To be clear again, I am asking for statements on Thursday. That is a request from our spokesperson, Deputy Conway-Walsh.

I believe there could be an opportunity in the Dáil so I make my request again.

We requested time for statements on the winter plan for Thursday and note that has been agreed. The announcement from Bus Éireann that it will close its intercity Expressway services to Galway, Limerick, Cork and Belfast is an extremely disturbing development. I ask that time be made available this week to discuss this issue and try to arrive at a solution that allows those vital services to continue. The Taoiseach will be aware that there was consternation last week at the failure of several organisations and the …

I move: That Dáil Éireann resolves that the European Union (Common Fisheries Policy) (Point System) Regulations 2020 (S.I. No. 318 of 2020) be and are hereby annulled. On behalf of all the fishing organisations Sinn Féin has spoken to, we support a penalty points system being put in place - it is essential - but the system must be fair and just. It is important that I outline the history of how we got here this evening. Previous statutory instruments introduced by Ministers in the Department with responsibility for…

This is a sorry saga. I will give the Minister genuine advice across the floor. He urgently needs to get a grip of the people who run the marine section in the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine. In all of my eighteen and a half years in politics, I have never come across such wall of distrust between those who a Department are supposed to represent and the Department itself. I have spoken to fishermen and fisherwomen up and down the coast since I took on the role of Sinn Féin spokesperson for fisheries…

The Minister will be very familiar with the issue of jurisdiction over Lough Foyle. In November 2016, the then British Secretary of State, Mr. James Brokenshire, declared that the whole of Lough Foyle was within the UK. That has always historically been rejected, not just by the Irish Government, but by the Irish people. The facts are that the British Government and the Crown Estate claim jurisdiction over all of Lough Foyle. One of the outworkings of the failure to resolve this issue is that we now have large numb…

I wish to raise directly with the Minister the serious problems that have emerged with school transport in Donegal and across the rest of the State. The Minister, in conjunction with the Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy Foley, overlooked the school transport challenge under the umbrella of the back-to-school plan in a very clear way. Every year at this time, families are always left behind under the eligible and concessionary tickets system. It is a major problem in rural areas, including rural Donegal, be…

Not agreed. I heard the Taoiseach on the radio yesterday calling on influencers, whoever they are, to help build public confidence in the public health measures. Last week, he had a go at various Opposition spokespersons regarding their co-operation with Government, yet he denied the Opposition the ability to scrutinise these public health regulations. He did not agree to a debate on them. As we speak today, in the Assembly in the North, members are debating and scrutinising the regulations up there and making them…

To be clear, I am raising again the fact that the Government failed to agree to debate the draft regulations last week. This was raised at the Business Committee and here. The Government voted down the proposition. I am, therefore, asking the Taoiseach if he will make space this week to debate the issue of the Government's testing and tracing plan, or absence thereof.

That is what we are here for.

Nothing was agreed in the past two weeks.

That additional time is based on our parliamentary numbers by the way. I state that for the record.

That is just to be complete in the explanation.

The Taoiseach has some brass neck on him.

The rest of the people of Ireland are very excitable when they listen to the Taoiseach these days.

We requested the Government to publish the draft regulations that will replace the regulations which will soon expire and which are having such a profound impact on people's lives, and that we would debate those regulations in this Chamber. I am aware that the Government is hiring additional public relations companies to assist it with its message, but yet it cannot come into this Chamber to submit its regulations to proper scrutiny, to have them debated and to get agreement. As that is not happening, Sinn Féin wil…

That is not the case.

On a point of order, the Taoiseach knows well that there were five dissenting voices at the Business Committee when it came to agreeing the schedule.

Not agreed.

We also raised this issue last Thursday. We are asking hundreds of thousands of workers, students, teachers, doctors and nurses to work in conditions that we are not demanding of ourselves in these Houses. The imagery from the Convention Centre is appalling. It is a cavernous space with huge gaps between us. It is not sustainable so our party has put forward proposals for the third time. They are currently being examined. We will oppose the Order of Business every week until we get all Dáil business back to Leinste…