It was the Labour Court-----

It was the Labour Court.

As the Ceann Comhairle knows, for the last number of weeks we have expressed our opposition to the failure of the Government at the Business Committee to honour a commitment it made to ensure the Covid emergency and the response to it are a standing issue on a severely curtailed Dáil agenda. The Government has refused to honour that commitment, which I understood had been agreed at the Business Committee. Given the dire situation we are facing in ICUs and nursing homes, the huge debate about the Government's failur…

No.

They are not agreed. Thursday would have been the logical day, as I see it, to have the promised debate on the Covid-19 response and the public health crisis. It is deeply ironic that the Taoiseach should cite as justification for not having that debate the non-essential travel and work requirements. It is precisely the Government's failure to police non-essential travel and non-essential work that means the situation is dangerously plateauing. We need to discuss that in detail this week and interrogate the Governm…

I asked for that debate.

Yesterday, the Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications, Deputy Eamon Ryan, announced the welcome decision - one for which People Before Profit has been campaigning for quite some time - to cease issuing new gas and oil exploration licences. Of course, it then emerges that the gas and oil companies are welcoming this because all the existing licences as well as ones such as Barryroe that are up for extension, renewal or adaptation will continue. This means we will have licences extending to 2034. In…

The Minister can cancel them.

I want it to be effective.

This is a technical motion on one level, but it is, nonetheless, an opportunity to highlight some important issues. We are talking about underspending of €709 million in many areas of capital spending, which is an indication of how significant the impact of Covid-19 has been. We must also add to that figure the roughly €20 billion in additional spending which is also related to the pandemic. To be honest, this exposes the Government's false narrative concerning its strategy balancing public health with the economy.…

I am happy to support the reappointment of Dr. Niall Muldoon and I commend him on his work. Precisely because of the nature of his work and the very good job he and his team have done in reporting our failure to vindicate fully the rights of children and young people under 18, I am sure that he would want us to take this opportunity to highlight some of the issues that his reports have covered. It is important to highlight the failure of this State to vindicate the rights of children and young people, despite the r…

If we had a little bit longer for the small groups, we might have time. A modern day plague or infestation has struck most of Dublin and perhaps other parts of the country. The infestation is particularly acute in south Dublin. It is not locusts but property developers and property speculators, who are drawn like bees around a honey pot or perhaps flies around a less pleasant substance, but the attraction point is strategic housing developments, SHDs. They are really just a mechanism to print money for speculators …

Yes, we are sharing time.

It is not agreed. I am not exaggerating when I say that the Government is using the Covid pandemic to gag the Opposition and minimise the opportunities for the Opposition to hold the Government accountable at a time of national emergency when people out there are asking questions about the strategy around Covid, around the state of our health services and all the different knock-on issues that are profoundly affecting our population. One of those opportunities, which is being denied to us because of the severe curt…

We are not allowed ask the Taoiseach these questions. That is not acceptable, as far as I am concerned. It is a 40-minute slot. We have asked for it for the past two weeks and it is being denied. That is not accountability. That is not leadership on the Taoiseach's part. It does not give the public the opportunity to ask really urgent questions they have of Government.

It is not agreed. I do not want to waste the Dáil's time by calling votes, particularly if I am not getting support from others. Nonetheless, I will make the point that we have six and a half minutes to question the Minister for Health tomorrow because the Government insists on limiting the time to debate with and question the Minister. We have raised this repeatedly over the past few weeks. It is unacceptable. We have a raging debate about the refusal of the Government to even take seriously the calls for zero Cov…

I am pointing out it is not acceptable.

Nor it is acceptable that, at the end of Thursday, it seems the Government wants to ensure that we organise things so that there cannot be Tuesday sittings of the Dáil. I object profoundly to this. It is essential work for us to act as messengers to the Dáil of the issues that are being raised by people in the context of this dire crisis and the hardships they are suffering-----

-----and their concerns about the lack of a plan from this Government to deal with Covid.

I raised it at the Business Committee.