When?

It is a very sorry-----

It is a very sorry state of affairs when a Head of Government finds questions asked as a rant.

I would ask the Taoiseach to withdraw it.

I am entitled to be treated with some level of respect.

The Taoiseach is a disgrace.

Not alone is the Taoiseach incompetent but he is ignorant.

I extend my thoughts and sympathies to the families of the 93 people whose deaths from Covid-19 were reported yesterday and to all those who have been bereaved in the course of this pandemic. We are living through what are difficult times for many families. The Government has abandoned plans to reopen special education schools and facilities this week. The Minister for Education, Deputy Foley, has twice promised that they would reopen. She has twice failed to deliver. The promises have fallen apart due to Governmen…

These children and their parents do not have the luxury of time. What we need now is a real, concrete and deliverable solution.

As the Taoiseach very well knows, holding the Government to account is not playing politics. I point to the irony of a Government that itself has played politics and rushed very quickly to point fingers at SNAs, teachers and anyone bar itself for this fiasco. There is a shared objective for special education to function. The Minister says that she is committed to that, but she has twice announced its reopening and has twice failed to deliver. The consultation that happened was clearly insufficient and the Minister …

What is worse is that after the fact, there was an attempt to lay the blame, scapegoat and be incredibly divisive among the special education community.

That is not good government. Is the Taoiseach telling the Dáil that he is reassured that the Minister, Deputy Foley, and the Minister of State, Deputy Madigan, can deliver an agreed return to school and services-----

-----and that it can be done in the short term with the agreement and the necessary, reasonable assurances that SNAs and teachers are looking for and rightly deserve?

I raise the decision taken by the Taoiseach, the Tánaiste, and the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, as party leaders, to award a pay increase of €81,000 to the incoming Secretary General of the Department of Health. How on earth does the Taoiseach regard that as appropriate at a time when so many people's incomes have collapsed, when the Government is taxing pandemic unemployment payments, PUP, and has come up with a proposal for a measly, miserly €100 allowance per student nurses? In that context, how does the Governm…

Do not mention that issue, it is not going to improve anyone's mood.

It speaks to waste.

I move amendment No. 1: To insert the following after “of a no deal scenario”: “notes that: — the outcome of the Brexit trade deal amounts to a 15 per cent overall cut to the quota of Irish fishers and a much higher percentage cut for some quota species; and — the proposed compensatory financial assistance on offer is nowhere near the levels of financial loss to Irish fishers that will arise from this deal; and calls on the Government to urgently engage with the European Commission and their EU member state counter…

By now most of us have had the opportunity to read and digest the commission's report into the brutal and shameful operation of mother and baby homes in this State. More importantly, the survivors themselves and their advocates have had that opportunity. The publication of this report ought to have been a moment that brought recognition, some relief and some comfort to survivors, who are well aware that they did nothing wrong. They know full well that they were wronged. There is absolutely no doubt, however, that t…

Cuirim fáilte roimh gach duine. Yesterday was a difficult day right across the island. There were record numbers of deaths North and South and it is only appropriate to express our sympathy to those who have been bereaved. The mother and baby homes report was also published. We will have an opportunity to discuss that report in due course today. For now, I wish to discuss the issue of housing. In Fianna Fáil's election manifesto last year, it promised 50,000 affordable homes over five years if in government. It als…

I am under absolutely no illusions, nor are the Taoiseach's officials, that the proposed shared equity loan scheme will have the effect of forcing up prices and saddling those young people and working families to whom he refers with even more debt. It seems clear that Fianna Fáil has learned nothing from the past and that we are back to the bad old days of developer-led housing policy in which the only people who will benefit from the Taoiseach's shared equity loan scheme are the developers. The scheme will lock in…