Pa Daly (Kerry, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I will keep it as brief as I can. I welcome all of the speakers and thank them for coming before the committee, in particular Mr. Geoghegan, if he is still with us. I have had some contact with him over the years when I worked in the Bridewell. He turned the lives of many of my clients around or gave them some bit of help along the way.

A common theme is the frustration all around and the proportionality of what went on. My experience of dealing with sergeants, inspectors and gardaí in Kerry was that they were frustrated. They were getting a lack of notice of the regulations. For example, they were receiving them very late on a Tuesday night and expected to implement them at 7 a.m. the following day. They were frustrated that they were receiving a lot of complaints from members of the public, for example, that people were spotted more than 5 km from home, walking on a beach or going up a mountain, when we were probably two weeks into the pandemic. People knew the virus was not being transmitted in that way. Gardaí spoke to me. Members of the public were frustrated that time was being taken up with this.

With regard to what was mentioned earlier about regulations, Sinn Féin introduced a Private Members' Bill, the Health (Parliamentary Oversight of Certain Instruments Relating to Covid-19) Bill 2021. We suggested the regulations be laid before the House for 14 sitting days or 21 days so they could be looked at before a vote would take place. This would have avoided the frustration that came, for example, from the regulations and the chaos that emanated last August when restaurants had to keep receipts. When it was challenged, it was dropped fairly quickly. This is something that could have been done. While the Bill was supported on First Stage, it has not yet been implemented.

There is an ongoing difficulty in Killarney, where there is a contrast or conflict between the by-laws in place for drinking on the street and the new regulations. Gardaí are being told from on high by the Government that they are to allow people to drink when more than 100 yards from a premises, but the by-laws of the town itself are in conflict with this.

Moving on to proportionality, Professor Fennell raised the point that many older people spent the last year of their lives in isolation when they were in lockdown, when it was not actually illegal for them to leave but they believed it was. Nobody was prepared to clarify this for them. There was a lot of isolation going on. We had an increase in domestic violence, and today we heard about the 43% increase in complaints to Women's Aid. It has been difficult for me to obtain information, because of how Garda statistics are compiled, on whether there was a similar 40% increase in complaints of domestic violence-type incidents to An Garda Síochána and in charges, particularly in the second, third and fourth quarters of 2020 compared with the second, third and fourth quarters of 2019. Perhaps one of the gardaí could answer this question.

The ICCL, or perhaps it was Professor Fennell, spoke about following the science and the continuing restriction of events. What I heard six or seven months into the lockdown from the HSE in Cork and Kerry was that it did not know of one case of Covid from outdoor sports or outdoor transmission. Under the regulations, which are still in place, we can have only 100 people at a football match. This will be increased to 200 and perhaps to 10% over the coming months. Without looking at what is happening around Europe and the lack of a spike, certainly that I can see, these continuing restrictions on people's lives remain in place and this is unfortunate. It is especially unfortunate for the groups that are not slick lobbyists and do not have a PR team in place to push their agenda. I am thinking in particular of some of the sporting organisations where on a return to play, even in July and August of last year, hundreds of thousands of children returned to outdoor sport without, correct me if I am wrong, one case of Covid transmission but their lives were restricted. This was a lack of proportionality.

Approximately 100,000 people participate in the Parkrun events every year. A total of 50% of participants are women, 7% have disabilities and 17% are from lower socioeconomic groups. Approximately 12,000 people run every week and 100,000 people over the year. This event is still closed down. In the dealings I have had with the Department of Health, the group is being asked for preregistration. There is a lot of bureaucracy still in place. The events are returning in England, and perhaps Dr. Lunn has some knowledge of this, at the beginning of next month but there is no sign of it opening here. Why are these continuing restraints on people's liberty in place?

I note what the ICCL has said about a reluctance to let go of these new powers, and there had to be an extension of the powers until November rather than what we had suggested, which was to look at the vaccination rates until the middle of July, before the Dáil breaks up for the summer, and pitch it at a shorter term until the middle of July. Do the witnesses think this should have been followed? I thank the witnesses.