Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

Okay.

A briefing was called at short notice on Wednesday evening, which was highly unsatisfactory. We were told that this has nothing to do with house parties, yet the Government's portrayal is that it is all to do with house parties. I will come back to that later when we consider the regulations in more detail. That is no way to do business, however. We should not have to take key decisions here today in a rush. I am putting down a marker at the very beginning that this is highly unsatisfactory and a very unprofessional way of dealing with legislation. It is not acceptable.

We are at level 5 now. There are questions to be asked about why we find ourselves at a point where level 5 had to be invoked. We are facing a national emergency. We all want to be part of the national effort in responding to that emergency. However, the Minister is making it difficult for us. This Government, and to a certain extent the previous Government, has excluded the Opposition from any kind of national response. That has been a poor decision. Clearly we need to be speaking with one voice. We need to come together sharing expertise and identifying those actions which are most likely to be effective in controlling the virus. The issue of what is the best approach to take to tackling this huge threat to our lives and livelihoods should not be a matter for political division. Instead, it should be a case of working together on a cross-party basis to devise a national strategy for responding to this. Several times I have asked the Taoiseach to reach out to other parties to work together on this on the basis of the best advice and expertise. Not only should that be the case at a political level, it should also be the case in terms of expertise being brought in to agree the national response to this issue.

We have highly qualified people in NPHET and good people with expertise in public health and mathematical modelling. While all of that is really important, it is only one aspect of it. Back in early summer, I put it to the Tánaiste that he would consider broadening the range of expertise that would be brought in to decide the best national response. He told me at that point there was a Cabinet sub-committee. That is all very well but the Cabinet sub-committee does not possess the kind of expertise required to respond in that broad way.

I drew attention then to the fact that the decisions on level 5 were taken by ten respected people but that all of them were male. There is an urgent need to bring diversity to decision-making because we should have the kind of balance that would be achieved with a gender balance. We also need to bring in other expertise on, say, human behaviour and what is the best way to encourage people to come along with some of the severe actions proposed. The mathematical and public health elements are a particular perspective. There are other perspectives as well, however. If the Government had involved broader approaches dealing with human nature, psychology and behavioural science, we would not necessarily find ourselves here today with the Government asking us to agree to the introduction of severe penal measures to get people to comply. This should be about winning hearts and minds. The Government should have set out to understand human nature better, come up with reasonable proposals. which would be seen as such, and bring people along. Unfortunately, that is not the case. Too often people hear measures being introduced that they cannot understand the logic for and feel that they are unreasonable. Certainly some of them are unreasonable. They do not necessarily add up to a situation where people can buy into the Government's response. That is a real weakness in the approach that has been taken.

I also have to express concern about attempts to demonise NPHET. It is a highly qualified body but it is not the possessor of all wisdom by any means. In the areas in which it has expertise, however, it is very good. It is regrettable that when the Government's efforts fail, some if its members point the finger at NPHET and demonise it. That has been entirely unhelpful. I am speaking obviously about the Tánaiste in particular. Other actions of the Tánaiste over recent weeks and months have also been unhelpful. I am referring to deliberate efforts and comments on his part that were clearly designed to undermine the Government and Government agencies, while not playing his part in achieving a national response.

It is clear that the Garda is not looking for the powers that the Government is setting out in this legislation, nor indeed has NPHET asked for them.

The Minister spoke about the need to build trust. Many people do not really trust the Government at the moment. There are several reasons for that. The political response to this should be aimed at gaining the public's trust. It is very hard to do that if the response is not unified and steps are not taken to bring people together. Moreover, unless the it keeps its side of the bargain, the Government will not retain the public's trust. What is the deal here? The Government must lead. It must take the actions that only it can take so that it can bring people with it and expect them to play their part. The vast majority of people have been playing their part, but people are increasingly asking why they should comply if the Government is not doing its bit.

There are major questions about why the Government is not doing its bit in a range of areas to which other Deputies have referred. Testing is an obvious example. The fact that this was not sorted out during the summer months is simply unbelievable. It is incredible that weekend clinics are still being cancelled and results are being delayed. It is unbelievable that the Government and the HSE have not sorted out the tracing issue. This is fundamental. Testing, tracing and isolation are central to the Government's approach to tackling the virus, but various aspects of that approach are now in complete disarray. The linchpin of the Government's approach is not functioning. The Minister must get that sorted out, and fast.

It was a revelation when we discovered a few weeks ago that tracing only covered the period of the previous 48 hours. No detailed work was being done to identify where the virus was being transmitted. We still do not know that. It is guesswork. We have not used the science or deployed the people who are capable of carrying out meaningful tracing that goes back seven or ten days. At the heart of all of this is the traditional and continuing complete neglect of public health. Most people had not heard of public health until the pandemic arrived earlier this year. Public health has traditionally been hugely under-resourced. It still is. We only have a third of the public health doctors a country of our size requires. The fact that a practitioner cannot become a consultant as a public health doctor is a real slap in the face. The Minister recently promised to do something about that, but there has been no engagement with public health doctors or their representatives. Public health nursing is another aspect of public health's position as the poor relation of our health service. We are 700 public health nurses short of the complement a country of our size should have. These are glaring areas where the Government needs to do its bit. People are saying the Government is not doing its bit, and the Minister knows where that thinking leads.

The other area that has been completely neglected is travel. I cannot understand that. I have been raising this issue for months. For the last few months there have been no safeguards or controls whatsoever at airports or ports. The Minister mentioned the other day that as part of the European traffic light system he will look at or explore - phrases he uses frequently - the prospect of five-day quarantines and polymerase chain reaction, PCR, testing at airports. Why is the Minister only considering this now? Is there any prospect of a system being put in place to address that issue any time soon?

The question of Northern Ireland relates that. I am not saying it is straightforward by any means, but an all-island strategy must be actively pursued. During the summer the North's all-party Committee for Health called for that. That was the time for an immediate and positive response. It did not happen. It is essential that the Minister provides political leadership in all of these areas, and unfortunately that is lacking.

The Minister has brought legislation before the House which introduces further restrictions on people's lives and on what can happen in the country and enables him to impose penalties. He has outlined some of what he has in mind, but the legislation allows him a very free hand to expand those restrictions and penalties. It would be very dangerous to give a Minister that kind of carte blanche without any kind of democratic controls. That is why my amendment requires any regulations to have the approval of the Dáil.

I have said that the briefing the other evening was very inadequate. It told us something very different to what the Minister and the Government are saying now. We need clarity on this. Yesterday, like others, I heard by chance that the Minister had signed regulations. The first of these imposes restrictions on the movement of relevant persons outside their places of residence. Rather than outlining the things people should not be doing, the regulations set out 25 reasons for which people will be allowed to leave their homes. That is incredible. Without too much effort one can immediately think of another 25 or even 50 reasons that would be perfectly legitimate but are not listed. For example, someone might travel 2 km by car to post a letter. That is a legitimate reason, but it is not listed. The Minister has been incredibly prescriptive in these regulations. After outlining the 25 reasons, the regulations state that the paragraph in question will be a penal provision for the purposes of section 31A of the Health Act 1947. The Minister is penalising people who leave their homes for reasons other than the 25 purposes he has prescribed. The regulations then address events and dwellings. That this is not a penal provision, despite what the officials told us. While this is portrayed as a measure dealing with house parties, it actually does not do that in penal terms. It sets out what people can and cannot do in their houses, but there does not seem to be any penalty attached. Funerals and the operations of businesses, hotels, etc., are all covered by penal offences.

If this is the first set of regulations the Minister has come up with, I fear what he might do next week or next month. It is completely unacceptable to expect the Dáil to pass legislation allowing a Minister to introduce whatever regulations and fines he wishes without any democratic control whatsoever. As I said at the outset, the Government's approach should aim to bring people with it. It should win over their hearts and minds by speaking to them directly about how they feel about the huge price they are paying for the restrictions on their lives. The Government should work with people and meet them where they are.

12 o’clock

It has not taken that approach to date. The regulations the Minister signed yesterday do not take that kind of approach. Given the first set of regulations the Government is proposing under the legislation, it is very difficult to have confidence in the judgment of the Minister or the Government regarding what we need to be doing.

I refer to the areas that are causing difficulty. House parties are undoubtedly causing difficulty. What is the Government doing about them? The regulations are very unclear about what steps will be taken in that regard. Under the regulations, which are not penal regulations, gardaí can knock on the door. What happens if the door is not answered? Is there anything the Garda can do in those circumstances?

I do not think the Bill is what is required at the moment. The Government needs to make a far greater effort to do what it undertook to do and get the basics right. There needs to be an appeal to people to work together. I have put it to the Taoiseach that unified political messages should be coming from the political system. That will only happen if we can work together in a genuine attempt to reach agreement on what we should be doing in the national interest, and then encourage people to do that. It is regrettable that that approach has not been taken.

I urge the Minister to withdraw these regulations and to consider supporting the amendments that I and other Deputies have tabled, which I believe are quite reasonable. The amendments propose that before introducing any regulations with relatively severe penalties, the Minister would get the approval of the House. That is the only way we can build trust with the public. I do not think it will happen otherwise.

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