Matt Shanahan (Waterford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

My thanks to our guests today. I will go back to the point raised some moments ago on the powers of gardaí. The main tenet coming across from the submissions is that we must have robust constitutional oversight, albeit some of the recommendations were probably not well understood early on.

The issue of house parties occupied a good portion of time in the national media yesterday, especially in college towns and cities. Obviously, we cannot blame young people for congregating and so on. However, if we accept the rationale that we have allowed emergency powers to be implemented on public health grounds, then why the reticence among the deputations in terms of giving a legal requirement to gardaí to be able to go in and disrupt such parties to try to stop the transmission of disease?