Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Thank you. I thank all of the Deputies for their various questions. I will finish with this. While there has been a great deal of debate, as there always will and should be in this Chamber, none of us wants to see the country moving to level 4 or 5 because we understand the consequences of that. We know it is possible, but I do not believe it is inevitable. We will have an opportunity over the next few weeks to push the R number below 1. If we do that, the virus will begin to shrink. We will then keep pushing it back. However, it will take every one of us embracing what level 3 means. The vast majority of people are following the measures the vast majority of the time. If any of us can find an extra little way of pushing that a little more, then let us do that and help one another do that. For example, if staff really do not need to be at work, employers can work with their employees to help them work from home. During training, let us be sure that those who need to be present are socially distanced. Obviously enough, this means the people who are training, but also parents and others.

To this day, the best and clearest advice I have heard came from Dr. Ronan Glynn at a press conference a few weeks ago. He made it simple. We have tried to keep the framework as straightforward as possible, but we are laying out five levels of measures across our entire society and economy. With the best will in the world, that cannot be captured in a single message. We each must look at the measures and see what we need to do at this level for our counties. Dr. Glynn summed it up well. At the time, the R number was 1.6 or 1.5. He said that we had to get it below R-1 and then told us what to do, namely, to have a think about tomorrow and the coming week and where in that week we would meet people, because that is how this bloody virus spreads. It spreads from one person to another when we are together. The framework is in place to stop the virus. Dr. Glynn said that, whatever number of people we were planning on meeting, be it in a friend's house, at training, at work or wherever, we should try to reduce it. At the time, he suggested trying to halve it, which he said would bring the R number down from 1.6 to 0.8. That would be a drop from rapid growth to negative growth.

Before I came to the Chamber this evening, I sat down with Dr. Holohan, Dr. Glynn and the Secretary General to discuss the latest NPHET advice from today. As I was leaving, I told Dr. Holohan that I was going to the Dáil for an hour and a half of good debate and that, hopefully, some people would be watching. I asked him whether there was any message he wanted me to try to get out from the Dáil to anyone who might be watching. He told me to just ask people to double down on this. We are at level 3. We all know and accept that he wants to go to level 5, which I fully respect. He told me to ask the nation to double down on level 3. We saw this working in the Ceann Comhairle's constituency and county. It worked in Kildare, Laois and Offaly. It should be more effective now, given that the entire nation is at level 3 rather than just those three counties, Dublin or Donegal. It was harder for them because other counties did not have the same restrictions. Level 3 applies to the full Twenty-six Counties right now.

That is the note on which I would like to end. There has been much talk about text messages and so on. I firmly believe that what happened over the weekend was entirely sensible and reasonable and was the Government functioning. When we are all considering decisions of the magnitude of moving our country to level 5 - asking people to stay at home and shutting down businesses across the country – or even level 3, there will inevitably be disagreements. Sometimes, there will be robust debate, and there was in this instance.

If we embrace the current restrictions for a few weeks, do as Dr. Holohan said and double down on the level 3 measures - the people of Kildare, Laois and Offaly showed the way and the people of Dublin are showing it now, because the infection rate has flatlined there - I believe that we can do this and we can push the virus back down. A total of 1 million students have gone back to school and continue to go to school. Some 250,000 students have gone back to higher education. A lot of that activity has moved online but they are back in higher education or in it for the first time. Something north of 400,000 people have gone back to work and moved off the PUP since the height of the first wave and since we began to open things up again. These are things of which we should all be proud. The hospitals are open and screening services are back up and running. What our doctors, nurses, therapists and disability service providers are having to do to get those services back up and running is not easy but, by God, they are doing it. We should be incredibly proud of our teachers, clinicians and business people. Indeed, I know all of us are proud.

We are capable of pushing this virus back with the current measures. Kildare, Laois and Offaly gave us hope and showed us the way. Dublin is doing the same now and the rest of us are more than capable of doing likewise. Notwithstanding the debate this evening, everyone in this House wants the same thing. We have a common enemy in Covid. We need to work together to push the virus back, keep schools, colleges and businesses open and get the remaining businesses open, and keep the hospitals and primary care centres open. We must work together through the winter, because it will be a hard winter in many different ways for the people we represent. People are going to feel isolated and scared. Businesses will struggle. Our public services and public servants are going to struggle. It will be a hard winter and we need to help and support each other to push this godawful virus back and open up our country, society, economy and communities as much as we possibly can.

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