Dr. Ronan Glynn:

NPHET never said anything about a €9 meal. It said that restaurants, in the traditional sense of what we understand is a restaurant in this country, should open. On masks, we have a choice. We can send out a set of messages and stop looking at the evidence as it evolves, never change our position, never learn and stick with what we have or we can learn, evolve and build on the knowledge that emerges in the context of a virus that nobody knew about it six months ago and a pandemic that nobody in the world has had to deal with, in terms of its scale, in our lifetimes. Yes, things will change but we all - doctors, politicians, the media and every organisation in this country - have a responsibility, if possible, to stop talking about mixed messages. The most important messages have not changed since the start of this pandemic. We need to wash our hands multiple times a day.

We need to stay physically distant from one another to stop giving this virus the opportunity to spread from one person to another. We need to avoid crowds. We need to decrease congregation. We need to practise respiratory etiquette. As soon as there is a symptom, we need to contact our GP and isolate to protect ourselves our families and our loved ones.

The evidence on face coverings has changed. We have evolved with that evidence. Yes, we were not convinced about it at the start, and one of our key concerns at the start was that people would put undue emphasis on face coverings at the expense of other measures. As the Deputy alluded to in the question, some people have done that which is why it is so important that in all the maelstrom that everyone is talking about and everything that is going on around us, that those key basic messages keep getting put out because it is those basic things that, if we all do them collectively and individually, will prevent us from having to take much more restrictive measures that no one, least of all ourselves in NPHET, want to have to recommend.