Alan Kelly (Tipperary, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I am aware that the Northern Ireland Executive is a multi-party Executive. I am also aware that there is a North-South Ministerial Council meeting coming up. I raised this matter for that reason. I think the whole of Ireland was shocked by the pictures they saw last night. They reminded us of various times in our past when we had to send up our fire service to help out. We need a number of things. The Taoiseach needs to make it very clear to the Northern Ireland Executive that, from the point of view of performance, it needs to do much more. It needs to make hard decisions in the next 24 to 48 hours because the impact of this is not limited to Northern Ireland but will be here, across all the Border counties and further afield. I ask the Taoiseach to make that very clear. He might share with us the form of assistance he is thinking of when it comes to helping the people of Northern Ireland. Furthermore, what additional measures or help can we give to our Border areas to help them? Finally, do we have a plan - one is referred to in the roll-out that was announced yesterday - to ensure that once vaccinations start, and it is hoped they will start in this jurisdiction before the new year, we will have a co-ordinated approach across both jurisdictions as to how we will ensure consistency in the roll-out in order to help those Border areas in particular?

See this speech in context