I appreciate the Deputy is raising very important issues of real interest to the communities she mentioned. I do not know enough about the individual schemes to give her a detailed reply. I will certainly advise the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, that she has raised it in the Dáil and ask him to come back to her directly.

I have not seen that invitation but as is the case with all invitations that come in, I will give it consideration. It will not be soon; I will be in Brussels for the next two days and out of the country next week but I will certainly take up the invitation and reply to it.

I think €250 million is a lot of help for small business. The amount allocated to the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment is roughly double what was spent on the temporary business energy support scheme, TBESS. That gives an indication of the level of support being provided to small business. It is a grant and not a rate rebate, rate reduction or rate pause. However, there is a linkage to the rate payable by the business because that is how we know the size and scale of a business. The Minister, Deputy C…

I thank the Deputy for raising a very important issue. I will touch base with the Department of Health and the Chief Medical Officer to see if something can be done in that regard. Many people in Ireland would benefit from vitamin D supplementation, which is very different from some supplements people take that are of no health benefit whatsoever. Vitamin D is one that can benefit people. I know a lot of work has been done with neonates and young children, and maybe not so much with older people or middle-aged peop…

I do not accept it is a political choice. To the extent that it is, we now have a record budget for special education, a dedicated Minister of State, Deputy Madigan, and a record budget for disability services. The real struggle, we tend to find, is in hiring the appropriately qualified staff as well as a court decision that requires a huge amount of resources to be used on very complicated assessments of need that may not be needed. We are working on that and trying to resolve it.

I appreciate that there is an ongoing and very severe problem with overcrowding in University Hospital Limerick. I point out for the record of the House that the number of people waiting for a bed in our hospitals today is 60 lower than was the case this time last year. That is a reflection of the additional beds and resources that have been put into the system. I would have to refer the Deputy's question to the Minister, Deputy Donnelly. I do not want to raise expectations in this regard. I absolutely appreciate w…

I propose to take Questions Nos. 1 to 3, inclusive, together. In the last ten years or so, apologies have been issued in the Dáil by various Taoisigh on behalf of the State. In February 2013, the then Taoiseach, Enda Kenny, issued an apology on behalf of the Government in Dáil Éireann to women who were resident in the Magdalen laundries for the hurt done to them and for any stigma and trauma experienced by reason of their residence in those institutions. The Government followed up on this through the establishment …

I thank the Deputies for their questions. Deputy Tóibín's question related to the possibility of a State apology to the Traveller community. He spoke about the attempt for decades to assimilate the Traveller community, which was wrong and should not have happened. I recall that under the Government led by Enda Kenny, and with a lot of leadership from the Minister of State at the time, Deputy Stanton, we as a State recognised Traveller ethnicity. This was the right thing to do. I know from being involved in State ap…

I propose to take Questions Nos. 4 to 6, inclusive, together. In January the Government established ten Cabinet committees. These are on Brexit and Northern Ireland, children and education, economy and investment, environment and climate change, EU and international affairs, Government co-ordination, health, housing, humanitarian response to Ukraine, and social affairs and public services. I am a member of all of the committees as are the Tánaiste and the Minister, Deputy Ryan. The Tánaiste chairs the committee on …

I thank the Deputies for their questions. Deputy Tóibín said I was looking a little tired today. If I am, it is probably because I got back from Wexford at 1 a.m. and then had to be in Blanchardstown at 8 a.m., but this comes with the job. The rows in Government are much exaggerated. To answer the Deputy's question, though, which is a serious and valid one, and I do want to answer it seriously, the situation is this. As a country, in the past two years, we have welcomed nearly 100,000 people from Ukraine. There may…

I propose to take Questions Nos. 7 to 13, inclusive, together. I attended a European Political Community, EPC, summit in Granada, Spain, on 5 October. It was hosted by the Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, and the President of the European Council, Charles Michel. The EPC is an informal forum which brings together leaders of around 50 countries from across the Continent of Europe to discuss issues of shared concern. This was the third meeting of the European Political Community. It first met in Prague in Octob…

I thank Deputies for their questions. The European Union does not have a single foreign policy. Each member state has its own foreign policy. This is very evident when one looks at the different positions held and different actions taken by the 27 member states. Depending on the case involved, we try, from time to time and on a case-by-case basis, to have a common policy. We have done that fairly successfully in respect of Ukraine, but there are dissenters, like Hungary, for example. When it comes to Israel and Pal…

Other countries come from a different perspective on this and we need to make sure we understand their perspectives, even if we do not agree with them. We must also guard against rising antisemitism and rising Islamophobia, both of which are happening in Ireland and in Europe and really concern me. We should also not forget that war crimes have been committed in our country. War crimes were committed in the name of the Irish people, although we always rejected that. Only this week, we mark the 30th anniversary of t…

On the issue of international alliances, it is a very valid suggestion that we would try to build an international alliance that looks for a ceasefire first and a peace initiative later. To have any influence, we cannot take absolutist positions. Once you take an absolutist position your influence is gone, unless you have other forms of power. You cannot be an honest broker in that kind of scenario.

I will participate in the October meeting of the European Council in Brussels tomorrow and Friday. The agenda will cover Ukraine, economic issues, migration and external relations, particularly the situation in the Middle East. A Euro summit will also take place. Later, the Minister of State, Deputy Peter Burke, will cover external relations issues other than Ukraine and the Middle East. I expect that the evolving, escalating and tragic situation in the Middle East will be central to discussions when we meet this w…

I will attend that meeting and I will do the best I can to persuade the European Union and the European Council to adopt a common position. It may not be possible for us to adopt a common position. We do not have a single foreign policy across the European Union. We all have our independent foreign policies, which is something I know that Deputy McDonald supports, but I will certainly do the best I can to persuade our colleagues in other European countries to agree a common European position. I will not tell them. …

We are small but we are far from ineffectual. We are a country that punches well above its weight in international relations. I did not say what the Deputy said: the misleader strikes again putting words in other people's mouths and stating things that are not true. If the Deputy ever has the opportunity to attend a European Council meeting, whether as a Minister or perhaps even as Taoiseach, she will understand that there are 27 different member states and they all have their different perspectives. Our attitude t…

At the outset, I join the Deputy in expressing my condolences to the family of Aidan Moffitt, a man I would have met on occasion through his involvement in Fine Gael, and the family of Michael Snee. I particularly thank the Garda for the work it has done in bringing this prosecution successfully through the courts. I also note the bravery of the man who was injured in stepping forward, testifying and giving his witness testimony to the Garda. I extend my admiration to him and my thanks to the Garda in particular. T…

The LDA is delivering real homes. I have been on site. I have been in the completed buildings. I have met the people who were moving into those homes. At long last, we are seeing that on the ground with the LDA, our public builder and developer, producing those homes. We will make sure the LDA is adequately capitalised to continue that programme and to make sure we can develop places like, for example, the old Central Mental Hospital in Dundrum, where we can build the best part of a thousand new homes for people in…

I do not want to see any innocent people being killed in the Middle East, nor do I think the Deputy does. He specifically mentioned Palestinian people. I would extend that to Israeli people, whom he did not mention. Innocent Israeli people should not be killed either, by Hamas or by any Palestinian armed group. Nor should any of our own citizens be killed. Let us not forget one of our own citizens, a joint Irish-Israeli whose mother comes from County Laois and whose family I have spoken to, was killed by Hamas two …