Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

We will have to live with Covid until a vaccine is found. That is self-evident. One significant ingredient in dealing with that is maintaining public goodwill. To do that, the message and information have to be coherent and understood, and the measures that are taken have to be seen to be fair and proportionate. Another component is that when something is a failure, we need to name it as a failure and deal with it as a failure. As a representative from Kildare, I know there is a substantial sense of relief that lockdown has been lifted, but it has had significant consequences. Businesses have closed and jobs have been lost for good. The lockdown in Kildare, Laois and Offaly followed a number of large outbreaks originating in meat processing plants that subsequently spread to people's homes. There is a sense that State agencies dropped the ball and that high-risk places of employment were not being monitored, and there is a price to pay for both the economy and society.

That full county lockdowns remain part of the regime means that we must learn lessons from what has happened here. Many of those who work in meat plants are low paid and often are migrant workers working in poor conditions. Workers are paid on a piece-time basis, which necessitates very high levels of productivity, which did not reduce. It is inconsistent with social distancing. The all-important thing is the bottom line and that productivity are maintained. Slaughterhouses especially are cold and wet environments and are conducive anyway to regular colds and flu. They are noisy places that require people to shout to communicate. Many of those who work in the industry are not organised. Very often the employer organises the work permit and is also the landlord. It is not an equal relationship and this is fundamental to the problem, as is our cheap food policy which also has consequences for farmers and consequences with exploitation. Covid-19 has demonstrated just how interconnected we are.

The absence of a test centre, whereby people had to travel on public transport, was another failure. The length of time it took for some of the tests to come back initially was a failure. All of those things cannot be repeated. We have to get absolute assurances that they cannot be repeated.

There is a second lesson with regard to public goodwill, which is the availability of usable data. The rationale for full county lockdowns is still being questioned within those counties. The data hub was updated on 12 August. I understand it will be further updated on 12 September. It showed a wide variation in cases in different parts of the locked down counties. It has to be updated weekly. People will judge for themselves. They do not want to be treated in a paternalistic way that says "we know best and we know where things are". People want to be able to see the evidence to support some of the measures. If it does this the Government brings public goodwill with it.

I have three questions. Will the Taoiseach agree to the establishment of a task force to examine the meat industry? Will the Taoiseach arrange for a weekly update of the usable data in the data hub where people can look at the data themselves? Will the Taoiseach visit the areas that were locked down? There are very real learnings to be had from listening to people who have had that second lockdown, which was way different from the first lockdown.

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