Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy spoke about what happened two weeks ago, which was on a Sunday. The previous Thursday evening, the Government received a letter from the same body, NPHET, that did not even recommend moving from level 2 to level 3. These are the facts. This is the prelude to what happened on the Sunday. Suffice it to say, the letter on Sunday took the Government by surprise, and everybody in the House bar the Deputy and Deputy Boyd Barrett. They were the two Deputies who wanted to move to level 5 at that stage, whereas nobody else did because of the enormous impact it would have on people.

This is not an exact science and let us not pretend that it is. What we have not quantified yet is the human cost of lockdowns, if we are honest. We are getting evidence on the damage to children who are out of school for too long, in terms of regression and life chances, particularly for disadvantaged children who may leave school early. This is hard to calculate. We have yet to quantify and do proper research on delayed diagnoses resulting from a large number of people not using our hospitals during the first lockdown for non-Covid illnesses. Deputy Kelly has been raising this for quite some time. In other words, these are cancer patients, heart patients and people with a range of diagnoses who just said they would not go to hospital and delayed. Many consultants and clinicians are worried about delayed diagnoses. This is not an exact science.

What the Government did in response to NPHET's letter was to move immediately to level 3. Level 3 is a very severe form of restrictions. It essentially closes down our entire hospitality sector, including pubs, restaurants and hotels, bar a few exceptional provisions.

In the context of the European stringency index, before we made our announcement last evening, Ireland was number one in terms of the level of restrictions. That was because we moved to level 3 two weeks ago. We added to that with the single-household provision and further restrictions in Donegal, Cavan and Monaghan.

The Deputy said I held up an appalling vista. I do not agree with him on zero Covid and NPHET does not either. The Deputy clearly rejects NPHET's advice on zero Covid but it has been very clear to us that it does not believe that the zero-Covid approach is credible, doable or implementable. The Deputy should not underestimate the impact on human lives, as well as the cost to people, that would result from such a measure. This is not an exact science; it is difficult and challenging and one has to balance a whole range of considerations. It needs to be given deep consideration. It cannot be the case anymore that we move from one level to another on one night on receipt of a letter. The day is over where someone gets a letter on day one and we do something by midnight. There has to be some degree of consideration and other inputs. I agreed with Deputy Shortall earlier - I did not get a chance to reply - when she spoke about bringing in a broader range of people. There are 40 individuals on NPHET but we need other Departments to have an input.

Child welfare referral rates decreased sharply during the lockdown, and that is a danger. Domestic violence increased significantly during the lockdown. That is also an issue. These are all issues that cannot be dismissed. As we go through this pandemic, we will learn more and, hopefully, be able to refine how we do things. NPHET informed us on Saturday that if we work with this for six weeks, we can get to a position, hopefully by the beginning of December, where we can reopen but that, in the new year, we might have to consider more restrictions again to keep control of the virus until we get hold of a vaccine . NPHET believes that is a better and more credible pathway than the zero-Covid or herd immunity pathways.

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