To follow on from Deputy McDonald's question, there is not only the issue of pupils who may have underlying conditions but there are also parents who are worried and who have serious underlying conditions. It is not clear to me, and I have had quite a few calls about this, what those parents should do. They do not know what to do or whether there is a danger in them sending their children to school. We need support and we need advice for people about what they should do in that situation. The Department and the Hea…

The inspections and monitoring.

People Before Profit is an all-Ireland party. We believe we must move to a united Ireland and end partition. A number of groups and parties in the House would say they subscribe to that view in one way or another. This is a very opportune time in view of the Covid-19 pandemic and how it has highlighted the irrationality of partition when we need an all-Ireland approach to health and dealing with the virus. I am from the James Connolly school of fighting for a different republic. Connolly understood that if one was …

Is there time left?

I will not rehearse the despicable treatment of more than 1,000 Debenhams workers by Debenhams. It has been well rehearsed in the House. I thank the Independent Group for tabling this motion. We also put forward a motion before the summer recess. All agree that what Debenhams has done to its workers is absolutely shocking, but what we must discuss is the unwillingness of the Government to do anything to rectify that injustice. The amendment from the Government is just an insult. It uses technicalities and jargon to…

I am sharing time with Deputy Barry, unless Deputy Paul Murphy comes to the Chamber, in which case we will change it slightly. This place, I have to say, makes me laugh or cry sometimes. We have had an hour of Government speakers before we get reached, by which time the Minister - no disrespect to the Minister of State, Deputy Troy - is gone. That is what the changes to the speaking order were designed to do. They were designed to knock down a significant section of the Opposition to the point where it is lost in t…

For the Government's roadmap on Covid-19 to be effective and gain public support it needs to be clear, consistent, to make sense and to embrace the principle of fairness and all of us being in it together. To date, the Government's measures and proposals have failed on those counts. The signs are that today's announcements from the Government are failing in that regard. I want to focus on one key aspect, which is the fairness principle or the idea that we are all in this together. If we do not take all our society …

I welcome the withdrawal of the crazy suggestion, which seems to have come from the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, of removing taxi drivers from bus lanes. We need more than vague commitments. We need very specific commitments. Subsidies have gone to other industries that have lost 20% or 30% of turnover. Taxi drivers have lost 40% or 50% of turnover. The more drivers return to work, the more turnover will decrease, especially if there are more restrictions. As long as Covid-19 exists and restrictions apply, there wi…

This roadmap is pretty much the most-----

We have had a very serious announcement about public health restrictions. I think it is crazy that the matter is not being debated this week in the House so that it can be explained. I wish to register the ongoing opposition of Solidarity-People Before Profit to the changed speaking arrangements which were, in our view, deliberately designed to minimise the voice of the smaller parties. We will continue to oppose those changed speaking arrangements. I point out that trying to gag and silence some voices in the Hous…

When the Taoiseach was leader of the Opposition, he would regularly get up and berate the then Taoiseach, who is now the Tánaiste, for excessive reliance on special advisers.

He definitely did.

He lambasted the Tánaiste weekly for reliance on PR and accused the then Government of being a Government of spin. It is quite extraordinary to have 21 advisers, including three press secretaries. On top of that, there was an announcement this week that a PR firm will be employed to mediate between NPHET, the public health advisers, and the Government. It will be a buffer which will dilute and finesse the message because the Government has got it so wrong and made such a mess of conveying the public health message …

I was at the taxi drivers' protest during Leaders' Questions, so I have not fully studied the roadmap, but I want to know what the strategy is, as do the people. Specialists in public health, immunology, infectious diseases and so on are saying that we should be pursuing a zero Covid strategy as against what appears to be, in this plan, a roller-coaster strategy, going up and down and up and down, with nobody knowing quite where it ends. Has this committee considered a zero Covid strategy, which I stress is not abo…

I have questioned the Taoiseach and appealed to him extensively, including today, on matters relating to taxi drivers and the public transport system. As we discussed earlier, there was a major protest involving taxi drivers today. The Taoiseach has expressed sympathy but has not given a clear commitment. When will he make a decision on the key demands being made by taxi drivers, because they are desperate? They are incurring debts and have virtually no income. They do not know whether to stay on the reducing pande…

For more than 150 days now, more than 1,000 workers have waged a truly inspiring and heroic struggle for a just settlement following the ruthless and cynical behaviour of Debenhams, their employer, to execute a tactical liquidation in order to leave those workers, who had given decades of service, absolutely high and dry without a penny. Due to their struggle, they have forced the issue of the injustice done to them to the top of the political agenda and although we have had sympathy from the Government, it continu…

To be clear, the points I put to the Tánaiste were not points that I dreamed up. They came directly from the Debenhams workers I was talking to this morning. They are their arguments and their proposals, and I agree with them. I am glad the Tánaiste mentioned Clerys because what the Debenhams workers pointed out this morning is that precisely the same situation operated in Clerys. The Clerys owners tried to do the same trick that Debenhams is doing. There were two companies in Clerys. There was a trading company th…

Even before Covid-19, supports and services for people with disabilities and their carers were woefully inadequate. The equality that is demanded by the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, UNCRPD, is not, and was not, a reality. For the past six months, the hardships that all of society has gone through have disproportionately fallen on those with disabilities and carers, with the closure of day care services, schools and so on. While it is welcome that day care services are now reopening, as …

What is happening at St. Mary's Centre Telford - the nursing home, the assisted living housing and the disability services - and indeed what has already happened with the Caritas Convalescence Centre, in terms of the attempted execution of a tactical liquidation and a manufactured insolvency at the expense of the workers who worked providing these services and the residents and service users in the centre and at the homes there, is an absolute scandal. The residents are watching this debate now because what has gon…

I mean no disrespect to the Minister of State but it is very disappointing that the senior Minister is not here to deal with this very serious matter. Engaging with liquidators and the INMO in terms of redundancies is just not good enough in this situation. Let me finish reading the comments of some of the residents: Let us have our lives back so we can laugh again. To break up our community and friendship would be akin to death. We have not committed any crime. What have we done to deserve this? What the residents…