I am getting texts from survivors expressing their disgust at what they are witnessing being done by the Minister and the Government. They are saying how pointless this whole exercise seems to be, given the Government's unwillingness to entertain amendments. Is it not pretty damning that the people who should be at the centre of this process are disgusted at what the Government is doing? Another person, whom I mentioned earlier, asked why on earth a whip was being imposed. That is a question the Minister has still …

I am sharing time with Deputy Barry. Any respite for people who are threatened with eviction is better than their not getting that respite at all. This is true in the current circumstances and in any circumstances where people face the possibility of being made homeless by a landlord, overwhelmingly because that landlord wishes to sell a property or refurbish it or, as also happens, the landlord says that he or she needs to do so when, in fact, the intention is to get rid of the tenant and increase the rent. In any…

There is no justification for what is happening to those people. Whatever about the perfect being the enemy of the good, which is the argument the Government is making in saying that we cannot solve everything right now because of constitutional limits and so on - I do not buy that argument, by the way - there is absolutely no excuse whatsoever, when we have a Covid strategy and when the Government has made clear we will probably be facing further intense restrictions in the new year, for not at least retaining the…

One of the reasons we opposed the extension of the emergency legislation today, and will oppose the plan to impose fines in connection with the public health restrictions, is not because we do not support the public health measures or think that people should not comply with them to drive down the virus, but because we do not think coercion is the way to achieve compliance with public health measures. We believe persuasion is the way. The other reason is that it implies that the reason we now have a rising infectio…

I never said there would be a flood of evictions.

I will let Deputy Barry speak for himself, but I never said that.

What I said in my contribution and previously was that it is a fact that the majority of people who come into my clinic because they are threatened with eviction are in that position because the landlord is selling. It is not a flood, but there is a constant flow of people of all ages into my clinic. As a result of the eviction ban which applied during the heavy lockdown the number of people entering homelessness declined. That is a fact. Logically, it followed that when the ban was lifted the number of cases began…

Early this morning I stood with workers at the Debenhams picket line in Blackrock along with shop stewards, workers from other Debenhams stores across the city who came to their aid and many from the local area and beyond supporting them and was witness to strikebreakers from KPMG arriving, attempting to enter the store to remove assets and break the Debenhams picket line. They acted in quite an aggressive manner against a peaceful, socially distanced protest. It was an appalling vista. The women strikers, who have…

There is more.

The European Council discussed co-ordination in the fight against Covid-19. It should be self-evident that at European and national level we need an integrated and properly resourced approach to combat Covid-19. It is worth dwelling on the fact that countries such as Germany have managed better because they have a tremendously well resourced and well staffed integrated national health service. This contrasts with our fragmented semi-privatised understaffed and under-resourced service. The Taoiseach discussed co-ord…

Not in the case of tracing.

I have a copy of the contract. It is not good.

People Before Profit was the only party in this House two weeks ago to explicitly support NPHET's call to move to level 5. We did so not because we like restrictions or lockdowns - we dislike them - but because we support a zero-Covid strategy based not on perennial lockdowns but on precisely trying to end the need for lockdowns by eliminating the virus. The excuse the Taoiseach has given for not pursuing an elimination strategy, which would present the possibility of getting out of the perennial lockdowns that the…

There is no next day.

I want to refer to our earlier discussion. As the Taoiseach said, he discussed the European wide response to Covid-19, specifically cross-border contact tracing. That brings us to the topical discussion of the state of our contact tracing system. I mentioned contact tracing. Reference to private German laboratories is a bit of a deflection, to be honest.

I accept that there is a large private pharmaceutical industry and it utilises its laboratories. There is also a state-of-the-art public health apparatus, something we do not have. We have run down our public health apparatus. A particular strength of the German system is the strength of its local public health apparatus and tracing regime. That is what is needed. Similar success has been achieved in New Zealand, Australia and so on because of the strength of local public health. We need people with local knowledge…

In June, NESC produced a paper called "How We Value Work: The Impact of Covid-19". One of the conclusions it drew is that Covid-19 has made good jobs better and poor jobs worse. That is an extremely interesting conclusion and the paper featured a fascinating graph, which I would be interested to know if the Taoiseach has seen. The graph shows that the people least impacted by Covid-19 tend to be the best paid people with the best ability to work remotely and so on. They are also less economically affected. The wors…

We could agree to give the Taoiseach a few more minutes to answer.

Including mine.

A mortgage break has to happen. It is absolutely unacceptable that the people who will be hit hardest by the lockdown in economic terms, losing either income or employment, will then also potentially have some of the banks crawling all over their backs, adding to the pressure and stress they face. When people talk about protecting mental health, let us be clear what that means in many cases. Often mental health is about the stress of not being able to pay one's mortgage, rent or bills and the uncertainty of possibl…