-----but overall will be the better for it. We will have an opportunity to tease through in painstaking detail the EU migration pact at the justice committee and on the floor of Dáil Éireann and Seanad Éireann. Far from ceding sovereignty, the people's representatives, including the Deputy, me and everyone else in this House, will vote "Tá" or "Níl" on whether we want to go it alone or work with our European partners in accepting the fact that migration is a massive crisis of our time. It is a humanitarian crisis a…

That is a horrendous slur.

In the minute available to me, it is not possible to deal with the electric buses, the metro, the national children's hospital, waste and a range of other issues that Deputy Tóibín went on an interesting journey around. However, it is absolutely beneath him to slur my political tradition and political party in this House. Let us look at the party the Deputy spent most of his time in and his stance. If it was up to him we would not-----

I was 15.

If it was up to the Deputy, we would not be in the European Union because-----

Sorry, Deputy McDonald is muttering something I cannot hear.

It is a statement of fact that Sinn Féin has opposed every European referendum since we joined the European Union, including the one to join the European Union. That is the truth.

Old fogey, young fogey.

I was distracted about the personal slurs Deputy McDonald made about my character, rather than engaging on political issues. In response to Deputy Tóibín, we are proudly seeking to join the EU migration pact. It is good for the country and for Europe. We are looking forward to teasing through and debating the detail in this House, the Seanad and at the justice committee and we will continue to do so.

I thank Deputy Collins for raising the important matter of small businesses and especially mentioning a number of them in what we call the hospitality sector, cafés, restaurants, pubs and others. I fully accept they have been struggling to absorb significant costs and have been operating in an environment of high inflation, rising costs and a number of charges that have come at them all at once. When I talk to many of them, it is not that they believe any of the initiatives are bad. They want to do well by their em…

-----to provide policy certainty as to what the next few years will look like with respect to the cost of doing business in Ireland.

The people will decide the outcome of the elections, not Deputy Collins's utterances in the Dáil. I would never be so arrogant as to tell the people what they are going to do in an election; maybe Deputy Collins should not either. It is not helpful to come at this with a suggestion that there is one way of helping businesses and if we do not do it this way, we do not care at all. That is oversimplistic. To be frank, if anybody understands the importance of balancing the books, doing a budget and living within a bud…

The Government produces a budget in this House each year. The budget is then voted upon by Members of this House and the country lives within its budget. We have done that, and it has provided economic certainty to businesses. It has provided a situation where we have full employment. It has provided a situation-----

-----where we have been able to set surpluses aside and provide €250 million of assistance to small businesses in Ireland today. It is worth saying in this House today that 140,000 businesses are eligible and only 34,000 or thereabouts have applied so far. We need everybody who is eligible-----

-----to get this money in their bank account. The Government is seeking to give people financial assistance and we are saying we will not stop there. We are going to do more around energy efficiency. We have increased the VAT threshold. We have left the gas and electricity VAT cuts in place for the time being. We are also looking at how we can provide certainty. The big thing I hear from small businesses is that they want to know what is next in terms of costs and whether there are more coming at them. I assure the…

It just went back up.

I have a screenshot. I will send it to the Deputy. I will text her.

I learned from you.

I thank the Deputy very much. I appreciate her pledge not to engage in smart alec comments. With regard to this important issue, I am very happy to meet the families. It is the least I could do. I will arrange to do that. I cannot give the Deputy a date right now, but I will do it in the next couple of weeks. I am very happy to do that; in fact, I think I would benefit from doing it. With regard to the treatment abroad scheme, the Minister for Health advised me yesterday that Mr. Moore, who I believe is the new cli…

I certainly will. I have already had contact with Finola Cassidy from the group, who is a regular campaigner here in Leinster House and known to all of us. I am very happy to have that engagement. As the Deputy said, there was a lot of engagement prior to my appointment with both my predecessors, Deputy Varadkar and the Tánaiste. I have asked to be briefed by my officials on where that is at. I join Deputy Bacik in extending my sympathy to the family of Elizabeth Sweeney on her passing.