Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I join with Deputy Boyd Barrett in recognising the life of Andrew St. Ledger and extend my condolences to his family, friends and colleagues. I did not know him well but I think we met once or twice in the context of environmental meetings. I would have to check what the exact mandate of Coillte is in legislation but when I had the chance to meet it last year, it set out a mandate that really had three elements. One was the production of timber for commercial purposes, which we need, particularly when it comes to building new houses and doing so in a more sustainable way using timber rather than concrete. Another is recreation for people who want to enjoy and spend time in forests, while another is biodiversity. I think this is a good mandate. That is what Coillte says its mandate is. I am not sure what is written down in the legislation but I think that is its mandate in practice.

Deputy Tóibín spoke about the pandemic. When we speak about the pandemic, we should always acknowledge that Ireland managed a very difficult situation - an unprecedented situation - very well. We did not get everything right. Nobody does and nobody can but our excess deaths were among the lowest in the developed world and our economy bounced back probably the fastest in the developed world. You still see countries where people are still suffering from the economic impact of the pandemic and the lockdowns. There will be a Covid inquiry. I anticipate the memorandum to establish it and agree the terms of reference will go to Cabinet in the next couple of weeks. We then need to recruit a chair and a panel, which will be difficult because it will be very hard to find people who did not have some role in managing the pandemic or did not comment on it in some way. That will be difficult but that is a challenge that we will overcome. It will go on for some time so it is quite a big commitment on behalf of the people who will be asked to serve on the inquiry.

What I have always said from day one during Covid - I was one of the few who said it and it was hard to hear sometimes - is that lockdowns and restrictions on people's freedom would save lives, as they did, but could also do harm, cause damage and potentially cost lives, particularly because so much regular healthcare was delayed or deferred. I was always up-front about that. I remember people calling for zero Covid and suggesting all sorts of extreme lockdowns and actions. I was always of the view and was honest with people that this was a judgment call and a balanced decision to make. I remember absurd calls for some things that were done. I remember the debates around mandatory hotel quarantine, which I was never a big fan of. A lot of people called for very strict measures, stricter measures that those that happened, and for prolonged periods, never acknowledging that those restrictions could do harm as well as good. It will be very hard for any inquiry to do the maths on that and work out which decisions were right and which were wrong but we must have an inquiry because we need to learn from it. Hopefully, it will never happen again.

I wish to reassure Deputy Paul Murphy that there was a very strong enterprise environment element to the trade mission to South Korea. To give three examples, the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Deputy Coveney, met a company that will power a data centre using fuel cells-----

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