When the Minister of State has an opportunity, he can explain exactly what the reason is. Yes, the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, has spoken about-----

-----the difficulty with reconfiguring the market, but that is it. We all get it. There is a limited supply. There are links along that supply chain. I get it. If the Government and the European Union do not take action, there will be people who will try to make money at every level-----

-----and across the board and we will face companies being closed and families being put under severe pressure. We know the Government has not done the work on ensuring we have the generation capacity. We know it has not done the work on renewables. We know the planning mess there is. We know we cannot deliver what we need to deliver in respect of offshore wind. The Government should therefore get its act together rather than the Minister of State shouting at me. If he wants to give an explanation, he can do so in …

I was talking to a locum pharmacist working in County Louth. A lady who was on the drug payments scheme came in to him. She had a medical card but previously it had been taken off her. She had a medical condition. She was late for her medication. He wanted to know why and she said that she did not have the money in her account. She was taking the medication every second day, which, obviously, would not suffice. She still had not a sufficient amount in her account. In fairness, the locum paid for it. He said that he…

I was about to give them a clap.

I was in deep trepidation there as I was not quite sure what the Ceann Comhairle was going to say. I am very glad it was not-----

No, that was not it. It was more whether it related to me. In these circumstances, I generally work on the basis that I may have done something wrong.

That is all right then.

It is early in the day. As I have said on numerous occasions previously, most of the good points have already been made and I will make them with less eloquence. We can break this down fairly straightforwardly. The idea of the Bill, albeit technical in nature, is to provide the Government with powers to protect security or public order from hostile actors using ownership of or influence over businesses and assets to harm the State. In this regard, we are talking about critical infrastructure companies. We all get t…

Authoritarian; that is it. Sorry. When you are down a hole, sometimes you just keep digging. It is a specific problem. We have this within the State. It is something the Minister of State and the Government need to consider. We need to do a piece of work on it. We cannot have people who are operating within the State and putting-----

I am. Unfortunately, I may have got tongue-tied. I apologise for that.

Regarding the better energy warmer homes scheme, it has already been said that we have 9,000 households awaiting works and an average wait time of approximately 27 months. That should tell the Minister straight out that this is not working. We all accept that we need to make huge inroads on climate action. I think everyone would accept that we are in a very different world now and we need to make sure we do all that is necessary in order that we are not all under water or in far worse conditions over the coming yea…

On the European solidarity windfall tax, who would be liable within the State in that regard? The Minister has spoken about how difficult it is to reform energy markets but we could all make the argument that perhaps we should have started this conversation earlier. We must do whatever we can at this time, however. The Minister has raised the fact that we are dealing with a wartime situation. It is fair to say that the biggest weapon Vladimir Putin has is the fact that we are all about to face absolute energy and f…

What is the status of the roll-out of the national broadband plan and what is the number of premises that have been passed? Are we likely to make the target of 102,000 premises, realising we are much behind where we thought we would have been? In further questioning I will speak about acceleration.

We all get the importance of remote working, especially in the circumstances in which we find ourselves, where it may be beneficial for people to reduce the amount of commuting they are doing - for multiple reasons at this stage. Those figures are definitely heading in a better direction than they have been. We just need to ensure that it is acceleration, acceleration, acceleration. I know that NBI has spoken about its need to either increase the amount of Eir make-ready products that they can use or that they woul…

I welcome the fact that the Minister of State has an interaction with Eir from the point of view of delivering more at its end and the fact that NBI obviously has a serious capacity but, at the end of the day, this is all about ensuring that we accelerate this as much as possible, especially to reach areas that have been and will be waiting for broadband for a considerable length of time. When is Eir to come back to the Minister of State with a plan with regard to producing more of the Eir make-ready product? What …

Always take the opportunity.

We could be facing economic carnage. We have all heard from the owners of small businesses and industries. We need to deal with the cost of energy at both a domestic and international level, where we can do so, but we will also have to look at grant schemes. I refer to Suretank in Dunleer and Castlebellingham. To lay it out cleanly, the company is looking at its cost of €15,000 per month for electricity going to €50,500, and gas going from €3,200 per month to €18,000 per month. It is saying this will mean all its p…

We have spoken before about the operation of the work permit scheme. Streamlining is needed across the board, in respect of everything from healthcare workers to chefs. Beyond that, the Minister of State spoke about the task force. We all know the issues, whether we are talking about healthcare workers in nursing homes or home carers, which is a particular issue. The Minister of State mentioned a level of engagement with this task force. My understanding is that, to a degree, there has been some sort of draft inter…

We have all spoken about planning on previous occasions in the House. We in this State have had a colourful relationship with planning. On that basis, it is absolutely necessary that we have an impartial and trustworthy planning framework and infrastructure. I accept that files have been sent to the DPP and I accept that the Garda is investigating, which limits what can be said. However, given what has happened, it is absolutely necessary to deal with any element of impropriety in regard to An Bord Pleanála. I do n…