Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

That was a legitimate part of the work, which was submitted to my predecessor in March 2019. The very clear advice I have is that the Department was fully intent on doing this. It is complex. Sensitive policy decisions have to be made and extensive legal advice has to be obtained. I accept the Deputy’s bona fides on this and I agree we need this scheme. At this point, the only reason we do not have it is that all the people required to put it together were, for obvious reasons, pulled on to Covid for two years. Now is a good time to push that work back into action.

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