Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I sense not just a pandemic, but a panic on the part of the Government. This is all about deflecting from the really deep systemic problems this society is facing. We have seen the collapse of the tracing system with the domino effect on the testing system that we heard about this morning. Deputy Carthy just talked about a complete disaster facing the schools. Evidence was already coming through that they were in trouble. Fórsa is calling for a strike by its school staff members and the ASTI has balloted. They are not doing this because they do not care about the kids; the opposite is the case.

Deputy O'Dowd wants us to praise people. I utterly and totally praise the teachers and the other school staff who have done their best to get those schools open and keep them open. I happen to live with a schoolteacher and the stress, worry and angst they carry with them every day through this pandemic is incredible. I absolutely praise them, those working in the health services and all essential workers. We have done so and we have clapped them to death, but we are failing them. We are failing them because the number of infections is rising among our health workers. The testing-and-tracing system has collapsed and our hospitals do not have the capacity. Despite what the Minister says, his winter plan is not enough. As we face into winter, we will face the same old problems with the beds and trolleys filling up, and the Covid cases will continue to increase.

I have just read the speech the Minister, Deputy McEntee, gave in support of this legislation. She mentions the four Es the Garda has been using: engage, educate, encourage and enforce as a final resort. That is fine, but I am afraid what we are doing today is panicking and trying to turn four Es into four Fs. I have no doubt that there will be a surge of fines against people who generally come from the lower economic classes. We will not find gardaí walking up the leafy suburbs of Castleknock and stopping somebody in their SUV with a crate of fine Pinotage wine going to a dinner party. We will find that they stop young lads and young ones going through parks with a six-pack under their arm. I believe the gardaí do not want this at all. In its panic, the Government is turning this into an argument about people's personal behaviour rather than the systemic failure of the Government to deliver.

We are totally opposed to imposing fines on people. In fact, they do not work. The Irish Council for Civil Liberties has done some good research on this. When we used to jail people for not paying their television licence fees, the jails were full of mainly single mothers who could not afford to pay their television licence fine and would go to jail for a day or two instead.

The Minister may find that this will happen. This approach does not work and is ineffective but, most important, it sends out the signal that we are not all in this together. This is part of the domino effect where we have the tracing and testing systems collapsing, a lack of capacity in our hospitals, and our public health doctors in a panic because the amount of work they have to do means they cannot keep up with cases, never mind the ordinary day-to-day health issues they must deal with.

This legislation is an admission of failure not only in the past but also for the future because the Government intends to extend it to June. It proves that the Government proposes a plan of ebb and flow, with lockdowns followed by reopening. That will be a disaster for the population, psychologically, socially and economically. It will not work for the levels of health service we need to achieve. We advocate a zero-Covid policy which is not about a permanent lockdown but about focusing on the things this society needs. We wasted the previous lockdown when we did not increase capacity to the levels required and reopened the economy too wide and too early. As Deputy Kenny said, we never imposed restrictions and checks on workplaces such as meat factories and direct provision centres where the clusters broke out. I am afraid history will repeat itself time and again unless the Government wakes up. It is dividing the community, not uniting it. People do not trust the Government and they are losing faith in it. Nevertheless, the vast majority want this to work. They want to see the pandemic end, a decent health service and normal life restored. The Government's approach is a recipe for disaster and indicates panic. There is also a strong class bias in how the legislation is framed and is to be imposed.

We saw the Garda quell events yesterday. It already has the powers to do that, so why do we need to give it more powers? If people refuse to mask up in a shop or on a bus, the Garda already has powers to do something about it. This is a waste of our time yet again. Unless we resource tracking and tracing, stop 7,000 people daily travelling into the country, have proper discussions with the Northern Ireland Assembly to have genuine and united cross-Border policies imposed to deal with the pandemic, we are wasting our time. We need to return to a message that we are in this together and respect people, rather than treating them like children and telling them what they can and cannot do.

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