He did not know.

He was not contacted.

He was not contacted for six days.

No. He was not contacted to be tested as a close contact.

As a matter of integrity, we are locked in here to protect the integrity of this budget process on budget day. What is the point of having these procedures in place if the Minister or his officials leak almost all of the budget to the media in advance? It is a cynical exercise by those in power to curry favour with their friends in the press which undermines the political process. There is one underlying problem with this budget which is highlighted in all its pages. That problem is simple. The Government is curren…

What is the point in encouraging Irish firms to move their trade from the UK, to source their raw materials from anywhere other than the UK and instruct businesses to try fellow EU countries to broaden their horizons and find alternative markets? The Government is constantly telling Irish firms to prepare, only for it to then not play its part in ensuring a riskless transportation operation in which they can do so. A former political adviser told me this week that the Government strategy's is not one of risk manage…

May I comment?

The Minister of State said in his statement that there are 20 plus sailings per week from Dublin. I need to correct the record. There are actually six in the roll-on roll-off sector which use the land bridge.

I thank Deputy O'Callaghan. One of the functions of the Residential Tenancies Board is to deal with complaints made by tenants in regard to the behaviour of landlords and complaints made by landlords in regard to the behaviour of tenants. Given the obvious importance of having such disputes and complaints dealt with swiftly, can the Minister outline the number of queries and complaints made by landlords and tenants to the Residential Tenancies Board, and the average wait time for a response to the relevant queries …

The timber industry is a significant indigenous economic sector, with 11% of lands currently under forestry. The aim is to increase that percentage to 18%. That growth is significant and needs a proper legislative framework in place to support it. The forest industry transport group was formed in 1999 and reflects the significance of transport in the sector. There are 97,600 movements annually, or approximately 390 haulage movements per day. The forest industry transport group was formed to facilitate communication…

Council Regulation (EC) No. 1224/2009 requires that actions be taken to ensure compliance with the rules of the Common Fisheries Policy. Clearly, enforcement action is necessitated by our membership of the EU and SI 318 sets out that enforcement action for Ireland. The enforcement is the imposition of penalty points for serious infringements of the Common Fisheries Policy. There are three issues I would like to raise. First, should the implementation of the penalty points system be done by way of primary legislatio…

I am disappointed in the statements of the Minister and the Minister of State. The Minister stated he had been in touch with all the stakeholders in the transport sector. According to the information I have, that is incorrect. He has not been in touch with the Irish Road Haulage Association, IRHA, an organisation that gave hundreds of hours of their time to assist the Government in Brexit and Covid preparations. There has been no acknowledgement of the stellar performance of the licensed road haulage operators and …

The pandemic has highlighted the importance of good and reliable broadband to ensure that all citizens, in all parts of Ireland, can avail of remote working, education and other essential online services. Can the Minister outline the plans and the fast-tracking of the national broadband plan, and can he make a statement on the matter?

I have the reply.

As I said, I received the Minister's written response but I found the answer was vague on timelines and the worst affected areas. I could also name many townlands in Wexford. When a statement includes the phrases "explore the feasibility of accelerating aspects of the national broadband plan roll out" or the "possibility of bringing forward premises currently scheduled for year six or seven to an earlier date", those words mean one thing to me, namely, that it will never happen. I know children who will have left t…

We want the businesses in rural Ireland to stay there. If 51% have said that they are being impeded in their ability to work at home that is a huge problem. The written response stated that the pandemic has had an impact on the delivery of the fibre network. The Minister has explained that is because we cannot get people to install it and people cannot travel from England. People are beginning to see that excuse as worse than GDPR. There are now three sets of excuses being used when it comes to Government contracts…

We are on day 84 of the Government's formation and of the term of this Government. There was a commitment by the Government to bring forward certain legislation within the first 100 days of its formation. Will the Tánaiste outline to the House which legislation is being brought forward and, as per the Government's commitment, if it will meet those deadlines?

I think it is sunny everywhere today except in the Dáil. I got a very disturbing email yesterday containing photographs of a queue in Dover. The Port of Dover has apparently instituted migrant checks which meant it took commercial traffic three hours to travel 1.8 km. The effects of Brexit are still four months away. In recent weeks the UK Government introduced the United Kingdom Internal Market Bill 2019-21. By the UK Government's own admission, this breaches Article 4 of the EU-UK withdrawal agreement, an interna…

I asked what preparations have been made.

I did not hear the relevant provisions. There should be a provision for capacity, which is currently on the UK side, to be diverted in the event that the UK carries on in the way it did in the past week and reneges on the common transit convention. The convention means that businesses must put financial guarantees in place just for the privilege of crossing the UK. If it will take three hours to travel 1.8 km, as was the case yesterday, that effectively will mean the drivers' regulation will be kaput and the land b…