Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the three contributors for their opening statements, which were most informative. I will first focus on the matters raised by Dr. David Kenny on the scrutiny or otherwise of legislation, where that has brought us and the difficulties arising from all of it. I believe the witness mentioned Australia, where regulations are published 48 hours before coming into effect, meaning there is a small period when people can examine them.

I suggest that regulations should have a type of "pre-regulation scrutiny", similar to our normal process of pre-legislative scrutiny. It would be appropriate for a committee of the Oireachtas to look at regulations as they came into play. We have seen this aspect has been the most difficult for the vast majority of people, who see regulations coming into effect where common sense does not apply. This has caused some upheaval.

I made the point in an earlier session that one of the key issues is to have unity of purpose, not just politically but among everybody in the community. This means all sections of society working together for the common good while recognising that certain aspects of their liberty are being denied or curtailed to some extent. At least if it is for a purpose, people will buy into that. However, what happens if regulations do not make sense to people? In places like my county of Leitrim, we have very low numbers of Covid-19 but people cannot even go to a football match. People do not see any sense in that. The regulations require a sense of scrutiny that should be public, so people can see it happening and know what is going on. They could understand the arguments and counterarguments. Do the witnesses wish to comment on that?

There is also the matter of courts. Many of the difficulties we have faced with the regulations around Covid-19 restricting people's movements and ability to carry on what was considered normal life have been exacerbated by the fact that so much of society and the systems out there were already under stress and in difficulty. We saw it in our education system, which had overcrowded schools and high pupil-teacher ratios. There were difficulties with school transport prior to this.

In our courts, people from impoverished backgrounds found it very difficult to access the criminal justice system. We have all come across cases in which people may have been entitled to take a case further. My colleague has mentioned how somebody taking a case because of injury is likely to settle early because he or she might not have the money to wait for the case to be heard. Such positions are being exacerbated by what is happening now and there should be an acknowledgement of that. This crisis also creates an opportunity to look closely at such matters and see how we can bring solutions that would be sustainable after Covid-19. The reality is we will have to learn to live with the virus and move forward in that way.