We are debating Covid restrictions and the Debenhams workers have been victims of Covid restrictions. They have been limited in the action they can take because of the Covid restrictions despite the fact their company used Covid as a cover to sack them by email, despite the fact they were forced to picket in a level 5 lockdown and despite the fact their campaign has been a litmus test for how workers are treated in a period of Covid. I want to make some brief points. The workers demand was for two plus two. They di…

I will conclude on this point, out of respect for the Leas-Cheann Comhairle's appeal. The workers have been hemmed in by the Covid restrictions. There would have been many more people on mass pickets if it were not for the Covid restrictions. It is shameful for Revenue to state, as it has in the past week, that it will not surrender one penny from the redundancy pot and for the Department of Social Protection to state it will not surrender one penny for the redundancy pot, with the result that the workers do not ge…

I wish to speak on the same issue. Last week in the Dáil, the Minister for Health told me that the HSE had asked SouthDoc for a timeline for reopening. He said he would report back to the Dáil this week on that timeline. Has the Taoiseach spoken to him about this matter and is he in a position to enlighten us in that regard?

There are plans to build 25,000 new homes in the Cork docklands over the next 20 years. The question is whether they will be genuinely affordable. Will young people and people on low and even average incomes be locked out of the market? I saw an interesting snippet on the RTÉ news recently. A company in Castleisland, County Kerry, built 70 houses. As the company had difficulty retaining a workforce in the area, it sold 20 of these houses to its workers at cost price. This cost of €150,000 was reckoned to be more th…

KPMG is taking €4.6 million from the Debenhams liquidation pot. It is taking this money to pay itself, and to pay for lawyers - in some cases for court actions taken against workers - for security, leases and warehouses where it has stored the goods that it smuggled out in the dead of night in order to cheat the picketing workers. If the Government had intervened after 50 days, as opposed to 250 days, it would have saved the vast bulk of this expenditure. In my opinion, that money should have been used to top up th…

Taking it out of the-----

The stock in the stores has been used to pay.

Today is day 250 of the Debenhams dispute. The Taoiseach was asked by multiple parties across this House to intervene to resolve this dispute before Christmas in order that workers could spend the holiday season at home with their families rather than freezing on picket lines and having to stress about an ongoing dispute. He appointed the chairman of the Labour Court, Kevin Foley, as mediator on 25 November. The expectation was that a proposal would be on the table no later than 7 December, allowing workers time to…

The Taoiseach's criticism of me personally is water off a duck's back. I am interested in what the workers think of my role in this dispute. I am not interested in what the Taoiseach thinks in this dispute, and that is where I will take my lead and my guidance from. For the matters at hand, I have spoken about the need for a settlement before Christmas. I want to speak now about the need for a just settlement. The Taoiseach knows as well as I do that this is not getting the statutory. This is about them getting mor…

The Government is currently reviewing the travel and accommodation allowance for student nurses and midwives. I want to remind him that the allowance was introduced in 2004 at a maximum of €50.79 per week. Sixteen years on, it still stands at €50.79 per week. It has not increased by one single penny in 16 years. I am sure the price of travel has gone up quite a bit in 16 years and I am absolutely certain that the price of rent has increased. Would the Taoiseach agree that the fact that this allowance has been froze…

I have two basic questions. How many new staff will be required to roll out the vaccine? Will the vaccine be rolled out exclusively through the public system, or is it envisaged that contracts may be awarded to private companies to administer it?

I wish to restate that this is an unacceptable situation for people on the north side of the city and beyond who have to travel to the other side of the city for out-of-hours care. Someone with a car might be able to deal with the situation. Someone without a car who faces an emergency with a young child must spend €40 on a taxi. That is completely and totally unacceptable. I note that in reply to Cork Kerry Community Healthcare, SouthDoc has stated that this is temporary. The question is how temporary it is. Can w…

The Minister says a timeline has not been provided but he will undertake to discover one. If the House does not mind me going into a rabbit hole, I must ask what the timeline is for the Minister to tell us the timeline. We do not want to know about this in January. We want to hear about it in the Dáil. Can we hear it tomorrow? If not tomorrow, can we have it early next week? The idea that the timeline will be kept secret from the people of the north side of the city until the Dáil reconvenes in January and the Mini…

There are pay increases for judges, pension cuts reversed for ex-taoisigh and 4,000 top civil servants but still no pay for student nurses and midwives. I agree with the Fianna Fáil Deputy for Cork East who stated yesterday that this may do lasting damage to his party. The Taoiseach spoke firmly earlier against paying student nurses but the point is student nurses are working in our hospitals. They will tell him that themselves. Does he doubt them? Even if they were in an apprentice-type arrangement, as he says he …

Yesterday, I asked the Taoiseach about the situation in the Arcadia group but he did not have time to reply so I will ask about it again because there are 900 workers whose jobs are on the line and, unlike Sir Philip Green, they cannot sail off into the sunset in a £100 million yacht. The company is in the hands of the liquidator who will try it for another six weeks but that only brings us up to the second week in January. There is a real danger that workers will get no more than the statutory two weeks, despite t…

The Arcadia Group workers-----

I am asking the Taoiseach a question on behalf of 900 Irish workers.

The review will be complete by the end of the year. Is that right?

Last week, the Arcadia group of companies went into liquidation, with 900 jobs on the line. Clearly, a retail jobs massacre is under way in this country. I believe that the Government should intervene to save jobs. If it does not, Mandate, the shop workers' union, needs to consider a one-day national strike to put pressure on the Government on this issue. There is also a broader issue in society. I have just come from a meeting of the Joint Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach, where w…

I ask the Minister if the continuation of the pandemic unemployment payment will be guaranteed until the end of the pandemic.