John Lahart (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

A speech could be very brief today based on the previous contributions, which submitted that the Government is responsible for absolutely everything, even for the pandemic itself. I, along with a few others, but not everybody, attended the briefing given by the Minister's officials yesterday on what Jonathan Swift would have called modest proposals, yet we have heard today a litany of questionable comments, unusually from Members I would normally consider sensible, including Deputy McNamara, who is in the gods up above me, who makes a lot of sense on Covid and who chaired - very intelligently - the Covid committee, a committee that is missed. The idea that legislation is planned by the Government so the Garda can fine and criminalise parents who visit their child or children who visit their parents is catastrophising what are modest proposals. It adds to the stress of people listening. To those who might be listening, I say that nothing could be further from the intentions of the Government in this legislation. The proposals are very simple and modest, in response to the fact that, while the vast majority of people continue to abide by the guidelines and the advisories issued by the public health authorities, HSE and NPHET, there are those who breach the guidelines, sometimes inadvertently, and cause difficulties for everybody else. Issues have arisen over larger-than-allowed gatherings in family homes. Some of those gatherings do not constitute raves or massive house parties but we are aware, based on the evidence that NPHET has given us, that they have been the source of super-spreading incidents.

We are also aware that the philosophy behind this legislation and the manner in which the Garda has commendably policed our country throughout the pandemic have been, first and foremost, to engage with the public, educate in a gentle, consent-led way those who are not complying, encourage those who are not complying to change their behaviour and, as a very last resort, introduce enforcement proceedings. People need to catch hold of themselves. The country is up to its neck, stressed out and anxious. The kind of language used today, particularly by those on the left, does nothing except add to the catastrophising of the crisis we face. They need to take a long, cold shower and listen to some of the rubbish they bleat about some of the regulations, advisories and guidelines that the Government is trying to introduce in the midst of a pandemic, the environment around which changes hourly and daily. The pandemic creates enough crises of its own without individual Deputies in here catastrophising one event after another, the latest concerning hand sanitisers, as though the Government deliberately procured dangerous hand sanitisers for schools and as if every school had procured them and every school would have to close down.

A Deputy for whom I have a lot of regard was in the upper tier earlier looking for advice on music schools.

The Deputy knows the answer to this, he just does not want to be the one to deliver that news. It is set out as plain as the nose on my face in levels 1 to 5. We know from various groups and residents that most people understand it. Many people need hand-holding and an awful lot of people ask questions to which they already know the answers but they wish the answers were not so. They want someone else to give them that answer and when they get the answer the person giving it gets a barrage of criticism. I have my own issues with level 5. I support what the Government is doing. We have gone into a phase for six weeks and we will have to wait and see what the outcome will be.

Then we look at the hard left. Deputy Shortall, whom I greatly respect, spoke about the entire House coming to a consensus on how we deal with these issues and on the fines and the levels of enforcement measures the Garda takes. We do not have the time for this. The Deputy knows the House would not come to agreement on any measure on the pandemic. The Government has to take the difficult and courageous decisions. This is what governing involves sometimes. It is not the easy decisions and the crowd pleasing decisions that come from the hard left that are so easy to make. It is the really difficult tough unpopular decisions that are the decisions the Government has to make. The Government does not always get it right and when it does not get it right it comes back and it says we have to change this and amend it. With regard to the hard left's latest proposal on zero Covid, I looked online, and yesterday my colleague, Deputy Jim O'Callaghan, referred to the fact there are 66 active cases in New Zealand, which has been one of the pin-up countries for a zero-Covid policy.

This is a virus. The Government is doing its best. Our health service is doing its best. The testers and tracers are doing their absolute best, as are the HSE, nurses, doctors, shelf stackers, teachers, special needs assistants and caretakers. The Government got the schools back and ensured the delivery and fulfilment of the social contract that protects as best as possible those who lost their jobs or whose businesses are struggling but never a word from the left about how the Government has fulfilled the social contract with the most vulnerable. In the pandemic, the most vulnerable can have various hues because they include businesses, entrepreneurs and the private sector and not just those who would traditionally be regarded as vulnerable. Never a word from the left in the House about how the Government has absolutely supported them at a time when they most need it. The Government has poured billions into ensuring that stability is maintained in society at a time of unforeseen and sudden crisis. All the left does is catastrophise, attempt to divide and cause more anxiety and upheaval because that is the environment in which it thrives. The Government's responsibility is to keep order in the midst of chaos. What a challenge it is to maintain order in the midst of chaos.

I will communicate privately with the Minister on my next point. There are other measures the Government could take from a behavioural point of view. Nobody is thrilled that we have moved to level 5. We will know in six weeks whether it has worked. It may be a fork in the road for the country in terms of whether it has. I truly hope it does work because we are facing into Christmas and a time of hope for people. Members of the public looking on need to know that the vast majority of Members of the House, on the left and right, and all of those who support the Government are doing their absolute best to help them through the crisis and to maintain order and stability. The proposals before us today from the Ministers for Health and Justice and Equality are modest. They are in response to the anxiety and concerns of the public about the fact that while they have been obeying the laws, they see others flagrantly not obeying the laws but have not seen any enforcement on this. These proposals are modest efforts to attempt to tackle this issue.

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