I have two questions for the Minister. First, will he intervene to ensure that the 20% cut to Dublin bus services across the city is reversed? Essential workers, including healthcare workers, are being affected by this cut and I have been contacted by many. One route, for example, used by staff to travel to Tallaght University Hospital in the morning, has seen the number of services halved at that time. It makes no sense to implement this cut at a time when our individual buses are running at 25% capacity and those…

My second question is this. The Minister is on record as supporting the idea of metro south west. In fact, he has spoken about his preferred route being Harold's Cross, Terenure, Knocklyon, Firhouse and Tallaght. He is now the Minister responsible for this issue. The National Transport Authority, NTA, has commenced a feasibility study. However, there are major flaws in it. For example, the feasibility study ruled out many of the stops that are part of the Minister's preferred route, including in Harold's Cross, Fir…

I have two sets of questions, the first on the disrespect shown to childcare workers by the Government and the second on the lack of supports for parents during this pandemic, including the proposal we have brought forward for paid childcare for working parents. The Covid-19 pandemic has demonstrated again just how essential childcare and childcare workers are. It is worth noting that over 90% of childcare workers are women. The Government and the Department have completely failed to support either parents or those…

It is clear that there are deep problems with both of the existing regulatory bodies in aviation, the CAR and the IAA. In theory, amalgamating both in a wide-sweeping change has merit but whether this Bill and the reasoning behind it addresses the weaknesses in both is certainly questionable. Equally, it has long been pointed out by workers and others that IAA was fundamentally compromised in regulating airlines to which it was dependent for its funding. In theory, separating those functions, such as air traffic co…

The public are paying very substantial sums of money to enable businesses to keep going. There is a problem in that we still do not have a system of conditions for the kind of funds that are going to businesses, particularly conditions relating to Covid-19 compliance, to workers who can work from home being allowed to do so, and to how workers are being treated. Anybody who watches the twice weekly briefings from NPHET will repeatedly hear the call that workers should work from home. People should not be leaving th…

It is clear from listening to the Minister that he prefers vaccination aspirations to targets, because people can be strung along with aspirations that will not be met and because that allows him to try to avoid the fact that if we continue the living with Covid strategy, there will be more lockdowns before we achieve full vaccination. Earlier this week the Minister, unbelievably, claimed that one of the reasons we could not pursue a zero Covid strategy was because we did not know for sure that another Covid varian…

I am fairly certain it was said at the press event to announce the extension of restrictions to 5 March, etc.. If we want to reduce the chances of more dangerous mutations that could undermine vaccines getting into the country, it would make sense to pursue elimination strategies within each country and to seek to keep new variants out. This also makes sense in respect of the points made by Deputy Bríd Smith regarding a people's vaccine? By the end of this year, nine in ten people in the lesser-developed countries …

Parents are at their wits' end trying to juggle work and childcare during the lockdown, with no support from the State. They are expected to double job, to hold down their regular work while also home schooling. Many are simply not able to do that. They have run through their annual leave already. They are being told by the Department to leave their job and go on the PUP. Other countries in Europe have brought in new entitlements to paid childcare leave from work to deal with the situation. Does the Minister not ag…

It is good to see that the Minister has recovered from coronavirus. Congratulations are also in order, as I think he is now the longest serving Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine in this Government. My questions relate to Covid and the Minister's Department. I accept that he may not have all the information before him but we do not have other avenues in oral questions and so on. He can give whatever information he has and then respond in writing. First, I will refer to the negotiations he reported previo…

I am old enough to remember a month and a half ago when all Government Deputies united to vote down our motion to pay the student nurses and midwives. I remember, as I am sure the Government Deputies do, the public backlash against that decision. We had reports on that aspect of the matter from the Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael parliamentary parties, but I am not sure if we got one from the Green Party. My constituency colleague and Minister of State, Deputy Brophy, is reported to have said at the Fine Gael parliamenta…

The Government's failure to follow public health advice is responsible for Ireland having the worst rate of Covid infection in the world. It is responsible for hundreds of tragic deaths and these tragedies were avoidable. On 26 November, NPHET wrote to the Government and stated, unambiguously, "NPHET therefore recommends that the hospitality sector remain closed ... over the eight-week period". The Government broke with that advice under the pressure of business lobbying and decided to open pubs and restaurants. At…

I find the defence that nobody said it would be this bad to be bizarre. It is like saying, when one's mother tells one not to put one's hand into the fire, "Mummy, you just told me I would burn my hand; you did not say my whole body would burn". The Government was warned about what would happen. It is simply not true to say that the Government broadly followed NPHET's advice. The Government broke from that advice in October when it refused to go into lockdown and the Tánaiste set out to undermine NPHET publicly. It…

This lockdown has placed huge pressure and burdens on families. Many parents are unable to work because of childcare responsibilities with schools being closed. In recognition of the additional burden being placed on parents as a result of the pandemic the German Government has just this month increased working parents' entitlement to paid leave to care for their children on full pay from four weeks per year to eight weeks. I ask the Government and the Taoiseach whether they will commit to introducing a similar rig…

Last week, the Minister wrote to the religious orders to ask them to contribute to the redress process. That is completely unacceptable. Those orders must be compelled to contribute, including by seizing their assets where necessary. The scheme must include all survivors, including women affected after 1973 and women and children who stayed in the homes for less than six months. Survivors must also be entitled to redress for all the harm offered, including from the forced adoptions that the commission incredibly cl…

Tens of thousands of young people are at home right now and looking to go to further education in September. They are anxious as to how places will be allocated and anxious as to whether they will be able to get a place. Last year, after a massive campaign by school students, the Government promised extra places to remove some of the pressure on students applying through the CAO system. This year we face a similar crisis, but now the Government has plenty of advance notice and time to invest in a serious expansion …

I want to use my short time to amplify the voices of survivors of these hellish church–State institutions. Repeatedly in the report, their voices are denigrated. Despite harrowing survivor testimonies of abuse, the report states there was "very little evidence of physical abuse" of women, and it downplays the physical abuse of children. On forced adoptions, it essentially states the many woman who have testified that their children were forcibly taken from them are lying. It states: Some of this cohort of women are…

Today we had 63 notified deaths, almost 2,000 people with Covid in our hospitals and 172 in ICU. The Minister now oversees the health service in the country with the worst rates of Covid infection in the entire world. It is worse than Trump's US and Johnson's Britain. All of this was predicted. It is the direct consequence of the deadly mistake that the Minister made to ignore the public health advice that he got. Does the Minister accept responsibility for the terrible state of affairs in which we are? Will he lea…

On a point of order-----

On a point of order, the Minister is lying. He is telling bare-faced lies. The Government-----

I have a point of order. The Minister told bare-faced lies.