It is the idea that the pursuit of profit by these companies will never clash with the health and safety of the workers. The Minister, Deputy Creed, should withdraw the comments from three weeks ago. The Minister should apologise to the meat factory workers of the country for not listening to their warnings and for not calling for inspections. There were no HSA inspections of meat factories or of any other workplace in the entire country until Monday of this week. It was zero. Then we had 80 on Monday, Tuesday and …

It is a picture of what not to do.

It is huge. It is a higher percentage than in America.

Debenhams workers protested outside the Dáil earlier for the third time. They are some of the almost 2,000 workers who have been opportunistically thrown on the scrapheap by a company that had been seeking to exit the Irish market, a company of which Bank of Ireland is a part owner. Of course, the public is, in turn, part owner of Bank of Ireland. My first question is very simple. Will the State continue to just sit idly by while a jobs massacre begins in retail? Last week, the Minister for Business, Enterprise and…

The Minister is planning to cut it.

Yes.

I have a few specific questions, so we might do this in the form of question and answer, question and answer, etc. My first question is on childcare workers in the informal sector. It is estimated that there are approximately 35,000 non-crèche childminders, many of whom work out of their own homes or the homes of the children they are minding. They are not well paid, but unless they had another job in the formal economy, they have not been able to access the pandemic unemployment payment, PUP. They are low-paid wor…

I thank the Minister. I wish to ask about the availability of primary care facilities, particularly for children, and raise the example of a campaign that I presume the Minister is aware of, that being, the active and long-running campaign for a primary care centre in Fettercairn. Despite having approximately 7,500 residents, Fettercairn incredibly does not have a single GP. That has real consequences for the health of everyone in the area, but children in particular. Does the Minister agree that communities like F…

I wish to ask about a report that the Minister might have seen and on which the Minister for Health, Deputy Harris, has provided answers to parliamentary questions. It relates to private clinics in the new national children's hospital. The proposal seems to be that, despite everything that we have gone through in recent months, there will still be private clinics operating out of the hospital. Is the Minister not concerned that this points to children's access to healthcare being rationed on the basis of their pare…

Yesterday, I received a letter from the Minister, Deputy Humphreys, which confirmed that there have been over 200 complaints about breaches of the Covid-19 guidelines in workplaces and there has not been a single on-site inspection of one of those workplaces. That is 200 groups of workers potentially working in unsafe conditions and 200 appeals to the Health and Safety Authority, HSA, falling on deaf ears. BAM and JBC Construction workers on the Intel site were told to return to work on Monday last despite the clea…

Does the Taoiseach think it is acceptable that 200 workers or groups of workers have complained about not being safe in their workplaces to the HSA, the body to which we eventually found out they are supposed to complain, and it has not inspected their workplaces? Are workers who are asked to return to work next week expected to have confidence in the system when those who have complained have had no inspection? It appears that the HSA and the Government have been asleep at the wheel, carrying out no inspections at…

In that case, does the Taoiseach agree that workers and unions will have to take action themselves to protect health and safety? The HSA is not intervening or doing the job it is meant to do. I have it in black and white from the Minister that there have been more than 200 complaints and zero on-site inspections related to Covid-19. As such, unions need to prepare and stand alongside their workers. Safety committees must be elected by workers. Fundamentally, no worker should go back to work unless he or she feels c…

I have a very simple question and I would like a clear answer to it. According to the agreement with the private hospitals, last week they were to produce a full cost statement detailing the costs for the month of April. I asked last week if that would be published but I did not receive a response to that question. Will the Minister make this detailed breakdown of costs available to Deputies and the public? He has said, including today, that the model is an open book but, for that to mean anything, will he open the…

This is the fourth time I have raised this question and got various answers but on the essence of publishing the information about the costs so we can establish why we are paying so much for the private hospitals, I am not getting an answer. I raised it once with the Taoiseach and three times with the Minister and, repeatedly, the phrase "open book" is used to explain it but I do not understand what "open book" means if the books are not actually open for people to be able to read them. I got a response yesterday f…

I will quickly ask a separate question. Has the Minister considered the request by the Irish Council for Civil Liberties not to expand the Garda powers beyond 18 May? Rather than using these restrictions on civil liberties, the Garda should rely on the things that have an overwhelming impact, such as education, persuasion, etc.

I have several questions for the Minister, so I will ask a question followed by an answer and the same again, if possible. It is a bit frustrating listening to the Minister and some of the other Fine Gael Deputies, whose contributions have involved giving lip service to the idea of the importance of the arts, combined with a certain supposed realism about what can be done in terms of funding. It is the same approach that existed before the crisis but repackaged for the crisis. It is precisely that lip service, comb…

I want to focus on the question of airline vouchers, which was mentioned previously. Tens of thousands of people are legally entitled to a cash refund within seven days for flights that have been cancelled. They are being obstructed by airlines, including Ryanair, which are trying everything to avoid people availing of their legal rights. Even the vouchers that are being offered to them are less than their legal rights in terms of vouchers. They have an expiry date of one year when people are entitled to at least a…

What the Minister is clearly responsible for is the joint statement with other European states. That is the simple question I am asking. Is it the case that the statement, which called for consumer rights to be suspended in favour of the airlines, emerged from a meeting and that the Minister signed up to it? The Taoiseach said to me in the House that the Government had made no decision about that. Was it a solo run by the Minister or was it agreed by the Government? Will the Minister please clarify that, because it…

I will try to get through three questions and answers. It is clear from the approach of the Tory Government that the question of a hard border on the island of Ireland is again coming into focus. Boris Johnson, as has been referred to, has ruled out the idea of an extension of the transition period, which means that this can be posed sooner rather than later. It will be posed at the end of the year. In the past, the European Commission has been very clear in saying that a no-deal Brexit would mean a hard border on …

A key question in the context of a right-wing Tory Brexit is, as has been referred to, the prospect of a race to the bottom with working conditions, labour regulations and taxation. We have an example now of a company that seems to be putting its workers' health at risk in order to minimise its costs and maximise its profits. We know that a particular fruit company had an internal document, dated 9 April 2020, referring to so-called family units of more than 50 people within which no social distancing was necessary…