Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

At the outset I commend Deputy Lahart on an excellent, thought-provoking and challenging contribution. It was really good and very moving. There was so much in it and I hope his Government colleagues were listening because there are major issues about loss in many different ways, the real fear that that will engender anger and the absolute need for people to be given hope. I want to thank the Deputy for that. I believe his contribution stopped many people in their tracks and made us think.

I have a few points to make. The Minister referred to this document as a roadmap. He is probably the only one here referring to it as a roadmap. It is generally referred to as a plan. The previous document we had was a roadmap going from stage to stage. This is a plan and it is more accurately described as a framework because it sets out a structure or framework where we can see that if we meet certain unspecified criteria in terms of danger we will move to the next level. It is helpful from that point of view and, hopefully, people will become more familiar with it and motivated to pull together in order to go down the levels.

I have to say that this is not a strategy; I have said that already to the Taoiseach. I am not sure at this stage, seven months into the Covid-19 pandemic, exactly what is the strategy. It is not clear to me and I believe it is not clear to many people. That is critical to keeping people with the Minister. What we have done is concentrated, supposedly, on having a very good testing and tracing system. That has been a patchy experience. Ultimately, however, the approach that is being taken is that every time there is an upsurge there is a lockdown. That is not a sustainable strategy by any means, not least for business, but for everybody in living their lives. I ask the Minister again to ensure that consideration is given to suggested strategies and learning, in particular, from the experience in other countries. There are many elements in terms of what we should be doing to try to minimise the incidence of Covid-19. There are many things we are ignoring in that regard, and I will come to them shortly, but it must be to come as close as possible to eliminating the virus. People talk about zero Covid-19. Those same people are saying that the aim should be at least zero. By doing that we identify all of the high-risk areas and then take action on those. That does need to be the approach but there needs to be at least debate on what is the best strategy and the pros and cons of different approaches. That debate has not taken place.

The second point I would make is that messaging is key in terms of keeping the public with the Minister. The launch of this document was a missed opportunity; we have said a good bit about that. It was a time when people were listening in but the messages were very unclear and confused. That was a missed opportunity but we now need to make up for that. The Taoiseach mentioned a couple of weeks ago the possibility of using influencers. I thought that was a very good idea and I suggested that it would have our support. It is not just about influencers on social media for young people. It is about influencing all different categories of people, including those older and middle-aged, people with different interests, sports people, people with an interest in music and different ethnic groups. The message needs to be tailored to those different cohorts. We should be using influencers because with all due respect, many people have switched off watching the standard six o'clock news or reading the broadsheets. People access their news or information on different platforms and in different media and we need to get to people through those different media by using people to whom those different cohorts will listen. What is happening about that? We have been talking about it for a long time.

The next point I would make is on decision-making. NPHET has very significant power. It is making major decisions that are affecting every part of our lives and our country. I said a long time ago that we needed to broaden out the decision-making and that we needed a task force that drew expertise from different areas. It is regrettable we did not do that. We need to have people who understand sport, business, logistics and travel in there who also have an expertise in risk assessment because every aspect of our lives carries risk in respect of Covid-19. It is a matter of assessing the level of that risk and then balancing that risk. In the absence of that kind of expertise, there is an element of guesswork and closing down everything is not sustainable.

Also in terms of the decision-making, I find it very hard to understand the reason the Opposition has been completely excluded from any kind of debate, and I am talking about engaging debate, not shouting across the floor of the Dáil. I am talking about bringing people into a room and looking at different aspects of it. As the Minister knows, there have been hardly any briefings since this Government took office. That is a big mistake. Party leaders and spokespersons want to be involved in that. We have legitimate questions and proposals to make and there should be a forum established. The Taoiseach said two weeks ago that he would give consideration to that. We have heard nothing since.

It is absolutely essential that the 14-day tracing back happens. On travel, and I will talk more to the Minister about this later, I refer to the example that was given at the briefing last night of two people who had been away coming back, mixing with others and spreading the virus to 30 other people. We have to go back to the source. I take it those people were abroad. It would be very interesting to know where they were but when we look at the figures of people coming into the country at the ports and airports, effectively, there is no oversight or monitoring of where the people have been or what they do when they come back. That is a glaring omission in terms of any approach to tackling this virus.

See this speech in context