Will the Taoiseach be straight with us?

This Finance Bill gives effect to the budget provisions. It is before us at what is unquestionably a very important and challenging time for our country. The Bill arrives in the middle of a global pandemic that has placed immense strain on our society, both in human and economic terms. We must recognise that. Nobody is suggesting that the crafting of the budget and the Finance Bill has been an easy task. It has not been easy, by any means. It has posed major challenges. Lives have been lost, families have been sepa…

Prior to Covid, most people had not heard of public health doctors, although they did essential work in terms of population health, prevention, screening, vaccinations and all of that key work. Since Covid, many of them have been occupied entirely with critical Covid work. At the same time, they have been treated as the poor relation of medicine. It is now time to address that and to fund this critical service properly. Does the Minister accept that?

That all sounds fine. The reality, however, is that the discussions with the Department have not been successful. The Minister is talking about a framework which is all fine. We need commitments on this, however. Ireland is an outlier. There are 72 public health doctors who are specialists. They have the same qualifications as all other consultants and yet they are the only specialty that does not have consultant grade. Will the Minister give a commitment tonight that those 72 specialists, with all the qualificatio…

They are not consultants.

A very important principle arises here. Does the Minister accept that these 72 doctors, who are specialists with full consultant qualifications, should be upgraded to a consultant grade? That is a straightforward question. Is there any justification for continuing to treat them less favourably than their colleagues in all other specialties? Is it not an absolutely shocking comment on the very valuable work of public health doctors to tell them that the Government is not prepared to upgrade them to the level of thei…

That could happen on Friday. That is what they are looking for and that is what will prevent industrial action.

I have one amendment, amendment No. 21, calling for regulations to be brought before the Dáil for approval prior to taking effect and prior to this legislation coming into force. I believe that should be included in the first group of amendments because the objective is exactly the same. Will that be reviewed prior to the end of Second Stage? It is hard to know how many speaking slots will be filled on Second Stage. Three and a half hours are allowed. If they are not fully used up, can we carry over that time to Co…

Okay. A briefing was called at short notice on Wednesday evening, which was highly unsatisfactory. We were told that this has nothing to do with house parties, yet the Government's portrayal is that it is all to do with house parties. I will come back to that later when we consider the regulations in more detail. That is no way to do business, however. We should not have to take key decisions here today in a rush. I am putting down a marker at the very beginning that this is highly unsatisfactory and a very unprofe…

On a point of order-----

I ask the Deputy to withdraw his remarks because they are not based on fact.

This section is about definitions only. I urge Members to allow us to get on to discuss the amendments.

I make a very strong appeal to the Minister to work with other parties in the House. We all want to work together, we recognise that we are facing a very significant threat to our lives and livelihoods. It is a national threat and there is a need for a national response. The best way of demonstrating that is for us to work on an all-party basis and to co-operate, collaborate and be very clear about the messages we are giving. The Minister's actions in handling this legislation work against that. The aim of these fi…

I know it is late on the Friday of a bank holiday weekend, but some of us are here. It is a pity that the Minister is not here for these comments. I do not know if some excuse was given. It is unfortunate because spokespersons want to raise a number of issues and it would have been good if we could have done that with the Minister. We have repeatedly rehearsed the reasons we find ourselves needing to go into level 5. It is unforgivable in many ways that so many elements of what we were supposed to have been doing w…

The Social Democrats supported the Act passed earlier in the year. In theory, we are happy to do so again, but it is very difficult to come to a definitive position on it given the lack of information. The proposals in the Act are very wide-ranging and have the potential to cause difficulties. It would have been helpful for some kind of assessment of the impact of the measures to date to have been carried out in order to ascertain whether there have been any issues raised or difficulties. It would have been reasona…

A speaking order has been agreed.

I am sure the Ceann Comhairle has noted that a number of parties that insist on having priority over others have not bothered to show up this morning. That needs to be taken account of. The previous speaker spoke about putting the responsibility onto the public. Obviously, the public has a responsibility but the primary responsibility for providing leadership and taking action as promised lies with the Government. Unfortunately, it has not done so to date. Others have spoken of the need for consultation and briefin…

I trust the Minister will come in for the remainder of this debate. Before the break, I was saying we would be much better off concentrating on building solidarity through clear messaging because the messaging has been very weak so far. It is really important to bring the public along with any new restrictions to ensure they see that there is a logic to those, that they are reasonable and that there is a basis for introducing them rather than just guesswork. The main way to build solidarity is by providing politica…

I have been asking the Taoiseach for some time now to consider taking an all-party approach to the response to Covid. It is really regrettable that he did not take up that proposal because we found ourselves yesterday in a situation in which a momentous decision was taken yet there was no consultation whatsoever with Opposition parties or party leaders, no sharing of data and no sharing of the modelling. That is really regrettable, and I think the response has been all the weaker for it. I repeat that request, that…

No, that was a briefing.