Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Psychiatric and general student nurses have joined the front line and helped out. They paid their way through college by the time they began their placement, which might last eight or ten weeks and for which they get paid. Now they cannot get that because of the circumstances of Covid-19 and there is significant hardship, therefore, on families, especially those who do not get grants.

St. Brigid's Hospital in Carrick-on-Suir is a wonderful district hospital. Three hospice beds there are funded mainly by the people of the community. Respite services in the area are totally closed. The hospital was taken over to accommodate Covid patients but it was not used. We have had promises and promises as to when it will open. I want the Minister to outline a definite date for when those hospice and respite beds will be returned to use. If he cannot do so today, he might do so in the coming days.

What went on in nursing homes was shambolic. There will have to be an independent public inquiry, without the involvement of the State, into what blackguarding went on there. Deputy Shortall and I attended briefings with the Department, the then Minister for Health, Dr. Tony Holohan and everybody else. I wish Dr. Holohan's family well. The Minister, Deputy Donnelly, also attended. The shoe is on the other foot now. We want answers, not waffle. The whole matter of the airports was also shambolic. I class this pandemic as a scamdemic. People are being scammed and deceived. Some 62,000 people have come into the country and fewer than 2,000 have even been asked to fill out a form or been followed up on.

This is disgraceful. We would not allow pubs to open, no more than 200 people can attend GAA matches, and above all, we will not allow more than 50 people into a church. We have had a wonderful holy mass, which I have mentioned previously, at the Holy Year Cross near Clonmel every year for the past 60 years, but it cannot be held outdoors because of the number restrictions. There are usually 500 or 600 people on the August bank holiday Monday morning. It is a wonderful occasion but it cannot happen, yet people can come in from all over the world and there is no testing, no tracing, nothing.

It is a deceit and the people are being conned. I accept there is a new Minister but he was on the other side and he knows. We are being conned. Ordinary people are being told on television to stay in their homes. I heard Deputy Berry talking about Dublin and the compliance with masks. That is great but the airports are a farce. I have been saying this since the first briefing. The Minister attended all of them, along with the then Taoiseach, when we were told we had to be good Europeans and we could not close the airports. Hungary could do it, but the then Taoiseach could do nothing but criticise that country, as the current Taoiseach, Deputy Micheál Martin, has done too.

The people are being fooled. The poor people who own pubs, many of them pensioners who are not getting a penny of any payment, were misled last week in regard to getting stock and were led to believe their pubs could reopen. Now, by the sounds of it this morning, they will not be allowed to open on 10 August either. Anybody can come in from anywhere, whether Saigon or anywhere else, and walk through the airport. Although there is to be electronic tracing, it will be overseen by the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport. When Deputy Shortall asked a question about that at one of the briefings, no one could tell us who would do it. Nobody is doing it and it is not being done. It is open season for anybody to come in from any hotspot to this country, and that is a disgrace. It is an injustice to our people, front-line workers, staff, the Garda Síochána and everybody who is trying to keep the virus at bay and beat it. The people are being blackguarded and deceived and it is a total scam from that point of view.

Small businesses are being pushed out of business. There are ordinary people trying to live their lives in the country while this blackguarding is going on. It is just unthinkable.

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