This is a fairly difficult question for the Taoiseach but one that the public wants asked today as we return from the summer recess. What is the Government's plan for Covid? Are we going to suppress it? Are we going to try to contain it? Are we going to try to eliminate it? Covid arrived in Ireland at the best time from the perspective of our climate, but we are now heading into six months of grave difficulty. The public needs to know the Government's plan. The Taoiseach has had all summer to think about it, so I presume he will have an answer. The people need to have a vision. The previous Taoiseach set out a vision or roadmap. Will the Taoiseach do so now in reply to me?

There are 221 people on trolleys, which is a signal, as it is only 2 September. What will it be like on 2 December? How will we ensure that the elderly in this country have a life to live? We face into this for at least another year or year and a half, and maybe longer. They must be allowed to live. How will we ensure that people with disabilities, the most vulnerable in our society, have a life to live, access to treatments and the stimulation that they need?

With that in mind, yesterday, the Labour Party published a Bill to provide sick leave and parental leave for workers. I ask the Taoiseach to support this wholeheartedly. The acting Chief Medical Officer and the chief executive of the HSE have both called for this. Ireland is one of only five countries, along with Cyprus, Denmark, Greece and Portugal, which does not have this on a statutory basis. We cannot have a situation where workers going into meat plants or other settings take paracetamol or Calpol to hide their temperature. If they have a choice between going to work with a symptom of Covid or not getting paid, it is a fairly stark choice. That needs to be eliminated for the workers and for society. The Government must do this. There is no choice when it comes to our position with the virus. Otherwise, the Government cannot have credibility if it asks other counties to go into lockdown, as it did with the three counties which have done so, without ensuring there is sick pay for low-paid workers who have a very stark choice of whether to go into work. Of course they should not do so but they would not get paid otherwise.

We must also ensure that all parents and guardians who have children going back to school in these weeks, and this week 30 children in one school had to leave, know they can get paid for the duration of time the school is closed.

What alternative have they got? What is the plan? Second, will the Taoiseach ensure in respect of what is an absolutely essential issue as far as we are concerned and about which we have written to all political parties to ask for support-----

The Deputy’s time is up.

-----he brings in provision for sick pay on a statutory basis and ensures there is parental leave for parents whose children are in schools affected by Covid-19?

In the first instance the Deputy has asked about three key points in his part of Leaders’ Questions which I have noted and will deal with.

The Government’s plan is to suppress the virus and from the very beginning all political parties in this House took it as a basic principle that they would go with the advice of the public health authorities and that was accepted in this House. I am not so sure that it is accepted as much anymore, if truth be told and perhaps the Deputy should say what his views on this are. This is fundamental. We had much consensus from the outset of the pandemic in taking on board the advice, not just of the Chief Medical Officer but of NPHET and the broader public health community. This served us well and if one looks at comparators around Europe and internationally, the countries which broadly speaking - I am not saying to every single letter of the guideline issue - followed public health advice did much better as to mortality, illness and cases than those countries which chose to ignore initially the public health advice. We would all do well to reflect on that point. I sense the rush to try to dispense with this rule and that rule and every other instruction or advice that comes our way. Instinctively, we want to break free from the impact, the restraints and the restrictions of this pandemic. This is easier said than done. We want to suppress this virus but to live with it also. The Government will be producing a plan towards the middle of September which we will bring to the Dáil and which will create a framework around which we can live with the virus.

As I said last week we want to protect lives above all but we also want to protect livelihoods. That is key. As I said earlier we are monitoring the economic fallout which is very significant. We cannot be blind to the reality of the €25 billion to €30 billion deficit this year with further significant borrowing throughout 2021 to maintain and sustain the supports that we have in different sectors of the economy. These are the realities. There is a very strong economic dimension to this that we cannot ignore which does not ultimately trump the health dynamic which is essentially to protect lives and save people, but we have learned a lot from the first phase. We had to suspend elements in the reopening of the roadmap because public health advice said that it was important that we did that. The three local lockdowns, as they were called, in Laois, Offaly and Kildare, which were not quite the same as the national lockdown, worked. We thank the people of those counties who suffered a great deal in implementing and living with the severe restrictions that were introduced. The outcome from a public health perspective is that they worked in reducing and getting the case numbers down. We need to learn lessons from that.

I thank the Taoiseach.

I know that the local Deputies and public representatives in those counties from all political parties took much heat and I want to thank them for working with the health and public expenditure Departments to see what we could do to help people in those situations.

I thank the Taoiseach.

I apologise for going over time here but on the question of sick pay, we will work constructively with the Deputy on this legislation which has many including, of course, financial implications. We have already moved ahead to create an infrastructure around Covid-19 illness payments, particularly in direct provision and meat plant contexts to make it very clear that every worker in such situations will get sick pay. I take Deputy Kelly’s point on the legislation that he is talking about, which is that it is to create a more permanent provision around sick pay and the right of workers to this.

I thank the Taoiseach and I am glad he has outlined for the first time the date on which he will publish a plan. He had all of the summer to do this but I welcome the fact that we will have it in two weeks' time, which we will have to wait for now.

The Taoiseach has put a challenge in asking me whether we are all following public health advice.

The reason I am raising the issue of sick pay and parental leave is because the acting Chief Medical Officer raised it himself last Thursday. Sick pay is an important issue when it comes to the potential spread of Covid, especially clusters. People who should not be going into work are going into work. It is as simple as that. They need to be taken on. We need to ensure there is a legislative provision and a statutory scheme to ensure workers do not have to choose between not getting paid and going in with symptoms of Covid. It is basic, simple and necessary. The acting Chief Medical Officer and the head of the HSE have called for it. The Taoiseach is asking us all to follow public health advice and we are, and the Taoiseach is always saying we should. The Taoiseach now needs to follow the advice on this specific issue.

Workers do not need to go into situations which put society in a vulnerable place. The way to deal with that is to ensure there is proper provision of sick pay across the board, especially in low-paid jobs. We all know that there are many large places of employment where clusters are being created and there is no sick pay. For instance, I was contacted by a representative of one of the groups in the meat industry when there was an outbreak in my county. I asked four questions relating to sick pay. Two weeks later, they still have not come back to me. I understand that one has to have a contract of over a year before one will even be considered for something like that, but many of the contracts are for less than a year. Workers will go into environments that they should not be going into, because they will not get paid otherwise. The Taoiseach needs to deal with this. This is a public health issue as well as a workers' rights issue.

I have dealt with it.

The Taoiseach has not dealt with it.

The Deputy has a tendency to develop a melodramatic posture when he is addressing people from time to time.

And you-----

The Deputy has. The Government introduced the Covid-19 illness benefit. Some €330 is available per week to employed and self-employed workers. It is paid for two weeks where a person is medically certified as self-isolated, and can be extended for a further two weeks and for a maximum of ten weeks where a person is medically certified as being diagnosed with Covid-19. We extended this payment to workers who live in direct provision. I spoke to the acting Chief Medical Officer over a month ago about this.

Why is it-----

Hold on. Last month, the Government also approved the extension of Covid-19 illness benefit to the end of March 2021. It is important to note that the Covid-19 illness benefit payment and the pandemic unemployment payment are also available to people living in direct provision centres as well as to applicants for international protection who live in the community outside of the direct provision system. I discussed this with the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection, Deputy Heather Humphreys, over a month ago. We considered how we get into the direct provision centres and meat plants to make sure workers know their rights and entitlements and do not fear having to put their hands up to say they have symptoms.

They do.

I know that. I accept the necessity to intervene here. We all agree on that. As I said to the Deputy, I will constructively engage with his legislation, which has more longer-term implications for the broader workforce.

We do not have time.

We have intervened in direct provision.

Follow the acting Chief Medical Officer's advice.

We have discussed this with the acting Chief Medical Officer. We are collectively on the same page with regard to this. We have made provision for it from the State's side so that workers know-----

I will remind the Taoiseach about that.

-----that if they get sick or have to self-isolate, they will not lose out. That is something we have communicated and will continue to communicate.