The Tánaiste touched on this matter earlier, but he did not answer the question. Why has this critical human resource not been used?

Tógfaidh mé ceithre nóiméad agus fágfaidh mé ceithre nóiméad go leith do mo chomhghleacaí. The political management of leaving certificate 2020 was a lesson in chaos. Last year, decisions were made and reversed on a weekly basis. It feels like we are back to square one. Currently, students around the country are having their stress levels ratcheted up, in large part due to the political chaos around this particular issue. I know of students who lost months last year in school and who will lose a month this year. I …

One thousand people in nursing homes have died from Covid-19. That is roughly half the number of people who have died from Covid-19 in this State. That figure far exceeds the proportion of people who have died in nursing homes internationally. According to the World Health Organization, approximately 25% of Covid deaths internationally have occurred in nursing homes. In this country, the people most vulnerable to the illness were left most exposed. After the first wave of the virus passed through the nursing homes,…

This is not good enough and it has to change.

It is an absolute disgrace that the Minister for housing is not in the Chamber.

I understand that, but this practice has been repeated by Governments and Ministers regularly. At the start of this Dáil the Government introduced a process whereby Opposition Deputies were made to slide down the pecking order when it came to an opportunity to speak in order that the Government could put its Deputies up first. That means that the Minister is not around to listen to other views in this Chamber. He listens only to the views he can already hear in the parliamentary party meetings. It is a sign of arro…

I appreciate that, but there is nothing better than listening to the remarks as they are made, as the Minister of State well knows. Deputy Mattie McGrath stated, "Ní neart go cur le chéile". We in Aontú have a similar saying, namely, that we all live under the same sky and we are all responsible for each other. During this pandemic and during the recession, we have an obligation as politicians, but also as human beings, to look out for the most vulnerable, identify the groups that are at risk of homelessness or ext…

Okay. Would it be possible to share with the rest of the Chamber any findings of the study or even the timetable for when it is to be completed? I believe that three actions are necessary in this situation. First, we need to be able to collect information from counties other than Dublin. We need to know how many people are dying in homelessness in each of those counties. If we do not know what is happening elsewhere, how are we meant to develop a policy to ameliorate that situation? Second, we need standardisation …

I welcome this important motion and praise the Regional Independent Group for bringing it before the Dáil. I would like to give a special mention to Cáit Nic Amhlaoibh, who did massive work in the development of this particular motion. This is a strong motion and, if implemented, would make a radical change to hundreds of thousands of lives around the country. I also welcome the fact that the Regional Independent Group has done good work in trying to get cross-party support for this motion. I ask that the Governmen…

Before asking my question, I take this opportunity to encourage women to use the CervicalCheck cancer screening service. CervicalCheck saves many lives every year. On 11 November, I asked the Minister for Health how many legal cases have been issued to date in respect of CervicalCheck. He replied that there had been 164 cases as of that date. That is an incredibly high figure. Each of those cases represents a woman with cancer and a family forced to fight for justice in an adversarial court system. Deputy Catherine…

It was the clinical director of CervicalCheck.

The fact that we are talking about the tribunal in the future tense at this stage is incredible. The Patricia Carrick case struck me in a number of ways. How could a Government fight her in the courts, practically up to the end of her life? It was incredible. She was not the only person who has been in that situation. It also struck me that she had taken a number of smear tests before her diagnosis, yet her tests were never part of any review. The reviews commissioned by the Department and the HSE focus only on sli…

What if the court cases find there is a problem?

We know this.

There is a margin of error, but the problem is the court cases are finding that there are also mistakes beyond the margin of error.

Aontú is a party of fiscal and social responsibility and these two policies are often presented by the Government as opposites, but they are not. One can be fiscally responsible and socially responsible at the same time. It is possible for a country to provide for housing, health, education, transport, communications and the environment and yet be fiscally responsible. This simply means that key resources are provided consistently and fairly. It also means that expenditure is carried out in the most efficient and e…

Maybe so. The Government, in fiscal terms, took the wrong decision in the level of stringency it pursued on the lockdown. This country was the sixth most strictly locked down country on the planet. Some 96% of all countries on the planet decided to have a less stringent strategy. This was despite the fact that we had the second lowest level of Covid-19 in Europe. One will say, correctly, that those two things are dependent upon each other. We have the second lowest level because of those stringent restrictions. Tha…

Deputy O'Dowd voted against paying student nurses last night.

The Deputy who is speaking voted against paying student nurses last night.

I stood up for what I believed in.