Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The one the experts talk to me about indicated that we have detected probably a bit over half of the total cases. Returning to the figure they use, we were at three per 100,000 a while ago. Two weeks ago we were at 18 per 100,000 and today we are at 30 per 100,000. Let us be very clear that this virus is rising again quickly in our community. The Chair has very fairly asked how that is linked to hospitalisations. The cases are high but the hospitalisations, thank God, are low. Go back and look at the profile at what happened the first time, and what you will find is that at this point in the pattern, as the cases were around where they are now and rising rapidly, hospitalisations were also very low. The unambiguous message and advice from public health is that death will follow high numbers of cases. What we do not want to do is wait for the hospital system to be overrun.

We do not want to wait for fatalities to increase before we act. We have to act first and that is what we are doing.