Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

One of the most controversial decisions made by the Government around the handling of Covid-19 was on international travel because it is obvious that international travel seeded the virus in Ireland. At the time, many countries were stopping international travel. New Zealand is probably the best case in point. It prevented much of the virus coming into the country. I remember asking the Taoiseach why he would not stop flights coming in from northern Italy. He said that it was the advice of the European Centre for Disease Control, ECDC, that we not stop travel within the European Union.

My instinct at the time was that this was a decision being made around the European Union's movement of people policies, rather than the health of the people. It was a wrong decision and has obviously led to a higher number of fatalities in this country per capitafrom Covid than many other countries who locked down their borders at the time. In that regard, I note from the Department's presentation today that NPHET gave the advice to the Government on 3 April that there should be mandatory self-isolation for international travellers. It is shocking that mandatory filling of forms for international travellers was only introduced last Thursday. Once that form is filled, international travellers can come to Ireland and have no legal responsibility whatsoever to self-isolate. I ask the Department of Health's representatives why we are not making it legally mandatory for these individuals to self-isolate as other normal liberal democracies have done around the world.

That is the first question. The second question concerns another example where the Government deviated quite radically from the medical and scientific advice it was being given, namely, the advice relating to seasonal workers. At the time, I raised the issue that we had international seasonal workers arriving in Ireland to work on fruit farms and yet we have a bizarre situation in which Irish soldiers cannot return from abroad because of restrictions. At the time we had the Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Tony Holohan, state it was against best public health policy to have seasonal workers travel around the world in a pandemic and yet, today, seasonal workers can travel to Ireland without any restrictions.

I ask these two questions initially of the Department's representatives. Why has the Department deviated from best medical advice in those two areas?