Mr. Liam Herrick:

It is fair to say we are more concerned with the unintended consequences. We had the opportunity to take part in a conference in New York yesterday with representatives from civil society all over the world. We heard about how some countries had taken advantage of the crisis to suppress civil society, trade unions or journalists and of course that has not been the case here.

What we have seen is that some of the regulations have had unintended consequences. An example of this is the regulations on food in restaurants and public houses which drew the police into monitoring what people had eaten, which was clearly unintended. Another example is the regulations which regulated house parties which engaged with constitutional problems about the private home. There were also regulations on public events which did not fully take into account the right to strike and the right to protest, or indeed the right of people to take part in religious observance. These were all issues that could have been teased out if there had been greater consultation.

From our point of view it is of course for the Government to restrict certain rights during a public health crisis but it must do so within the law and must do so with respect to principles of necessity and proportionality. On some occasions that has not happened. We saw this again most recently with the mandatory hotel quarantine, where the rushed nature of the regulations meant it was not able to take into account humanitarian circumstances for some of the people who might be subject to it. Therefore, there are many ways in which the Oireachtas could help to safeguard against disproportionate introduction of powers.