been a long seven months and I know people are very weary. This Government continues to stand in solidarity with every community, employer, employee and their families. As so…

I propose to speak on Financial Resolutions Nos. 5 and 6. Financial Resolution No. 5 is an anti-tax avoidance measure. It provides that section 541 of the Taxes Consolidation Act 1997, that is, Act No. 39 of 1997, be amended with respect to disposals made on or after 14 October 2020, by insertion of a new subsection (6A). The purpose of this amendment is to correct an anomaly recently identified by the Revenue Commissioners whereby the same foreign currency transfer between accounts held by the same person has the …

I take it that there are no objections to Financial Resolutions Nos. 5 and 6, which are anti-tax avoidance and technical measures. The same goes for Financial Resolution No. 4, to which Deputy Cullinane referred. To avoid any confusion, this is an anti-avoidance measure and a technical measure. The Government is proposing and supports it, and it is very much in line with what we have been doing in recent years, whether that is abolishing the concept of stateless corporations or removing the double Irish. There is n…

I move: (1) THAT section 541 of the Taxes Consolidation Act 1997 (No. 39 of 1997) be amended, as respects disposals made on or after 14 October 2020, by inserting the following subsection after subsection (6): “(6A) Notwithstanding subsection (6), a gain or a loss accruing on a disposal of a debt referred to in that subsection shall not be a chargeable gain or allowable loss where the sum standing to the credit of the holder of the account concerned is transferred in whole or in part to another account of that hold…

I move: (1) THAT subsection (9) of section 629 of the Taxes Consolidation Act 1997 (No. 39 of 1997) be amended, as respects amounts of tax referred to in that section which remain unpaid on or after 14 October 2020, by substituting the following paragraph for paragraph (a): “(a) Simple interest shall be payable in respect of an amount of tax which is due and payable and which remains unpaid, and shall be calculated, from the specified date to the date of payment, for any day or part of a day during which that amoun…

I move: THAT it is expedient to amend the law relating to inland revenue (including value-added tax and excise) and to make further provision in relation to finance.

I move: That Dáil Éireann authorises the Minister for Finance (the ‘Minister’), pursuant to section 9(1) of the National Surplus (Reserve Fund for Exceptional Contingencies) Act 2019 (the ‘Act’), to transfer €1,500,000,000 (€1.5 billion) from the National Surplus (Exceptional Contingencies) Reserve Fund to the Exchequer’s Central Fund, having regard to the fact that in accordance with section 9(2) and 9(3) of the Act, the Minister, after consultation with the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, is satisfied…

Covid is nobody's fault. Nobody in the Government is engaging in any sort of blame game. That is the game of others. This is a virus. Nobody is to blame for it whether here or north of the Border. I will not speak for the Minister, Deputy Donnelly; I understand he is to issue a statement later in the day. I can, however, speak for the Government and for myself. I can give the facts. Nobody in Government had any indication that consideration was being given to recommending a move to level 5 until Sunday. This was co…

On the issue of ICU capacity, as I outlined earlier, we went from 225 beds at the start of the year to close to 300 beds now. The number of patients in ICU with Covid-19 is around 25. We have the ability to go to 360 beds with surge capacity, and there is also the option of using the private hospitals. That option was available to us in the spring and it can be available again. Those are the facts of the situation. I know what Deputy Doherty is trying to do, namely, play the blame game. He is trying to set it up so…

Let us look at other countries. Two good examples are the Netherlands and Spain. Both those countries have a much higher incidence of the coronavirus than Ireland and fewer hospital beds per head than Ireland and neither is at this stage considering going back into lockdown. That is the position. In relation to the Chief Medical Officer, I did not say a bad word about him.

He is somebody I respect immensely and someone I worked with very closely on difficult issues, such as Portlaoise and CervicalCheck, when the Opposition was taking lumps out of him, by the way.

I spoke to the CMO on Tuesday night, which was the first time I had a chance to speak to him in ages. I did not want to bother him while he was off because his wife is sick. We had a good personal conversation. We cleared the air and neither of us has any issue with the other. We spent most of that conversation talking about how we are going to beat this virus, and that is what we should be talking about today.

To answer the Deputy's first question, the Minister for Health, Deputy Stephen Donnelly, will make a statement today.

His office has informed me that he will do that today. I cannot answer the Deputy's second question regarding whether public health departments have been contacted, but I am sure they have been. We all appreciate the amazing work the public health departments are doing in contact tracing. They have had the assistance of people who would never have known what contact tracing was until recent months but who were trained to do exactly that, including members of the Defence Forces. It is important that they are properl…

I think the Deputy's line of questioning is a distraction as well.

The way we will beat this virus is through collective action led by the Government and individual actions which people take in their everyday lives. We all appreciate that individual actions are required, with all of us following those public health guidelines, and Government action to ensure we put the infrastructure in place. Part of that infrastructure involves testing, and we are now testing 100,000 people per week. There are 12,000, 13,000 or 14,000 tests every day. This is polymerase chain reaction, PCR, test…

I thank Deputy Canney for raising this issue. I know it is close to his heart and I remember us speaking about it months ago when we were in government together. The Government really values the essential work done by school secretaries and caretakers. Often, the school secretary is the first person one meets on the way into a school and the caretaker is the last person to leave in the evening. Schools would not operate without them and the role they play in our education system is as important as that of schooltea…