Outrageous.

Does the Taoiseach think it was a good idea to break a commitment to teachers about vaccinations less than two weeks before the full reopening of schools? Does his breach of trust put the full reopening of schools in any kind of jeopardy? Will he send teachers and students back into the schools on 12 April if the reproduction number remains above one or will he do it if the reproduction number rises above 1.5? Fifth year students will have missed 14 weeks of classroom teaching time by 12 April. These students will …

The Beacon Hospital gave vaccines to staff of the private school attended by the children of its CEO. The hospital gave the jab to staff of Park Academy crèches and the CEO of the VHI. The Irish Daily Mail reports that at least one other senior manager with no clinical role at the VHI was contacted by the Beacon Hospital and offered a Covid-19 jab at the start of March. I am told there is a 1990s revival going on at the moment. Certainly, it seems that the golden circle of that decade has not gone away. It used to …

SouthDoc is paid €7 million annually by the HSE to provide out-of-hours GP care for public patients. Despite this, their centres in Blackpool on Cork's northside and Listowel in County Kerry are shut. The Blackpool centre has been shut for over a year. The HSE has expressed grave concern about this situation. The health needs of the people of the northside must not be shoved to one side. When will the Taoiseach and Minister for Health intervene to make sure those doors open again? Across the country, the State is f…

More than 5,000 peaceful protesters were arrested in just one day in January this year in Russia and the repression has continued since then. I wish to focus on two of the less high-profile cases. The first is the case of Anastasia Ponkina, a feminist and environmental activist. On 9 March she was charged in Izhevsk for attending a protest in January. She now faces the prospect of up to five years in prison and her organisation, the Russian Socialist Movement, faces being branded by the state as an extremist organi…

What steps does the Minister intend to take to defend jobs and services in the branch networks of banks? I ask him to make a statement on the matter.

Let us recap what we are talking about as regards job losses. In Bank of Ireland there will be 1,400 to 1,700 redundancies. In Ulster Bank 2,800 jobs are in jeopardy, as are 300 at PTSB and 1,500 at AIB. The grand total is more than 6,000. It is not good enough for the Government to say market forces rule and it is not going to interfere, or it appealed to the boards of the banks to play by the Queensberry rules, etc. A pause should be put on these redundancies and closures, at the very least until the end of the C…

I assure the Minister that my interest in the well-being of bank workers is far from new-found. If he talked to some of the bank workers I have assisted in their various campaigns in the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s and 2010s, that might clarify the position for him. We will leave that matter there. This is a test for the Government. There are massive redundancies coming down the line in retail, and post Covid there will be massive redundancies in other industries as well. Now there are more than 6,000 jobs on the line in t…

What are the Minister's views on the continuation of the bankers' pay cap? Will he make a statement on the matter?

In the Minister's exchange with Deputy Doherty earlier, he made the point that Goodbody was not covered by the cap, that the State had no control over the remuneration it paid its top executives and that he was not proposing any change to the cap for AIB executives. However, what he did not deal with was the fact that if AIB takes control of Goodbody, then AIB executives can transfer over to Goodbody, and those executives can be paid €500,000-plus and the bankers’ bonuses without the 87% rate. They can find a way a…

Unfortunately, the Minister’s very weak position on this issue is encouraging other senior bankers who want to drive a coach and four through the banking cap and find a way around it. At the Oireachtas finance committee recently, the CEO of Bank of Ireland, Ms Francesca McDonagh, was not prepared to discuss her bank's interest in Davy and what would happen if it was to purchase Davy, but was prepared to discuss a theoretical situation where the bank would acquire an entity, which we agreed to call entity B. She mad…

I will begin with a quote: This is a massive missed opportunity to speed up and scale up the production of lifesaving vaccines worldwide, by waiving the intellectual property barriers that prevent more qualified manufacturers from joining the effort... It is unforgivable that while people are literally fighting for breath, rich country governments continue to block what could be a vital breakthrough in ending this pandemic for everyone in rich and poor countries alike. These are the words of Oxfam's health policy m…

An Bord Pleanála has given the green light to and granted planning permission for Ireland's tallest building. At 140 m, the five-star hotel will have 34 stories. It is a €150 million development at Custom House Quay. Once upon a time the land at Custom House Quay was publicly owned and this project shows clearly why we should keep publicly owned land in public ownership. This is land that could have and should have been used for public housing. That is what Cork city and the ordinary people need. They need social a…

"We are not scared. We are not afraid. We shall not obey." These were the cries that rang out on the streets of Ankara, Istanbul and Izmir at the weekend. There were demonstrations of women and girls holding pictures of women who had died as a result of male violence and protesting against the withdrawal of the Turkish Government from the Istanbul Convention, which directs prosecution for domestic violence, marital rape and female genital mutilation. These women and girls and the men who support them were protestin…

My first question is for the Minister of State. She just stated that 99% of over-85s had been vaccinated. Will she clarify? Is she using that figure as a general way of saying that most have been vaccinated or is she saying that it is actually 99%? My next questions are for the Minister. Pfizer and Merck were contacted by the Government about producing vaccines in Ireland. The State offered to assist with the cost of reconfiguring plants in Cork and Carlow, but the companies said "No". Some questions arise. Did the…

I ask colleagues to consider what is the essence of the Minister's remarks and his key line of argument. In effect, he is saying that we are all in agreement in this House on these issues and we are headed towards the same place. We are agreed on the goal, according to the Minister, and the only debate is over the speed at which we travel. The facts contradict what he is saying. According to Universitas 21, which measures government expenditure on third level education as a percentage of gross domestic product, Ire…

We are discussing a Bill which would give the right of all persons to a birth certificate, which would mean that adopted persons in this State would have the right to their birth certificates. That is clear, straightforward and reverses an injustice that has been visited upon people for many years. This legislation should be passed, and we will vote wholeheartedly in support of it. The other issue at stake today is being discussed by the Cabinet. It is the question of an inquiry into illegal adoptions in this State…

I will speak about the State's 400 student radiographers. Our student radiographers spend four years in college. Over the course of those four years, they spend approximately 200 days working in our hospitals for free. They have been doing difficult and dangerous work in the pandemic. They do direct Covid-related work, for example, the taking of X-rays. Not only are they not paid, they do not receive sick pay if, for example, they are infected. They do not receive paid leave. They have in many cases had to give up …

I was sent up to this place by the people of Cork North Central to give voice to their opinions and concerns, which is an important part of my job. The people on the ground feel that they are doing a hard shift. For many, lockdown number three is the toughest of them all but the vast majority of people are sticking with the guidelines and to the plan. There is some scepticism about the vaccine and there are some people who say that they will not take it but my sense of it is that the vast majority of people will de…

No. I am making a statement. We all heard the story today about the Connemara GP racing around in the dead of night getting the needles and syringes because he was informed of the delivery at the very last minute. Leaving that aside, the story that is heard across the country and that I have heard in Cork North Central is of the old people who were asked to go to their GP surgery. There is excitement about the big day, they arrive in the morning and the vaccines are not there because the GP surgery has been told at…