Pat Casey (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I tabled this Commencement matter to bring a degree of proportionality and transparency to the debate on the true impact of the pandemic on the hospitality sector.I believe that information is sorely missing.

I thank Senator Crowe for his intervention today. Every time, the industry's hopes are raised and then dashed. This has happened six times. The impact cuts deeper each time this happens. I am not just referring to the financial impact. At Christmas, our industry was blamed for the serious outbreak of the Oxford variant. Everyone in this Chamber and everybody in the public domain knows that they probably were more at risk of getting the disease if they were in a public space like a shopping centre that was packed before Christmas. Let us not forget the number of household parties that were being held before Christmas and the number of families that gathered for Christmas dinner in a small close environment. Yet the only thing in the media was "why did you open the hospitality sector?" It was not just the hospitality sector that was open before Christmas. As all retail and personal services opened, proportionality and transparency need to be brought to the debate. Seven months on, when our industry, that is, the restaurants and the pubs, were about to open again, the only thing in the media leading up to it was whether the Government would open indoor hospitality because of the arrival of the Delta variant. Then NPHET produced its modelling and referred to a narrow opening of indoor social activities or a wider opening of indoor social activities. To the public, that means indoor dining. One then adds the other variable. The question of whether someone is vaccinated refers to indoor dining. In respect of the doomsday scenario given to Government by NPHET, hospitality will not lead to 680,000 cases of Covid and will not lead to 2,127 deaths over the three months, as projected by NPHET. How society as a whole reacts in every sector, both in the workplace and in public, will lead to that. Perhaps the Government's message should be around how if we continue the way we are going, it will not be just hospitality that closes down. The whole country will be shut down. Perhaps if the Government gave out that message and showed the true transparency behind these figures, people might behave better and might stop being so relaxed, as we all have become in the current environment.

I know the Cabinet cannot answer my question. What percentage of the figures presented in the modelling by NPHET relate directly to hospitality and indoor dining because they do not exist? These are modelling figures. The Government and NPHET framed the debate around indoor hospitality and how, again, we are the sector that has brought this pandemic and will be the ones that will cause the exponential surge in cases, which is factually incorrect. I ask the Government and NPHET to be a bit more conscious of our industry and when they present figures, to present them in a transparent and factual manner and not lay the blame totally on our sector.