Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

We have heard about the Thursday letter, level 3 and so on before. I will quote from the letter of 4 October. It states: "A graduated approach would, ultimately, result in application of Level 5 measures as mitigation." NPHET predicted precisely where we are. It is important, to learn lessons for the future, that the Government acknowledge that the advice to move to level 5, two and a bit weeks ago, was correct and that it made a serious mistake by refusing to follow it. I do not care what other parties in this House advocated; NPHET was clear. It has been vindicated and the Government damaged the public health advice in general by taking the approach it did.

Judging by the way the Taoiseach talks about the matter, it is as if those who advocate a zero-Covid approach are pro-lockdown. We are not pro-lockdown. Everybody, surely, is anti-lockdown. Nobody wants to be in a lockdown, but we are going into a lockdown on Wednesday night with the Government's strategy of supposed suppression and managing the virus, which offers a continual yo-yo, into lockdown, out of lockdown, into lockdown, out of lockdown. That is a nightmare for people.

The alternative, zero Covid, can be achieved. In New Zealand at the weekend, there were scenes of people living normally, but it is not just in New Zealand. Countries as diverse as Iceland, South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam and Australia have all implemented versions of the zero-Covid strategy. That is what we need to do in order to give people some hope. I encourage the Taoiseach and the Government to implement that strategy.

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