John Lahart (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Okay; I will leave that.

With regard to messaging, I follow the daily press briefings but the messaging has not changed much, whether there were five people in ICU or 200 people in ICU. I mean this as a serious point but I believe there is a need to repurpose the messaging because NPHET has exhausted almost every adjective in the dictionary at this stage. The situation was viewed as grave a year ago when we were down at level 5, and I am not belittling all of this, but many people are not listening now. I live very close to the M50. Last year during level 5 lockdown, the M50 was like a quiet country road. One could hear individual cars on it. Today it is buzzing, and we heard figures this week of 60% of transport being on the road. What are Dr. Glynn's ideas about that? People have switched off. They often ask me why the daily briefings are continuing as it is too much to take in.

The recent message that this will go on for at least a year had a serious negative impact on people's mental health. I found it quite disheartening to hear. While we are at level 5 in theory, Dublin is not at level 5. There is a significant amount of activity. The city is quiet but there is much going on in the suburbs. That is not a criticism of the witnesses. Do they have any ideas on how the messaging can be changed to reinforce its impact?