I want to reassure Deputies Harkin and Feighan, and everybody in Sligo, that it remains Government policy that Sligo should develop as a major urban centre for the north-west. Project Ireland 2040 is alive and well and will continue to be implemented. The fact there is no specific mention of it in the programme for Government does not mean the policy has changed. It is something I am very committed to personally and I want to reassure the Deputy about that. I apologise, but I had not heard about the mudslide. Perha…

Fine Gael will not make a nomination on this occasion but will support the nomination of Deputy Micheál Martin as Taoiseach. I will speak at greater length when the Dáil reconvenes later but I want to briefly make three points. The first is that this is an historic occasion. I believe Civil War politics ended a long time ago in our country but, today, Civil War politics ends in our Parliament. Two great parties, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, are coming together with another great party, the Green Party, to offer what …

Today, we broke with tradition by electing a new Taoiseach and Government in this centre rather than Leinster House. We found a new way of doing things, without sacrificing any of the things that really matter. Let this symbolise the mission of this new Government, putting aside the divisions of the past to find new ways of doing things, a new approach that is in the best interests of our country and a break with the past for the dream of a better future. I offer my sincere congratulations to Deputy Micheál Martin …

Before I make my statement I want to endorse what was said earlier about the death of Detective Garda Colm Horkan. The remarkable outpouring of grief we saw over the weekend says a lot about our values as a country and the respect we have for the men and women who uphold our laws. Whenever we lose a member of An Garda Síochána in the line of duty, it wounds us all and we grieve as a nation. At the funeral, Colm's brother Brendan remembered his achievements on the sporting pitch and said he never let the jersey down…

It is now more than 100 days since the first recorded case of Covid-19 in our State, 92 days since the first person died from the virus, and 91 days since we instituted the first set of measures to suppress its spread and protect as many people as possible from its deadly power. Today, as always, we think of the 1,695 people who, as of last night, have died from or with Covid-19, and a further 537 who have died in Northern Ireland. Their lives shone brightly, and were brought to an end before their time. As an Oire…

I appreciate what the Deputy said and that there are concerns about how the summer programme will work. As she said, these concerns exist before the announcement has been made. I anticipate and hope that should the Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy McHugh, and the Minister for Health, Deputy Harris, get approval for the summer programme tomorrow, they will be able to answer questions and allay any concerns that people have tomorrow. In fairness to them, they cannot do that until they have Government or Cabi…

I thank the Deputy for his contribution. We all agree, accept and understand that racism exists in every society. It may take different forms but that makes it no less real. Sadly, Ireland is by no means immune to the scourge of racism. I had a very good engagement yesterday, as the Deputy mentioned, with Irish people who are black and of colour. That Zoom call went on for over an hour as a forum to hear from them and share our collective experience of racism in Ireland. There were ideas aired that could be pursued…

I thank the Deputy for raising that matter. I do not want to say too much about it but I was rather taken aback to see Tyson Fury dropping the name of the person the Deputy mentioned in a video the other day as if he was not a person with quite a chequered history in this State and elsewhere. While I cannot comment on a particular Garda operation, I can certainly assure the Deputy that there has been contact between the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the authorities in the United Arab Emirates about th…

Decisions will be made by the Government, not by individual airlines. The decisions we make will be co-ordinated with the European Commission and with the European Union Aviation Safety Agency, EASA. We need to bear in mind that we are all EU citizens. EU citizens have the freedom to travel, work and study anywhere in the European Union. We can bring in limitations based on public health but they have to be justified. In terms of foreign travel - by foreign travel I mean travel off the island of Ireland - our advic…

We have considerable testing and tracing capacity now, with capacity to test 100,000 people a week and to trace many thousands of people which is not being used at the moment because of the low level of demand for it. It can be used if we need to do so in the future. The future will involve making sure that we have a very strong testing and tracing capacity, so that any important cases and new clusters are identified quickly and can be stamped on quickly, so that they do not spread and we do not have to engage in a…

I thank the Deputy for bringing this petition. I will give it full and meaningful consideration over the next couple of days. I mean that. A lot of the legislation the Deputy mentioned was passed when we had a properly constituted Seanad. We do not have one now, so we are not in a position to enact primary legislation. This may require that. We cannot always bring in retrospective legislation. The leave aspect would be justice legislation and the benefit aspect would be social protection legislation. We will give i…

I will have to examine the examples the Deputy gave. What I said, however, was that nobody would be worse off than they were before the pandemic as a consequence of the decision being made. I did not say that no one would be worse off than they were before the pandemic. Many people are worse off than they were before the pandemic. Most people who have lost their jobs, for example, are, sadly, worse off than they were before the pandemic. The average weekly wage in Ireland in the first quarter of this year was €800.…

I do not have the full transcript in front of me, but I think, if I remember correctly, the Deputy was referring specifically to students and young people working part time, and not the kind of examples he gave. We have the same welfare system as we had before the pandemic. It is internationally and independently adjudicated to be one of the more generous welfare systems in the world and one of the most successful in redistributing income. That welfare system is not being cut. We layered something new on top of it,…

I earlier answered questions on the 2 m rule so I might answer the Deputy's other questions now. The plan as of now for the summer programme is that the Ministers for Health and Education and Skills will bring their proposals to Cabinet tomorrow. All things going to plan, we will sign off on that tomorrow, they will make the announcement and hopefully that will answer any questions or allay any concerns that people have. I absolutely understand the stress that parents with children who have special needs are under …

I thank the Deputy. I may not have picked up exactly right on people consuming alcohol outdoors or on the street. My understanding is that it is not against the law. There may be by-laws in certain counties or city areas but in terms of national law, drinking alcohol in a public place in Ireland is not illegal. Being drunk and disorderly is; that is an entirely different thing. Just having the one pint, perhaps, or maybe two or three glasses is not against the law.

Or in the Phoenix Park for that matter. On the 2 m rule, as I mentioned earlier, while there are different advices from different bodies, everyone agrees that a distance of 2 m is safer than one of 1 m and a distance of 3 m would be safer again. A distance of 1 m provides about 70% or 80% protection from somebody who is carrying the virus. A distance of 2 m provides closer to 95% protection. We should be honest with people that if we are going to go from 2 m to 1 m, that is an additional risk. It is much less of a …

I can assure the Deputy I will still be Taoiseach next week. Deputy Mattie McGrath does not need to say any sayonaras just yet. The contract for the private hospitals ends at the end of June, so it is really only a couple of weeks now. The HSE is now trying to negotiate a new arrangement with the private hospitals to allow them to step in if, for some reason, we need the beds at a later stage and also to use the National Treatment Purchase Fund, NTPF, to get some necessary work done for public patients. Regarding t…

I thank the Deputy very much. I am going to tell her because I think it is important. Back in 2012 only about €700 million a year was spent on mental health. This year, for the first time it will be more than €1 billion. Since my party came to office, there has been a 44% increase in funding for mental health. Unfortunately, I doubt that future Governments will be able to do quite as well as that but I have no doubt that they will try. A Vision for Change ran out in 2016. There is a successor document, which was ap…

The fiscal rules, as the Deputy will be aware from her time as an MEP, always had provision to be relaxed in circumstances like this. They were never what the opponents made them out to be-----

Indeed, they were relaxed and we will borrow something like €30 billion this year - maybe 10% of GDP - the largest deficit in a very long time. We are certainly not being shy when it comes to spending and borrowing money on behalf of future generations to get us through this crisis. There is in place a rates waiver for three months, tax liabilities are being warehoused, and there is a reopening grant of up to €10,000. The uptake is high, not low, and we will have to put more money into it because it is so high. The…