On balance, it has to be acknowledged that very significant progress has been made on home support.

It is estimated that at the end of September 2021, some 15 million hours had been provided to over-----

I refer to care that has been provided to 53,000 people. You get the impression sometimes coming in here that nothing at all is being done in any area.

This entails 2.2 million more hours compared to the same period last year. The waiting lists have come down from 7,800 in January 2020 to just over 400 in 2021. The Minister of State, Deputy Butler, has made a lot of progress on this and wants to make more progress. The Deputy is correct in that because we have made so much progress, there is now pressure on getting more staff in the home care area. We will see what we can to do improve conditions to attract more people.

I did not realise that the Deputy was writing down everything I was saying in an informal capacity.

I always admire the innovation of hospital managers who, as we open one facility, hurriedly move you on to the next facility that they want to develop. I do take the point. I spoke to the Minister for Health and have spoken to the HSE chief executive officer on that project. It is a ready-made project that would provide 33 extra beds with a degree of investment. It makes sense to me and we will continue to push for its provision.

The HSE and the Government have consistently used online platforms across the board on public health messaging generally and on information on Covid-19. There have been specific programmes for online platforms for quite some time. I will take up the matter on antigen testing but that is the next phase.

We have to increase the capacity of existing schools or build new schools with population growth. In the public school programme, priority has always been given to areas of high development potential and growth.

I have noted of late Deputy Durkan's tenacity and persistence on the issue of the lottery and the need for somebody to win the prize. It could be taken up by the Joint Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach. I think the Deputy is a member. It should invite the regulator which governs the licensing of the lotto. We all have high estimations of ourselves but my capacity to produce a winner in the lottery is something that I do not think is in my grasp right now. However, I wish Deputy Durk…

Fundamentally, as we have said there has been a significant increase in inflation across the world and it is driving pricing. Through taxation measures the Deputy opposed in the budget, we have made an effort to give some assistance to people, especially working people, in meeting costs. We did so also through social protection increases.

That said, we are looking at other measures to get electricity bills down for households. We also want to build more houses because the best way for people to have affordable housing and reduced energy prices is for properly A-rated housing to be built, including public housing and so on.

We need to allow that to happen. Every day we oppose big housing projects, we stop ordinary people-----

-----from getting access to housing-----

-----where they could live with a decent quality of life and with reduced costs. I have, of late, been in some of the local authority houses and approved social housing body houses that have been built-----

-----and from an energy point of view, they are working and costs are way down.

I will indeed. We have expanded neurological services. They need to be further expanded and I will work with the Minister for Health and the HSE to advance that.

There are two points there. As I said yesterday and today, we are monitoring this very closely and working out how best we can help to reduce household bills for people in terms of electricity. We are conscious also of the huge pressures on hauliers that have arisen due the general global increase in pricing caused by the economic rebound resulting from the relaxation of Covid measures throughout the summer and early autumn.

We are very conscious of the pressures on University Hospital Limerick. Surge plans remain in place and are being activated as needed with the HSE's critical care major surge working group providing support to all hospitals. Very significant funding of €52 million was provided by the Government in budget 2021 to add an additional 66 beds in Limerick and the HSE has advised 42 of these beds are now open, bringing baseline capacity to 297. They include ten additional critical care beds in Limerick, of which six are i…

There is no doubt but that cybersecurity threats are ongoing and serious for all countries across Europe. Europe tends to work collaboratively in response to such threats. One needs to be alert that the potential for a whole range of actors out there to intercept or attempt to intercept communications is always there. We must be very vigilant in relation to it.

Again, that is far easier said than done and may have wider implications that could also be negative, in terms of a sustained approach to deal with an energy crisis. There are other mechanisms the Government can avail of that we have availed of, such as the rebate scheme.