George Floyd, Tony McDade, Breonna Taylor, Charlene Lyles, Philando Castile, Sandra Bland, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Tanisha Anderson, Tamir Rice, Trayvon Martin, Oscar Grant and Amadou Diallo; I could recite the names of black men, women and children murdered by racist vigilantes and racist police in the United States for my full five minutes, and I could go on for much longer than that. I stand with those in the US and around the world rising up against systemic racism, and against racist policing in particular…

A growing number of millionaires and billionaires and their cheerleaders in the media and the Dáil are calling for vital public health restrictions to be loosened more quickly so that the economy can fully re-open and they can resume making their profits. Leading the charge, unsurprisingly, has been Michael O'Leary of Ryanair, a notoriously bad employer, despite what the Minister might say. He has now graduated from bashing unions and driving down workers' pay and conditions to demanding an end to vital public heal…

The Minister is not pushing to reduce the 2 m distance to 1 m.

For the record, I take it the Minister agrees that there is substantial scientific weight behind the 2 m requirement. A review of over 200 scientific studies published in The Lancet two days ago states that transmission of viruses was lower with physical distancing of more than 1 m and that the evidence is clear that 2 m saves more lives than 1 m. The World Health Organization, WHO, is also clear on that point. A number of Ministers have stated, as did the Taoiseach last week, that the vast majority of people would…

I only need four minutes.

People are not stupid. They know exactly what the Government was doing. People know there has been a campaign of manufacturing consent for attacks on the pandemic unemployment payment and they are increasingly seeing that it is built on the same sort of lies as those on which the Taoiseach built his previous campaign about welfare cheats, which are fundamental untruths about the figures. I will come back to them. The Government has a problem now because the true face of the motivation behind this attack was reveale…

I do. I just need ten seconds. It excludes all social protection payments, including the working family payment and so on. Hundreds of thousands of people are affected by those payments, but the figures do not include any of them and, therefore, they are bogus. Could the Minister confirm that the payment is based on people's income from an employer, that it does not include social protection payments and that this figure of 38% is, therefore, not accurate?

I will try to regain some time here so I ask the Taoiseach for a very short answer to my first question. It is undeniable that we have seen a massive propaganda campaign in the past week or more to attack those on the pandemic unemployment payment. Pat McDonagh, a millionaire, has been complaining that it is tough to get part-time workers to work in Supermac's for €200 a week because of the availability of the pandemic payment. A Government Minister has suggested it is unsustainable to continue to pay it. Deputy Ra…

My argument is simply that before the Taoiseach cuts the pay of anybody who is currently on €350 a week, he should see what it is like to live on that amount. Everything about this propaganda campaign reminds me of the "Welfare cheats cheat us all" campaign that was rolled out when the Taoiseach was the Minister for Social Protection. It is the same attempt to divide and rule workers through the use of the same scaremongering and exaggeration about people scamming the system and from the same underlying motivation …

A catastrophic crisis is unfolding in our meat factories. Last week, 40% of all new Covid-19 cases in the entire country were among meat workers. That crisis was preventable but the State agencies, and the Ministers responsible, were asleep at the wheel. Does the Minister agree that it is scandalous that there were zero on-site Health and Safety Authority, HSA, inspections in regard to coronavirus until Monday, 18 May? More than two months after the pandemic really hit Ireland there were zero inspections on-site de…

I thank the Minister for the answer. Will he clarify if all 200 officers who are being allocated by the Department of Health will be engaged in on-site field inspections, and if not, how many will? That is crucial. It was reported in the Irish Examiner on 19 May that the Department of Business, Enterprise and Innovation had assured people that the HSA was getting additional inspectors from the WRC to inspect workplaces. I do not know if that is still the case or the plan. I have seen internal emails, which show tha…

As well as a horrific pandemic with death and tragic consequences for so many people around the world, we are also living in a real-life experiment of what it is to implement the most far-reaching changes imaginable in terms of people's habits. The Minister spoke earlier about the need for everyone to change their habits. I agree with that, but who could have imagined the kind of changes in people's habits that currently are taking place? Consumption has collapsed and huge parts of the economy have effectively been…

Why does it not apply to meat factories, shops or pharmacies?

That is not the question the Minister was asked.

In a response I received yesterday to a parliamentary question I tabled regarding my repeated requests for a breakdown of expenditure under the agreement with the private hospitals to be published, the Minister claimed this information is commercially sensitive and, therefore, will not be published. I have written to the Ceann Comhairle under Standing Order 44A to complain that the Minister has not answered the question and ask that he request that the Minister does so. I have a very simple question for the Ministe…

We have a situation whereby the State has now paid €112.4 million, as I understand it, to the private hospitals owned by, among others, Denis O'Brien, Larry Goodman, etc. We know from reports that the State is paying up to four times as much per bed as is paid in the United Kingdom. We are now finding out that, two weeks after the figures were to be provided by the private hospitals, the Minister has not looked at those figures. We are expected to be okay with that and with the fact that he has repeated in writing …

I want to ask a question on the National Famine Commemoration Day. First, I wish to pay tribute to the National Famine Commemoration committee volunteers. The committee has done an extraordinary amount of campaigning work and has pushed for proper appropriate commemoration of the Famine. Part of the work has involved pushing for a full recognised State day with a consistent date in the calendar. A Bill relating to this matter passed Second Stage in the previous Dáil. The Famine was commemorated last Sunday and the …

Will the Minister confirm that the commemoration will happen on the third Sunday in May every year and that will be the case for the event in Buncrana in 2021?

My first question is to the Minister, Deputy Creed, and it follows on. Three weeks ago, he accused me in this House of smearing the meat processing plants because I raised with him complaints from the meat factory workers and their unions and I called for them to be inspected by the Health and Safety Authority. Does the Minister now accept that the Health and Safety Authority should have inspected the plants in April when the complaints were made? Will he, please, withdraw his allegation that I was unfairly smearin…

It is the same as three weeks ago. It is the same ideological, touching faith in the pursuit of profit of these companies-----