If the LDA is to transform the land market, it must provide for all types of housing.

I welcome the debate and in particular the emphasis on the centrality of community safety at the heart of a new community policing strategy. The Commission on the Future of Policing established that human rights are at the heart of what the Garda does. The right to feel safe in one's own community is a fundamental right that we need to promote. The sad reality is that this right is not equally distributed across our community. The Minister, Deputy McEntee, rightly drew attention to the work done by Jack Nolan in th…

This House needs an opportunity to discuss all the actions being taken during the six-week period of level 5, so the wisdom of Members on all sides of the House can be brought to bear rather than having isolated questions brought forward. We all want to understand and improve the test and trace system, we want to see plans for vaccines and we want strategic sectors to have options to stay open as best they can. I ask the Tánaiste to provide an opportunity for all Members to have a chance to contribute.

I am happy to rise to vote confidence in the Tánaiste. At a time when the nation is holding its breath, many people are striving to demonstrate solidarity with those who are suffering considerably as a result of the Covid crisis, people's mental health is on the line, isolation is affecting people and businesses are struggling just to survive, Sinn Féin comes up with this attempt to blow up an error, one for which the Tánaiste has been fully accountable in the House, into a nuclear incident and create a DEFCON 1 en…

I thank the Ceann Comhairle. The Tánaiste will probably know that the Central Bank reported this week on motor insurance. It gives us a welcome transparency on this sector. For standard injury cases, it shows that the cost of litigation is ten times the cost of going through the Personal Injuries Assessment Board, PIAB, yet we see litigation on the increase and the PIAB losing a share of those injury cases. It also shows that even though three quarters of the cases over €40,000 are going for litigation, litigation …

I thank the Acting Chairman. We will have to get binoculars to help him. I welcome the legislation and I thank the Minister for introducing it. I listened to Deputy Barry but my reading of the Bill is that it puts a freeze on any termination notice. It does not lead to the sort of cliff edge at Christmastime that he was talking of. That may be of consolation to him. We really need to look at the long-term stability of the rental sector. We are continually coming up with short-term solutions in this arena and they r…

As the Tánaiste is aware, on page 12 of the programme for Government there is a commitment that new measures of well-being will be used to drive Government policy-making and to set budget priorities. As we plan for a world post Covid or through Covid and that is affected by climate change, that commitment is more important than ever. Those challenges are exposing the fragility of the approaches we have taken, as well as the capacity for solidarity if we get this right. When will we see movement on that initiative? …

The Taoiseach will be aware that on page 85 of the programme for Government there is a commitment to replicate the north-east inner city model of support for communities at particular disadvantage. He will also be aware that last week, a report entitled, Darndale A Long View of an Enduring Challenge, was published on behalf of the city council. Among other things, it calls for a co-ordinated delivery structure, a new approach to crime prevention or a broken windows strategy, as it were, a bespoke education programm…

I thank the Taoiseach for providing a full answer on this timely question. This is a genuinely exciting opportunity to shape a new media environment rather than allowing our existing media to be hollowed out by some of the forces of change that are currently at work. Does the Taoiseach agree that Covid has underlined the importance of an independent media more vividly than ever before and that it has exposed the vulnerability of many of our media sources in a way that may not have been clear previously? Does he agr…

Yes, the whole regulatory environment concerning who is a publisher and who is not and these sort of obligations.

I wish to recognise the foresight of the Minister of Finance in drawing up the budget last year as he left scope for many measures that are now helping to protect the economy. The Irish Fiscal Advisory Council has indicated that it believes substantial additional stimulus should be undertaken in 2021. I am keen to explore what this substantial additional stimulus will look like.

What is striking about the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council's advice is that it recognises the short-term extreme disruption the economy will go through and acknowledges that a new normal must arise. Something like a new deal needs to be developed in Ireland at this stage. Will there be a substantially larger public investment programme? It is important that we start to take the opportunity of a decline in private investment to accelerate. Can we get projects moving quickly enough to take up that opportunity? I am als…

I am conscious there is significant opportunity and need for structural change in respect of climate action in many sectors of our economy, including the public sector. It would be very timely to commit not only to higher levels of investment but to accelerating that change and developing tools that will lead enterprise to accelerate those needed investments and to position itself for the new normal that will emerge. There is a need to look creatively at how investment can be accelerated and at how necessary change…

I thank Deputy Haughey for sharing time on this issue. It is always said that the darkest hour is before the dawn. It certainly seems dark from this vantage point. In the UK the political "remainers" have effectively folded their cards and given up on that path. I saw reports in the newspapers that the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade detected that fellow member states felt "gamed" and impatient about the British position of deciding that, effectively, it does not want a deal. We have seen the binary type of …

I held the post of jobs Minister back in 2011 and, to be fair, I think some of the characterisation of the recovery that we forged in those years that has been presented by the Opposition does not ring true with me. We built a stronger economy, a fairer economy, with a lot of really strong employment and diversified sectors, and that has to be reflected. However, I absolutely agree that the design and implementation of the next national economic plan is going to be the most critical challenge we face. We are facing…

Some of the interpretation of this legislation is very unfair to those who drafted it. I listened to Deputies Michael Collins, Michael Healy-Rae and Mattie McGrath. In my view, this is a framework under which we can start to open pubs and lift some of the restrictions that have been very difficult to manage. Deputy Michael Collins portrayed the legislation as a means to ensure that the pubs remain closed. It is quite the opposite. If we want to see the opening of premises that have been closed we need to see the de…

I do not wish to repeat everything that has been said, but what strikes me, apart from the content of this law, which is worrying in itself, is that it is in conflict with the basic law which was the underpinning of the "one country, two systems" principle; that it was drafted in secret, with no opportunity for the people of Hong Kong to be consulted; that it has created categories of crime which are clearly designed simply to bottle up protest rather than genuinely address issues of national security; and that its…

How is it intended that the EU will monitor the application of this law within Hong Kong in order that not just its introduction but also its continuing application can be a cause of pressure to ensure that the potential abuses that are evident in the way it is being introduced do not come to pass?

This year's planned UN conference on climate change has had to be postponed until next year. This gives an opportunity, in the light of the European green deal, for Ireland to plan a more coherent approach to that conference, particularly in the context of the work of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in leveraging change across the international community. I would like to hear how Ireland is approaching this challenge.

Everyone recognises that Covid-19 is an appalling tragedy for many countries, particularly the least developed ones, but it also offers an opportunity to embed real structural change as we move forward and try to resolve it. There is a risk that low oil prices and the urgency of immediate priorities might result in the wrong decisions being taken. It would be worthwhile for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade to work with colleagues in Europe to flag that moneys will be made available for structural shifts …