Alan Kelly (Tipperary, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the fact that a strategy has been announced and that the Taoiseach took on board a number of the proposals the Labour Party put forward last week. We were very clear on where we thought the country needed to go, unlike some others. In regard to what was announced, we are not going to magically wake up on 1 December and see what has been delivered. We need metrics and measurements. We need the Taoiseach to say to the public what we need to achieve, what will happen if we achieve the specified measurements in regard to the R-nought rate, hospitalisations and everything else and what will take us to level 3 and level 2. It is about giving people hope, as the Taoiseach knows, in terms of Christmas and there on in. We cannot always be going between levels 2 and 5. I believe we are going to have to live with this virus and to move between one level up or one level down, but these massive changes cannot be sustained. What do we need to do to ensure we get to levels 2 and 3? Can the Government show metrics and measurements in this regard to the public?

It is appreciable that the Government has taken on Senator Moynihan's proposal on bubbles, which she has been working on for some time. However, I want clarity on the idea that we can allow individuals to come together. There are 400,000 people living alone and the over 200,000 single parent families. The details on the Government's website are way too restrictive on visiting for children under 18, mental health, custody arrangements, dementia and carers. We have overcomplicated this. I know the Government has made a couple of changes to what it announced already such as for funerals, with which I agree. How can one measure whether somebody has a mental health challenge and that he or she should go into a bubble? It is not measurable. We need to make this very simple. What is the difference between somebody going into a bubble because he or she needs to do so due to a mental health challenge and somebody going into a bubble because he or she is partaking in chemotherapy? These people are both equally needy. The Government should take a line from the television show "The Cube" and simplify it. The Government is on the right track but it is a little bit too narrow and tight. This needs to be simplified. It is a very good concept, it has worked in New Zealand and Britain has adopted it as well. It deals with the issues we all know the lonely and vulnerable faced in the first lockdown. I ask the Government to look at simplifying this and allowing two people to come together for whatever reasons, rather than those reasons listed by the Government. I also ask the Taoiseach to give us some measurements and metrics on what we can achieve through yesterday's announcements by 1 December.

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