I will follow on from that point, because Deputy Kenny's question prompted a thought. The Department of Education and Skills has buildings which are sitting empty. One such building is the old education and training board building on Eblana Avenue in Dún Laoghaire. It has been sitting empty for the last two or three years, which was an absolute disgrace in and of itself pre-Covid. Given that we now have a desperate need for space, workers should be sent in to refurbish that building so it can be made available for …

Yes, I want to-----

I thank the Acting Chairman. I challenge what the Taoiseach said earlier about the Apple tax ruling. The ruling clearly states that the tax rulings made by Revenue were ineffective and inconsistent. The court does not contest that the level of tax on chargeable profits was totally out of line with the amount of tax that would be paid anywhere else under normal market conditions. In other words, the court accepted that Apple was involved in aggressive tax avoidance here. It only said that it could not quite prove th…

On health, I suggest the Taoiseach start taking French lessons. In recognition of the heroic work of healthcare workers, the French Government have just announced an €8 billion package of pay increases for them because of their tremendous work in protecting people and French society in the face of Covid-19. Healthcare workers in this country have done work every bit as heroic to protect us all, to protect our society, and to prevent our health system from being overrun. As a consequence, they have suffered from som…

We should not set the need to recruit health workers to increase the capacity of the health service against the need to stimulate other parts of the economy. Recruiting health workers should be part of the stimulus for two reasons. First, if our health service is overwhelmed, then we can forget everything else. The stimulus will mean nothing if we have to lock down our economy again. A precondition, therefore, for the reopening of the economy is to get the public health service up to capacity levels that will allow…

I am sharing time with Deputies Barry and Paul Murphy. The advent of Covid-19 has put Europe and the world at an existential crossroads. There have been a lot of woolly words of recognition about the need to move forward to a new normal, something different and better, and to learn the lessons of the Covid pandemic. However, I fear that a lot of that talk is rhetoric that masks an inclination simply to move as quickly as we can back to where we were before the advent of Covid. My fear is that we will fail to learn …

It is not agreed. I wrote to the Business Committee this morning stating that tomorrow or on another day this week, there will need to be statements on foot of the ruling, which will come out tomorrow, of the General Court of the European Union on the Apple tax case. This is not a small matter. We will get a ruling tomorrow as to whether the decision of the European Commission to award Revenue €13 billion in unpaid taxes plus interest from Apple will be upheld. Regrettably, the previous Government, with the support…

There is time on Thursday.

As long as that is a commitment that the Government will facilitate statements.

No later than early next week.

Not "could". Will be.

If that is a commitment from the Government.

I am not sure whether my colleagues are coming in to share the time but if they do I will share it. We do not oppose the legislation. I welcome the fact that apparently, some lessons were at least partially learned from the follies of the response of the European Union, its member states and here in Ireland to the crisis in 2008 and the austerity that followed it. We need not return to austerity but instead to inject money into maintaining jobs, investing in services and adopting Keynesian policies rather than fisc…

The interest is building up.

I am provoked by Deputy Gannon's reference to the venue we are in. It is a nice venue but if one was trying to do an artistic evocation of the weirdness, surreality and alien character of the impact of the pandemic on Irish society, one could do worse than start with an image of this place, with Deputies sitting miles away from each other in this weird environment. Having said that, it is better that democracy continues to function, even in a slightly weird environment. It is democracy, in the broadest sense, that …

I am glad to hear that the Government will appeal the sectoral employment order. It seems to me that there are very strong grounds for that appeal which, as was stated, will affect thousands of construction workers and, potentially, hundreds of thousands of other workers in sectors where sectoral employment orders, SEOs, or sectoral agreements maintain some kind of minimum standard of pay and conditions. The Tánaiste stated that people should not try to breach those orders or agreements prior to the appeal. It is i…

I will be share time with Deputy Mick Barry. I will take five minutes and he will take four. The eviction of people into homelessness was utterly unacceptable before the pandemic. Solidarity-People Before Profit put forward an anti-evictions Bill that was passed with a majority in the previous Dáil. If I am correct, Fianna Fáil voted for that Bill and, ultimately, that is the solution. We need to stop evictions into homelessness and remove any grounds for eviction that are not related to genuine fault on the part o…

The last time the Taoiseach and his party were in government and faced with a major crisis, at that time caused by the greed of bankers and developers, working people got it in the neck, hundreds of thousands of people lost their jobs or had cuts to their pay and a decade of austerity followed. For most people, the test as to whether Fianna Fáil has changed and will lead the Government of change that people voted for on 8 February is how working people will fare under its governance. A key and immediate litmus test…

I welcome, as I am sure the Debenhams workers will welcome, the Taoiseach's words of sympathy and his condemnation of how Debenhams has treated them, but the test is what the Government will do about it. We need to act urgently to do everything we can to make sure that Debenhams does not get away with manipulating the law as it stands to siphon off these assets. Its failure to consult workers and the fact that the State may have to pay out the statutory redundancy gives us certain leverage under that legislation fo…

I wish to take the Minister up on his earlier offer to listen to ideas for the July stimulus package. I will focus on a few specific groups. The pandemic and the lockdown affected huge numbers of people in terms of their income, employment and livelihoods but particular groups have been hard hit and are likely to be hard hit for the foreseeable future as long as Covid-19 remains with us. As well as big, broad measures and schemes, such as the Microenterprise Loan Fund (Amendment) Bill 2020 before us, we need to be …