I propose to take Questions Nos. 10 to 13, inclusive, together. The Cabinet committee on economic recovery and investment has been established and first met on 8 July. It has met on a total of five occasions, most recently on 22 September. The Cabinet committee is scheduled to meet next on 9 October. Membership of the committee comprises the Taoiseach, the Tánaiste and Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation, the Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications and for Transport, the Minister for F…

Is it the case that the Opposition Deputies are saying that unemployment assistance and jobseeker's allowance should be €350?

Is it the case that it should be €350? We need to call a spade a spade.

I am making the point that this is not sustainable. Carer's allowance at €350 a week could not be sustainable. If one elevates every social protection measure to €350 per week-----

The Deputies opposite are avoiding this all the way through. Deputy McDonald has avoided it.

Deputy Boyd Barrett would tax the imaginary whoever to fund it.

There has to be sustainability to what we do. We have to think ahead. The whole idea of the pandemic unemployment payment was to open it up to new entrants. We did that because of the acknowledgement that there would be further restrictions imposed. We also extended it to April. It is my sense that we will have to extend beyond that until we get a vaccine. The Government has to take the overall view. We are borrowing over €20 billion this year, and rightly so. We will be borrowing large amounts next year. There are…

On the Debenhams workers, again, I am conscious of the efforts made by Mandate and others in terms of the liquidation. I am not happy with how Debenhams dealt with this. There are limitations, however, to what can be done. The Government will provide a statutory redundancy payment and will do whatever it can within its powers to get extra support for the workers where that is possible. That has been the Government's approach from the outset. I never promised something that I felt might not be achieved for the worke…

I know that. We have a set of criteria in the plan that we discussed with NPHET. They are broad criteria; I accept that. The bottom line is that everyone had an expectation of a graduated response.

Once there is a lockdown, there are unintended consequences. There is no point pretending it would not have a serious effect on many ordinary self-employed people who have grasped the period from the last lockdown to now to try and create viability in their business. They might employ four or five people. A lockdown on Sunday night could have spelled the end for them. These are the hard decisions we have to make and we are not making the call in terms of short-term profit. That is an outrageous and propagandistic a…

Our reality is to protect people as much as we can, including lives and livelihoods. They are intertwined because a range of health consequences can emanate from people losing jobs or being unsure about their future. Their mental health can be undermined. We have to take that on board.

We may not. We still have it within our responsibility as people. We can impact on this, collectively and individually, if we pull together to try to get the numbers stabilised. If we do not, we may have to move to another level.

We may have to do that. As I said last week, the decision was at this stage not to move to level 5. I have no guarantees, just as there were no guarantees that had we moved to level 5, it would all be fine in four weeks' time. On the New Zealand strategy, we are not New Zealand, either geographically or in terms of economic construct. We are different from New Zealand. No other country in Europe at the moment has gone ahead with a lockdown, even though their numbers are far higher than ours.

No, it is not to do with ICU capacity.

NPHET does not say that.

There is a range of criteria. The HSE says it has ICU capacity. We are obviously concerned and will monitor that but the HSE is running the service and the last time out, we managed. We created a surge capacity when it came and our hospitals managed.

We will have to readjust and I hope we do not get there but, if we do, we will do everything we can to protect people. There has to be balance to the debate and using language to suggest that short-term profit triumphs over everything is just propagandistic, ideological nonsense.

First, I think it is a good report by the ESRI. I want to say that, contrary to the pandemic increasing affordability issues in the sector, the ESRI is actually saying that, in the short term, affordability may have actually improved over recent months because of, to use its own phrase, "extraordinary fiscal measures [introduced by the Government] in the form of the Pandemic Unemployment Payment (PUP) and the Temporary COVID-19 Wage Subsidy Scheme (TWSS)". It does acknowledge extraordinary interventions by the Gove…

The Deputy has a lot of talk and her party colleagues talk a lot, but what is absent, in my view, is any coherent plan in terms of employment, affordability or housing. They talk a lot about those things but, in my view, much of it is without substance. If one reads the ESRI report comprehensively, it uses the phrase "extraordinary fiscal interventions" in reference to the Government's actions, which Deputy McDonald just condemns, attacks and undermines. She has done so from the very beginning, in a very unrealisti…

I thank Deputy Kelly for his question and the issues he has raised. There is no doubt that the impact of Covid-19 on the economy has been very severe in 2020, and especially on the domestic side of the economy. Regarding the multinational sector, it is worth saying this, and the Deputy will acknowledge it and get it, but a lot of people in the House do not get it, that Sinn Féin and the far left have never acknowledged or accepted the extraordinary impact the multinational sector has had on our economy. It is 250,0…