This Government has been a shambles over the past few weeks.

It has been a shambles-----

I will conclude on this point, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle. The Government has made a shambles-----

The Government has been a shambles on the pay increase for the junior Ministers.

The Government has been a shambles on the attacks on people who avail of the pandemic unemployment payment, and it is a shambles here tonight.

It is not going to get away with it.

It is not going to get away with it.

Fifth year students, the leaving certificate class of 2021, lost close to three months of face-to-face teaching time this year. I know that the Government and the Minister accept that changes must be made to take account of that lost time. I was going to say that I had an exchange with the Minister earlier today but it was yesterday at this point. In that exchange, she indicated that the change was going to take the form of giving a greater degree of choice to next year's leaving certificate students. That seems li…

I want to be clear that I understand the answer. I think the Minister said that the students should know about the changes as soon as they go back to school. That implies that they will know in the first week that they go back. Is that the position? Could the Minister indicate if I have got that right with a "Yes" or "No" answer?

That is helpful; I thank the Minister. Earlier, I mentioned to the Minister that in an exchange I had during the week with the Taoiseach, he said there would be consultation with all of what he described as the stakeholders on the proposed changes in next year's leaving certificate about which the Minister has just spoken about. He laid particular emphasis on the fact that he considered it important that there would be a very high degree of consultation with sixth year students to seek their consent for the changes…

I am concerned by that answer and I think that many fifth year students who will be going into sixth year in September will also be concerned. The Minister said that the consultation has taken place. I am not sure if many of those students to whom I referred will agree with that. I know that there is a representative organisation and I respect the good work it has done. I understand that the Minister has been in touch with that group and had a certain back and forth engagement. However, there has not yet been an op…

I will conclude by saying that it may well be the case that what the Minister says does not contradict the Taoiseach's line that there will be maximum consultation and a need for consent. It is possible that it will contradict that. If it does, the Minister will need to review that position. We will leave it at that.

I congratulate the asylum seekers at the Skellig Star hotel in Cahersiveen. They have been treated appallingly since the first day they were put in there in the middle of March. There were 110 people accommodated in 56 rooms. Imagine what that means in the middle of a coronavirus pandemic. When there was a boil water notice in the town, the residents were limited to 1 l of water per day. They reached out to the Minister for Justice and Equality and the International Protection Accommodation Service, IPAS, for help …

Did I hear the Minister correctly that she hopes to have everyone moved out by the end of the year? Is that correct?

The written statement we have here states that the process will be completed in a relatively short period, which is vague, and then in no more than a few months which is vague as well. That is not going to cut it with the asylum seekers or their supporters in the town. They welcome the fact that people are being moved out. Some people are being moved out this weekend. However, the idea that people would be left behind there for months is not acceptable to the people who have organised this struggle. If I heard the …

The programme for Government pledges to review the legal provisions for collective redundancy, something that is long overdue. We have seen how workers at Clerys and now Debenhams are suffering under liquidation laws that were framed by the Taoiseach's party and Fine Gael when it was leading the Government. This day last week, the Tánaiste met Debenhams workers and their union representatives and undertook to take steps to try to improve the package available to them. My question is twofold. Will the Taoiseach repo…

I will share the remaining time with Deputy Paul Murphy, who will be present shortly. I will refer to the July stimulus but I will first make some specific comments about the TWSS and the PUP. I welcome the fact that the payments are being continued into 2021, albeit with the TWSS under a slightly different guise. However, I do not welcome the fact that the PUP is due to be cut on 17 September and that workers who are out of work through no fault of their own will be forced to take pay cuts of between €50 and €100 …

The ban on evictions was introduced on 27 March and it worked. It was a very effective policy. At the end of March, 9,907 persons were in emergency accommodation in the State. By the end of April, that had declined to 9,335. By the end of May, it had fallen again to 8,867. At the end of March, 3,300 children were living in emergency accommodation. By the end of May, that was down to 2,787. In the space of a mere two months, the overall numbers forced to live in emergency accommodation in the State declined by more …

This morning, FM radio stations across the country were quoting Government sources as stating that the Residential Tenancies and Valuation Bill 2020 offers protection for tenants on the pandemic unemployment payment, PUP, and the temporary wage supplement scheme, TWSS, until the new year. Those Government sources did not say that these protections will not apply to tenants on the PUP and TWSS when landlords plan to evict on the grounds of sale of property, refurbishment of property, relatives moving into the home a…

In an exchange we had earlier in July, the Taoiseach confirmed to me that the Department was giving active consideration to making changes to the leaving certificate of 2021 in order to take into account the very significant loss of face-to-face teaching time that the students who have just completed their fifth year studies have suffered. In that exchange, he also indicated to me that an outcome or a plan would be in place by the end of July. We are nearly there; we have a day or two to go. I am hoping the Taoisea…