I thank the Deputies for raising the important issues they outlined relating to mental health, including individual cases, local services, LGBT young people and the Traveller and Roma communities. The commitment to develop and implement that strategy stands. I will ask the Minister of State with responsibility for mental health, Deputy Butler, to provide specific replies to the Deputies.

There is an old adage that one cannot improve what one does not measure. We are very good at measuring many things in Ireland, whether it is GDP, GNI*, unemployment numbers or waiting list numbers, etc. What we do not really have is an index for the well-being of society. There is a specific programme for Government commitment to do exactly that. I am not sure of its status, but it is something on which we wish to make progress. Some other countries have done it. The Government welcomes input from the Deputy and th…

It is not opposed. I thank Deputy Ward for his initiative in putting forward this Bill.

I am grateful for the opportunity to address Members on the important topic of Brexit and business. The date of 31 December 2020 is drawing in and this signals a major change for Irish businesses doing business with the UK as it exits the EU Single Market and the customs union. Businesses that move goods from or through Great Britain will be subject to a range of customs formalities, sanitary and phytosanitary, SPS, checks and other regulatory requirements that do not apply to such trade today. I want to stress the…

I thank the Deputy. Meat plants, as we all know, are at high risk of becoming clusters. There are many reasons for that but we know that is the case in Ireland and around the world. We have known that for a long time and that is precisely why there are specific protocols in place in relation to meat plants. That is why there is a joint committee on it and why surveillance testing happens in meat plants. Even though the positivity rate is very low, it is still done as a precaution, as it is in nursing homes and some…

I do not have any details on that particular cluster nor on the means of staff getting to work, but I will make some enquiries and respond to the Deputy later, if possible. Deputy Doherty can spin out as many conspiracy theories as he likes. The message is very clear: if public health officials or the Health and Safety Authority, HSA, recommend or order a business to close, then it should close. The Deputy can create any kind of paranoid conspiracy theory that he likes, but I guarantee that there is no message, nud…

The Deputy is a clever person. He knows the numbers. He said that there have been very few clusters and outbreaks in pubs.

Of course there have not. They are closed, with the exception of those operating as restaurants.

Turning to capacity, we have the capacity to do 100,000 tests per week, and not per day, as Deputy Doherty's party leader said yesterday. She got her facts wrong once again. If we divide 100,000 by seven we get about 14,000 tests each day. Is it possible for us to do 14,000 tests in a day? Yes, it is. Have there been days where we have done 14,000 tests in one day? Yes, there have in the past two weeks. Have there also been occasions when demand for tests exceeded 14,000 in one day? Yes, that has also happened and …

As the House will know, the counties of Laois, Offaly and Kildare were the first in Ireland to experience local restrictions. We all realised and appreciated at the time that they would not be the last. We all expect that other counties will have local restrictions imposed on them in the coming months, for various reasons, and it is important that those counties receive the same additional supports as were provided to Laois, Offaly and Kildare. We also need to consider additional initiatives. The Deputy will probab…

I thank the Deputy. As he mentioned, the Minister, Deputy Catherine Martin, provided an extra €500,000 to promote Kildare and encourage people to take a break there and visit the county because, as we all know, it is very much open for business. The money is being routed through Fáilte Ireland because it is a State agency and, for obvious reasons of corporate governance and accounting practices, Government money tends to be routed through public bodies. I met some people in Kildare who felt that money was being spe…

I thank the Deputy. The Government is working as one and has been since it formed. I appreciate that there are people who are opposed to this Government and do not want it to last. That does not include the Deputy, but it does include others. Those people will do their best to stoke up, invent and exaggerate any differences that may occur between different politicians and parties. I remember well, during the height of the Brexit struggle, that people would go out of their way to ask me a question, ask Deputy Covene…

I appreciate from where the Deputy is coming and understand his sentiments. What the Deputy will hear, and is hearing, from the Government is one message that we have agreed collectively. He will hear lots of different voices explaining that message and that is what has been seen over the past couple of days. On Tuesday, we agreed and published a Government plan to deal with Covid for the next six to nine months. The Deputy would have seen Ministers and Deputies from Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael out there explaining a…

I thank the Deputy for raising the important issue of forestry. The Government is committed to the last Government's plan to increase dramatically the amount of forestry in our country. This will be beneficial for both climate action and rural and regional development. I have taken note of the Deputy's suggestions and I will let the Minister of State, Senator Hackett, know about them. I am sure she will respond to the Deputy directly. As we all know, there is a backlog of forest licence applications awaiting assess…

We certainly do not want to import timber from elsewhere when we could be providing it for ourselves. As I understand it, the Department needs two things: new legislation and additional staff to deal with appeals and applications. The legislation is being developed and we expect to have it within this session. This work is being led by the Minister of State, Senator Hackett. With regard to the additional staff resources the Department needs, as I mentioned earlier, 14 new ecologists have joined it as either permane…

From the way the Deputy is speaking, one would not think that the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission was a Government agency. It is a Government agency under my Department that carried out the investigation and released a statement only in the past hour. Rather than criticising us, Deputy Doherty should at least welcome the fact that an agency under my Department took this action. The way Deputy Doherty is speaking one would swear it was some sort of NGO or something. I am told that at least 22 of the 2…

I will certainly say to the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection, Deputy Humphreys, that Deputy Smith has raised this again. I have seen some individual queries of constituents of mine who are finding it difficult to access their welfare entitlements. As is often the case, everyone's situation is different and that can complicate matters, but we will try to help as best we can. The Government really appreciates and understands the extent to which the aviation sector, airports and airlines have been…

The Government is committed to a referendum on the right to housing. That will happen during the term of this Dáil. There is no date set for it. Obviously, we have to agree the wording, because any time we amend the Constitution the wording that we put in is then interpreted by the courts in a way that is superior to any law that we pass here. We need to ensure that we get the wording right when we change our Constitution. I would issue a word of caution, though. A total of 83 countries in the world have either a l…

I am afraid I do not have a date on that. I will ask the Minister for Health, Deputy Donnelly, to get back to Deputy Kenny on it. It is something that the Government has committed to doing. We want to get it done both in terms of legislation and the programme itself. I have no wish to give Deputy Kenny an untrue answer without knowing what the answer is. I will certainly ask the Minister for Health, Deputy Donnelly.

In fairness, Deputy Harris is now the Minister with responsibility for further and higher education so I would not expect him to be up to date on it, although he probably does know.