Throughout the pandemic the Government has provided unprecedented and extraordinary supports across the board, both with income supports for those who have lost work and passed measures to provide additional parental leave. There was also support for employers and the jobs they support through the employment wage subsidy scheme, EWSS, the Covid restrictions support scheme, CRSS, the pandemic unemployment payment, PUP, and a range of other supports. Without question, the level of engagement by Government with differ…

In the first phase of the vaccinations up to 70,000 vaccines were administered to front-line healthcare workers. Some 23,000 were administered to the residents of long-term care facilities. The objective is that by next Sunday all residents and staff in such long-term care facilities would be vaccinated, and a substantial number of front-line healthcare workers. Once the long-term care facilities are done the intention is to continue with front-line healthcare workers until the full 150,000 of those in hospitals an…

I personally did not close anything and I certainly did not close that facility because I was not involved in that decision. I have not refused to meet anyone.

I do not know whether the Deputies have talked to the HSE locally. I suspect that the Deputies are aware of why the HSE took the action it has taken. That said, it is my understanding that the HSE wanted to invest in the centre with different purposes in mind. The facility needs a lot of investment and its current structures are not in a very good state, and I believe the Deputies would agree with that.

I have no issue in engaging with the HSE. I have not refused to meet with anybody. I do not know why people assert that I have, I have not. That remains the position.

I will talk to the Minister on the wind energy guidelines and the publication of the Mulcahy report. I will follow those up for the Deputy. The wind energy guidelines have been considered by the Department for a long time now so I will talk with the Minister about those.

We are in the middle of a global pandemic and the virus is wreaking devastation on many industries, on many sectors and on society at large. That is the reality. The vaccination programme offers light at the end of the tunnel. We are part of a European pre-purchase agreement process with a number of companies for the delivery of the vaccine. The first such company was Pfizer-BioNTech and it is delivering its vaccine to Ireland. Moderna has followed with low levels of vaccine. As soon as we get vaccines in, we will …

I was involved in the establishment of SouthDoc in my time as Minister for Health and Children. It has provided a range of services across the Cork-Kerry region, including out-of-hours, 24-7 services, GP services and primary care services. The understanding was that the clinic would be opening and SouthDoc has taken that decision. I do not operate SouthDoc but nonetheless I will seek an explanation for the failure to open the Blackpool clinic and the reasons for it and I will revert back to the Deputy.

I thank the Deputy for his comments and I concur with them. As I said earlier, we wish President-elect Biden the very best and I agree with him when he describes the Irish poets as the best in the world. We look forward to welcoming him to Ireland during his presidency and we look forward to a very fruitful partnership with the United States on a range of multilateral issues, from climate change to public health issues as regards the status and position of the World Health Organization. Progress has been made on th…

I welcome the fact that that meeting is happening tomorrow. Deputies O'Dea and Quinlivan and the Minister of State, Deputy Niall Collins, have been consistently raising this issue with me and there has been significant advancement on the first phase of the project. I will engage again with the Minister, Deputy Ryan, on it.

The recent decision of the Government on the obligation and requirement for a negative PCR test before one comes into the country has been strongly adhered to. There are very high levels of adherence to that measure. Further measures around quarantine are constantly being examined and there are significant implementation issues around them. To be frank, we have an issue with people accessing the Republic through flights into Northern Ireland, and that remains a concern.

I move: That Dáil Éireann: supports the Trade and Cooperation Agreement between the European Union (EU) and the European Atomic Energy Community, of the one part, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (UK), of the other part, done on 30th December, 2020; welcomes that: — the Trade and Cooperation Agreement, together with the Withdrawal Agreement, including the Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland have ensured the achievement of Ireland’s key objectives in the Brexit process, including Ireland…

On the first point, we are not allowing anybody to write our housing policies. Generally speaking, I think the budget was a landmark budget in terms of housing, with a €3.1 billion allocation and the largest amount of social housing - to be built this year - on record. Obviously, Covid will interrupt that this month. Be under no illusion - we are taking a multi-strand approach to housing. There is strong investment in social housing in order to address homelessness and deal with the long waiting lists for such hous…

I know what the Deputy is doing. She is engaging in a political branding exercise rather than making a serious intervention on housing and housing policy. Sinn Féin seems to be opposed to all home ownership initiatives by this Government and by previous Governments. Fianna Fáil did one thing in the history of this country. It was responsible for the massive social housing programme of the 1930s and right through the decades to the 1960s, in particular, that dramatically transformed living conditions for many people…

I thank the Deputy for his contribution. For my own part, my remarks and my statement yesterday in no way sought to diminish the role of the churches, or indeed the State, and any reading of them would confirm that. I spoke about the perverse moral code overseen by the church that in my view was responsible for this in terms of its attitude to sexual morality, for example, which was at the heart of forcing mothers into mother and baby homes. I will deal with this in substance in the statements later and in the apol…

No doubt the commission brought out a whole range of issues and actions speak louder than words. The most important work we have to do in this House in the immediate future is the implementation in terms of the legislation which the previous Dáil was not in a position to get through.

It will be a survivor-led response to the commission. The commission was independent. No politician had any hand, act or role in the deliberations of the commission itself. The Deputy needs to accept that. I hope he was not implying that when he used the phrase "systematic attempt". It is important that this sort of thinking does not gain ground. That is not fair and it is not right. It is not fair to the commissioners in particular. How would the Deputy define society? We are all society. All of us are part of a s…

I can deal with that more comprehensively later.

I thank the Deputy for the question and for raising the issues. I also wish everyone a happy new year and may 2021 be better than 2020, in particular in respect of Covid-19. We sympathise with those who have lost someone, in particular most recently, as a result of Covid. The Deputy's question relates essentially to the impact of Brexit. We have been very clear for quite some time that Brexit essentially means that the seamless trade between the European Union and Great Britain is a thing of the past. That is a rea…

The Government did not bring about Brexit. There are issues in terms of rules of origin that will impact on some food products and these result directly from the legal framework governing trade. There are also some significant anomalies in respect of certain goods that are manufactured in Europe by companies that have their main bases in the UK in terms of supplying the UK and Ireland. That has happened in the context of a number of products and because these are reboxed or whatever in the UK, there is a difficulty…