First of all, I thank the Deputy for raising the issue. Women of Honour emailed my office yesterday, requesting a meeting with me, which I will facilitate. The Minister for Defence is also facilitating a meeting and I believe there has been interaction and he had offered a date. That is my understanding. He will be meeting the representatives. All members of the Defence Forces have a right to be treated with respect, equality and dignity and to carry out their duties free from any form of sexual harassment or bully…

First of all, the €3.8 billion was not thrown around like confetti. It was income supports for the people who needed income supports as they had lost their jobs because of Covid-19. It was to protect jobs in terms of companies-----

-----and in terms of health services badly needed to deal with Covid. It funded a whole range of measures, so it was not wasted money; it was important money in that respect. The Deputy is correct that I will be meeting people in respect of Ardfinnan bridge. Deputy Jackie Cahill asked me would I meet with them.

Councillor Michael Anglim has been consistently asking me-----

I have been trying to facilitate my diary and get-----

I hope the Deputy does not object to me going to Ardfinnan-----

-----with Deputy Cahill and Councillor Michael Anglim in that respect. Again, there have been various requests to meet. I have refused nobody.

The only issue is to try to facilitate meetings and so on. I will do what I can in that regard.

It is a very fair point the Deputy has raised in terms of theatre usage. That is why the development of elective-only facilities is crucial, so that we have theatres that are not impacted by trauma medical admissions and so on, which happens in the major tertiary hospitals. That is key. Proposals for three elective facilities will come to Cabinet in a short while in respect of Galway, Dublin and Cork in terms of new elective facilities. However, even within the existing suite of hospitals, we should ring-fence elec…

I thank the Deputy for raising the issue. I understand the importance in respect of Longford and the major frozen food facilities there. I will talk to Gas Networks Ireland and engage with it. Obviously, in the first instance, the routing of natural gas pipelines or the connections to towns is its responsibility and that of the Commission for Regulation of Utilities, but the Deputy has made a very fair point. We will pursue that.

I thank the Deputy for raising the issue. The Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage has been engaging with the working group in respect of developing a scheme. As that group has been meeting, other areas of the country have also signalled potential issues. As the Deputy will be aware, a submission from Clare County Council arrived in the Department at the end of July. That is being reviewed. He will be aware of the Limerick interest at this stage as well. All areas where this manifests itself will get…

As Minister for Health, I introduced a new nursing degree programme, which was a transformative development in nursing education. The idea was to free up nursing for education purposes. We developed new facilities in universities and institutes of technology across the country. Whatever we do, we must not damage that education space and aspect of undergraduate and postgraduate nursing education. I will talk to the Minister for Health in respect of where the report is now. Of course, we will publish the report and i…

I thank the Deputies. Deputy Patricia Ryan raised a question about the women in "Women of Honour" and their search for justice and for the truth to be told. The Government has made no decision in respect of this. As I said earlier to Deputy Tóibín, the Minister for Defence, Deputy Coveney, will be meeting the group. I will be also meeting them on foot of an email I received yesterday requesting a meeting. Deputy Durkan raised the worrying situation of human rights abuses globally. He is absolutely correct. It is a …

I propose to take Questions Nos. 1 and 2 together. The Mulvey report, Dublin North East Inner City - Creating a Brighter Future, which was commissioned by the Government and published in February 2017, contained recommendations for the social and economic regeneration of Dublin's north inner city. This report has been further supplemented by the publishing of the north-east inner city strategic plan 2020-22. Both documents are available on the north-east inner city website, www.neic.ie . In June 2017, an independen…

I thank the Deputies for raising these issues. To respond to Deputy McDonald's basic point about a review of probity, yes, we should do that. I will talk to my Secretary General about that and about the broader interest in terms of just reviewing the progress that has been made, the remaining issues and perhaps lessons learnt from the model. As I said earlier, maybe during Leaders' Questions, I am anxious we would broaden out and learn from previous experience of models that were developed before in certain communi…

I understand.

There were two items there. I will take up the issue of the childcare question. I will ask the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, to engage with the Deputy on that and I will follow up with the Minister. I cannot agree to any form of new inquiry today. I will make the general point that, ultimately, we have to get to a position where our existing mechanisms are ones in which we trust and whereby we say it is their duty to investigate. We can see with commissions of investigation how, even after three or four years of inves…

Following the disclosure in a newspaper report earlier this year of certain information relating to the final report of the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes in advance of consideration of the report by the Government, I requested that an investigation be carried out. A senior official in my Department is carrying out the investigation in the context of a broader examination of the overall arrangements for the management of documents for Government meetings and their confidentiality. That proce…

The general point the Deputies have made is valid, in regard to the protection of documentation and information. The storage and dissemination of such information has to be protected. I have asked for new mechanisms to be brought into play to ensure the protection of material that comes before the Government. The entire response of the Government to the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes is to deal, once and for all and comprehensively, with the issues that have been raised. I am not pre-empting…

I have not interfered with the investigation. It was undertaken by an official in my Department. I am not in a position to say who did what, or to give the Deputy any confirmation of that, nor indeed on the conclusion of it.