Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I do not think the Minister quite explained why some people are excluded. On the point about zero Covid, we would not be in such a precarious situation having to decide between high circulation levels of the virus and reopening after a long period of lockdown if the Government had introduced a zero Covid approach at the appropriate time and not made the mistakes it made in December and January, which have left us in a much more protracted period. The truth is that there is tremendous fatigue and there will be no stomach for trying to reimpose even harsher restrictions. However, the Minister should do everything to avoid a fourth wave so there should not be premature accelerated reopening, which could produce a damaging further wave and greater lockdown. There should be mandatory quarantine to keep the variants from coming in and completely destroying the vaccination programme and the progress that people's hardship has achieved.