The Taoiseach talked about his previous incarnations in government in terms of the survivors of industrial schools and the things he did. One of the scandalous things done under a Fianna Fáil Government was the decision to limit the liability of the religious congregations responsible for the abuse of those who went through the industrial schools and such institutions to €128 million, with the rest to be covered by the State. Contrary to his last contribution in response to my question, the survivors I am talking a…

Will the Taoiseach come back to me on that?

I got a letter yesterday from the HSE's health business services, HBS, in response to a parliamentary question. It is the interestingly named business division of the HSE, which seems like a contradiction in terms. Why do we need a business section of the health service? This was a response to a question about the contract that was awarded to CPL for recruitment in the context of Covid-19. As the Taoiseach knows, CPL has been recruiting people from Be On Call for Ireland, nurses, contact tracers and those working i…

It was on CPL.

When I spoke to the Taoiseach about his failure to pay student nurses and the use of temporary agency contracts for contract tracers and medical scientists carrying out testing, he baulked when I suggested that the Government is trying to fight Covid on the cheap. I should rephrase it and state that the Government is trying to fight Covid on the basis of cheap labour and utter gross exploitation. The latest example of this is just absolutely scandalous. Some 15 contract tracers employed four weeks ago on these crap…

This, by the way, reflects the experience of another group of similar contact tracers I mentioned a while ago who were on those zero-hour contacts-----

-----for whom it took eight weeks before they got paid a cent by CPL. This is an outrage. What is the Taoiseach going to do about it?

There has.

The conditions for Palestinians under Israeli occupation are horrendous at any time but the fact that last Tuesday week Israel carried out, in the midst of a pandemic, the biggest demolition of homes of Palestinian families, 11 in number, making 80 people homeless including 41 children, is truly shocking. The pictures show the demolitions destroying water containers, farm equipment, solar panels and so forth. Much of this equipment was funded by Irish Aid and European Union money. This is happening, incidentally, i…

We need to get the money back.

On 20 October, I raised with the Taoiseach the issue of student nurses and the fact that they are working during a pandemic where they cannot do other jobs for the most part, certainly in other healthcare settings, and are working long hours on the front line of the Covid-19 effort and not being paid. That is scandalous. In that engagement the Taoiseach, who obviously was not scripted on it, said that it was wrong that they were not being paid in the same way as they were in March and April and that he would follow…

We should do it again.

The Taoiseach should read the accounts of student nurses.

The sacking of Mr. Donald Trump by the American people and the rejection by the majority of Americans of his hate-filled, toxic, racist and divisive agenda is a cause for celebration for people across the world. It is a major blow against the forces of the political far right who were emboldened by his toxic agenda, including small but growing forces of the far right in this country. Although Mr. Trump and the far right are down, they will not be out unless we challenge the conditions that gave rise to Trumpism and…

Democratic socialism.

That is what the Taoiseach said about-----

Boris Johnson is a wrecker. That is clear from his Internal Market Bill and his talk of breaching international agreements, resurrecting the threat of a hard Brexit and resurrecting fears, which must be resisted every inch of the way, of a hard border and so on. More generally, there is the economic damage that would be done as a result of a no-deal Brexit and the advent of tariffs, customs and so on, on an east-west basis, all of which will do very severe economic damage to particular sectors of our economy. Most …

This is an exercise of the most cynical game-playing by the Government.

Frankly, Government Deputies are smirking through their words because they know that it is cynical game-playing and politically motivated spite essentially-----

-----against the fact that an Opposition party put forward a no confidence motion in a Minister. It is important for people to know that Deputy Pringle, at the Business Committee, proposed an alternative that would have saved the €25,000 it will cost to move us at short notice over to the convention centre when we had decided we would be sitting here today.