It was.

What I was about to say was that I do not like the language of competition in terms of a sustainable economy but nonetheless some of the matters discussed in the document are important. This relates to my previous point about musicians. If we do not support key sectors such as music and culture, we will really pay for it. I ask the Taoiseach to look at that because although some venues are getting some supports, individual jobbing musicians are not getting the support they need. Many of them will go out of business…

Will the Taoiseach ask the Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media to meet musicians in that regard?

There is a lot to discuss when talking about €88 billion in expenditure in a year but I will first raise things that I consider urgent for people who have endured a particularly difficult time, or who are likely to as we face into Christmas. Obviously, a considerable amount of the additional money spent on Covid income supports relates to the pandemic unemployment payment, PUP, the employment wage subsidy scheme, EWSS, and all of that. I was trying to get this point across to the Taoiseach and I will now try to get…

I thank the Simon Community for bringing forward the provisions of the Bill and I thank Deputy Ó Broin for co-ordinating the all-party effort to support the legislation. The Bill would give people three months leeway when faced with eviction into homelessness and it would give local authorities the right to trigger that three-month extension. The most important element of the Bill is the requirement that during those three months, local authorities would try to prevent the people in question from becoming homeless.…

I thank the Regional Group, including Deputy Naughten, for tabling this important motion on the critical subject of the development of our offshore wind energy resources. There is no doubt but that we need to develop our renewable energy resources quickly. A key part of that will be the development of our offshore wind capacity. Particularly given our huge maritime area and geographical location, we are well placed to play our part in moving away from fossil fuel energy, which we know is threatening the sustainabil…

Huge numbers of musicians, performers, entertainers and taxi drivers who, as a result of the dramatic reduction in people going out and the new measures on numbers and percentages in theatres and venues which impact on the night-time economy, are applying for the much-trumpeted restoration of the pandemic unemployment payment, PUP, are receiving letters denying them it because they had signed on for jobseeker's allowance last week and because they are on the part-time self-employment scheme, the whole point of whic…

People are taking massive hits on their income and they are being denied access to the PUP. What is the Taoiseach going to do for these groups of people who have been bit by measures the Government has taken?

Why then are people being denied it?

I want to follow up on the question Deputy Connolly asked earlier. As the Taoiseach knows, Deputy Connolly and I are very strongly in favour of the vaccination programme. We think people should get their boosters and we agree about the injunction to protect life and limb. However, there are human rights considerations for the small number of people who cannot be vaccinated for health reasons or who have not yet been persuaded, sometimes because they do not really understand the issue. I just want to draw a contrast…

People looking to get appointments with the Irish Naturalisation and Immigration Service, INIS, on immigration matters are unable to get any. I am inundated with complaints about this matter. I submitted parliamentary questions on it, through which I was informed that the INIS was registering 1,000 customers per week, implying that there was no problem, but I have had repeated confirmations from people that this cannot be true because when they go on, there are no appointments being released. People are going on at…

Yes. It is a serious and widespread problem. I see that other Deputies are nodding their heads. This issue needs to be addressed. We are not getting the truth of the matter when we submit questions to the INIS and the Department of Justice. Will the Taoiseach address this matter? I do not know whether he can tell us anything now but I urge him to address it.

I remain baffled as to the hesitation, reluctance and inaction that the Taoiseach is demonstrating when it comes to the issue of ventilation, air quality and air filtration. He said earlier today that he would do anything to protect life and limb, yet we know that providing minimum standards in terms of air quality and systems that can purify the air could potentially have a dramatic effect on the ability of this disease to transmit in the particular settings and particular types of buildings where it has been prev…

It is not just schools.

I am sorry, as I am slightly late to the debate. I support Deputy Cullinane's amendment. We are not, as Deputy Bríd Smith indicated in the Second Stage debate, supportive of this legislation. That is not in any because we are reluctant or reticent about protecting public health. We think it is critical to protect public health. From the beginning, we have been 150% in favour of promoting vaccination and it is clear that vaccination has reduced the likelihood of illness, hospitalisation and death. At this stage, we …

Yes, and the amendment is about the need to scrutinise decisions and powers that the Minister wants to give himself in this Bill. Is that okay?

It does, because I am concerned about the lack of a clear rationale for some of the powers that the Minister wishes to have. I want to explain that we need a rationale for a policy and a strategy. It is not clear at this point what the rationale is because at a particular point in the evolution of this pandemic, everybody believed that there was a possibility that if we got to a certain level of vaccination – the figure that was being floated at that time was about 70% - or immunity through natural infection, that …

Because we do not give draconian powers to the Minister with a lack of accountability to this House unless we know where the strategy is heading.

In particular when the Government is not giving clear answers. What is consistent in our approach to this is that when we were campaigning for elimination as a strategy, prior to there being mass vaccination, the whole point was to reduce the likelihood of long protracted periods of very harsh restrictions and rolling lockdowns that went on for long periods precisely because we saw it as a mechanism to reopen society. That is what everybody wants to know, how we reopen society but do it safely in a way that we can …

I will do so clearly. I do not believe in giving wide-ranging powers to the Minister without accountability to this House unless he can give us and the wider public an evidence-based argument that is convincing about what exactly the purpose of all of this is and how it is part of an integrated strategy to cope with Covid-19. That is distinctly lacking. What we end up with then is a Government essentially looking around to point the finger at other people and particular groups and incoherent messages about where th…