There is a crisis right across the country.

What is the Taoiseach going to do now? There is a crisis now.

What is the Taoiseach going to do now, this week?

The Zappone affair cannot be explained simply by the sense of entitlement felt by merchant princes. Fine Gael has been in power for more than ten years now. Its Ministers believe that power is theirs by right. The Varadkar leaks affair showed that last year; the Zappone affair shows it this year. As well as being the Minister most caught up in the lobbying, cronyism and deception of the Zappone affair, Deputy Coveney is just one of the Ministers whose fingerprints are all over this housing crisis, who have drastica…

I ask the Tánaiste what measures he will take to ensure the maximum possible engagement with workers and their representatives in the process of the return to work; and if he will make a statement on the matter.

On the issue of health and safety and maximum consultation, the Government decided to implement 100% capacity on public transport at short notice the week that schools went back. No opinion was sought from NPHET. There was no consultation with public transport workers who, by the way, played a key role in guiding society through the pandemic. However, the workers rejected the Government's instruction. They decided to keep capacity of 75%. In practice, they are allowing seats to be occupied and implementing a no-sta…

While workers will be back to work on 20 September, the teachers went back to work three weeks ago. The employer, the State, did not set a very good example in this regard either. Best practice ordains that every classroom should have a filter and a carbon dioxide monitor. Proper mitigation measures, according to Professor Orla Hegarty, would cost €10 per child. They were not put in place, however. How does the Minister of State explain that to teachers? Will he comment on that? I listened with interest to the Tána…

The question was whether the Minister of State will join me in making a call to the companies to say that under no circumstances should pay cuts of the kind in question be implemented here. I would appreciate an answer to that.

No clear call from the Minister of State.

Currently, there are 61 countries on the red list. The vast majority are from Africa, Asia and Latin America. The only European countries are Turkey and Russia. As the richer countries get their people vaccinated, the mandatory hotel quarantine system impacts more heavily on those from poorer countries and, while certainly not exclusively, on people of colour. As time goes on this will increasingly be the case. Mandatory hotel quarantine will impact hardest on our migrant communities, again, especially those from A…

On Monday, the secretariat of the English-language education working group within the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science emailed all the English-language schools, giving them the power to reopen next Monday, 19 July. English-language students are, generally speaking, between the ages of 20 and 40. The overwhelming majority are unvaccinated. Many English-language teachers are also unvaccinated. There are 28 teachers in one school that I am aware of and only two of them have …

The unit deals with the Dáil in progressing the programme for Government. A key challenge is the question of youth unemployment. In that context, I want to ask the Taoiseach about the work placement employment programme, JobBridge 2.0. There will be 10,000 positions for six months with 30 hours of work per week for €306. No doubt the Taoiseach will tell me that amounts to the minimum wage of €10.20 per hour but all the work placement participants will be on jobseeker's allowance of €203. This means that they will r…

What about JobBridge?

The caretaker Prime Minister of the Netherlands, Mr. Mark Rutte, said yesterday, "We had poor judgment, which we regret and for which we apologise." In a society with a higher vaccination rate than ours, he rushed a reopening and the cases multiplied by 20 times within a fortnight. The legislation is being rushed through the Dáil and Seanad, and rushed down to Áras an Úachtaráin. Concerns related to civil liberties and workers rights are not being heeded. The voices being listened to are those of the publicans and …

The Minister of State, Deputy Butler, is reported in the Irish Examiner this evening as saying she plans to report any potentially criminal allegations involving abuse and neglect in nursing homes to the Garda. She repeated the point in her speech. As the Minister of State knows, potential abuse and neglect in HSE nursing homes are already automatically referred both to the Garda and registered safeguarding social workers. I therefore have a question for her. Is it now intended to change the law so this would autom…

Tonight, the Dáil will vote on a proposal to freeze rents for a period of three years. The Government has proposed an amendment to delay progressing the Bill for another 12 months. The Government is adopting the Johnny Logan approach to rent increases - what's another year? For tenants, another year could mean the fourth, fifth, sixth or seventh year in a row that their rents will rise. For some, it is another year of notices to quit or evictions. In the 1960s, Fianna Fáil was the party of the Taca men. In the Celt…

Is the Taoiseach's climbdown on the vulture funds the most spectacular in the lifetime of this Dáil? If climbdowns and U-turns comprised an Olympic sport, I suspect Paddy Power would have the Taoiseach at short odds for a medal at Tokyo. Just nine weeks ago, the Taoiseach voiced strong opposition to local authority leasebacks from vulture funds. He said the message should go out loud and clear from the Government, yet tonight his Government will vote to provide a new incentive to the very same vultures and cuckoos.…

The Minister needs to listen and take on board the concerns of women and those of the 221+ group. They want a non-adversarial approach in this tribunal and a tribunal that will not oblige women to fight the laboratories. They want the right for a woman to return to the tribunal if her cancer recurs. They want the Statute of Limitations to be extended as well as other reasonable, modest demands. They feel that the tribunal is not working for them. It is meant to be the Minister's job to ensure that the tribunal work…

This amendment is a sneaky one. The Taoiseach has denied that that is the case. He has told the Dáil twice now, I think, that he indicated that this would be the case when vulture funds were being debated nine weeks ago. Well, if the Taoiseach did give an indication at the time, it was so cryptic and so far beneath the radar that no Opposition Deputy, alert and all as we were, no journalist in this country, alert and all as they are, and no member of the public following the debate noticed it. There is a reason for…

We were told by the Department of Social Protection at the start of June that the State's new work experience programme would be unveiled by the end of June. We are now a week into July and the Department is saying that it will give the details in July. I do not think I am the only one who suspects that the Government might be holding back on the details until after 15 July and the summer recess, so that the new scheme cannot be critiqued or questioned on the floor of the Dáil. We all remember the notorious JobBrid…