Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am delighted to have an opportunity to speak on this issue again. I sometimes get confused. Listening to the debate in this House and in other countries that have been similarly affected, one can come to a different conclusion. For instance, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, France, Belgium, Denmark and Sweden have all been held up as examples of how to deal successfully with this virus. We in public life, certainly on the Government side, were advised, by the Opposition more often than not, to copy that and that we would then be okay. The answer was that that was wrong. They all had their problems. The difference in those countries was that the Government was not blamed. Efforts were made to try to correct, identify and meet the virus head-on. Let us not forget that they had more than one attempt and they are still fighting hard to hold their position in order to hold up the virus.

The virus is a bit like a forest fire. It has started and it has spread. Several mini-fires have spread now. I did not hear anybody speak in the House in the last two days to identify any signs that they saw what might have contributed to this recurrence and resurgence of the virus. Maybe my constituency is different. We had a second lockdown ourselves some time ago. It had the effect of slowing, but not preventing, the virus. Let us not forget that it did not prevent the virus from recurring. It was always pointed out that as the economy recovered, there would be more outbreaks of the virus, for obvious reasons. Of course we would all aspire to have air travel restored. It is part of business. I do not know how possible that is, or whether it is possible at all. I do not know how the isolation of people for ten or 14 days after air travel will work.

I want to address the comparison with New Zealand. It is chalk and cheese, or apples and oranges. There is no comparison to be made with a country with vast areas with very little population and little air travel compared to our situation. We live in a country with a capital city with an airport with the second highest level of activity in the world. That is a stark statement.

The telephone calls that I have received are from businesses, mostly small businesses and small shops, which have observed the letter and the spirit of what they were supposed to do in the course of the restrictions. They have pointed out numerous instances in their own localities where observance of the restrictions did not take place to the same extent. That is where the unfairness arises and where people begin to get cynical. In the past month, I have received, as have many Members, telephone calls about widespread disregard for wearing of masks and social distancing. A 1 m distance was not being observed, never mind 2 m. There was a lack of hand hygiene and use of disinfectants and so on. There has been much talk about tracing and testing. I can predict one thing. We can have all the tracing and testing that we want from here on, but if there is not serious observance of the regulations, it will all be to no avail.

What has happened is that the outbreaks throughout the country have started to converge on each other. When that happens, the tracing system will be overwhelmed. For those who think otherwise, let us wait and see. It is not possible to reverse the virus simply with tracing when there are numerous outbreaks around the country and they start to converge on each other.

It is all very fine to blame the Government. In this country, there is a tradition of that and that is maybe the way that we are. One Member tonight spoke at length about employment and the need to shut down various employment-providing ventures throughout the country.

Everything could be shut down unless there is strict observance of social distancing, social interaction and the degree to which ordinary members of the public, ourselves included, converge on each other's space and, as a result, create the conduit that allows the virus to continue. We can talk about it forever. I can blame the Opposition, the Opposition can blame the Government and there can be protest marches and many other things, but we must get one thing straight - the virus requires contact. It needs people not to observe the regulations, the hand hygiene and the social distancing and to converge in congregation with each other. That is what the virus needs, and that is why there has been such a sharp resurgence. There was a modest drop in the numbers reported this evening. Hopefully, that will continue, but it may or may not.

NPHET has been referred to as unnecessary, comprising civil servants and so forth. They are experts in their fields. They can work out, and have worked out, mathematically exactly what will happen, and when and how it will happen. It can do so again. We all know the members. They excel in their respective fields, so we can ignore them as well and blame it on the Government. We can ignore what NPHET has to say, but it repeatedly comes back to the same question: how do we encourage most of the people to observe the regulations? The theme is that we will go back to where we were. We will draw a deep breath, hold it for some time and we will return to a situation where everything is all right. It will not be that way. It could be months, a year or more. We will have to observe the distancing regulations to a far greater extent than we have heretofore. We must try to restore our economy to some extent at the same time. It is going to be a difficult task. It is a difficult call, but it is a matter for ourselves. We can then blame whom we like if it does not work, but it will work if the distancing regulations are observed. There is no doubt about that.

I have listened to various sides of the argument in the Special Committee on Covid-19 Response, the Joint Committee on Health and during debates in the House. We have to recognise the cause of the spread of the virus, the conduit. That conduit is the degree to which people have converged and mixed together. That brings me to the telephone calls. People have rung me at all times of the day and night to ask why hordes of people are converging in certain areas, with nobody wearing a mask or observing social distance. We then ask how we get isolated outbreaks at various locations in the country. They were all identified and found. It was possible to find out where they started. However, it came back to the same thing again - people congregating. It may well have been for a good cause, but that does not matter. When people are brought together, all that is required is one person in the group to be the carrier. We know the story about one person who infected 54 other people. It need not have stopped at that. It could be more, even 500 people. We still seem to continue to point the finger at other issues. They are not as relevant as they appear, but they offer the opportunity to blame the Government. That is an easy option.

I am not suggesting that the Government does not have responsibility. It does, and I expect it to take its responsibility seriously. I believe it is doing so. It is responding to the threat as it arises. However, it does not matter how seriously the Government does its job, if the general public does not come with it. It has been suggested that the public has lost faith and does not trust the Government. I heard that argument put forward in the House today. Oscar Wilde famously said, "Duty is what one expects from others, it is not what one does oneself." The Leas-Cheann Comhairle will recognise that, given the part of the country from which she comes. The fact is that everybody has a role to play, at whatever level it is. We must play that role to the best of our ability and with one thing in common. We do not have to shut down the country or turn the nation into an unemployment black spot if we do the simple things such as observance of social distancing. There is no reason we cannot be six or seven feet apart and wear masks. While we do not want to wear masks or to be seven feet apart, we can have a conversation of some type in that environment, albeit different from what it used to be. We must remember that we are not going back to where we were in the short term. At all times over the next year, and it might be longer than that, we must accept that we are under threat, and that we can only get respite when the vaccine is discovered or the virus is defeated. I do not believe it will be defeated readily or quickly.

My final point is that we should not add to confusion. We should identify the issues. They are simple to identify because they have been repeated many times. Drawing up ancillary issues that are not intrinsic to the issue we must deal with is not helpful. We all extend our sympathies to those whose lives were lost during this pandemic. Sadly, there will be more. I hope that during the current partial lockdown there is sufficient support among the people to trust and follow the simple advice for themselves. If they do not interact, do not break the social distancing rules and observe hand hygiene and all the other things the experts advise them to do, they have the ability in their hands to defeat the virus regardless of what the Government or anybody else does.

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