I apologise that I could not get to all the questions.

First of all, the Deputy is incorrect and is wrong. We know that Covid-19 has had a very significant impact on the housing situation in 2020. It is true that Rebuilding Ireland home loan approvals have been down this year because of Covid-19 and significantly so in quarters 1 and 2. The pandemic impacted significantly on the building sector because of the first lockdown, and that has followed through. Commercial mortgage approvals, by the way, were down 30% in quarters 1 and 2 of 2020. The Government, in the budget…

I am not saying that people who need affordable housing have massive savings. That is why we are supporting them. That is the reason we put €150 million into the help-to-buy scheme which the Deputy refuses to support and which she attacks whenever she gets a chance. We want to give people support to enable them to buy homes. Approximately €760 million was provided in the budget for affordable housing, there was €110 million in new measures towards a shared equity scheme, €150 million for the help-to-buy scheme, €20…

I set up the task force. This is an issue of national priority that goes to the top of the Government and I will stay on top of this until everything is resolved. To be clear, much of the experience and expertise resides in the Department of Health and the HSE. They have been involved in a range of previous vaccination programmes with the national immunisation advisory committee and so forth. One must draw upon the large amount of residual expertise and experience there. For the information of the House, Pfizer/Bio…

That is the reason I established a task force.

There has to be proper line accountability, right to the Minister for Health in the first instance in terms of supervision.

I set up the task force and it will report to me. It will report on 11 December. Generally speaking, I prefer to let it get the job done, get it sorted and dot the i's and cross the t's. The task force can present the plan and we will then operationalise it. The HSE will be a key driver of the operationalisation of it and the Department of Health will have oversight of that, as will the Minister for Health. As I have said, in terms of sequencing, there is a significant experienced team in the Department of Health t…

This is of a different scale. That is why we have brought in external expertise and those people are represented on the task force. It is important to draw on those strands that are then clearly accountable to a Minister. It is easy to nominate someone and put him or her in charge but he or she would not necessarily have the line accountability or authorisation over officials or agencies. That is an issue that will have to be sorted. I accept the Deputy's overall point. He is making a constructive contribution to t…

-----will have a significant role to play on the communications side to make sure that there is a good national collective take-up of the vaccine.

As a general point, I do not accept that the public health messaging is weak right now. I think people fully understand what is required between now and 18 December. I have seen increased mask wearing on the streets, which indicates that people are taking on board the messaging. After 18 December, people are fully aware of the communications. There will be a very comprehensive two-pronged communications strategy, #savechristmas, but also one that is devised for young people by youth advocacy groups, #antiviral, whi…

-----which has also been problematic in terms of the spread of the virus on both sides of the Border but in particular close to the Border itself.

It is mandatory to correctly complete the passenger locator form and we are looking at further potential mandatory obligations. As far back as the summer I spoke to the Northern Ireland Executive about the dangers of travel. We did not have the same exponential increase in the Republic as they did in the North after the summer because we were very slow in reopening travel in this country. I took much criticism at times for not reopening travel more liberally during the summer. The story for the Republic right throu…

I thank the Deputy for raising this very important matter, which relates to significant employment throughout the country. It was inherited by the Government and has been brought about by massive serial objections to forestry licences all over the country, which created paralysis in the system. As the Deputy said, he supported a forestry Bill that was enacted in October, which brings the forestry licensing process in line with the planning process under the Planning and Development Act 2000. A detailed project plan…

That is an important issue. I will speak to the Minister, Deputy McConalogue, and ask him to engage with the Deputy on the primer grant aid for smaller growers. The wider matter of small growers must be addressed proactively and positively by the Government. I will engage with the Minister in that regard.

The Government would view with concern any large-scale redundancies of that kind. Obviously, they are not mandatory redundancies. The indications seem to be that these are issues that will have to be worked out in negotiation but I will obviously discuss this with the Minister for Finance. Conversations will also happen with the banks although I have to stress that the Government does not run AIB. The Deputy knows, as does everyone else in the House, that there has been a very clear demarcation line between the Gov…

I remember that occasion well. I also remember when the trade unions engaged with the Government and said they were in a process

They were in a process with the then Government at the time. That is what happened with that particular campaign at that particular time. Some of it was resolved at the higher level in terms of the larger organisations but there was engagement between the unions and the HSE at the WRC. We would seek to have these issues resolved through the proper forums. Of course section 39 workers are essential and section 39 organisations make an enormous contribution. To that end, in the recent budget we made very significant …

Again, organisations and regulatory bodies across the country manage and regulate their membership, including for registration purposes. It is not the function of Government to get involved in every single one at this point. The Government has put unprecedented resources in under the economy. The sums are extraordinary. The Government, through the taxpayer, is providing €1 billion per week to underpin economic activity in the country. We will continue to do that well into 2021. The situation has to be seen in the o…

It is not satisfactory that the report has not been published, notwithstanding the pandemic. Much has happened since March and a lot of normal activity in terms of the way Departments operate has been put on hold but that in itself is not an excuse for the failure to publish this very important report. I will follow up on that, find out why the report has not been published and seek to get it published. Along with the publication, I will ensure that an implementation plan is put in place based on the report's recom…

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