A lease of a tenner per year for 300 years is not too valuable. We need to bring some common sense and reality to this issue. The motivation of everybody here is to provide a modern hospital. That is the only objective here. Co-location was the origin of all of this. The idea is that if we co-locate a maternity hospital with a tertiary hospital, we get the best outcomes for women and newborns. That is the whole idea. We have only done one such major centre, which is the maternity hospital and neonatal centre in Cor…

I am clear in my conscience. As Taoiseach, I am not prepared to prevaricate. I am not prepared to allow this to go on for another couple of years with no decision taken. I know how these things can get dragged on for a variety of reasons. I am determined that we move on and build modern, proper facilities for women in the 21st century.

I will respond to the Deputy's comments and remarks. On the issue of ownership, I must be strong because this debate is focused on the nature of leasehold versus freehold ownership. Leasehold ownership is very common across the State. It is not some new concept. It has been clarified that leasehold ownership is common-----

The Deputy talked about State ownership and said that I had no commitment to State ownership.

I will come back to the Deputy's question. I have three minutes but I am entitled to refer to points that the Deputy made, in terms of the ownership question. This is a publicly-owned hospital. That is the point. I am not going to allow people to stand up and say that it is not a publicly-owned hospital, that there is somehow a private agenda. It is anything but a privatised agenda.

It is a publicly-owned hospital and given the way healthcare is evolving, there will be more of this. Healthcare has evolved over the last 100 years through different methods, in all countries, with non-religious voluntary hospitals like St. James's Hospital, which have their own independent governance mechanisms, and voluntary hospitals like St. Vincent's hospital. We have to deal with where we are and move on and co-location was the origins of this. In terms of the issues in relation to lawfully and legally permi…

If that is the case then why, for the last two weeks, have we been arguing about ownership? Now the Deputy is saying to me that last night that all disappeared.

That is what the Deputy just said. He just said that which-----

What I am saying is that over the last fortnight, or for the first week or ten days of this debate, from all sides of the Opposition, it was all about ownership. In other words, this keeps shifting and the goalposts keep changing. There is an element of that but what we must do is address the real concerns people have in terms of what can happen in the hospital and what services can be permitted. The Government received very strong legal advice, the strongest of legal advice, that the legal guarantees mean that all…

I thank the Deputy for raising this important issue about connectivity, particularly as it applies to rural Ireland, the economic life of rural Ireland and the quality of life in a modern digital era. The main twin pillars of the Government's economic recovery plan were digitalisation and the green economy. The economic recovery plan has been particularly successful in its objectives. Consider the employment created since we published that plan and the actions on climate. It is quite dramatic. As a result of that p…

First, I thank the Deputy again for raising this issue. There are very serious issues and he made reasonable points in respect of this. I would be wary of estimates that we get from time to time. We should all be wary of estimates in respect of projects of this kind, particularly in the communications area because they tend to balloon, particularly when the State signals too early an interest in getting involved. Costs can go up. I think we should take this step by step. The overall principle is about enhancing cov…

I thank the Deputies for raising the various concerns regarding the Order of Business as outlined this week. On the announcement today by the British Government, as I said earlier at the remembrance ceremony for the Dublin and Monaghan bombings, the 48th anniversary of the worst atrocity of that time, the Stormont House Agreement remains the agreed position of the two Governments and all the political parties. This unilateral departure by the United Kingdom is not welcome and I have made it consistently clear to th…

We will have a debate but there is an issue with Deputy Coveney's schedule this week.

Deputy Bacik raised the issue of passports. We could have a debate, perhaps next week, but there will not be time this week. An additional €10 million has been provided in budget 2022. Passport Service staff numbers have increased by more than 300 since June 2021. There is a recruitment campaign ongoing for temporary clerical officers. The competition is under way and, once complete, we will see staffing numbers of over 900 in the Passport Service, which represents a doubling of staff numbers since last summer. Som…

It is not actually a matter of delays but a matter of a higher volume of applicants. We can have a more extensive debate on that.

Deputy Mattie McGrath raised the issue of the World Health Organization, WHO. I am a strong supporter of the organisation and believe we should increase and enhance its capacity to deal with pandemics. The World Health Organization is the body that calls pandemics, rather than national governments. There is a very good reason for that. Some governments in the world would never call a pandemic even if one was blowing right through their countries. I know that from previous experience. To put it another way, some are…

I am not shy at all with regard to pandemics. To be serious, one risk is that during the last pandemic, the previous President of the United States, Donald Trump, made efforts to undermine the WHO. That did not serve the world well.

I apologise. I suggest we hold one next week, if that is possible.

I am looking at the schedule but I just cannot see any.

Would Deputy Pringle like to?