David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The problem is that the Minister himself admitted that he did not see the interview with the Tánaiste on RTÉ, where the Tánaiste very clearly pushed back against the CMO and gave the impression that the Government was bounced and that the first it heard of added restrictions was when it received that letter from the CMO. The Minister is now telling the Dáil that on Sunday, before NPHET met, there was a discussion about going to level 4 and possibly further. The Minister says he did not try to influence NPHET, which is right, but the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste said that they were caught on the hop and that the first they heard of it was when they received the letter after the meeting on Sunday. That is patently untrue. The fact of the matter is that the CMO did everything possible, as far as I can see, by relaying the information to the Minister for Health, being very clear about the situation of the spread of the virus, and talking to the Minister about the possibility of added restrictions. Yet the following day, on national television, the Tánaiste talked about being bounced. Today in this Chamber he said, in response to my colleague Deputy Doherty, that he had no inkling about added restrictions until he got a briefing after the NPHET meeting. That is clearly not the case.

The Minister did not answer the question I put to him. When he and the CMO had the discussion on Sunday morning, prior to the NPHET meeting, and talked about added restrictions and the possibility of going to level 4, did he relay that information to the Taoiseach at that point and was it given to the Tánaiste? When we had all the controversy surrounding the Tánaiste's interview on RTÉ and the perception that NPHET went on a solo run ahead of the Government and had not briefed it on what it was doing, why did the Minister not put these telephone calls with the CMO into the public domain for 24 hours? We are only hearing today in the Chamber that the Minister did have a discussion about added restrictions. That was a failure on the Minister's part and a fracture has occurred over recent days between the Government and public health officials because of the mishandling of the situation. Reference has been made to there being poor communication between the Government, the CMO and NPHET, but it strikes me that that was not the case. The poor communication was on the Government's side, between the Minister and the Taoiseach, the Minister and the Tánaiste and the Minister and his partners in government. Will he answer the question I have put to him? On Sunday morning when the Minister received that call and had a discussion about the added restrictions, which were a possibility coming from that NPHET meeting, did he have a conversation with the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste about that possibility?

See this speech in context