Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

We are debating a proposal to extend the State's emergency powers because of the Covid crisis. There are powerful arguments against extending these powers. I will deal with three. First, there is not adequate discussion and debate on the issue. We are discussing huge curtailment of people's freedoms, including the right to move freely, the right to meet up and the right to have a livelihood. This discussion is being compressed into the space of a few hours. The Irish Council for Civil Liberties has said this makes a mockery of our democracy and it is hard to disagree with that.

Second, when we debated this earlier in the year I gave examples from other countries of how emergency Covid powers were used against the interests of ordinary people. I warned that this could and would happen here and that has proved to be case. It was only a couple of weeks after that debate that gardaí from Store Street Garda station used these powers to order the dispersal of an official picket at the Debenhams store on Henry Street. They followed the pickets to the Luas line to make sure they left town and they even tried to break up a conversation between the shop steward and a journalist. In other countries provisions have been put in place to ensure the right to protest is defended, even in the context of a Covid emergency. That has not happened in this State.

Last but not least, this is in part a discussion on the Government's strategy. People should wear masks, curtail their contact with other people and take all the other necessary measures to push back against the virus. I fully support all those measures. Level 5 has been allowed to occur because the Government backed off from tackling powerful business interests. It did this by refusing to go after the meat plant bosses, bottling on the issue of level 5 two weeks ago and failing to bring in a sick pay scheme for workers in private nursing homes, for example. In addition, while there have been improvements in testing, tracing remains a problem. Having failed to convince people with such a strategy, the Government has turned to coercive powers such as fines for not wearing a mask and for travelling further than 5 km and so on. People need a strategy they can believe in, which does not bow down to vested interests. They need to be persuaded, as they can be, rather than the Government taking the big stick. These are all very powerful reasons to vote against this extension.

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