James Lawless (Kildare North, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank Mr. Herrick. I will ask Ms Cunningham to respond but before she does, I will think out loud. I represent Kildare North and County Kildare went into a separate lockdown last August. It was difficult because the rest of the country was coming out of lockdown while Kildare was going back into lockdown. People felt a sense of injustice, rightly or wrongly. I noticed some commentary in the media at the time to the effect that some of the regulations were unenforceable.

Unfortunately, a small minority took to flaunting the regulations on social media and took delight it. This had a corrosive effect for public buy-in. People by and large were abiding by all of the regulations and doing their very best, with great personal difficulty at times. They were doing it anyway. A small number of people took satisfaction and delight in flaunting regulations and were actually advertising the fact and rejoicing in the fact there was no sanction. It struck me that perhaps a sanction would have been very helpful for that small number, not so much to punish or penalise those people - although they probably deserved it - but more to achieve the wider buy-in. One could then say that we are all in this together and we are holding firm, and that people could not go off and get away with it. I thought that aspect was very unhelpful. Does Ms Cunningham want to respond to those points?