No, it is an important point. The legislation has been at the pre-legislative scrutiny stage for six months, then the Government gets attacked for delaying. The suggestion and implication there was that we deliberately produced the scheme yesterday. I hope the Deputy is not suggesting that. Last week, we were being asked when the scheme would be published.

The Deputy mentioned those younger than 60-----

The target and expectation of the HSE is that those aged 60 to 69 will receive boosters by the end of December-----

I know, but we have engaged regularly with NIAC on the need-----

-----to review this. NIAC provides the advice. There is a balance here, and I must be honest with everyone in the House. People ask if the Government will do this or that. The Government acts on the advice of NIAC. I do not want to put the committee under the spotlight unduly either, which really is the implication of what the question is about.

I am answering it. My point is that the committee ultimately has to answer for any advice that it gives about the administration of a vaccine to people. Roughly 93% of people took up the first vaccines, which in many ways is a vote of confidence in the system that we have.

I respectfully suggest that we could jeopardise all of that. It is easy for me and it would be very populist of me to say-----

I am giving the Deputy the answer.

The Deputy knows that is the answer.

We do. NIAC is constantly reviewing all of these things. I have to say what I said there.

We do, and we need to accept public health advice on keeping our schools open. The constant thread and consistency from Government in keeping our schools open is accept the public health advice. It has worked, actually. The public health advice was received in respect of contact tracing. It has not been disastrous either way.

I put it to the Deputy that he cannot have it both ways. His party took the correct approach from the outset of the pandemic. I agreed with his party leader, Deputy Shortall, who said, at the time, that we must be guided by public health advice, no matter what, because if we jettison that, we will end up with a very inappropriate and wrong response to the pandemic. If we look at countries around the world that jettisoned public health advice, we can see where they ended up in terms of mortality rates and the disast…

To be honest, the number of PUP recipients has been coming down steadily as we have reopened the economy. The number of recipients has gone from somewhere well over half a million down to 60,000. That has been the direction of travel, because we have reopened so many sectors of the economy.

Which the Deputy supported, I think. Or did she? I thought she supported what we did last night.

Some day I might get an answer from her.

As they say, you run with the hare and you hunt with the hound. It was Deputy Kenny's question, to be fair. It is our view, and there is consistent feedback from Members and people across society, that one of the significant difficulties employers have faced since the economy reopened is getting staff. There is a balance somewhere between the two. The number of recipients of PUP has come way down. We will continue to support people and the sectors that are hit, as we have done from the beginning in terms of sectors…

I accept the sincerity of the Deputy's presentation. I value her raising the issue, even though the recruitment of staff is an operational issue for the HSE. The Deputy has suggested because the post is part time, it is not getting the attention from people who could fill that position. I will engage with the HSE on that. The recruitment processes need to be speeded up, accelerated and there needs to be greater innovation in recruiting people. The HSE has recruited approximately 11,000 people in the period between …

The Ceann Comhairle is being too strict. I was really looking forward to a lyrical list of those beautiful Kerry names dripping off the tongue. I agree with the Deputy. I will look at it. It is a very fair point. Deputy Ó Cuív was instrumental in introducing the rural social scheme. It is a valuable scheme. It does a lot of valuable work throughout the country. It is very useful and developmental for the people involved. I will speak to the relevant Ministers to see whether we can look at the specific issue the Dep…

I will certainly examine the issue. Advances have been made in nursing through the nurse education and degree programme we introduced many years ago and through advanced practitioner courses. It is very clear in many specialties that nurse-led teams do enormously effective work, from gynaecology to children. In neurology, which historically has been an underfunded area, there is much to commend in what the Deputy said.

I have raised this issue myself with the Minister for Education and others. It is an easy issue to raise but it will be more challenging to fulfil. I would not start from Covid; I would start from climate change. With regard to tearing up the rule book, the way we should approach school transport into the future is through the prism of climate change. The Deputy is correct that if we want people out of cars and less frequent car trips, providing more buses and getting children to school on them would make a contrib…