The Government has recommended that people work from home. That has plenty of environmental benefits as well as public health benefits, on top of rejuvenating towns and cities across our country. However, the rural broadband scheme is hopelessly behind and that is a disincentive for people as it makes it impossible for them to work from home. The Tánaiste, Deputy Varadkar, has been promising a Bill that would give ComReg powers to make existing broadband providers provide the services they are contracted to, but we have not seen it. The Minister is right. His Government has spent billions of euro on the Covid response but we have seen nothing on the actual responses that could make people live more safely. There has been nothing on antigen testing. No money has been spent on that even though the EU is providing tests and there are 1.5 million of them sitting in storage. There has been nothing with regard to ventilation in our schools, which I called for, along with many other Deputies, before the summer holidays. We have seen nothing on statutory sick pay, which would allow people who are sick to stay at home and we have seen nothing with regard to increased capacity in our healthcare system. When is the Government going to stop giving people advice and start facilitating people to live more safely?

The national broadband plan is one such facilitation. The Deputy is right that it has been delayed compared with what was originally expected because of Covid. There was a particular issue around issuing planning licences within local authorities. Both of those issues have been largely addressed. We still face significant issues in getting access to ducting and ducting that is not as high quality as was originally expected. There are real challenges but we have delivered 388 broadband connection points for rural communities so if people do not have a connection at home they have a local connection point where they can access high-speed WiFi.

They do not work from home-----

The Minister without interruption.

The Deputy was looking for practical examples and these are real things that are in operation. Some 274,000 houses have been surveyed and build works are starting on 125,000. It is not fast enough and we all want to accelerate but we recognise that this is a particular moment in time. We are doing everything we can with Eir and National Broadband Ireland to try to help deliver that.

Time is up.

Difficulties there will be but there is no lack of commitment.