Irrespective of the criticisms we may sometimes have of RTÉ, public service broadcasting and having a national broadcaster are important because the alternative is the big, private, for-profit IT companies and the big digital online purveyors of movies, such as Amazon and Netflix, which are making an absolute fortune. If we are to safeguard the future of public service broadcasting and the media, we should, rather than imposing broadcasting charges on ordinary people who are already paying through the nose for Sky,…

It seems to me that the parliamentary liaison unit remit is to do everything to shut down the voices of questioning from the Opposition. There has essentially been a systematic drive by the Government to do that. The latest example of this is the refusal to allow the Minister for Justice to come to the House to address questions. We also saw this with the change in speaking arrangements. I have raised this several times but I am really aggrieved tonight. We have an important debate on Covid-19 strategy. Our party w…

It has gone too far in the other direction.

The landslide in Donegal resulting from the construction of a wind farm was a shocking reminder of the Government's failure to take seriously what happens when the development of renewable energy is in the hands of private developers who only care about profit and do not give a hoot about the environment. It was not the first time we had seen that type of environmental damage resulting from the failure to conduct proper environmental impact assessments on such projects. This year, we were forced to pay €5 million i…

Those who are trying to underestimate the threat of Covid-19, as Deputy Eoghan Murphy just did, need to explain why there are hospitals in this city turning patients away because they have had Covid outbreaks, irrespective of whether the patients are Covid patients or non-Covid patients. That is with infection rates at a relatively low level. If the rates rise, our hospitals will be overrun, and people who make irresponsible comments will have a lot to answer for. In the insulting amount of time given to discuss th…

What is the Minister talking about?

Who wants an unrealistic proposal? That is nonsense talk, and the reference to ideology is nonsense talk. The Minister has his ideology and the ideology of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Labour and the Green Party has dominated housing policy forever. The result is that sites in public ownership, which should long since have had public housing built on them, have sat empty because over those years they insisted, in one shape or another, on involving private capital and that delayed everything. I have a proposal for the la…

What we have been doing is not realistic. It has not delivered, so that is not real. The lists are long and we should look at the cost. With HAP or RAS, in my area the rent is €2,000 a month to a private landlord. That is €580,000 over 25 years for social housing and the State does not even own it. If the State does a leasing deal of €28,000 per annum, that is €600,000 over 25 years and it does not own anything at the end of it. If the State purchases a turnkey property, the Irish Government Economic and Evaluation…

At one level the task force report on recovery in arts and culture is welcome. I refer to the proposals for a basic income pilot scheme for those working in the arts, local authority funding to be continued, a support for well-being programmes, upskilling and training, loans for small and medium-sized businesses in the events sector and other proposals such as, importantly, payment for online content. The issue is whether it will be merely an oversight committee discussing this. Will we actually see any of these me…

Yes. It is one of the proposals in the task force.

It is about the income supports and other supports for people working in the arts and creative sector.

The CRSS will benefit some in live entertainment and music and that is to be welcomed. The report itself, however, obviously influenced by the campaigning of groups like the Events Industry Alliance and the Event Production Industry Covid-19 Working Group, EPIC, points out that huge numbers of SMEs in the music and live entertainment sector will not qualify for the CRSS because they do not have rateable or public-facing premises and so on. This, by the way, is the same point I have made about taxi drivers. They are…

I requested the first debate on the impact of Covid on the arts in the House earlier this year. The central point of what I said at the time was that life, without arts, music and culture, would not be worth living. I am glad to find that sentiment has found its way into the title of the Minister's report. However, while we have all these positive proposals, what has actually happened? Many of the people who really need the help and are fighting for their lives are excluded from the CRSS. The PUP has been cut for m…

Covid-19 has forced us to rethink many of our priorities and understand what is important. Many of those things that we have learned the importance of during Covid-19, and which we should have known before, start with higher education. There are the doctors, the nurses and the scientists we need to cope with a health crisis, the engineers, the architects and the apprentices we need to build infrastructure and the houses we so desperately need, and the arts and the humanities without which, frankly, we would all hav…

I have spoken out repeatedly on behalf of taxi drivers since the Covid pandemic began and their industry was decimated. Before I ask my specific questions, the Taoiseach should understand just what a fantastic service the 26,000 taxi drivers provide. The National Transport Authority, NTA, reported today that of 40 million taxi journeys last year, there were just under 1,000 complaints. That means the percentage of complaints per journey is 0.000025%. I just did that on my calculator. It is an extraordinary figure. …

The Taoiseach said something earlier with which I thoroughly agree, which is that if Covid-19 is widespread in the community, the consequences are felt in the hospitals. We are seeing them in hospitals throughout the country. In that context, we should be concerned about the fact that the reduction in the number of cases appears to have stalled in a worrying manner. While everybody supports the objective of keeping schools open, there are significant concerns about whether the contact tracing of positive cases in s…

It is based on a narrow definition.

I wish to speak about Covid-19 and the necessity of an all-Ireland approach. The worrying stall in the reduction of cases that we are now seeing further adds to the urgency of doing everything possible to try to develop such an approach. Could the Taoiseach give us a report on his latest efforts in that regard and the communications he has had with the Northern authorities to try to push towards an all-Ireland approach? It is clear that divergence is a problem. We need to do anything we can to try to get that all-I…

I ask the Taoiseach to look into that.

Since the recent furore surrounding legislation relating to mother and baby homes and the issues regarding attempts to seal information relating to survivors, I have been inundated with contacts from survivors who are particularly concerned about the issue of industrial schools. One thing that I did not know was that the data in the archive for the industrial schools was outsourced and is in the possession of an American company. The survivors I talked to expressed great concern about that fact and went on to say t…