Michael McNamara (Clare, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Could the Minister respond to my questions within the five minutes allocated to me? Deputy Connolly also has five minutes. As the Minister knows, on 27 March the House gave extraordinary powers to the Minister for Health to introduce regulations. For almost two weeks, people adhered to the medical recommendations without any regulations. They were introduced on 7 April. The Minister was reported in the media as being one of those in favour of them. I am not asking him to comment on that, as it would be inappropriate for him to comment on what happened at Cabinet.

The regulations required people to stay in their homes unless they had a reasonable excuse to be out of them. One of the excuses was to carry out essential services or go to an essential retail outlet. That gives a huge amount of power to individual members of An Garda Síochána and is a very difficult position to put those individual members in. It is a power I would not feel comfortable having. I would not want to determine whether it is reasonable that somebody I meet should be out of his or her home. How long does the Minister think it is feasible to continue with these penal provisions? There are penal provisions in the regulations which are quite unusual, but which may be necessary or were necessary at a certain time.

As a matter of the rule of law, people have to know what the law is so that they can organise and regulate their behaviour in accordance with the law. The law very clearly stated that hardware stores could open. I heard numerous Ministers, who are the highest Government officials in the land, say that hardware stores would be allowed to open from a certain date when the law already stated that hardware stores were allowed to open. That begs questions about the rule of law. If we do not know what the law is, how can we adhere to it? If Ministers are saying that hardware stores can open from a certain date and the law is stating that they are allowed to open as we speak, that creates confusion. Confusion about what is and is not lawful can never be good in a democracy.

Broadcasters are saying, with regard to people aged over 70, that they must stay in their homes or may now leave their homes, when there was nothing whatsoever in the law about that. There were medical recommendations from the Chief Medical Officer and NPHET, and I encourage everybody to adhere to them, but I would not tell people that they must do something because people then think they are doing something unlawful. By leaving their homes, people aged over 70 may have been doing something unwise or unhealthy, but they were not doing anything unlawful. For the sake of the rule of law in this democracy, we need clarity. Does the Minister agree with me or does he think it is okay to have such confusion about what is and is not lawful?

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