The Government is not allowing a debate on that at any point, is it?

It is not agreed. Same point.

That has nothing to do with it.

Are any of the additional staff brought in to deal with Covid-19 addressing the issue of the recruitment of front-line workers necessary to deal with the crisis or the issue of the conditions and pay such workers have to accept? I have raised this matter with the Taoiseach a few times but the more I raise it, the more shocking and extensive are the emails and contacts I get from people. For example, a number of weeks ago I raised the widespread issuing of zero-hour contracts to contact tracers by CPL. I have got a …

I have also raised this issue repeatedly with the Taoiseach. I go so far as to say that the failure to have an all-Ireland integrated strategy to deal with Covid-19 amounts to sabotage of the efforts necessary to deal with the virus. That is how high the stakes are, and all the public health experts, infectious disease experts and epidemiologists understand that point. It is simple to understand that we have a serious problem if we are operating two different strategies, two different timescales and two different a…

My question, which I asked the last time, was on whether the Taoiseach actually talked to Boris Johnson and the British authorities about the imperative to have an all-island approach to Covid-19. What is their response to that? Are they indifferent or dismissive? From an infectious disease point of view, it is an irrefutable fact that to operate on an all-Ireland basis in dealing with Covid-19 would by far be the best and most effective way to deal with it. Will the Taoiseach elaborate a little bit more on what th…

If I understand correctly, when Maitiú Ó Tuathail contacted the Tánaiste and asked him for the contract, the Tánaiste did not check with the IMO, the Minister for Health or the Department of Health to alert them to the fact that he intended to give it to Maitiú Ó Tuathail. Could he explain why this was the case? Presumably the Tánaiste knew, if Dr. Ó Tuathail was contacting him, that he could not get the document through other channels. He was coming to the Tánaiste and the Tánaiste did not check with the Minister,…

Did it occur to the Tánaiste that he should have asked the Minister for Health, the IMO and the Department of Health before giving the document to a friend? Did that not occur to him at all?

To follow up on that, the Minister said earlier on this that it was education not work so we should not pay them. We should be clear that this departs from what the Government was forced to do in March and April when it had to acknowledge they were actually working and pay them at the healthcare assistant level. The idea that the student nurses who are on placement at this time are not working is a nonsense, when there are 500 to 600 healthcare workers out for more than 14 weeks with long-tail Covid, of whom the bi…

I raised this issue with the Taoiseach on 20 October. It might be of interest to the Minister to know that the video of that engagement has been watched 250,000 times, which is very rare for any video of proceedings in this House in which I am involved. That was the scale of the response from student nurses. In that engagement, the Taoiseach said the following: ...I will engage with the HSE and the Minister for Health on student nurses working on the wards in the current context. As they were earlier, they should b…

News has just broken that the National Virus Reference Laboratory, NVRL, in University College Dublin has released the following urgent notification in relation to SARS-CoV-2 testing at NVRL: Due to unavoidable staff shortages the VRL will not be able to provide any SARS-CoV-2 testing on the weekends of the 24th/25th and 26th October and the weekend of the 31st October/1st November 2020. Apologies for the late notice ... That is serious. It is shocking. It seriously contributes to undermining the fight against Covi…

Not agreed.

But I am not agreeing section 2.

May I comment on it briefly first?

This section deals with definitions, particularly the definition around dwelling event. I just want to point out the sort of preposterousness of this and the misguided focus that it implies. This lies at the centre of how misguided this entire legislation is, namely, trying to suggest that the primary responsibility for rising infection rates and the necessity to resort to another lockdown lies with events in people's homes. It is a narrative I have heard repeated endlessly with, for example, the commentary that it…

I move Amendment No. 1: In page 4, line 36, after “Equality” to insert “and Dáil Éireann”. I did not respond to Deputy Stephen Donnelly's last point because I did not want to delay this section, but his argument is also relevant to this amendment. We are talking about weighing the Minister's political judgment against the collective wisdom of the Dáil and its Members on penal measures and fines the Minister might propose based on his analysis of what is causing further transmission of the virus. I would like to res…

Deputy Ó Ríordáin was late and has messed up my speaking slot.

The prospect of level 5 restrictions for the next six weeks is a pretty grim one. The normal social and human interaction that is the lifeblood of people will be curtailed to a very significant extent. It is, however, necessary for a very simple reason. For any who doubt that, and there are a few, it is necessary for the very simple reason that we cannot put our doctors and front-line health workers in a position where sick people, with Covid-19 or non-Covid related sicknesses, arrive at hospitals where there is no…

The Minister could just nod.

It is rare that I am completely dumbfounded by the Government or the State but I really am dumbfounded. I am very curious to hear what the Minister has to say for himself in response to the points that have been made and to the request for a free vote, which I echo on behalf of survivors. I was talking to a survivor last night and she asked why on earth the Government would impose a whip on this issue. It is perhaps understandable on economic issues or certain political issues in the general sense of the word but w…