Mr. Frank Vaughan:

I thank the Deputy. In my opening remarks I mentioned that we were not entirely clear why the amendment was introduced in the way it was 2016. I have no particular insight on that, bar the fact that there seemed to be resistance to doing that.

A couple of speakers have remarked on the fact that we have a community incidence of Covid-19, and that is probably the preponderance of cases we have the State. Nobody is denying that. Clearly, we have had clusters of infection in workplaces, not only necessarily in the highlighted areas such as healthcare, but also last year, tragically in a number of our meat factories. Sometimes I suspect that the concentration on such cases mitigates the occurrences in other sectors. Cases are happening across the board.

With all occupational diseases, not just Covid-19, there can be difficulties in determining precisely what has occurred in an occupational context as opposed to some other source, be it wider environmental factors or whatever. It seems to be the case that many other jurisdictions have come up with ways of dealing with that, and an evidence-based approach is taken. Over the past year various other countries have adopted essentially a basis of likelihood with regard to Covid-19. The argument that one cannot determine the source of the infection brings us into a blind alley. There are ways of determining probability and likelihood. I do not think that is a sufficient reason to refuse to-----