Frank Feighan (Sligo-Leitrim, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am sharing my time with Deputy Dillon - six minutes and four minutes. Once again, I want to express my sympathy to the families, loved ones and friends of those who have been lost to this awful disease.

I welcome the Minister's update on the Covid-19 disease, our response and its impact on the health service. It is reassuring that this week nobody passed away from the Covid disease and, as the Minister rightly said, we had only a small number of new cases. It makes the reproduction number difficult to estimate but, importantly, we need to monitor the new cases. The average number of cases over the past five days was nine. This day last week it was more than twice that amount.

Tomorrow, the Minister will meet with the National Public Health Emergency Team to discuss phase 3 and the Government will then decide how to proceed tomorrow afternoon. There is an area of my constituency of Sligo-Leitrim, north Roscommon and south Donegal which effectively covers six dioceses - the dioceses of Killala, Achonry, Elphin, Ardagh, Kilmore and Raphoe. Those are just the Catholic dioceses. There are other dioceses that interlink those. People are deeply disturbed by the report that churches will not be allowed resume masses on 29 June if the numbers exceed 50 people. The new restrictions were not part of the information we were given a few weeks ago. We were told they could open for mass on 29 June. That makes no sense whatsoever because it bears no reference to physical distancing. Some churches such as St. Anne's cathedral in Sligo town, the church in my town of Boyle and those in Carrick-on-Shannon, Ballymote, Ballinamore, Ballyshannon and Bundoran are very sizeable. They actually say that some churches in rural communities could not and should not have 50 people attending mass even if they are observing the 2 m rule. We need to look at the larger churches in the larger towns. This is coming from the bishops themselves.

Many people who have waited patiently for churches to reopen are very disappointed. They have been working very hard within the Government guidelines to prepare for a return to mass. I just looked at the Diocese of Elphin website which has the Full Guidance Document with Resources. They are as follows: Resource 1 - Parish Support Team and Volunteer Roles; Resource 2 - Risk Assessment; Resource 3 - Training; Resource 4 - Cleaning; Resource 5 - Use of PPE; Resource 6 - Stewarding; Resource 7 - Distribution of Holy Communion; Resource 8 - Communications and Signage; Resource 9 - Human Resources incl Return to Work Form; Resource 10 - Parish Policy Statement; Resource 11 - Responding to an Outbreak; and Resource 12 - Church Readiness Form. In addition, there are many training videos on the website. These people have worked extremely hard and they are very disappointed. I hope that we can come up with a resolution tomorrow that we will work with the various dioceses and churches. We need to clarify the matter. They want to be allowed do what they have been working towards, with expert advice, for the next two months. I hope the Minister will take that into consideration and he might comment on the matter.

See this speech in context