David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

What Mr. Herrick is saying is there must be fairness and proportionality. He obviously recognises there is a public health emergency and of course there must be public health responses that include restrictions. That fairness and proportionality is important and also that democratic scrutiny is important because if we do not have that, mistakes can be made. Mr. Herrick said there were unintended consequences in some areas. Perhaps he can expand on that. He might spell out what areas he is talking about.

I have a secondary question. I am not saying Mr. Herrick is saying this but I agree with his analysis that there must be proper scrutiny of the effectiveness of the existing legislation; that makes perfect sense. We must be reviewing all the different elements of that emergency legislation and all the regulations to see what worked, what has not worked and what unintended consequences may have flowed from all of them. As Mr. Herrick mentioned unintended consequences in some areas, he might be able to help the committee by explaining what those are. Has he seen any abuses by any State agencies in relation to the restrictions and the public measures, or is it more a matter of unintended consequences, just for the purposes of clarity?