Thomas Pringle (Donegal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Therefore the leaks seem to have come from within Government. That is what I was trying to get to the bottom of.

The Minister said the Government would like to see more detailed options for the end of the four week period at level 5. I believe that we should have gone to level 5 and things look like we will go to level 5 in the next week or so anyway, with schools closing early for Hallowe'en. Maybe that will not happen. I want to tease out what the Minister said. What are the detailed options on carrying on as we are? I was at a meeting last week when very prominent medical people outlined what happens in Africa and so on with virus outbreaks etc. where peaks and troughs are ongoing. They said this pandemic would be ongoing for at least two to three years. We are looking at another two or three years at least of this cycle of lockdowns and reopening. How is that good for our society or for the businesses that many Members have mentioned this evening? How can we sustain things into the future like that? Maybe NPHET has modelled it differently and the Minister thinks that this will break the back of the pandemic now. If that is the case I would like to hear it. That is the crux of the matter. If we went for a full lockdown now and closed the whole thing down we could close the numbers down and then open everything back up by having proper testing and tackling the instances as they arise. We would have to do that on an all-island basis, that would be very important. Those are the options and that is what we should be talking about.

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