How can the Taoiseach explain that 71% of student nurses and midwives said, in a survey, that they are going to probably leave the country after completing their training because they feel that they are so badly treated?

How can he possibly justify the fact that the testers and tracers that we need to keep on top of outbreaks have no sick pay and rubbish "hire 'em and fire 'em" contracts when they should be treated with respect with decent pay and conditions?

To be helpful to Deputy Kelly, I think one answer to how we deal with the vaccination roll-out is to have our public health teams at a level such that they are capable-----

They are the people who deliver immunisation programmes. As I mentioned to the Taoiseach on Leaders' Questions, they are taking industrial action. At a time when they have never proven their value to society more, they are being forced to take industrial action because the Government has shown them zero respect in terms of their status and giving them status as consultant specialists, but also in the fact that we have one third of the recommended public health staffing complement. How on earth are they supposed to …

I did not intend to speak on this issue but Deputy McDonald referred to anti-social behaviour. It is an issue we all encounter and it can be difficult to address, particularly during the pandemic. We get reports of people complaining of large groups of young people gathering and so forth. There are two ways to deal with that. We can blame the young people and take a coercive approach, which I do not believe works. On the other hand, we can recruit people directly from the community to work in community and youth ou…

One of the key areas that it is necessary to address if one is to really try and strive towards equality is education. I wish to continue to put to the Taoiseach certain points I was making earlier, but just to focus them a little bit more. Fees are increasingly becoming a major barrier to equality of access to education. That is bad, not just for the people who have financial impediments put in front of them in terms of accessing higher education, but also for society because we are not going to get the talented, …

It was reported in the past week or two, and perhaps earlier, that a company set up by Goldman Sachs - it is a crowd called Tramore Funding DAC, a special purpose vehicle that is just two years old and is due to disappear shortly - and which had purchased loan portfolios off banks generated €153 million in tax-free profits from its backers but, through "complex accounting procedures", managed to turn those profits into a loss and paid no tax whatever. Is the Minister aware of this? What does he think about such an …

The securitisation of loans helped to crash the entire global economy in 2008. The Minister would have to do a fair bit of convincing to persuade me or most people that it is not a very hazardous practice. It is absolutely unacceptable that outfits like Goldman Sachs can purchase these loan portfolios and set up designated activity companies, DACs, in this case Tramore Funding DAC, that can generate €153 million in profits and somehow turn that into a loss. This is not just about that individual company. This is ho…

I can only say that whatever efforts the Minister claims he is making have made absolutely zero difference to the capacity of big financial corporations and other multinationals to use networks of subsidiaries in this way. They can generate profits in one subsidiary and through distributions, royalties or payments of interest on loans from other subsidiaries they magically turn a profit into a loss on the balance sheet. They can therefore tell the Revenue that they did not make any profits at all, even though these…

I was not expecting to be called, but it is fine.

The issue of online content moderators needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency. It might be of interest for the Taoiseach to know - and I will ask him a little more about this later - that in the United States, online content moderators did not go into work at all between March and October because of Government restrictions there. Here, they have been working in large workplaces for the past number of months. To my mind, this is in complete breach of the level 5 restrictions. The Taoiseach will be aware that f…

Seeing as how, as the Taoiseach suggested in a previous answer, the Government is not busy with any particular legislation at the moment, and given that he is responsible for co-ordinating the response to Covid, may I suggest something for his Department to do? There are many aspects to this, but one that is staring us in the face, is growing more evident every day and will be the key to any kind of return to normality is the need for more doctors, nurses and healthcare assistants to increase the capacity of our he…

I congratulate the American people on sacking Donald Trump. It is very gratifying to see his increasingly desperate and farcical attempts to deny reality. It reminds me a little bit of Chemical Ali trying to claim that Saddam Hussein was still in charge when the walls were shaking around him. It is amusing but people hope it will bring real change, not least given the absolutely disastrous manner in which Donald Trump dealt with Covid-19. The Taoiseach mentioned that and I want to ask him about it. An issue that is…

It is thanks to large orders that have come in from the United States.

I just wanted to hear the end of the answer to my question.

Perhaps I can kill two birds with one stone by getting an answer to my previous question. In the context of the shared island initiative, a shared vaccine programme would be an immediate way of giving us common cause, North and South, to deal with the pandemic and get us out of the cycle of lockdowns. The Taoiseach should take that idea very seriously. As I said earlier - I would like to hear the Taoiseach's response on this point - the question of intellectual property rights surrounding vaccines is already emergi…

Companies could also share the technology.

The Government has spent well over a week trying to shield the Minister for Justice from questioning over the process of selection of Mr. Justice Séamus Woulfe to the Supreme Court. As a result of the collective insistence of the Opposition that the Minister come into the House to face questions and be accountable to the Dáil, the Government was forced to put forward a proposal. That proposal will see the Minister coming in tomorrow, but the Government has attempted to arrange it in such a way that for three quarte…

That is seriously disingenuous.

We will be asking questions in the first ten minutes.