Extraordinary and unprecedented resources have been made available for this school academic year for public transport. Even dealing with NPHET's advice in relation to 50% on a bus necessitated €100 million plus from the Government over and above what was provided for in the school transport scheme. Substantial resources have been provided already. I do not know the specifics of the case but if the Deputy submits them to the Department, we will see what can be done. Across the country, there are challenges in relati…

That can be done by local authorities. Local authorities should do that.

They do have the money. They have been given unprecedented resources. This is a national Parliament. I understand Members raising issues and I have no problem with that but that is €550,000 nationally. If that is divided among all the local authorities at €15,000 per facility, that is well within the capacity of local authorities. We have provided additional resources this year to local authorities because of Covid-19. It is an important point the Deputy has raised and it should be attended to but I would like to k…

I propose to take Questions Nos. 1 to 3, inclusive, together. I met with the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, in Dublin on 8 October 2020. We discussed the programme of work for the European Council for the period ahead, with a particular focus on the agenda for the meeting of the European Council which took place on 15 and 16 October. This included Brexit, Covid-19, climate action and European Union relations with Africa. President Michel and I took stock of progress in the Brexit negotiations. W…

Deputy McDonald spoke initially on the Brexit issue and the EU trade negotiations more generally and, in particular, on the Mercosur trade proposition. In my view, and I raised this at a recent EU Council meeting where we discussed climate change, there is an incompatibility in the climate change agenda of the European Council and European Commission proposals on climate change. We will return to this in December when there will be a more detailed and comprehensive discussion on climate change in terms of the Europ…

Briefly, I share Deputy Boyd Barrett's condemnation of the attack by Israel and the demolition of the 80 Palestinian homes. I am not aware as of now whether that money has been recovered. The EU provides very significant funding to support housing, education and social services in Palestine and to support the Palestinian people, as does Ireland, and we will continue to do that.

I propose to take Questions Nos. 4 to 8, inclusive, together. The Cabinet committee on Covid-19 was re-established by Government on 29 June to assess the social and economic impacts of the potential spread of Covid-19 and oversee the cross-Government response. The committee, which I chair, meets regularly as required. The committee last met on 19 October. The date of the next meeting has not yet been set. A senior officials group supports the special Cabinet committee and ensures a dedicated, high-level, cross-gove…

On the issue of student nurses, as Deputy Boyd Barrett knows, discussions have been under way for quite some time. The Government's priority is to protect and support the education of all students, including student nurses and midwives. We recognise the impact of Covid-19 on student nurse and midwife placements. The Minister for Health is currently considering proposals to revise the existing student nurse and midwife allowances for clinical placements in the short term to support their ongoing clinical training. I…

Hold on a second and listen. The decision was taken to suspend clinical placements for all students and to offer all undergraduate nurses and midwives temporary healthcare assistant contracts. At the same time, the salary level for fourth-year internship students was raised to the healthcare assistant rate. The cost of that was about €41 million. That worked on that occasion. The situation is much different now in terms of the impact on Covid itself. In April, there were approximately 900 patients with Covid-19 in …

I have hopes for the current discussions. It seems from what I am hearing about the negotiations that people are looking for different rates now than were agreed in April. I want those negotiations to be brought to a conclusion as quickly as possible and to protect the clinical placements for students. Deputy MacDonald referred to behavioural change and the vulnerable. At all levels, that remains a priority for the Government in its response to Covid-19, particularly in terms of funding and resourcing disability da…

The data on that will inform whether we might look at certain sectors as well and might moderate that. I did not get to everyone. My apologies.

I propose to take Questions Nos. 9 and 10 together. I met the US ambassador, Mr. Ed Crawford, at Government Buildings on 21 September. The meeting was a courtesy call requested by the US embassy to mark my appointment as Taoiseach and to discuss matters of mutual interest to Ireland and to the United States. We discussed the Irish and American responses to the Covid-19 pandemic and its ongoing impact in each country. The ambassador and I discussed the Brexit negotiations and the importance of full implementation of…

I would just say first of all to Deputy Paul Murphy that I do not accept the definition or description of Ireland as a "tax haven". We work with the OECD and with other countries on good and sound taxation global policy. We have continued to work on that basis, and also within the European Union framework, in terms of taxation strategy and taxation policy. We have for more than 50 years operated a very successful and effective foreign direct investment strategy, which has created thousands and thousands and thousan…

-----the sense I get from them is a set of strategies and policies that would undermine jobs and create thousands and thousands of vacancies or redundancies in our system. I do not think they have this well thought through in terms of how the global environment operates and in terms of competition out there.

The foreign direct investment here has not been just about tax. Ireland invested, from the 1960s onwards, dramatically in education. It will never get acknowledged by the far left. There is a very significant degree of state intervention in Ireland. The free second level education was a huge advance in Irish society that Donogh O'Malley and Fianna Fáil brought in. The expansion of third level education and the dramatic investment from the late 1990s that I initiated in higher education research have had a profound …

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue and for her remarks, and also for the point about unity of purpose across all parties in this House on the crucial issue of Brexit, which I welcome very much indeed. I also take the opportunity to join with the Deputy in expressing our sympathies to the family of the Secretary General of the PLO on his recent passing. I share that sympathy with all in that organisation and those of his loved ones. We are particularly pleased that President-elect Joe Biden has won the confid…

I undertake to do that. I am conscious that the Minster for Foreign Affairs, Deputy Coveney, is introducing the Withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union (Consequential Provisions) Bill 2020 tomorrow. I believe he has had consultation with party spokespeople across the House and has secured a good degree of consensus and constructive engagement on that Bill, which is crucial for preparedness on Ireland's behalf. I spoke with the President of the European Commission over the weekend in relation to ong…

I thank the Deputy for raising the issue of the Debenhams workers. It is very difficult and unsatisfactory from the workers' perspective that it has dragged on for so long and they have not received their redundancy entitlements as per the collective agreement they entered into with their employer. The Government will, of course, honour the statutory redundancy but that is not the issue at stake. The recent exploratory talks at the Workplace Relations Commission ended without agreement. The Ministers of State, Depu…

What the Deputy is saying, essentially, is that whatever is due to the various Government Departments, to Revenue or in terms of social protection should be waived, if I understand him correctly. That creates a very significant potential incentivisation for others in the future to welch on their obligations to workers, knowing the State will pick up the tab. Essentially, that means creating a new statutory redundancy scheme in an ad hoc way and simply saying the State will pick up the tab anyway, which would then i…

I do.