Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Some of what the Deputy has said is valid but we could equally say that we must always balance the undoubted impacts of lockdowns against what would happen if we did not lock down. To me, the fundamental objective was always to save lives and people from becoming severely ill. We also wanted to protect our health services from being overwhelmed. The mortality question is important, and as I said in my opening address, we have the sixth-lowest mortality rate in that respect in Europe. We counted almost everything when it came to Covid-19 deaths and our data are very comprehensive.

We were very conscious of many of those matters throughout the pandemic. The Deputy mentioned domestic violence and mental health. I do not want to go back over old issues but on one occasion we were accused of differing from the NPHET opinion. At that meeting there were presentations from the Central Statistics Office, CSO, on well-being and mental health, and all of that informed our view of the time. I have remained very concerned about mental health and particularly the impact on young people through the pandemic. The effect on domestic violence, for example, was not unknown to us and it would have been reported to Covid-19 committee meetings that during the first lockdown, domestic violence rates increased.

These were very difficult decisions of life and death in deciding whether to lock down. I was very concerned about construction but we must remember where the alpha variant had us. That alpha wave was the worst moment of the Covid-19 pandemic, and it really stretched us. It was a variant that ran through us and we did not have vaccination to protect us. In hindsight we tend to look at things differently. I genuinely believe the absolute game-changing nature of vaccines has not been fully appreciated. I can look back at the Alpha wave and we did not have vaccines so people were getting very sick and dying. This time around, with the Omicron variant, we were vaccinated and doing far more socialisation even before Christmas than the previous Christmas but hospital beds were not filling up to the same extent. The vaccine story is the key to what happened in 2021 and how we go out of this.

There should a robust inquiry and evaluation of this. I use the word "evaluation" because I do not want future public officials - or private sector personnel who worked very well with us - looking over their shoulders. The Irish Business and Employers' Confederation and the Irish Congress of Trade Unions were very good on the return to work process and we saw some really good collaboration. We needed decision makers and for people to take decisions in the middle of a crisis like a pandemic. They will take what comes with that. We need an international comparator as well and we should have an international person or two in such a process.