The Government's gratitude for the heroic work our healthcare workers have done to protect us all during Covid was revealed as thoroughly hollow when it voted down the People Before Profit motion in October to pay student nurses and midwives for their work on placements. What the Government did promise was a review of their allowances. The review offered them an absolutely pathetic €100 a week, but even that has not been paid. It was supposed to be backdated, but student nurses and midwives have not got a cent. Now…

Student nurses are living in poverty.

I thank USI for continuing to campaign on this important issue. It is great that many parties of the Opposition are uniting to support students in order to end the disgraceful situation whereby students do not enjoy the protections to which they are entitled in terms of their accommodation. Indeed, when one looks at all of the purpose-built and extremely expensive student accommodation popping up all over the city, it is clear that a certain group of people think that students' accommodations needs are to be exploi…

I have amendments in the group. We actually went to the trouble of putting in amendments. There are more than 20 of them. My thanks to the staff in the offices of People Before Profit and Rise who, at short notice, had to submit over 20 amendments. There are connected amendments across this grouping and other groupings. The purpose of the amendments is to try to turn a Bill that is, in the form put forward by the Government, actually a public relations exercise on mandatory quarantine. It is not actually a serious …

I am sharing time with Deputies Paul Murphy and Barry. Sadly, this legislation on quarantine is the latest instalment in the totally defective and failed policy of the Government for dealing with Covid-19. To be honest, the legislation is nothing more than quarantine by name, but neither in effect nor in practice, for incoming travellers and therefore will continue to allow the virus and the variants to move into the country freely and completely undermine all of the huge sacrifice and hardship that the public are …

It is the tourism business continuity scheme.

I am sharing time with Deputy Barry. Since the outbreak of the pandemic in March of last year, I have been advocating on behalf of two sectors that have been hit particularly hard - devastated - by the pandemic and pandemic measures. For the most part, they still remain excluded from the support schemes that have been set up. I requested that the Tánaiste meet with one of those groups, the taxi drivers, and he did so. They have explained their situation to him. Apart from a few weeks before Christmas, there is no w…

Deputy Paul Murphy and I are sharing time. I thank Deputy Doherty for this Bill and for continuing to bang the drum on trying to end the insurance rip-off. This Bill addresses one of the more obnoxious practices of the insurance industry, that of essentially punishing its most loyal customers for being loyal. It is an outrageous policy and of course it hits at the loyal customer. It also hits at the vulnerable customer who does not know how or feel confident to challenge an insurance company over increased insuranc…

As we have been stating for weeks now, it is completely unacceptable that the Government is using the Covid crisis to shield itself from legitimate questioning and accountability on a range of pressing issues for people in this country by limiting time for debates, questions to An Taoiseach and, critically, the pandemic, thus breaking a commitment that there would be a standing debate on Covid and dealing with the pandemic. It is outrageous. I want to mention a specific item on today's order, namely, the Land Devel…

There are a number of new heads in the Bill dealing with how it is proposed to involve private investors in public land and definitions of affordable housing, none of which has been through pre-legislative scrutiny, as is required under the legislative process.

I will not delay or call a vote because I know people want to have Questions on Promised Legislation. However, I want to say something about the Government's refusal to compromise with the Opposition. We said at the Business Committee that all we needed was approximately an extra six hours in the week to accommodate the health debate we are looking for on the Covid-19 crisis, questions to An Taoiseach, Private Members' business and so on. The Taoiseach refuses point blank to make any concessions because he does not…

The slots for questions to An Taoiseach are gone.

I understand that. Listening to this debate, all I can say is "wow". I do not know whether to laugh or cry when I hear what Government spokespeople are saying. Of course, the Minister has left the building, like Elvis Presley, but the boys are back in town - that is all I can say. The boys are back in town, as Phil Lynott put it - Fianna Fáil and the developers. I find it absolutely shocking beyond belief that we have Government people accusing the Opposition of ideology. It is utterly laughable, as is the referenc…

I will move the adjournment. I hope we can mobilise popular opinion to defeat this legislation before it gets passed. I hope we can actually force in legislation that will take the land off the speculators and vultures. That is the action we really need to take.

I am sharing time with Deputy Paul Murphy. I have one very specific question which the Minister probably will not have an answer for today so I ask him to bank it and come back to me on it. The Minister will be aware of the concern expressed by the South African Government in regard to the efficacy of the AstraZeneca vaccine in terms of the variant in that country. I have been contacted by at least two healthcare workers here who are working with people who are quarantining following their arrival into this country…

I thank the Labour Party for giving us the opportunity to discuss Covid-19 strategy. It is critical that we do because, quite frankly, it beggars belief that the Government is continuing to talk about living with Covid-19. Even more shockingly, this week the Minister with responsibility for housing has been citing arbitrary dates in a few weeks' time to reopen construction and other sectors of the economy with the cheerleading of Mr. Tom Parlon from the Construction Industry Federation, CIF. This is a terrifying ec…

People Before Profit was not a latecomer to calling for mandatory quarantine or for a zero Covid strategy. We have been calling for this for months. Yesterday we saw that Ireland paid a very bitter price with 101 fatalities, a record number, for the Taoiseach's failure to embrace a coherent zero Covid strategy and to impose mandatory quarantine. I now will address another chronic failure. It is ironic that the Taoiseach referred to workers in his justification for not imposing quarantine and zero Covid. Today is th…

Even at this late stage, on the 300th day of this dispute, will the Taoiseach do right by the Debenhams workers and the Arcadia workers?

First, my only interest is to see 1,000 Debenhams workers, who have gone through an extraordinary struggle and have been treated despicably, get the justice and fair redundancy they deserve. It is similar for the Arcadia Group's workers, another group of workers faced with the same situation because of the failure of this and successive Governments to address this abuse. I put to the Taoiseach a concrete example. The Irish Bank Resolution Corporation, IBRC, which was bailed out by the people, put a €5.5 million fun…

The people bailed it out.