Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Leas-Cheann Comhairle. To be honest, I was simply told that it was statements. It was not something that I had requested at all, as we do question-and-answer sessions all of the time. I cannot do it today because doing such a session requires a tremendous amount of preparation and there is a great amount of data that I need to have available for colleagues but I fully appreciate where they are coming from. Can I suggest that we proceed with statements today, as agreed, and I can work with colleagues to find the time to do a question-and-answer session? Alternatively, if colleagues have pressing questions we could set up an informal briefing for health spokespeople, as we did on the National Public Health Emergency Team, NPHET, advice. I am have very happy to facilitate it, which is what we have done the whole time in the past, but I just cannot have such a session now because the preparatory work required to ensure that I have sufficient answers for colleagues takes a significant amount of time and that work was not done because today's session was for statements.

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