Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

As the Taoiseach knows, for a long time we have been stressing the importance of ventilation and filtration in a strategy to fight Covid-19, which is an airborne pandemic. We were therefore very glad that People Before Profit’s Workplace Ventilation (Covid-19) Bill 2021 received the support of the entire Dáil. The Minister of State, Deputy English, who contributed to the debate on behalf of the Government, pledged that he would contact me that afternoon to arrange a meeting to discuss how its aims could be rapidly implemented via regulation. During that debate, the Government promised that this would not be “a case of sending it to [the] committee and setting it to one side”, but that seems to be precisely what is taking place. I never got that call. We contacted the Minister’s offices seeking a meeting, but we never received the arrangements for a meeting. Instead, we got a long letter raising various legal questions over our Bill and saying that the Minister is going to write to the Health and Safety Authority over the coming days to ask it formally to review the regulation. The absence of urgency on this crucial question of workers' right to clean air in schools, colleges, pubs, restaurants, offices and factories is a central issue. Will the Taoiseach intervene to ensure we have regulations before the end of the year on this issue?

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