Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I have answered questions on the pandemic unemployment payment already so perhaps I will answer some of the Deputy's other questions. I am totally opposed to reintroducing austerity or austerity measures in Ireland. There is nothing I would hate more to see happen to our country than having to experience more austerity budgets. Let us not forget why we had austerity in Ireland ten or 12 years ago. It was not because the economy collapsed. It was not because the banks collapsed. It was because we lost the confidence of the financial markets and could not borrow any more. That is why austerity happened. We could not borrow money and had to go to the IMF. The IMF said it was the lender of last resort and would only give us money if we fulfilled certain conditions, and those conditions were austerity.

How would we end up in austerity again? We would do so by putting ourselves in a position that we lose the confidence of those financial markets, and that would be by borrowing more than we could afford to pay back. That is the basic point.

Austerity happens not because the economy collapses or the banks collapse but because we lose the confidence of the financial markets and we lose the confidence of the financial markets by borrowing more than we can afford to pay back because people then will not lend us more money. It is as simple as that and that is why the kind of policies that are pursued by left-wing governments, socialist governments and reckless populist governments around the world are the ones that lead to austerity in the end.

On WHO advice, I think I am correct in saying the advice is to stay at least 1 metre apart or more than 1 metre apart but that 2 metres is best. There are different opinions on this, and different agencies and experts will give different opinions. What is useful to read is a study published by The Lancetonly a couple of days ago. That is a meta-analysis of 170 different studies on masks and social distancing and what works and does not work. To cut a long story short, what that Lancetanalysis concludes is that if people are more than a metre apart, they are between 70% and 80% protected, and if they are 2 metres or more apart, they are between 95% and 100% protected. That is the difference. Nobody disputes that. One metre is good; 2 metres is better. The question is at what point we are willing to take the risk of moving from 2 metres to 1 metre. I think we do not take that risk until the virus is more suppressed in our community than it is now.

I believe protests and demonstrations are part of democracy and I believe in free speech and hate to see that suppressed in other countries. I would however ask anyone who is taking part in protests of any nature to maintain that physical distance of 2 metres and not to travel more than 5 km from their homes to participate in the protest. Protests can be organised locally as well as in city centre locations. Anyone who is organising a protest should ensure that they take responsibility for that protest, that the public health guidelines are managed, and to do that not because I am asking them to but out of respect for our health care workers and older people who are the ones who will suffer if any of these protests become a cluster for infection.

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