Following on from my previous question, I am happy to correct my assertion that the Taoiseach's top-up was €50,000. It was, as he correctly stated, €30,000. Will he inform the House at what point he stopped receiving that top-up payment? Will the Taoiseach also tell us what contribution or engagement the Cabinet committee on the environment and climate change has had on the July stimulus plan? I would have thought that was the Taoiseach's first set-piece opportunity to explicitly and comprehensively marry the agend…

The allowance of €30,000 can, in fact, be payable to a party of Government. I take it the Taoiseach is not now in receipt of that allowance. Is it fair to say then that he stopped being in receipt of that allowance once he received his seal of office from Uachtarán na hÉireann? The Taoiseach might clarify that. On the plan, all of us want to see children back in school safely and teachers back in the classroom. The Government's plan places a huge burden to act very quickly and, in some cases, to carry out tasks tha…

I wish to raise with the Taoiseach his Government’s handling of the issue of international travel. There is absolute public confusion and a lack of public confidence in the Government’s whole approach which has been marked as cack-handed and, frankly, operating on a wing and a prayer. Yesterday the Taoiseach was at odds with the Tánaiste, and the confusion between the two hardly adds to public confidence. Instead of managing the risks that we clearly face, he has now pursued a reckless policy with virtually no chec…

I hope that the Tánaiste desists from the type of sniping that the Taoiseach has described. We need an all-island approach, and I hope that the North-South Ministerial Council meeting next week will provide an opportunity for Dublin to step forward, stop being passive, and to champion that very approach. Our position is well known within the five party Executive, which is that we need every protection for the island as a single unit. That means effective quarantining methods and not placing a form online and champi…

Will the Government have an intervention for those families?

It is about the right people quarantining.

The Taoiseach should be accurate.

I ask the Taoiseach about the HIQA report into nursing homes which contained some very damning observations. It is absolutely apparent that nursing homes did not conform to any satisfactory level of clinical governance and were left without the human and practical resources necessary to protect residents and staff. We know how all of this ended. It ended with many people losing their lives with many families to this day shattered by that traumatising experience. We need to know what happened in the nursing homes be…

We must do the work now and throughout August to ensure this committee can speedily work in order we learn the lessons and the families affected have some platform for their real experiences to be recorded and responded to.

I thank the Taoiseach for the answer. It is a very welcome development that the North-South Ministerial Council will meet next week. I hope the value of the forum is now widely understood. It is true to say the North-South Ministerial Council and the all-Ireland infrastructure has been neglected for quite some time. I hope the Taoiseach's engagement with the institutions in the North and all the political parties will be positive and forward-looking. I hope that next week, when the North-South Ministerial Council m…

Of course that ought to be the case. It is no great surprise that Sinn Féin and I are very much seeking to advance the case of an all-Ireland approach. I hope the Taoiseach will take my comment in the spirit in which it is intended because this is a constructive observation. The Taoiseach cannot on one hand look to the North and say we can see what it has done because Britain has a particular position and it has gone along with it. The island is partitioned and that is why we feel the long or invisible hand, at tim…

Jesus. The Taoiseach is a disaster.

I remember.

NESC published a paper last month on the implications of Covid-19 for housing in Ireland. The paper argues that the crisis demonstrates the capacity of Government to take swift and decisive action. It adds that the introduction of legislation to ban evictions and rent increases and in securing additional accommodation for homeless households is the evidence of that. Another important point it notes is the increased co-operation between official bodies and voluntary agencies in dealing with homelessness and their sh…

It is no secret that the Taoiseach has been hostile to the idea of rent freezes and bans on evictions. During the election campaign he cited legal advice saying that a rent freeze would not be possible. We all know that this turned out not to be the case. Leaving that aside, I asked the Taoiseach if the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government would agree to briefing Opposition housing spokespersons on the proposed legislation. Thus far the Minister has refused to do that. I am asking the Taoiseach to in…

I too would like to know whether this Government co-ordination Cabinet committee met in advance of last night's Cabinet meeting. With regard to the green list, it was very clear that yesterday the Tánaiste acted as a critic of his own Government, or at the very least of his Government colleague, in telling the media it was wrong to send out mixed messages about international travel. In fact he questioned the value of having a green list at all. Was that matter thrashed out at the co-ordination committee? On a separ…

Exactly.

I echo all of those sentiments. I would also like the Taoiseach to answer the question in terms of the allowance for the third super junior Minister. Is it true that this legislation will be brought forward, when will that happen and how on earth does the Taoiseach justify it? I ask the Taoiseach please to answer that question this time.

I ask the Taoiseach to address my question in respect of super junior Ministers.

I am sharing time with Deputy Brady. The multi-annual financial framework negotiated every seven years provides member states with the opportunity to point the European Union in a new direction towards a fairer, greener and more equal Europe. The negotiations on this budget have taken place during unprecedented times and they were lengthy. The people of the European Union, and indeed the world, are reeling from the social and economic shocks of the Covid-19 pandemic. The real and immediate threat of the climate eme…