Dáil debates

Wednesday, 9 September 2020

Health Act 1947 (Section 31A - Temporary Restrictions) (Covid-19) (No. 4) Regulations 2020: Motion [Private Members]

 

3:20 pm

Photo of Seán SherlockSeán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I note the presence of the Minister of State, Deputy Feighan, and I am very sorry that the senior Minister has taken it upon himself to leave during a discussion on such an important motion. There is no doubting that the regulations are overkill but I worry that the motion before us now, if it succeeds, would result in annulling all the regulations, and that could also be overkill. While we agree with the spirit of what is being debated, if there is an attempt to annul the regulations completely, it is important that we recognise that such an absence, if there is a confirmed case of Covid-19 in a public house for instance, could result in nullifying any attempt to carry out contact tracing.

There are problems with the motion, notwithstanding the rightful anger that is being expressed at the Government's handling of the imposition of these regulations.

I welcome the fact that pubs will reopen on 21 September. Those of us in this House who are reasonable and rational have been lobbying Ministers for the past number of months and reflecting the views of the VFI and other representative bodies but, most important, intergenerational families who have run good public houses for donkey's years and found themselves left out in the cold, looking askance at the contradictory statements made by the Minister and the Government on the imposition of regulations on other sectors. Those publicans were left to wonder would they ever be let back in from the cold.

I am glad that pubs will reopen on 21 September. I am hopeful that will be adhered to and that the Government will be bound by that date because it is vitally important that we get pubs reopened not only to purvey alcohol but to allow for the impact they have on their communities by delivering intergenerational solidarity, serving the fundamental human need to get out of the house and coalesce with other members of a community, to meet, talk, chat, bitch and moan, if I am not using unparliamentary language when I say that. People need to bicker and to be allowed get on with their lives in a safe way that allows for normal life to continue insofar as we can call the circumstances in which we live at present "normal".

The Minister needs to stop acting like an independent observer from Stokes Kennedy Crowley. He needs to start to feel what it is like to live in this country at present. There have been contradictions. The people are told one week that they can go to a GAA game, a sport that they have been following for years, and the next minute they are not allowed to watch the sport that is in the very blood that courses through their veins. The Minister needs to start having more empathy and not to be dispassionate. He needs to get out and start meeting real people because I fear that he is being cocooned, to use that unfortunate phrase. I feel that he has not gone out and met the people because, if he did so, he would probably sense the anger and frustration of the people living in this country who want to abide by the regulations and obey the rules but also want some degree of normality to be restored to their lives to allow them to be able to do the things they always did. They do not want to be told that they can do something one minute only for it to be stopped in its tracks the next.

We need to have a degree of humanity, sympathy and emotional intelligence about how we conduct our affairs in this Parliament. We look to the Government to provide that. We have given to this Government all of the support that could reasonably be given by any Opposition in the times in which we live but common sense has now broken down. It needs to be restored and we are asking the Minister to please take note of the fact that we are reflecting the views of ordinary people in the arguments we are making.

It is not common sense to take an occupational therapist who is working in the HSE and put them to work contact tracing. That person is a front-line worker and we do not know how many of them have been redeployed to contact trace. How many people in this State need occupational therapy as we speak? It is not common sense to put an assistant psychologist who could be working with a family feeling the psychosocial effects of Covid-19 into contact tracing or testing. A skewed public policy is in place at present where good front-line workers are being taken from key and essential jobs and being put into areas in which they should not be deployed. There needs to be a root-and-branch review of how Covid is being dealt with and whether scarce resources are being deployed in the most effective way.

I ask the Minister and the Government to start taking on the beef barons and doing a deep dive to look at what is happening in the meat industry. I fear that the barons are in the ears of influential people and have an overbearing influence on this society that affects migrant and Irish workers who live in our communities and feel the brunt of the culture that exists within that industry. It needs to be reviewed and taken on. We want a sense of decency. If there is decency and common sense, we will support it, but we have not witnessed decency or common sense these past few weeks.

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