Yes.

And also who does not benefit.

The Minister invited suggestions in this debate specifically about the July stimulus. He did actually invite such suggestions.

Yes. Taxi drivers as a group are excluded from nearly all of these supports for reasons I do not understand. I asked some of the taxi drivers to explain it to me. I am told their exclusion is related to them not paying or charging VAT. I did not fully understand the explanation but I know they are excluded from many of the support schemes for small enterprise.

That is an unfairness. Taxi drivers cannot return to work because there is little demand for taxis and also to do so they would need to install screens and the National Transport Authority, NTA, has not clarified what type of screen would pass muster in terms of insurance and so on. There has been no clear direction on this issue. Even though they have not been working throughout the pandemic, taxi drivers still face continued costs such as car loan repayments, maintenance charges and insurance costs. If they retur…

I am saying that they are microenterprises. They are the definition of a microenterprise. In fact, they are the most micro of microenterprises-----

-----and they deserve support.

It is a microenterprise.

Any Bill that the Government should put forward supporting microenterprises should take these specifics into account. That is the point I am making. I am appealing to the Government to do that and, in the mean time, I am appealing to the Government not to cut their payments but to maintain those payments as income subsidies. Taxi drivers do not want to remain unemployed. They do not particularly want an unemployment payment. They want to be able to work but there has to be a recognition on the part of the Governmen…

The situation at Debenhams has demonstrated yet again that the introduction of legislation providing for a hierarchy of creditors in the case of liquidation needs to be prioritised. We saw the same thing with Clerys, at which time such legislation was put forward in the Dáil. It is not acceptable that this situation is repeating itself. In the case of Debenhams, 2,000 staff, many of whom worked loyally for the company for two or three decades, are being dumped on the scrapheap. The company has used a series of what…

I am sharing time with Deputies Barry and Paul Murphy. People Before Profit will not be supporting the nomination of Deputy Micheál Martin for Taoiseach. That has got nothing to do with him personally. It has to do with our understanding of what people voted for in the general election of 8 February. The Taoiseach derides the use of the word "change" by some of us. If it was just used for its own sake, he might have a point. However, there was a clear, unequivocal sentiment among the majority of people who voted in…

The decision of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Green Party to drop the Control of Economic Activity (Occupied Territories) Bill 2018 and leave it out of the proposed programme for Government is a disgrace, and a betrayal of the Palestinian people and of any semblance of commitment to human rights for people generally, specifically for the long-persecuted Palestinian people. Was dropping the Bill the price of getting the seat on the UN Security Council? Given the reports of lobbying by the Israeli ambassador and US …

Is the Minister aware of how frustrated and annoyed teachers and parents are about the lack of clarity regarding the reopening of schools in September? He needs to be. Every primary school knows or learns quickly that one cannot put a square peg into a round hole, but it seems that the Minister and the Government think one can and are determined to try to put a square peg into a round hole. The square peg in this instance is the Minister's determination to reopen schools as normal and the round hole is, pre-Covid, …

I saw the Taoiseach on "Prime Time" having fun at Sinn Féin's expense and referring to it as-----

Yes, "Spin Féin". Listening to it, I thought that it was ironic. I thought it was even more ironic when I listened to the Minister and to Deputy Donnelly today. Frankly, the performances by the Taoiseach on "Prime Time" and those of the Minister and Deputy Donnelly today suggest that it is more about "Spina Gael" and "Spina Fáil". I mean that in all sincerity because there is almost nothing I disagree with in the Minister's speech. It was a great speech, heaping praise on our health workers, saying we must never go…

Then the truth is revealed when Deputy Donnelly gets up to speak and it is very clear that the party with whom Fine Gael has just agreed a deal, and the deal itself, make a clear and explicit commitment not to go forward, but to go back. That commitment is to reopen private healthcare and to source the additional capacity that we now need more than ever. We needed it badly before Covid but we now need it even more badly. More capacity is required, but is going to be sourced through the NTPF where we are going to re…

I am sharing time with Deputy Barry. We must not just condemn racism, we must also fight against it. That is why People Before Profit declares absolute solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement and the wave of protest across the world in the aftermath of the horrific killing of George Floyd. There has been a rightful recognition by a vast number of people worldwide that it was not an isolated incident but, rather, a deadly and brutal consequence of systemic and widespread racism across America and the rest of…

The Ceann Comhairle knows that I already made this point to the Business Committee, but I want to formally put it on the record. I am not at all happy that the Dáil is only sitting one day this week or that there is a similar plan for it to sit only one day next week. I do not see the reason or justification for scaling back a Dáil that is already significantly scaled back. It has sat far less recently, when so many pressing issues are facing our country. It seems that the only reason we are not having a Dáil sitti…

That is all the more reason we should debate the issues we are facing.

I am sharing time with Deputy Barry. I have raised on a number of occasions my disquiet at the fact that the Minister decided to go through recruitment agencies, such as CPL, to recruit staff for the health service during the pandemic. I refer to the 70,000 people who bravely volunteered for the Be On Call for Ireland initiative. I asked a question recently of the Minister which was passed on to the HSE about the cost of using CPL and agencies like that.